a bribe!

The worth of his three kingdoms I defy

To lure me to the baseness of a lie ;

And of all lies (be that one poet's boast!)

The lie that flatters, I abhor the most.

This profest abhorrence of adulation was uttered in the real spirit of simplicity and truth. No poet was ever more perfectly free from that base propensity, which is sometimes erroneously imputed to the poetical tribe, who from their peculiar warmth of sensation are often thought to flatter, when they speak only their genuine feelings.

Perhaps Cowper sometimes indulged himself in a very different weakness, if I may call the little excesses of a generous independent pride by so harsh an appellation.

It is incumbent on me to explain the petty foible of my friend to which I allude. Having composed from the impulse of his heart his little poem on the elevation of his intimate companion in former days, Lord Thurlow, to the dignity of Chancellor, he condemned it to lie in long concealment from an apprehension, that although he knew the praise to be just, it might be supposed to flow from

a sordid and selfish solicitude to derive some advan tage from the recent grandeur of a man, whom he had once cordially loved, but whom their different destinies had made for many years almost a personal stranger to the poet, though never an alien to his heart.

But to resume the few remarks I wish to make on the poem of Table-Talk. It contains what Cowper could readily command, a great variety of style. Much of the poem has the manner of Churchill, and particularly the lines that exhibit a strong character of that popular and powerful satirist;poet, whose highest excellence Cowper possessed, with many more refined attractions, which the energetic, but coarse spirit of that modern Juvenal could not attain. Towards the close of Table-Talk, the poet introduces very happily what he had proposed to himself, as the main scope of his own poetical labours the service that a poet may render to the great interests of religion. This he describes in a strain of sublimity, and contrasts it very ably with inferior objects of poetical ambition.

From this poem of infinite diversity, it would be easy to select specimens of almost every excellence that can be found in a work of this nature, and

the modest author himself has confessed his own partiality to the verses that describe the character of a Briton. Truth however obliges me to observe, that this admirable prelude to the collected poetry of Cowper has a weak and ungraceful conclusion.

The four poems entitled Truth, Expostulation, Hope and Charity, are four christian exhortations to piety, which may be thought tedious and dull by readers who have no relish for devotional eloquence, or who, however blest with a serious sense of religion, have too hastily admitted the very strange and groundless dogma of Dr. Johnson, that “ contemplative piety cannot be poetical." A position resembling that of the ancient sophist, who denied the existence of motion, and whose indignant hearer answered him by walking immediately in his sight. With such simple and forcible refutation, the genius of Cowper replies to the paradoxical pedantry of a critic, whose high intellectual powers, when he exerts and exhausts them to command and illuminate the expansive sphere of poetry, delight and disgust his readers alternately, by a frequent mixture of gigantic force, and dwarfish imbecility. His weak, though solemn, sophistry on this subject is completely refuted by the poems of Cowper, because contemplative piety, which, accord

ing to the critic's assertion, cannot be poetical, is in truth, one of the most powerful charms by which this devout poet accomplishes his poetical enchantment.

But to return to the four sacred poems that led me to this remark. That on Truth exhibits the author's singular talent of blending the humorous and the sublime in his portrait of the sanctified prude, he is at once the copyist and compeer of Hogarth; — in his picture of cheerful piety, and true Christian freedom, he soars to a species of excellence that the pencil of Hogarth could not command.

Expostulation flows in a more even tenor of sublime admonition:-it was founded on a sermon preached by the author's zealous and eloquent friend, Mr. Newton, and contains the following admirable description of what the clergy ought to be.

The priestly brotherhood, devout, sincere,
From mean self-interest, and ambition clear;
Their hope in Heaven, servility their scorn,
Prompt to persuade, expostulate, and warn;
Their wisdom pure, and given them from above;
Their usefulness insur'd by zeal and love;
As meek as the man Moses, and withal

As bold, as, in Agrippa's presence, Paul,

Should fly the world's contaminating touch,
Holy and unpolluted; are thine such ?

I will not transcribe the closing couplet; because it appears to me one of the few passages in the poet, where the warm current of his zeal hurried him into a hasty expression of asperity, not in unison with the native and habitual candour of his contemplative mind.

The poem on Hope, although the poet means only to describe

That Hope, which can alone exclude despair.

has a gay diversity of colouring, and the dialogue introduced is written with exquisite pleasantry. The great and constant aim of the author is expressed in his motto,

Doceas iter, et sacra ostia pandas.

In the commencement of his poem on Charity, the author renders a just, and eloquent tribute to the humanity of Captain Cook; and in the progress of it bursts into an animated and graceful eulogy on Howard, the visitor of prisons. The sentiments that Cowper endeavours to impress on the heart of his