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His voice conspired with his features to announce to all who saw and heard him the extreme sensibility of his heart; and in reading aloud he furnished the chief delight of those social, enchanting winter evenings, which he has described so happily in the fourth book of "The Task."

Secluded from the world, as he had long been, he yet retained in advanced life singular talents for conversation; and his remarks were uniformly distinguished by mild and benevolent pleasantry, by a strain of delicate humour, varied by solid and serious good-sense, and those united charms of a cultivated mind, which he has himself very happily described in drawing the character of a venerable friend.

Grave without dulness, learned without pride;
Exact, yet not precise: though meek, keen-eyed;
Who, when occasion justified its use,

Had wit, as bright as ready, to produce;
Could fetch from records of an earlier age,
Or from philosophy's enlightened page,
His rich materials, and regale your ear
With strains, it was a privilege to hear.
Yet, above all, his luxury supreme,
And his chief glory was the gospel theme:
Ambitious not to shine or to excel,

But to treat justly what he lov'd so well.

But the traits of his character are nowhere developed with happier effect than in his own writings, and especially in his poems. From these we shall make a few extracts, and suffer him to draw the portrait for himself.

His admiration of the works of Nature:

I never fram'd a wish, or form'd a plan,
That flatter'd me with hopes of earthly bliss
But there I laid the scene. There early stray'd

My fancy, ere yet liberty of choice

Had found me, or the hope of being free.

My very dreams were rural; rural too
The first-born efforts of my youthful muse,
Sportive and jingling her poetic bells,

Ere yet her ear was mistress of their pow'rs.

No bard could please me but whose lyre was tun'd
To Nature's praises.

Task, book iv.

The love of Nature's works

Is an ingredient in the compound man,

Infus'd at the creation of the kind.

This obtains in all,

That all discern a beauty in his works,

And all can taste them. Minds, that have been form'd And tutor'd with a relish more exact,

But none without some relish, none unmov'd.

It is a flame that dies not even there

Where nothing feeds it: neither business, crowds,
Nor habits of luxurious city-life,

Whatever else they smother of true worth
In human bosoms, quench it or abate.

The villas, with which London stands begirt,
Like a swarth Indian with his belt or beads,

Prove it. A breath of unadult'rate air,

The glimpse of a green pasture, how they cheer
The citizen, and brace his languid frame!

Book iv.

God seen, and adored, in the works of Nature:

Not a flow'r

But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain,

Of his unrivall'd pencil. He inspires

Their balmy odours, and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes,
In grains as countless as the sea-side sands,
The forms, with which he sprinkles all the earth.

His fondness for retirement:

Since then, with few associates, in remote
And silent woods I wander, far from those
My former partners of the peopled scene;
With few associates, and not wishing more.
Here much I ruminate, as much I may,
With other views of men and manners now
Than once, and others of a life to come.
I, see that all are wand'rers, gone astray,
Each in his own delusions; they are lost
In chase of fancied happiness, still woo'd
And never won.
Dream after dream ensues;

Book vi.

And still they dream that they shall still succeed,
And still are disappointed. Rings the world
With the vain stir. I sum up half mankind,

And add two-thirds of the remaining half,

And find the total of their hopes and fears
Dreams, empty dreams.

His love for his country:

Book iii.

England, with all thy faults, I love thee still-
My country! and, while yet a nook is left,
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Tho' thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year most part deform'd
With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flow'r, for warmer France
With all her vines; nor for Ausonia's groves
Of golden fruitage, and her myrtle bow'rs.

VOL. V.

Book ii.

BB

His humane and generous feelings:

I was born of woman, and drew milk
As sweet as charity from human breasts.
I think, articulate, I laugh and weep,
And exercise all functions of a man.
How then should I and any man that lives
Be strangers to each other? Pierce my vein,
Take of the crimson stream meand'ring there,
And catechise it well; apply thy glass,
Search it, and prove now if it be not blood
Congenial with thine own.

His love of liberty:

Book iii.

Oh Liberty! the prisoner's pleasing dream,
The poet's muse, his passion and his theme;
Genius is thine, and thou art fancy's nurse;
Lost without thee the ennobling powers of verse;
Heroic song from thy free touch acquires
Its clearest tone, the rapture it inspires:
Place me where winter breathes his keenest air,
And I will sing, if liberty be there;

And I will sing at liberty's dear feet,

In Afric's torrid clime, or India's fiercest heat.

'Tis liberty alone, that gives the flow'r
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume;
And we are weeds without it.

Table Talk.

Task, book v.

His depressive malady and the source of its cure :

I was a stricken deer, that left the herd
Long since; with many an arrow deep infix'd
My panting side was charg'd, when I withdrew
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.

There was I found by one, who had himself
Been hurt by th' archers. In his side he bore,
And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars.*
With gentle force soliciting the darts,

He drew them forth, and heal'd, and bade me live.

Book iii.

The employment of his time, and design of his life and writings:

Me therefore studious of laborious ease,
Not slothful, happy to deceive the time,
Not waste it, and aware that human life
Is but a loan to be repaid with use,

When He shall call his debtors to account,
From whom are all our blessings; business finds
E'en here: while sedulous I seek t' improve,
At least neglect not, or leave unemploy'd,
The mind he gave me; driving it, though slack
Too oft, and much impeded in its work
By causes not to be divulg'd in vain,
To its just point-the service of mankind.

Book iii.

But all is in his hand, whose praise I seek.
In vain the poet sings, and the world hears,
If he regard not, though divine the theme.
'Tis not in artful measures, in the chime
And idle tinkling of a minstrel's lyre,
To charm his ear whose eye is on the heart,
Whose frown can disappoint the proudest strain,
Whose approbation-prosper even mine.

Book vi.

The office of doing justice to the poetical genius of Cowper has been assigned to an individual so well qualified to execute it with taste and ability, that the Editor begs thus publicly to record his

* The Saviour.

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