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 thro' life the highest degrees of admiration and of pity-of admiration for mental 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.

readers. In feeling all the weight of this difficulty, I may still be confident that I shall not utterly disappoint his sincerest 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 inflamma"tions of the eye, and in my boyish days had specks on both that "threatened to cover them. My father alarmed for the conse

quences, sent me to a female Oculist of great renown at that "time, in whose house I abode two years, but to no good pur

pose.

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's 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 mentioned, is a very memorable example, and if any Readers have thought the Poet too severe in his strictures on that system of education, to which we owe some of the most accomplished characters, that ever gave celebrity to a civilized nation, such Readers, will be candidly reconciled to that moral severity of reproof, in recollecting, that it flowed from severe personal experience, united to the purest spirit of philanthropy and patriotism.

Cowper's exhortation to fathers, to educate their own sons, is a model of persuasive eloquence, and not inferior to similar exhortations in the eloquent Rousseau, or in the accomplished translator of Tansillo's poem, the Nurse, by which these enchanting writers have induced, and will continue to induce, so many mothers in polished life to suckle their own children. Yet similar as these exhortations may be esteemed, in their benevolent design, and in their

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 thro' life the highest degrees of admiration and of pity—of admiration for mental 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.