Still outlives many a storm that has effac'd That thou might'st know me safe and warmly laid; The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestow'd The parent whose merits are so feelingly recorded by the filial tenderness of the Poet, was Ann, daughter of Roger Donne, Esq. of Ludham Hall, in Norfolk. This lady, whose family is said to have been originally from Wales, was married, in the bloom of youth, to Dr. Cowper; after giving birth to several children, who died in their infancy, and leaving two sons, William, the immediate subject of this memorial, born at Berkhamstead on the 26th of November, N. S. 1731, and John (whose accomplishments and memorable death will be described in the course of this compilation), she died in childbed at the early age of thirty-four, in 1737. Those who delight in contemplating the best affections of our nature, will ever admire the tender sensibility with which the Poet has acknowledged his obligation to this amiable mother, in a pcem composed more than fifty years after her decease. Readers of this description may find a pleasure in observing how the praise so liberally bestowed on this tender parent, at so late a period, is confirmed (if praise so unquestionable may be said to receive confirmation) by another poetical record of her merit, which the hand of affinity and affection bestowed upon her tomb. A record written at a time when the Poet, who was destined to prove, in his advanced life, her more powerful eulogist, had hardly begun to show the dawn of that genius which, after years of silent affliction, arose like a star emerging from tempestuous darkness. The monument of Mrs. Cowper, erected by her husband in the chancel of St. Peter's church, at Berkhamstead, contains the following verses, composed by a young lady, her niece, the late Lady Walsingham: Here lies, in early years bereft of life, The best of mothers, and the kindest wife; Who neither knew, nor practis'd any art, Secure in all she wish'd, her husband's heart. Her love to him still prevalent in death, Pray'd Heaven to bless him with her latest breath. Still was she studious never to offend, And glad of an occasion to commend: With ease would pardon injuries receiv'd, Nor e'er was cheerful when another griev'd. Despising state, with her own lot content, Enjoy'd the comforts of a life well-spent. Resign'd when Heaven demanded back her breath, Her mind heroic 'midst the pangs of death. Whoe'er thou art that dost this Tomb draw near, O stay awhile, and shed a friendly tear, The truth and tenderness of this Epitaph will more than compensate with every candid reader the imperfection ascribed to it by its young and modest Author. To have lost a parent of a character so virtuous and endearing, at an early period of his childhood, was the prime misfortune of Cowper, and what contributed, perhaps, in the highest degree, to the dark colouring of his subsequent life. The influence of a good mother on the first years of her children, whether nature has given them peculiar strength, or peculiar delicacy of frame, is equally inestimable: It is the prerogative and the felicity of such a mother to temper the arrogance of the strong, and to dissipate the timidity of the tender. The infancy of Cowper was delicate in no common degree, and his constitution discovered, at a very early season, that morbid tendency to diffidence, to melancholy, and despair, which darkened as he advanced in years into periodical fits of the most deplorable depression. It may afford an ample field for useful reflection to observe, in speaking of a child, that he was destined to excite, in his progress through life, the highest degrees of admiration and of pity-of admiration for ment. 1 excellence, and of pity for mental disorder. We understand human nature too imperfectly to ascertain in what measure the original structure of his frame, and the casual incidents of his life, contributed to the happy perfection of his genius, or to the calamitous eclipses of his effulgent mind. Yet such were the talents, the virtues, and the misfortunes of this wonderful person, that it is hardly possible for Biography, extensive as her province is, to speak of a more interesting individual, or to select a subject on which it may be more difficult to satisfy a variety of readers. In feeling all the weight of this difficulty, I may still be confident that I shall not utterly disappoint his sincerrest admirers, if the success of my endeavours to make him more known, and more beloved, is proportioned, in any degree, to the zeal with which I cultivated his friendship, and to the gratification that I feel in recalling to my own recollection the delightful extent and diversity of his literary powers, with the equally delightful sweetness of his social character. But the powerful influence of such recollection has drawn me imperceptibly from the proper course of my narrative. I return to the childhood of Cowper. In first quitting the house of his parents, he was sent to a reputable school at Market-Street, in Hertfordshire, under the care of Dr. Pitman, and it is probable that he was removed from it in consequence of an ocular complaint. From a circumstance which he relates of himself at that period, in a letter written to me in 1792, he seems to have been in danger of resembling Milton in the misfortune of blindness, as he resembled him, more happily, in the fervency of a devout and poetical spirit. "I have been all my life," says Cowper, "subject to inflammations of the eye, and in my boyish days had specks on both that threatened to cover them. My father, alarmed for the consequences, sent me to a female oculist of great renown at that time, in whose house I abode two years, but to no good purpoe. From her I went to Westminster school, where, as the age of fourteen, the small-pox seized me, and proved the better oculist of the two, for it delivered me from them all. Not, however, from great liableness to inflammation, to which I am in a degree still subject, though much less than formerly, since I have been constant in the use of a hot foot-bath every night the last thing before going to rest. ད It appears a strange process in education to send a tender child from a long residence in the house of a female oculist immediately into all the hardships that a little delicate boy must have to encounter at a public school. But the mother of Cowper was dead, and fathers, though good men, are, in general, utterly unfit to manage their young and tender orphans. The little Cowper was sent to his first school in the year of his mother's death, and how ill-suited the scene was to his particular character, must be evident to all who have heard him describe his sensations in that season of life, which is often, very erroneously, extolled as the happiest period of human existence. He has been frequently heard to lament the persecution that he sustained in his childish years, from the cruelty of his school-fellows, in the two scenes of his education. His own forcible expression represented him at Westminter as not daring to raise his eye above the shoe-buckle of the other boys, who were too apt to tyrannize over his gentle spirit. The acuteness of his feelings in his childhood rendered those important years (which might have produced, under their cultivation, a series of lively enjoyments) miserable years of increasing timidity and depression, which, in the most cheerful hours of his advanced life, he could hardly describe to an intimate friend, without shuddering at the recollection of his early wretchedness. Yet to this, perhaps, the world is indebted for the pathetic and moral eloquence of those forcible admonitions to parents which give interest and beauty to his admirable Poem on Public Schools. Poets may be said to realize, in some measure, the poetical idea of the Nightingale singing with a thorn at her breast, as their most exquisite songs have often originated in the acuteness of their personal sufferings. Of this obvious truth, the Poem I have just |