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In 1782 he was indebted to his friend, Dr. Lowth, bishop of London, for a prebend of St. Paul's, and the living of Thorley in Hertfordshire, which, after some arrangements, he exchanged for that of Wickham. His ecclesiastical preferments came too late in life to place him in that state of leisure and independence which might have enabled him to devote his best years to literature, instead of the drudgery of a school. One great project, which he announced, but never fulfilled, namely, " A General History of Learning *," was, in all probability, prevented by the pressure of his daily occupations. In 1788, through the interest of Lord Shannon, he obtained a prebend of Winchester; and, through the interest of Lord Malmsbury, was appointed to the rectory of Euston, which he was afterwards allowed to exchange for that of Upham. In 1793 he resigned the fatigues of his mastership of Winchester; and having received, from the superintendants of the institution, a vote of well-earned thanks, for his long and meritorious services, he went to live at his rectory of Wickham.

During his retirement at that place, he was induced, by a liberal offer of the booksellers, to superintend an edition of Pope, which he published in 1797. It was objected to this edition, that it contained only his Essay on Pope, cut down into notes; his biographer, however, repels the objection, by alleging that it contains a considerable portion of new matter. In his zeal to present everything that could be traced to the pen of Pope, he introduced two pieces of indelicate humour, "The Double Mistress," and the second satire of Horace. For the insertion of those pieces, he received a censure in the "Pursuits of Literature," which, considering his grey hairs and services in the literary world, was unbecoming, and which my individual partiality for Mr. Matthias makes me wish that I had not to record.

As a critic, Dr. Warton is distinguished by his love of the fanciful and romantic. He examined our poetry at a period when it appeared to him that versified observations on familiar life and manners had usurped the honours which were exclusively due to the bold and inventive powers of imagination. He conceived, also, that the charm of description in poetry was not suffi

[* Did Warton ever announce his intention of writing "A General History of Learning?" We think not, though Hume, in a letter to Robertson, speaks of such a work as coming from Warton's pen. Collins had such an intention, and Warton mentions it in his Essay, in a passage which has been overlooked by every writer on the subject. (Essay, ed. 1762, p. 186.) No copy of Collins's published proposals is known to exist, and it is now perhaps hopeless to obtain the exact title of his projected work. Johnson calls it, A History of the Revival of Learning; a correspondent in the Gentleman's Magazine, and an acquaintance of Collins's, A History of the Darker Ages: Thomas Warton, A History of the Restoration of Learning; and Joseph Warton, The History of the Age of Leo X. Walpole mentions it in a letter to Sir David Dalrymple.]

ciently appreciated in his own day: not that the age could be said to be without descriptive writers; but because, as he apprehended, the tyranny of Pope's reputation had placed moral and didactic verse in too pre-eminent a light. He, therefore, strongly urged the principle, "that the most solid observations on life, expressed with the utmost brevity and elegance, are morality, and not poetry." Without examining how far this principle applies exactly to the character of Pope, whom he himself owns not to have been without pathos and imagination, I think his proposition is so worded, as to be liable to lead to a most unsound distinction between morality and poetry. If by "the most solid observations on life" are meant only those which relate to its prudential management and plain concerns, it is certainly true, that these cannot be made poetical, by the utmost brevity or elegance of expression. It is also true, that even the nobler tenets of morality are comparatively less interesting, in an insulated and didactic shape, than when they are blended with strong imitations of life, where passion, character, and situation bring them deeply home to our attention. Fiction is on this account so far the soul of poetry, that, without its aid as a ve hicle, poetry can only give us morality in an abstract and (comparatively) uninteresting shape. But why does Fiction please us? surely not be cause it is false, but because it seems to be true; because it spreads a wider field, and a more brilliant crowd of objects to our moral perceptions, than reality affords. Morality (in a high sense of the term, and not speaking of it as a dry seience) is the essence of poetry. We fly from the injustice of this world to the poetical justice of Fiction, where our sense of right and wrong is either satisfied, or where our sympathy, at least, reposes with less disappointment and distraction, than on the characters of life itself. Fiction, we may indeed be told, carries us into "a world of gayer tinct and grace," the laws of which are not

[t Our English poets may, I think, be disposed in four different classes and degrees. In the first class I would place, our only three sublime and pathetic poets, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton. In the second class should be ranked, such as possessed the true poetical genius, in a more moderate degree, but who had noble talents for moral, ethical, and panegyrical poesy. At the head of these are, Dryden, Prior, Addison, Cowley, Waller, Garth, Fenton, Gay, Denham, Parnell. In the third class may be placed, men of wit, of elegant taste, and lively fancy in describing familiar life, though not the higher scenes of poetry. Here may be numbered. Butler, Swift, Rochester, Donne, Dorset, Oldham. In the fourth class, the mere versifiers, however smooth and melli fluous some of them may be thought, should be disposed. Such as Pitt, Sandys, Fairfax, Broome, Buckingham. Lansdowne. This enumeration is not intended as a col· plete catalogue of writers, but only to mark out briefly the different species of our celebrated authors. In which of these classes Pope deserves to be placed, the following work is intended to determine.-JOSEPH WARTON, Der cation to Dr. Young.

The position of Pope among our poets, and the ques tion generally of classification, Mr. Campbell has argued at some length in the Introductory Essay to this volume)

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to be judged by solid observations on the real scription. The doctor, like his brother, certainly world.

But this is not the case, for moral truth is still the light of poetry, and fiction is only the refracting atmosphere which diffuses it; and the laws of moral truth are as essential to poetry, as those of physical truth (Anatomy and Optics, for instance,) are to painting. Allegory, narration, and the drama make their last appeal to the ethics of the human heart. It is therefore unsafe to draw a marked distinction between morality and poetry; or to speak of "solid observations on life" as of things in their nature unpoetical; for we do meet in poetry with observations on life, which, for the charm of their solid truth, we should exchange with reluctance for the most ingenious touches of fancy.

The school of the Wartons, considering them as poets, was rather too studiously prone to de

so far realised his own ideas of inspiration, as to burthen his verse with few observations on life which oppress the mind by their solidity. To his brother he is obviously inferior in the graphic and romantic style of composition, at which he aimed; but in which, it must nevertheless be owned, that in some parts of his "Ode to Fancy" he has been pleasingly successful. From the subjoined specimens, the reader will probably be enabled to judge as favourably of his genius, as from the whole of his poems; for most of them are short and occasional, and (if I may venture to differ from the opinion of his amiable editor, Mr. Wooll,) are by no means marked with originality. The only poem of any length, entitled "The Enthusiast," was written at too early a period of his life, to be a fair object of criticism.

ODE TO FANCY.

O PARENT of each lovely Muse,
Thy spirit o'er my soul diffuse,
O'er all my artless songs preside,
My footsteps to thy temple guide,
To offer at thy turf-built shrine,
In golden cups no costly wine,
No murder'd fatling of the flock,
But flowers and honey from the rock.
O nymph with loosely-flowing hair,
With buskin'd leg, and bosom bare,
Thy waist with myrtle-girdle bound,
Thy brows with Indian feathers crown'd,
Waving in thy snowy hand
An all-commanding magic wand,
Of power to bid fresh gardens blow,
'Mid cheerless Lapland's barren snow,
Whose rapid wings thy flight convey
Through air, and over earth and sea,
While the vast various landscape lies
Conspicuous to thy piercing eyes.
O lover of the desert, hail!

Say, in what deep and pathless vale,
Or on what hoary mountain's side,
'Mid fall of waters, you reside,
'Mid broken rocks, a rugged scene,
With green and grassy dales between,
'Mid forests dark of aged oak,

Ne'er echoing with the woodman's stroke,
Where never human art appear'd,
Nor ev'n one straw-roof'd cot was rear'd,
Where Nature seems to sit alone,
Majestic on a craggy throne;
Tell me the path, sweet wand'rer, tell,
To thy unknown sequester'd cell,

Where woodbines cluster round the door,
Where shells and moss o'erlay the floor,
And on whose top an hawthorn blows,
Amid whose thickly-woven boughs

Some nightingale still builds her nest,
Each evening warbling thee to rest :
Then lay me by the haunted stream,
Rapt in some wild, poetic dream,
In converse while methinks I rove
With Spenser through a fairy grove;
Till, suddenly awaked, I hear
Strange whisper'd music in my ear,
And my glad soul in bliss is drown'd
By the sweetly-soothing sound!
Me, goddess, by the right hand lead
Sometimes through the yellow mead,
Where Joy and white-robed Peace resort,
And Venus keeps her festive court;
Where Mirth and Youth each evening meet,
And lightly trip with nimble feet,
Nodding their lily-crowned heads,

Where Laughter rose-lipp'd Hebe leads ;
Where Echo walks steep hills among,
List'ning to the shepherd's song:

Yet not these flowery fields of joy
Can long my pensive mind employ ;
Haste, Fancy, from the scenes of folly,
To meet the matron Melancholy,
Goddess of the tearful eye,

That loves to fold her arms, and sigh ;
Let us with silent footsteps go
To charnels and the house of woe,
To Gothic churches, vaults, and tombs,
Where each sad night some virgin comes,
With throbbing breast, and faded cheek,
Her promised bridegroom's urn to seek ;
Or to some abbey's mould'ring towers,
Where, to avoid cold wintry showers,
The naked beggar shivering lies,
While whistling tempests round her rise,
And trembles lest the tottering wall
Should on her sleeping infants fall.

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Now let us louder strike the lyre,
For my heart glows with martial fire,—
I feel, I feel, with sudden heat,
My big tumultuous bosom beat;
The trumpet's clangors pierce my ear,
A thousand widows' shrieks I hear,
Give me another horse, I cry,
Lo! the base Gallic squadrons fly;
Whence is this rage?-what spirit, say,
To battle hurries me away?
"Tis Fancy, in her fiery car,
Transports me to the thickest war,
There whirls me o'er the hills of slain,
Where Tumult and Destruction reign;
Where, mad with pain, the wounded steed
Tramples the dying and the dead;
Where giant Terror stalks around,
With sullen joy surveys the ground,
And, pointing to th' ensanguin'd field,
Shakes his dreadful gorgon shield!
O guide me from this horrid scene,
To high-arch'd walks and alleys green,
Which lovely Laura seeks, to shun
The fervours of the mid-day sun;
The pangs of absence, O remove!

For thou canst place me near my love,
Canst fold in visionary bliss,

And let me think I steal a kiss,
While her ruby lips dispense
Luscious nectar's quintessence !

When young-eyed Spring profusely throws
From her green lap the pink and rose,
When the soft turtle of the dale
To Summer tells her tender tale;
When Autumn cooling caverns seeks,
And stains with wine his jolly cheeks ;
When Winter, like poor pilgrim old,
Shakes his silver beard with cold;
At every season let my ear
Thy solemn whispers, Fancy, hear.
O warm, enthusiastic maid,
Without thy powerful, vital aid,
That breathes an energy divine,
That gives a soul to every line,
Ne'er may I strive with lips profane
To utter an unhallow'd strain,

Nor dare to touch the sacred string,

Save when with smiles thou bidd'st me sing.
O hear our prayer, O hither come
From thy lamented Shakspeare's tomb,
On which thou lovest to sit at eve,
Musing o'er thy darling's grave;
O queen of numbers, once again
Animate some chosen swain,
Who, fill'd with unexhausted fire,
May boldly smite the sounding lyre,
Who with some new unequall'd song
May rise above the rhyming throng,
O'er all our list'ning passions reign,
O'erwhelm our souls with joy and pain,
With terror shake, and pity move,

Rouse with revenge, or melt with love;

O deign t' attend his evening walk,
With him in groves and grottoes talk;
Teach him to scorn with frigid art
Feebly to touch th' unraptured heart;
Like lightning, let his mighty verse
The bosom's inmost foldings pierce;
With native beauties win applause
Beyond cold critics' studied laws;
O let each Muse's fame increase,
O bid Britannia rival Greece.

THE DYING INDIAN.

THE dart of Izdabel prevails! 'twas dipp'd
In double poison-I shall soon arrive
At the bless'd island, where no tigers spring
On heedless hunters; where ananas bloom
Thrice in each moon; where rivers smoothly glide,
Nor thund'ring torrents whirl the light canoe
Down to the sea; where my forefathers feast
Daily on hearts of Spaniards !-O my son,
I feel the venom busy in my breast,
Approach, and bring my crown, deck'd with the
teeth

Of that bold Christian who first dared deflower
The virgins of the Sun; and, dire to tell!
Robb'd Pachacamac's altar of its gems!

I mark'd the spot where they interr'd this traitor,
And once at midnight stole I to his tomb,
And tore his carcase from the earth, and left it
A prey to poisonous flies. Preserve this crown
With sacred secrecy: if e'er returns
Thy much-loved mother from the desert woods,
Where, as I hunted late, I hapless lost her,
Cherish her age. Tell her, I ne'er have worshipp'd
With those that eat their God. And when

disease

Preys on her languid limbs, then kindly stab her With thine own hands, nor suffer her to linger, Like Christian cowards, in a life of pain.

I go! great Copac beckons me! Farewell!

TO MUSIC.

QUEEN of every moving measure,
Sweetest source of purest pleasure,
Music! why thy power employ
Only for the sons of joy?
Only for the smiling guests

At natal or at nuptial feasts?
Rather thy lenient numbers pour
On those whom secret griefs devour;
Bid be still the throbbing hearts

Of those whom Death or Absence parts;
And, with some softly-whisper'd air,
Smooth the brow of dumb Despair.

WILLIAM COWPER.

[Born, 1731. Died, 1800.]

WILLIAM COWPER was born at Berkhamstead, in Hertfordshire. His grandfather was Spencer Cowper, a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and a younger brother of the Lord Chancellor Cowper. His father was the rector of Great Berkhamstead, and chaplain to George II. At six years of age, he was taken from the care of an indulgent mother, and placed at a school in Bedfordshire. He there endured such hardships as embittered his opinion of public education for all his life. His chief affliction was, to be singled out, as a victim of secret cruelty, by a young monster, about fifteen years of age; whose barbarities were, however, at last detected, and punished by his expulsion. Cowper was also taken from the school. From the age of eight to nine, he was boarded with a famous oculist+, on account of a complaint in his eyes, which, during his whole life, were subject to inflammation. He was sent from thence to Westminster, and continued there till the age of eighteen, when he went into the office of a London solicitor. His account of himself in this situation candidly ac knowledges his extreme idleness. "I did actually a live," he says, in letter to Lady Hesketh, "three years with Mr. Chapman, a solicitor; that is to say, I slept three years in his house. I spent my days in Southampton-row, as you very well remember. There was I, and the future Lord Chancellor Thurlow, constantly employed from morning to night in giggling and making giggle." | From the solicitor's house he went into chambers in the Temple; but seems to have made no application to the study of the law. "Here he rambled," says Mr. Hayley, "to use his own colloquial expression, from the thorny road of jurisprudence to the primrose paths of litera

In Hayley's Life his first school is said to have been in Hertfordshire. The Memoir of his early life, published in 1816, says in Bedfordshire. [In Cowper's account of his own early life, this school is said to have been in Bedfordshire; but Hayley says Hertfordshire, mention

ture," a most uncolloquial expression indeed, and savouring much more of Mr. Hayley's genius than his own. At this period, he wrote some verse translations from Horace, which he gave to the Duncombes; and assisted Lloyd and Colman with some prose papers for their periodical works. It was only at this time, that Cowper could ever be said to have lived as a man of the world. Though shy to strangers, he was highly valued, for his wit and pleasantry, amidst an intimate and gay circle of men of talents. But though he was then in the focus of convivial society, he never partook of its intemperance.

His patrimony being well nigh spent, a powerful friend and relation (Major Cowper) obtained for him the situation of Clerk to the Committees of the House of Lords; but, on account of his dislike to the publicity of the situation, the appointment was changed to that of Clerk of the Journals of the same House§. The path to an easy maintenance now seemed to lie open before him; but a calamitous disappointment was impending, the approaches of which are best explained in his own words. "In the beginning" (he says) "a strong opposition to my friend's right of nomination began to show itself. A powerful party was formed among the Lords to thwart it. Every advantage, I was told, would be sought for, and eagerly seized, to disconcert us. I was bid to expect an examination at the bar of the house, touching my sufficiency for the post I had taken. Being necessarily ignorant of the nature of that business, it became expedient that I should visit the office daily, in order to qualify myself for the strictest scrutiny. All the horror of my fears and perplexities now returned. A thunderbolt would have been as welcome to me as this intelligence. I knew to demonstration, that upon these terms the Clerkship of the Journals was no place for me. To require my attendance at the bar of the house, that I might there pub.

ing also the place and name of the master; and as Cowper licly entitle myself to the office, was, in effect,

was only at one private school, subsequent biographers have properly followed Hayley. The mistake probably originated in the press, Cowper's own Memoirs having apparently been printed from an ill-written manuscript. Of this there is a whimsical proof (p. 35), where the Persian Letters of Montesquieu are spoken of, and the compositor, unable to decide that author's name, has converted it into Mules Quince.—SOUTHEY, Life of Cowper, vol. i. p. 7.]

He does not inform us where, but calls the oculist Mr. D.-Hayley, by mistake, I suppose, says that he was boarded with a female oculist. [He was placed in the house of an eminent oculist, whose wife also had obtained great celebrity in the same branch of medical scienceSOUTHEY.]

to exclude me from it. In the mean time, the interest of my friend, the honour of his choice, my own reputation and circumstances, all urged me forward, all pressed me to undertake that which I saw to be impracticable. They whose spirits are formed like mine, to whom a public exhibition of themselves, on any occasion, is mortal poison, may have some idea of the horrors of my situation-others can have none. My [The Connoisseur, and St. James's Chronicle.] [§ His kinsman Major Cowper was the patentee of these appointments.]

continual misery at length brought on a nervous fever; quiet forsook me by day, and peace by night; a finger raised against me was more than I could stand against. In this posture of mind I attended regularly at the office, where, instead of a soul upon the rack, the most active spirits were essentially necessary for my purpose. I expected no assistance from anybody there, all the inferior clerks being under the influence of my opponent, and accordingly I received none. The Journal books were indeed thrown open to me; a thing which could not be refused, and from which perhaps a man in health, and with a head turned to business, might have gained all the information he wanted; but it was not so with me. I read without perception; and was so distressed, that had every clerk in the office been my friend, it could have availed me little; for I was not in a condition to receive instruction, much less to elicit it out of MSS. without direction. Many months went over me thus emiployed; constant in the use of means, despairing as to the issue. The feelings of a man when he arrives at the place of execution are probably much like mine every time I set my foot in the office, which was every day for more than half a year together." These agonies at length unsettled his brain. When his benevolent friend came to him, on the day appointed for his examination at Westminster, he found him in a dreadful condition. He had, in fact, the same morning, made an attempt at self-destruction; and showed a garter, which had been broken, and an iron rod across his bed, which had been bent, in the effort to accomplish his purpose by strangulation. From the state of his mind, it became necessary to remove him to the house of Dr. Cotton, of St. Albans, with whom he continued for about nineteen months. Within less than the half of that time, his faculties began to return; and the religious despair, which constituted the most tremendous circumstance of his malady, had given way to more consoling views of faith and piety+. On his recovery, he determined to re

[* Author of Visions in Verse-The Fireside, &c. See ante, p. 615.]

The crisis of his recovery seems to have been accelerated by the conversation of his brother, who visited him at Dr. Cotton's. "As soon as we were left alone," he says, "my brother asked me how I found myself. I answered, As much better as despair can make me.' We went together into the garden. Here, on expressing a settled assurance of sudden judgment, he protested to me that it was all a delusion, and protested so strongly, that I could not help giving some attention to him. I burst into tears, and cried out, If it be a delusion, then I am one of the happiest of beings! Something like a ray of hope was shot into my heart, but still I was afraid to indulge it. We dined together, and spent the after

noon in a more cheerful manner *****, I went to bed, and slept well. In the morning I dreamt that the sweetest boy I ever saw came dancing up to my bed-side; he seemed just out of leading-strings; yet I took particular notice of the firmness and steadiness of his tread. The sight affected me with pleasure, and served at least

The

nounce London for ever; and, that he might have no temptation to return thither, gave up the office of commissioner of bankrupts, worth about 607. a year, which he had held for some years. He then, in June 1765, repaired to Huntingdon, where he settled in lodgings, attended by a man-servant, who followed him from Dr. Cotton's out of pure attachment. His brother, who had accompanied him thither, had no sooner left him, than being alone among strangers, his spirits began again to sink; and he found himself, he says, "like a traveller in the midst of an inhospitable desert, without a friend to comfort or a guide to direct him." For four months he continued in his lodging. Some few neighbours came to see him; but their visits were not very frequent, and he rather declined than sought society. At length, however, young Mr. Unwin, the son of the clergyman of the place, having been struck by his interesting appearance at church, introduced himself to his acquaintance, and brought him to visit at his father's house. A mutual friendship was very soon formed between Cowper and this amiable family, whose religious sentiments peculiarly corresponded with the predominant impressions of his mind. Unwins, much to his satisfaction, agreed to receive him as a boarder in their house. His routine of life in this devout circle is best described by himself. "We breakfast," he says, in one of his letters, "commonly between eight and nine; till eleven we read either the Scriptures or the sermons of some faithful preacher of those holy mysteries. At eleven we attend divine service, which is performed here twice every day; and from twelve to three we separate and amuse ourselves as we please. During that interval, I either read in my own apartment, or walk, or ride, or work in the garden. We seldom sit an hour after dinner, but, if the weather permits, adjourn to the garden, where, with Mrs. Unwin and her son, I have generally the pleasure of religious conversation. If it rains, or is too windy for walking, we either converse within doors, or sing some hymns of Martin's‡ collection, and, by the help of Mrs. Unwin's harpsichord, 1 make up a tolerable concert, in which our hearts, I hope, are the most musical performers. tea, we sally forth to walk in good earnest, and we generally travel four miles before we see home again. At night, we read and converse as before till supper, and commonly finish the evening with hymns or a sermon."

After

After the death of Mr. Unwin, senior, in 1767, he accompanied Mrs. Unwin and her daughter to a new residence which they chose at Olney, in Buckinghamshire. Here he formed an intimate friendship with Mr. Newton, then curate of to harmonise my spirits. So that I awoke for the first time with a sensation of delight on my mind."-Memoir published in 1816.

Martin Madan, a cousin of the poet.

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