and his talents. In many cases, they have undoubtedly richly merited this censure; but there are some honorable exceptions, and amongst this class Cowper is pre-eminently distinguished. Of this wicked and foolish practice he had the utmost abhorrence; and in some instances it may be doubted whether he did not carry his aversion to flattery, almost to an opposite extreme; withholding praise where he knew it was due. The following lines occur almost at the commencement of his Table Talk. After painting the portrait of that most virtuous monarch, George the Third, in language as just as it is beautiful, he abruptly exclaims—

"Guard what you say; the patriotic tribe

Will sneer, and charge you with a bribe-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."

In the character of Cowper there was not the slightest particle of ostentation; on no occasion did he assume any airs of consequence; he never aimed, or wished to be what he was not. Everything in the shape of affectation was the ́object of his disgust. He loved simplicity without rudeness, and detested that squeamish mimicry of fine feeling which not unfrequently, either under the assumed garb of superior sanctity, or of ardent friendship, conceals the most pitiable imbecility and ignorance.

It must be acknowledged that Cowper sometimes dipped his pen in gall. Some expressions the most bitterly sarcastic are to be found in his poems. Of his first volume it was said, by one of his friends, "There are many passages delicate, many sublime, many beautiful, many tender, many sweet, and many acrimonious." Cowper's satire, however, though keen and powerful as a whip of scorpions, was employed only to expose and punish the openly profligate, and the hypocritical professors of religion. Everything in the shape of deception he ever held in perfect detestation. The castigation of vice, of ignorance, or of dissimulation, was his object, when he became a satirist. If he held up philosophy to ridicule, it was that glare of false philosophy, which, instead of being beneficial to men, only led them from the plain and beaten track of truth, into paths of error and misery. He never wantonly, for the sake only of his own gratification, inflicted his satiric lash on a single individual. He became a satirist, not to give vent to a waspish, revengeful, and mali

cious disposition, (to feelings of this kind he was an entire stranger, (but for the same purpose as the holy prophets of old were satirists, to expose, in mercy to mankind, the hideous deformity of those vices, which have ever been the fruitful parents of misery to mankind.

The exquisite sensibility of Cowper, and the real goodness of his disposition, with his entire abhorrence of cruelty, whether practised by man towards his own species, or towards any part of the Creator's works, are evinced by the following striking lines—

"I would not enter on my list of friends,

Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility, the man

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.

An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarned,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons
To love it too. The spring-time of our years
Is soon dishonored and defiled in most

By budding ills, that ask a prudent hand

To check them. But, alas! none sooner shoots,
If unrestrained, into luxuriant growth
Than cruelty, most devilish of them all!
Mercy, to him that shows it, is the rule
And righteous limitation of its art,

By which Heaven moves in pardoning guilty man;
And he that shows none, being ripe in years,
And conscious of the outrage he commits,,
Shall seek it, and not find it, in his turn.
Distinguished much by reason, and still more
By our capacity of grace divine,

From creatures that exist but for our sake,
Which, having served us, perish, we are held
Accountable: and God, some future day,
Will reckon with us roundly for the abuse

Of what he deems no mean or trivial trust!"

Liberty has always been the soul-inspiring theme of poets. On no subject has the muse sung in sweeter strains, or towered to more sublime heights. Cowper has given ample proofs that his muse felt all the fire of this ennobling theme. In his Table Talk, some beautiful lines will be found on this interesting subject, so dear to the heart of every Englishman; but in his most masterly production, the Task, he thus sings

""Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume;
And we are weeds without it. All constraint
Except what wisdom lays on evil men,
Is evil: hurts the faculties, impedes
Their progress in the road of science; blinds
The eyesight of discovery; and begets
In those that suffer it a sordid mind,—
Bestial-a meagre intellect, unfit

To be the tenant of man's noble form.

Thee, therefore, still, blameworthy as thou art,
Thee I account still happy, and the chief
Among the nations, seeing thou art free,
My native nook of earth! Thy clime is rude,
Replete with vapors, and disposes much

All hearts to sadness, and none more than mine;
Yet, being free, I love thee for the sake
Of that one feature, can be well content,
Disgraced as thou hast been, poor as thou art,
To seek no sublunary rest beside.

But once enslaved, farewell. I could endure
Chains nowhere patiently; and chains at home,
Where I am free by birthright, not at all!"

The liberty of Cowper was not, however, that lawless restraint which, under the sacred name of liberty, would burst asunder all those bands that hold society together, and introduce confusion infinitely more to be dreaded than the most absolute despotism. It was not the wild and unrestrained liberty of the ferocious mob; it was the liberty that is compatible with wholesome restraint, and with the due administration of law. It was the liberty not of disorder but of discipline, as will be seen by the following beautiful lines—

"Let Discipline employ her wholesome arts;
Let magistrates alert perform their parts,
Not skulk, or put on a prudential mask,
As if their duty was a desperate task.
Let active laws apply the needful curb,
To guard the peace that riot would disturb;
And liberty, preserved from wild excess,
Shall raise no feuds for armies to suppress.
When Tumult lately burst his prison door,
And set plebeian thousands in a roar,
When he usurped Authority's just place,
And dared to look his master in the face;

When the rude rabble's watch-word was- Destroy!'
And blazing London seemed a second Troy!

Liberty blushed, and hung her drooping head—
Beheld their progress with the deepest dread;
Blushed that effects like these she could produce,
Worse than the deeds of galley-slaves let loose:
She loses in such storms her very name,

And fierce Licentiousness should bear the blame!"

Powerful as were the charms of subjects like these to Cowper, there were others of a different character which he held as more dear, and ever regarded as more important. Like his great predecessor, Milton, he had made the sacred scriptures his constant study; not so much because he admired the sublime imagery of the holy penmen (alive as he was to their beauties in this respect,) as because he felt the full force of divine truth upon his heart; which, notwithstanding the severe pressure of his malady, would sometimes yield him an interval of pleasure. It was undoubtedly on one of these happy occasions that he penned the following lines, so strikingly descriptive of the refined pleasure with which the Christian can view the works of Nature

"He looks abroad into the varied field

Of Nature; and though poor, perhaps, compared
With those whose mansions glitter in his sight,
Calls the delightful scenery all his own:

His are the mountains, and the valleys his,
And the resplendent rivers: his to enjoy
With a propriety that none can feel,
But who, with filial confidence inspired,
Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling say-My father made them all!
Are they not his by a peculiar right?
And by an emphasis of interest his
Whose eyes they fill with tears of holy joy;
Whose heart with praise, and whose exalted mind
With worthy thoughts of that unwearied love
That planned, and built, and still upholds a world
So clothed with beauty, for rebellious man?
Yes! Ye may fill your garners, ye that reap
The loaded soil; and ye may waste much good
In senseless riot; but ye will not find
In feast, or in the chase, in song or dance,
A liberty like his, who, unimpeached
Of usurpation, and to no man's wrong
Appropriates nature as his Father's work,
And has a richer use of yours than you."

Although Cowper, towards the close of his life, before he received his Majesty's pension, owing to the heavy expenses occasioned by his own and Mrs. Unwin's illness, was scarcely able to keep his expenditure within the limits of his income, yet he was never once heard to complain, nor even to indulge the slightest disposition to be otherwise than contented in the station where Providence had placed him. Writing to his intimate friend, Mr. Hill, on one occasion, whom he appears to have made his treasurer, he remarks:-" Your tidings respecting the slender pittance yet to come, are, as you observe, of a melancholy cast. Not being gifted, however, by nature with the means of acquiring much, it is well that she has given me a disposition to be contented with little. I have now been so many years habituated to small matters, that I should probably find myself incommoded by greater, and, may I but be enabled to shift, as I have been hitherto, unsatisfied wishes will not trouble me much."

On another occasion, to the same individual he writes:“I suppose you are sometimes troubled on my account, but you need not. I have no doubt that it will be seen, when my days are closed, that I served a Master who would not suffer me to want anything that was good for me. He said to Jacob, I will surely do thee good; and this he said not for his sake only, but for ours also, if we trust in him. This thought relieves me from the greatest part of the distress I should else suffer in my present circumstances, and enables me to sit down peacefully upon the wreck of my fortune." The same sentiment is still more forcibly expressed in the following lines:

"Fair is the lot that's cast for me;

I have an Advocate in Thee:
They whom the world caresses most,
Have no such privilege to boast.
Poor though I am, despised, forgot,
Yet God, my God, forgets me not;
And he is safe, and must succeed,

For whom the Lord vouchsafes to plead."

Perhaps no individual ever felt more fully the power of religion in his heart, or embodied it more completely in his life, than Cowper. The apprehensions, for his ultimate safety, by which he was so continually harassed, depressive as was their influence on his mind, never relaxed, in any degree, that severe watchfulness which religion had taught him to exercise over his thoughts and conduct. On the contrary,