pleasure! Yes; I was pleased that these affecting papers were entrusted to my care, because some incidents induce me to believe, that if their revered author had been solicited to appoint a biographer for himself, he would have assigned to me this honourable task; Yet honourable as I considered it, I was perfectly aware of the difficulties, and the dangers attending it: One danger indeed appeared to me of such a nature, as to require perpetual caution, as I advanced; I mean the danger of being led, in writing as the biographer of my friend, to speak infinitely too much of myself. To avoid the offensive failing of egotism, I had resolved at first to make no inconsiderable sacrifice ; and to suppress in his Letters every particle of praise bestowed upon myself. I soon found it impossible to do so without injuring the tender and generous spirit of my friend.

I have therefore suffered many expressions

of 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 who recommended it to his female relation to continue her exempla. ry regard to the poet by appearing as his biographer, advised her to relate the particulars of his life in the form of Letters address

person

ed to your Lordship.-He cited, on the oc.casion, 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

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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 honour 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 publick 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 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 deserve, let me say, in the words of Horace,

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 poeti