his affectionate partiality towards me to appear, at the hazard of being censured for inordinate vanity.-To obviate such a censure, I will only say, that I have endeavoured to execute what I regard as a mournful duty, as if I were under the immediate and visible direction of the most pure, the most truly modest, and the most gracefully virtuous mind, that I had ever the happiness of knowing in the form of a manly friend. It is certainly my wish that these Volumes may obtain the entire approbation of the world, but it is infinitely more my desire and ambition to render them exactly such, as I think most likely to gratify the conscious spirit of Cowper himself, in a superior existence.-The person who recommended it to his female relation to continue her exemplary regard to the Poet by appearing as his biographer, advised her to relate the particulars of his Life in the form of Letters addressed to your Lordship.He cited, on the occasion, a striking passage from the Memoirs of Gibbon, in which that great historian pays a just and a splendid compliment to one of the early English poets, who, in the tenderness, and purity of his heart, and in the vivid powers of description, may be thought to resemble Cowper.—The passage I allude to is this:"The nobility of the Spencers has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough, but I exhort them to consider the Fairy Queen as the most precious jewel of their coronet." If this lively metaphor is just in every point of view, we may regard The Task as a jewel of pre-eminent lustre in the coronet belonging to the noble family of Cowper. Under the influence of this idea allow me, my Lord, to address to you such Memoirs of your admirable Relation, as my own intimacy with him, and the kindness of those who knew and loved him most truly, have enabled me to compose! I will tell you, with perfect sincerity, all my motives for addressing them to your Lordship.-First I flatter myself it may be a pleasing, and permit me to say, not an unuseful occupation to an ingenuous young Nobleman, to trace the steps by which a retired man of the most diffident modesty, whose private virtues did honor to his name, arose to peculiar celebrity.My second motive is, I own, of a more selfish nature, for I am persuaded, that in addressing my Work to you, I give the Public a satisfactory pledge for the authenticity of my materials.—I will not pretend to say, that I hold it in the power of any title, or affinity, to reflect an additional lustre on the memory of the departed Poet: for I think so highly of poetical distinction, when that distinction is pre eminently eminently obtained by genius, piety, and benevolence, that all common honours appear to be eclipsed by a splendour more forcible, and extensive.-Great poets, my Lord, and that I may speak of them, as they dein the words of Horace, serve, let me say, Primum me illorum, dederim quibus esse Poetas, Excerpam numero. Great poets have generally united in their destiny those extremes of good and evil, which Homer, their immortal president, assigns to the bard, he describes; and which he exemplified himself in his own person. Their lives have been frequently chequered by the darkest shades of calamity; but their personal infelicities are nobly compensated by the prevalence and the extent of their renown.—To set this in the most striking point of view, allow me to compare poetical celebrity with the fame acquired by the exertion of different mental powers in the highest department of civil life. The Lord Chancellors of England may be justly regarded among the personages of the modern world, peculiarly exalted by intellectual endowments: with two of these illustrious characters, the Poet, whose life I have en voured deavoured to delineate, was in some measure connected; being related to one, the immediate ancestor of your Lordship, and being intimate, in early life, with a Chancellor of the present reign, whose elevation to that dignity, he has recorded in rhyme. Much respect is due to the legal names of Cowper, and of Thurlow. Knowledge, eloquence, and political importance, conspired to aggrandize the men, who added those names to the list of English nobility: yet after the lapse of a few centuries, they will shine only like very distant constellations, merely visible in the vast expanse of history! But, at that time, the Poet, of whom I speak, will continue to sparkle in the eyes of all men, like the radiant star of the evening, perpetually hailed by the voice of gratitude, affection, and delight. There is a principle of unperishable vitality (if I may use such an expression) in the compositions of Cowper; which must ensure to them in future ages, what we have seen them so happily acquire and maintain in the present—universal admiration, and love! His Poetry is to the heart, and the fancy, what the moral Essays of Bacon are to the understanding, a never-cloying feast! "As if increase of appetite had grown Like Like them it comes "home to the business and bosom of every man by possessing the rare and double talent to familiarize and endear the most awful subjects, and to dignify the most familiar, the Poet naturally becomes a favourite with Readers of every description. His works must interest every nation under Heaven, where his sentiments are understood, and where the feelings of humanity prevail. Yet their Author is eminently an Englishman,in the noblest sense of that honourable appellation. He loved the constitution; he revered the religion of his country; he was tenderly, and generously alive to her real interest and honor; and perhaps of her many admirable poets, not one has touched her foibles, and celebrated her perfections, with a spirit so truly filial. But I perceive, that I am in danger of going far beyond my design in this introductory Letter, for it was my intention not to enter into the merits of his character here, but to inform you in what manner I wish to make that character display itself to my Readers, as far as possible, in his own most interesting language.—Perhaps no man ever possessed the powers of description in a higher degree, both in verse and prose. By weaving into the texture of these Memoirs, an extensive selection of his private Letters, and several of his |