researches he was master of twenty-eight lan-produced his noble Alcaic Ode, animated by the guages-were the wonder and admiration of his purest spirit of patriotism, and a high strain of contemporaries. Sir William was born in Lon- poetical enthusiasm. He was appointed one of don in 1746. His father was an eminent mathe-the judges of the supreme court at Fort William, matician, but died when his son was only three in Bengal, and the honour of knighthood was years of age. The care of educating young Jones conferred upon him. He married the daughter of devolved upon his mother, who was well qualified Dr Shipley, bishop of St Asaph; and in April for the duty by her virtues and extensive learning. 1783, in his thirty-seventh year, he embarked for When in his fifth year, the imagination of the India, never to return. Sir William Jones entered young scholar was caught by the sublime descrip- upon his judicial functions with all the advantages tion of the angel in the tenth chapter of the of a high reputation, unsullied integrity, disinterApocalypse, and the impression was never effaced. ested benevolence, and unwearied perseverance. In 1753 he was placed at Harrow School, where In the intervals of leisure from his duties, he he continued nearly ten years, and became an directed his attention to scientific objects, and accomplished and critical classical scholar. He established a society in Calcutta to promote did not confine himself merely to the ancient inquiries by the ingenious, and to concentrate the authors usually studied, but added a knowledge of knowledge to be collected in Asia. In 1784, his the Arabic characters, and acquired sufficient health being affected by the climate and the Hebrew to read the Psalms. In 1764 he was closeness of his application, he made a tour entered of University College, Oxford. Here his through various parts of India, in the course of taste for oriental literature continued, and he en- which he wrote The Enchanted Fruit, or Hindu gaged a native of Aleppo, whom he had discovered Wife, a poetical tale, and a Treatise on the Gods in London, to act as his preceptor. He also assidu- of Greece, Italy, and India. He also studied the ously perused the Greek poets and historians. Sanscrit language, being unwilling to continue at In his nineteenth year, Jones accepted an offer to the mercy of the Pundits, who dealt out Hindu be private tutor to Lord Althorp, afterwards Earl law as they pleased. Some translations from oriSpencer. A fellowship at Oxford was also con-ental authors, and original poems and essays, he ferred upon him, and thus the scholar was relieved from the fear of want, and enabled to pursue his favourite and unremitting studies. An opportunity of displaying one branch of his acquirements was afforded in 1768. The king of Denmark in that year visited England, and brought with him an eastern manuscript, containing the life of Nadir Shah, which he wished translated into French. Jones executed this arduous task, being, as Lord Teignmouth, his biographer, remarks, the only oriental scholar in England adequate to the performance. He still continued in the noble family of Spencer, and in 1769 accompanied his pupil to the continent. Next year, feeling anxious to attain | an independent station in life, he entered himself a student of the Temple, and, applying himself with his characteristic ardour to his new profession, he contemplated with pleasure the 'stately edifice of the laws of England,' and mastered their most important principles and details. In 1774, he published Commentaries on Asiatic Poetry, but finding that jurisprudence was a jealous mistress, and would not admit the eastern muses to participate in his attentions, he devoted himself for some years exclusively to his legal studies. A patriotic feeling was mingled with this resolution. Had I lived at Rome or Athens,' he said, 'I should have preferred the labours, studies, and dangers of their orators and illustrious citizens— connected as they were with banishment and even death-to the groves of the poets or the gardens of the philosophers. Here I adopt the same resolution. The constitution of England is in no respect inferior to that of Rome or Athens.' Jones now practised at the bar, and was appointed one of the Commissioners of Bankrupts. In 1778, he published a translation of the speeches of Isæus, in causes concerning the law of succession to property at Athens, to which he added notes and a commentary. The stirring events of the time in which he lived were not beheld without strong interest by this accomplished scholar. He was decidedly opposed to the American war and to the slave-trade, then so prevalent, and in 1781 he 2 contributed to a periodical established at Calcutta, entitled The Asiatic Miscellany. He meditated an epic poem on the discovery of England by Brutus, and had matured his design so far as to write the arguments of the intended books of his epic, but the poem itself he did not live to attempt. In 1789, Sir William translated an ancient Indian drama, Sacontala, or the Fatal Ring, which exhibits a picture of Hindu manners in the century preceding the Christian era. He engaged to compile a digest of Hindu and Mohammedan laws; and in 1794 he translated the Ordinances of Menu, or the Hindu system of duties, religious and civil. His motive to this task, like his inducement to the digest, was to aid the benevolent intentions of our legislature in securing to the natives, in a qualified degree, the administration of justice by their own laws. Sir William died April 27, 1794. Every honour was paid to his remains, and the East India Company erected a monument to his memory in St Paul's Cathedral. The attainments of Sir William Jones were so profound and various, that it is difficult to conceive how he had comprised them in his short life of forty-eight years. With respect to the division of his time, he had written in India, on a small piece of paper, the following lines: Sir Edward Coke: Six hours in sleep, in law's grave study six, Seven hours to law, to soothing slumber seven, An Ode, in Imitation of Alcaus. Not high-raised battlement or laboured mound, Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; As respects sleep, the example of Sir Walter Scott may be added to that of Sir William Jones, for the great novelist has stated that he required seven hours of total unconsciousness to fit him for the duties of the day. Not bays and broad-armed ports, Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. With powers as far above dull brutes endued As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude; Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain, And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain : And sovereign Law, that state's collected will, Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill; The fiend Discretion like a vapour sinks, And e'en the all-dazzling Crown Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks. Such was this heaven-loved isle, Than Lesbos fairer, and the Cretan shore! Shall Britons languish, and be men no more? Those sweet rewards, which decorate the brave, 'Tis folly to decline, And steal inglorious to the silent grave. A Persian Song of Hafiz. Sweet maid, if thou wouldst charm my sight, Boy, let yon liquid ruby flow, Oh! when these fair perfidious maids, In vain with love our bosoms glow: Speak not of fate: ah! change the theme, Beauty has such resistless power, While music charms the ravished ear; What cruel answer have I heard? Go boldly forth, my simple lay, The nymph for whom these notes are sung! The Concluding Sentence of Berkeley's Siris imitated. I kneel in manhood as I knelt in youth: Tetrastic-From the Persian. On parent knees, a naked new-born child, NATHANIEL COTTON. NATHANIEL COTTON (1721-1788) wrote Visions in Verse, for children, and a volume of poetical Miscellanies. He followed the medical profession in St Albans, and was distinguished for his skill in the treatment of cases of insanity. Cowper, his patient, bears evidence to his well-known humanity and sweetness of temper.' The Fireside. Dear Chloe, while the busy crowd, Be called our choice, we'll step aside, From the gay world we 'll oft retire Where love our hours employs; If solid happiness we prize, Of rest was Noah's dove bereft, Explored the sacred bark. Though fools spurn Hymen's gentle powers, Our babes shall richest comforts bring; Whence pleasures ever rise: We'll form their minds, with studious care, To all that's manly, good, and fair, And train them for the skies. While they our wisest hours engage, And recompense our cares. No borrowed joys, they're all our own, Monarchs! we envy not your state; Our portion is not large, indeed; We'll therefore relish with content To be resigned when ills betide, And pleased with favours given; Whose fragrance smells to heaven. Thus, hand in hand, through life we 'll go ; Its checkered paths of joy and woe With cautious steps we 'll tread; Quit its vain scenes without a tear, Without a trouble or a fear, And mingle with the dead: While conscience, like a faithful friend, And smooth the bed of death. WILLIAM COWPER. WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800), the most popular poet of his generation, and the best of English letter-writers,' as Southey has designated him, belonged emphatically to the aristocracy of England. His father, the Rev. Dr Cowper, chaplain to George II., was the son of Spencer Cowper, one of the judges of the court of Common Pleas, and a younger brother of the first Earl Cowper, lord chancellor. His mother was allied to some of the noblest families in England, descended by four different lines from King Henry III. This lofty lineage cannot add to the lustre of the poet's fame, but it sheds additional grace on his piety and humility. Dr Cowper, besides his royal chaplaincy, held the rectory of Great Berkhamstead, in the county of Hertford, and there the poet was born, November 15, 1731. In his sixth year he lost his motherwhom he tenderly and affectionately remembered through all his life-and was placed at a boardingschool, where he continued two years. The tyranny of one of his school-fellows, who held in complete subjection and abject fear the timid and home-sick boy, led to his removal from this seminary, and undoubtedly prejudiced him against the whole system of public education. He was next placed at Westminster School, where he had Churchill and Warren Hastings as schoolfellows, and where, as he says, he served a seven years' apprenticeship to the classics. At the age of eighteen he was removed, in order to be articled to an attorney. Having passed through this training-with the future Lord Chancellor Thurlow for his fellow-clerk-Cowper, in 1754, was called to the bar. He never made the law a study: in the solicitor's office he and Thurlow were 'constantly employed from morning to night in giggling and making giggle,' and in his chambers in the Temple he wrote gay verses, and associated with Bonnel Thornton, Colman, Lloyd, and other wits. He contributed a few papers to the Connoisseur and to the St James's Chronicle, both conducted by his friends. Darker days were at hand. Cowper's father was now dead, his patrimony was small, and he was in his thirty-second year, almost unprovided with an aim,' for the law was with him a mere nominal profession. In this crisis of his fortunes his kinsman, Major Cowper, presented him to the office of clerk of the journals to the House of Lords-a desirable and lucrative appointment. Cowper accepted it; but the labour. of studying the forms of procedure, and the dread of qualifying himself by appearing at the bar of the House of Lords, plunged him in the deepest misery and distress. The seeds of insanity were then in his frame; and after brooding over his fancied ills till reason had fled, he attempted to commit suicide. Happily this desperate effort failed; the appointment was given up, and Cowper was removed to a private madhouse at St Albans, kept by Dr Cotton. The cloud of horror gradually passed away, and on his recovery, he resolved to withdraw entirely from the society and business of the world. He had still a small portion of his funds left, and his friends subscribed a further sum, to enable him to live frugally in retirement. The bright hopes of Cowper's youth seemed thus to have all vanished: his prospects of advancement in the world were gone; and in the new-born zeal of his religious fervour, his friends might well doubt whether his reason had been completely restored. He retired to the town of Huntingdon, near Cambridge, where his brother resided, and there formed an intimacy with the family of the Rev. Morley Unwin, a clergyman resident in the place. He was adopted as one of the family; and when Mr Unwin him self was suddenly removed, the same conection was continued with his widow. Death only could sever a tie so strongly knit-cemented by mutual faith and friendship, and by sorrows of which the world knew nothing. To the latest generation the name of Mary Unwin will be united with that of Cowper, partaker of his fame as of his sad decline: pared with The Task, are like formal gardens in comparison with woodland scenery.' As soon as he had completed his labours for the publication of his second volume, Cowper entered upon an undertaking of a still more arduous nature-a translation of Homer. He had gone through the great Grecian at Westminster School, and afterwards read him critically in the Temple, and he was impressed with but a poor opinion of the translation of Pope. Setting himself to a daily task of forty lines, he at length accomplished the forty thousand verses. He published by subscription, in which his friends were generously active. The work appeared in 1791, in two volumes quarto. In the interval the poet and Mrs Unwin had removed to Weston, a beautiful village about a mile from Olney. His cousin, Lady Hesketh, a woman of refined and fascinating manners, had visited him; he had also formed a friendly intimacy with the family of the Throckmortons, to whom Weston belonged, and his circumstances were comparatively easy. His malady, however, returned upon him with full force, and Mrs Unwin being rendered helpless by palsy, the task of nursing her fell upon the sensitive and dejected poet. A careful revision of his Homer, and an engagement to edit a new edition of Milton, were the last literary undertakings of Cowper. The former he completed, but without improving the first edition : his second task was never finished. A deepening gloom settled on his mind, with occasionally bright intervals. A visit to his friend Hayley, at Eartham, produced a short cessation of his mental suffering, and in 1794 a pension of £300 was granted to him from the crown. He was induced, in 1795, to remove with Mrs Unwin to Norfolk, on a visit to some relations, and there Mrs Unwin died on the 17th of December 1796. The unhappy poet would not believe that his long-tried friend was actually dead; he went to see the body, and on witnessing the unaltered placidity of death, flung himself to the other side of the room with a passionate expression of feeling, and from that By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light. After the death of Mr Unwin in 1767, the family were advised by the Rev. John Newtona remarkable man in many respects-to fix their abode at Olney, in the northern division of Buckinghamshire, where Mr Newton himself officiated as curate. This was accordingly done, and Cowper removed with them to a spot which he has consecrated by his genius. He had still the river Ouse with him, as at Huntingdon, but the scenery is more varied and attractive, and abounds in fine retired walks. His life was that of a religious recluse; he ceased corresponding with his friends, and associated only with Mrs Unwin and Newton. The latter engaged his assistance in writing a volume of hymns, but his morbid melancholy gained ground, and in 1773 it became a case of decided insanity. About two years were passed in this unhappy state. The poet, as appears from a diary kept by Newton, would have been married to Mrs Unwin but for this calamity. On his recovery, Cowper took to gardening, rearing hares, drawing landscapes, and composing poetry. The latter was fortunately the most permanent enjoyment; and its fruits appeared in a volume of poems published in 1782. The sale of the work was slow; but his friends were eager in its praise, and it received the approbation of Johnson and Franklin. His correspondence was resumed, and cheerfulness again became an inmate of his retreat at Olney. This happy change was augmented by the presence of a third party, Lady Austen, a widow, who came to reside in the immediate neighbourhood of Olney, and whose conversation for a time charmed away the melan-time he never mentioned her name or spoke of her choly spirit of Cowper. She told him the story of John Gilpin, and 'the famous horseman and his feats were an inexhaustible source of merriment.' Lady Austen also prevailed upon the poet to try his powers in blank verse, and from her suggestion sprung the noble poem of The Task. This memorable friendship was at length dissolved. The lady exacted too much of the time and attention of the poet-perhaps a shade of jealousy on the part of Mrs Unwin, with respect to the superior charms and attractions of her rival, intervened to increase the alienation-and before The Task was finished, its fair inspirer had left Olney without any intention of returning to it. In 1785 the new volume was published. Its success was instant and decided. The public were glad to hear the true voice of poetry and of nature, and in the rural descriptions and fireside scenes of The Task, they saw the features of English scenery and domestic life faithfully delineated. The Task,' says Southey, was at once descriptive, moral, and satirical. The descriptive parts everywhere bore evidence of a thoughtful mind and a gentle spirit, as well as of an observant eye; and the moral sentiment which pervaded them gave a charm in which descriptive poetry is often found wanting. The best didactic poems, when com again. He lingered on for more than three years, still under the same dark shadow of religious despondency and terror, but occasionally writing, and listening attentively to works read to him by his friends. His last poem was the Castaway, a strain of touching and beautiful verse, which shewed no decay of his poetical powers at length death came to his release on the 25th of April 1800. So sad and strange a destiny has never before or since been that of a man of genius. With wit and humour at will, he was nearly all his life plunged in the darkest melancholy. Innocent, pious, and confiding, he lived in perpetual dread of everlasting punishment: he could only see between him and heaven a high wall which he despaired of ever being able to scale; yet his intellectual vigour was not subdued by affliction. What he wrote for amusement or relief in the midst of 'supreme distress,' surpasses the elaborate efforts of others made under the most favourable circumstances; and in the very winter of his days, his fancy was as fresh and blooming as in the spring and morning of existence. That he was constitutionally prone to melancholy and insanity, seems undoubted; but the predisposing causes were as surely aggravated by his strict and secluded mode of life. Lady Hesketh was a better guide and companion than John Newton; and no one can read his letters without observing that cheerfulness was inspired by the one, and terror by the other. The iron frame of Newton could stand unmoved amidst shocks that destroyed the shrinking and apprehensive mind of Cowper. All, however, have now gone to their account the stern yet kind minister, the faithful Mary Unwin, the gentle high-born relations who forsook ease, and luxury, and society to soothe the misery of one wretched being, and that immortal being himself has passed away, scarcely conscious that he had bequeathed an imperishable treasure to mankind. We have greater and loftier poets than Cowper, but none so entirely incorporated, as it were, with our daily existence-none so completely a friend our companion in woodland wanderings, and in moments of serious thought-ever gentle and affectionate, even in his transient fits of ascetic gloom-a pure mirror of affections, regrets, | feelings, and desires which we have all felt or would wish to cherish. Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton are spirits of ethereal kind: Cowper is a steady and valuable friend, whose society we may sometimes neglect for that of more splendid and attractive associates, but whose unwavering principle and purity of character, joined to rich intellectual powers, overflow upon us in secret, and bind us to him for ever. It is scarcely to be wondered at that Cowper's first volume was coldly received. The subjects of his poems (Table Talk, the Progress of Error, Truth, Expostulation, Hope, Charity, &c.) did not promise much, and his manner of handling them was not calculated to conciliate a fastidious public. He was both too harsh and too spiritual for general readers. Johnson had written moral poems in the same form of verse, but they possessed a rich declamatory grandeur and brilliancy of illustration which Cowper did not attempt, and probably would, from principle, have rejected. There are passages, however, in these evangelical works of Cowper of masterly excution and lively fancy. His character of Chatham has rarely been surpassed even by Pope or Dryden : A. Patriots, alas! the few that have been found, Felt himself crushed at the first word he spoke. Neither has the fine simile with which the following retrospect closes : Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared, Ennobling every region that he chose. He sunk in Greece, in Italy he rose ; And, tedious years of Gothic darkness past, Emerged all splendour in our isle at last. Thus lovely halcyons dive into the main, Then shew far off their shining plumes again. The poem of Conversation in this volume is rich in Addisonian humour and satire, and formed no unworthy prelude to The Task. In Hope and Retirement, we see traces of the descriptive powers and natural pleasantry afterwards so finely developed. The highest flight in the whole, and the one most characteristic of Cowper, is his sketch of The Greenland Missionaries. That sound bespeaks salvation on her way, O blest within the inclosure of your rocks, In this mixture of argument and piety, poetry and plain sense, we have the distinctive traits of Cowper's genius. The freedom acquired by composition, and especially the presence of Lady Austen, led to more valuable results; and when he entered upon The Task, he was far more disposed to look at the sunny side of things, and to launch into general description. His versification underwent a similar improvement. His former poems were often rugged in style and expression, and were made so on purpose to avoid the polished uniformity of Pope and his imitators. He was now sensible that he had erred on the opposite side, and accordingly The Task was made to unite strength and freedom with elegance and harmony. No poet has introduced so much idiomatic expression into a grave poem of blank verse; but the |