He was of a middle stature, rather strong than delicate in the form of his limbs; the color of his hair was a light brown, that of his eyes a bluish grey, and his complexion ruddy. In his dress he was neat, but not finical; in his diet temperate, and not dainty. He had an air of pensive reserve in his deportment, and his extreme shyness sometimes produced in his manners an indescribable mixture of awkwardness and dignity; but no person could be more truly graceful, when he was in perfect health, and perfectly pleased with his society. Towards women, in particular, his behavior and conversation were delicate and fascinating in the highest degree.

There was a simplicity of manner and character in Cowper which always charms, and is often the attribute of real genius. He was singularly calculated to excite emotions of esteem and love by those qualities that win confidence and inspire sympathy. In friendship he was uniformly faithful; and, if the events of life had not disappointed his fondest hopes, no man would have been more eminently adapted for the endearments of domestic life.

His daily habits of study and exercise are so minutely and agreeably delineated in his letters, that they present a perfect portrait of his domestic character.

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 humor, 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 dullness, 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 sut fer him to draw the portrait for himself.

I

His admiration of the works of Nature: 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, No bard could please me but whose lyre was Ere yet her car was mistress of their pow'rs.

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, [form'd
And all can taste them: minds that have beer.
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 of 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 odors, 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
Book vi.

tun'd

To Nature's praises.

His fondness for retirement: And silent woods I wander. far from those Since then, with few associates, in remote 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; 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.

Book iii.

His love for his country: England, with all thy faults I love thee stillMy country! and, while yet a nook is left,

God's gift with pleasure in his praise employ, And Thornton is familiar with the joy.

Charity.

The martyrs of the Reformation: Their blood is shed In confirmation of the noblest claim, Our claim to feed upon immortal truth, To walk with God. to be divinely free, To soar and to anticipate the skies. Yet few remember them. They liv'd unknown, Till persecution dragg'd them into fame, And chas'd them up to heav'n. Their ashes flew -No marble tells us whither. With their names No bard embalms and sanctifies his song: And history, so warm on meaner themes, Is cold on this. She execrates indeed The tyranny that doom'd them to the fire, But gives the glorious suff'rers little praise. Task, book v.

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress:

O thou, whom, borne on fancy's eager wing
Back to the season of life's happy spring,
I pleas'd remember, and, while mem'ry yet
Holds fast her office here, can ne'er forget;
Ingenious dreamer, in whose well-told tale
Sweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail;
Whose hum'rous vein, strong sense, and simple
style,

May teach the gayest, make the gravest smile;
Witty, and well-employ'd, and. like thy Lord,
Speaking in parables his slighted word:
I name thee not, lest so despis'd a name
Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame:
Yet, e'en in transitory life's late day,
That mingles all my brown with sober grey,
Revere the man, whose Pilgrim marks the road,
And guides the Progress of the soul to God.
Tirocinium.

Brown, the rural designer :*

Lo! he comes

Th' omnipotent magician, Brown, appears.
Down falls the venerable pile, th' abode
Of our forefathers. a grave whisker'd race,
But tasteless. Springs a palace in its stead,
But in a distant spot; where more expos'd
It may enjoy th' advantage of the north,
And agueish east, till time shall have transform'd
Those naked acres to a shelt'ring grove.
He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn,
Woods vanish, hills subside, and valleys rise,
And streams, as if created for his use,
Pursue the track of his directing wand,
Sinuous or straight. now rapid and now slow,
Now murm'ring soft. now roaring in cascades,
E'en as he bids. Th' enraptur'd owner smiles.
"Tis finish'd. And yet. finish'd as it seems,
Still wants a grace, the loveliest it could show.
A nine to satisfy the enormous cost.
The Task, book iii.

London:

Oh! thou resort and mart of all the earth, Chequer'd with all complexions of mankind, And spotted with all crimes; in whom I see Much, that I love and much that I admire,

*Brown, in Cowper's time, was the great designer in the art of laying out grounds for the nobility and gentry.

And all that I abhor; thou freckled fair,
That pleases and yet shocks me, I can laugh,
And I can weep, can hope, and yet despond,
Feel wrath and pity when I think on thee!
Ten righteous would have sav'd a city once,
And thou hast many righteous. Well for thee¬
That salt preserves thee; more corrupted else,
And therefore more obnoxious at this hour,
Than Sodom in her day had power to be,
For whom God heard his Abram plead in vain.

THE CONTRAST.

Where finds Philosophy her eagle eye,
With which she gazes at yon burning disk
Undazzled, and detects and counts his spots ?
In London. Where her implements exact,
With which she calculates, computes, and scans
All distance, motion, magnitude, and now
Measures an atom, and now girds a world?
In London. Where has commerce such a mart,
So rich. so throng'd, so drain'd, and so supplied,
As London-opulent, enlarg'd, and still
Increasing London? Babylon of old
Not more the glory of the earth than she,
A more accomplish'd world's chief glory now.
Book i.

The gin-palace:

Behold the schools, in which plebeian minds,
Once simple, are initiated in arts,
Which some may practise with politer grace,
But none with readier skill. 'Tis here they learn
The road that leads from competence and peace,
To indigence, and rapine, till at last
Society, grown weary of the load,
Shakes her encumber'd lap, and casts them out.
But censure profits little; vain th' attempt
To advertise in verse a public pest,

That, like the filth with which the peasant feeds
His hungry acres, stinks, and is of use.
Th' excise is fatten'd with the rich result
Of all this riot, and ten thousand casks,
Forever dribbling out their base contents,
Touch'd by the Midas finger of the state,
Bleed gold for ministers to sport away.
Drink, and be mad then; 'tis your country bids!
Gloriously drunk, obey th' important call!
Her cause demands the assistance of your

throats;

Ye all can swallow, and she asks no more.
Task, book iv.
We add a few short passages:

How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!
But grant me still a friend in my retreat
Whom I may whisper-solitude is sweet.

Not to understand a treasure's worth
Till time has stolen away the slighted good
Is cause of half the poverty we feel,
And makes the world the wilderness it is.

Not a year but pilfers as he goes Some youthful grace, that age would gladly keep When one that holds communion with the skies Has fill'd his urn where these pure waters rise, And once more mingles with us meaner things, 'Tis even as if an angel shook his wings; Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide. That tells us whence his treasures are supplied.

We must not omit a most splendid specimen of Cowper's poetic genius, entitled the "Yardley Oak." It is an unfinished poem, and supposed to have been written in the year 1791, and laid aside, without ever having been resumed, when his attention was engrossed with the edition of Milton. Whatever may be the history of this admirable fragment, it has justly acquired for Cowper the reputation of having produced one of the richest and most highly finished pieces of versification that ever flowed from the pen of a poet. Its existence even was unknown both to Dr. Johnson and Hayley, till the latter discovered it buried in a mass of papers. We subjoin in a note a letter addressed by Dr. Johnson to Hayley, containing further particulars.*

among

Though this fragment is inserted the poems, we extract the following passages, as expressive of the vigor and inspiration of true poetic genius.

Thou wast a bauble once, a cup and ball
Which babes might play with; and the thievish
jay,
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloin'd
The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs
And all thine embryo vastness at a gulp.
But Fate thy growth decreed; autumnal rains
Beneath thy parent tree mellow'd the soil
Design'd thy cradle; and a skipping deer,
With pointed hoof dibbling the glebe, prepar'd
The soft receptacle, in which, secure,
Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through.
So Fancy dreams.

As to Yardley Oak, it stands in Yardley Chase, where the Earls of Northampton have a fine seat. It was a favorite walk of our dear Cowper, and he once carried me to see that oak. I believe it is five miles at least from Weston Lodge. It is indeed a noble tree, perfectly sound, and stands in an open part of the Chase, with only one or two others near it, so as to be seen to advantage.

"With respect to the oak at Yardley Lodge, that is quite in decay-a pollard, and almost hollow. I took an excrescence from it in the year 1791, and if I mistake not, Cowper told me it is said to have been an oak in the time of the Conqueror. This latter oak is on the road to the former, but not above half so far from Weston Lodge, being only just beyond Killick and Dinglederry. This is all I can tell you about the oaks. They were old acquaintances, and great favorites of the bard. How rejoiced I am to hear that he has immortalized one of them in blank verse! Where could those one hundred and sixty-one lines lie hid? Till this very day I never heard their existence, nor suspected it."

No flock frequents thee now.
While thus through all the stages thou hast
Of treeship-first a seedling. hid in grass;
push'd
Then twig; then sapling; and as cent'ry roll'd
Slow after century. a giant bulk
Of girth enormous with moss-cushion'd root
Upheav'd above the soil, and sides emboss'd
With prominent wens globose-till at the last,
The rottenness which time is charg'd to inflict
On other mighty ones, found also thee.
Time was when, settling on thy leaf, a fly
Could shake thee to the root-and time has been
When tempests could not.*

ular favor, it is pleasing to reflect on the With these acknowledged claims to popsingular moderation of Cowper amidst the snares of literary fame. His motives seem to have been pure and simple, and his main design to elevate the character of the age, and to glorify God. He was not insensible to the value of applause, when conferred by a liberal and powerful mind, but even in this instance it was a subdued and chastened feeling. A more pleasing evidence could not be visits to Weston, brought a recent newspaadduced than when Hayley, in one of his per containing a speech of Mr. Fox, in which that distinguished orator had quoted the following impressive verses on the Bastille, in the House of Commons.

Ye horrid tow'rs, the abode of broken hearts:
Ye dungeons, and ye cages of despair,
That monarchs have supplied from age to age
With music, such as suits their sov'reign ears,
The sighs and groans of miserable men!
There's not an English heart that would not leap,
To hear that ye were fall'n at last; to know,
That e'en our enemies, so oft employ'd
In forging chains for us, themselves were free.†

Mrs. Unwin discovered marks of vivid satisfaction, Cowper smiled, and was silent.

The late Samuel Whitbread, Esq., was an enthusiastic admirer of the poetry of Cowper, and solicitous to obtain a relic of the Yardley Oak. Mr Bull, of Newport Pagnel, promised to send a specimen, but some little delay having occurred. Mr. Whitbread addressed to him the following verses, which, emanating from such a man, and not having met the public eye, will, we are persuaded, be considered as a literary curiosity, and of no mean merit.

"Send me the precious bit of oak,
Which your own hand so fondly took
From off the consecrated tree,
A relic dear to you and me.
To many 'twould a bauble prove

Nor worth the keeping.-Those who love
The teeming grand poetic mind,
Which God thought fit in chains to bind,
Of dreadful, dark despairing gloom;
Yet left within such ample room,
For coruscations strong and bright:
Such beams of everlasting light,
As make men envy, love, and dread,
The structure of that wondrous head,
Mist prize a bit of Judith's stem,
That brought to light that precious gem-
The fragment: which in verse sublime
Records her honors to all time."

†These lines were written prophetically, and previ ously to the event.

The late Lord Erskine was a frequent reciter of pas