Museum viewing the Townley Marbles, when a person came in and announced the death of Mr. Pitt, Thurlow was heard to say, "a d-d good hand at turning a period !" and no more.* The following anecdote was related by Lord Eldon :-"After dinner, one day when nobody was present but Lord Kenyon and myself, Lord Thurlow said, 'Taffy, I decided a cause this morning, and I saw from Scott's face that he doubted whether I was right.' Thurlow then stated his view of the case, and Kenyon instantly said, 'Your decision was quite right.' 'What say you to that?' asked the Chancellor. I said, 'I did not presume to form a judgment upon a case in which they both agreed. But I think a fact has not been mentioned which may be matetial.' I was about to state the fact and my reasons. Kenyon, however, broke in upon me, and, with some warmth, stated that I was always so obstinate, there was no dealing with me. Nay,' interposed Thurlow, 'that's not fair. You, Taffy, are obstinate, and give no reasons; you, Jack Scott, are obstinate, too; but then you give your reasons, and d—d bad ones they are !'" Thurlow having heard that Kenyon had said to a party who had threatened to appeal from his decision, by filing a bill in Chancery, "Go into Chancery then: abi in malam rem!"—the next time he met the testy Chief Justice, he said, "Taffy, when did you first think the Court of Chancery was such a mala res? I remember when you made a very good thing of it." Pepper Arden, whom he hated and persecuted, having been made a Welsh Judge by Pitt, and still continuing to practise at the Chancery bar, was arguing a cause against his boon companion, Graham, and something turning upon the age of a lady, who swore she was only forty-five, he said he was sure she was more, and his antagonist looking dissent, he exclaimed, so as to be heard by all present, "I'll lay you a bottle of wine of it." Thurlow did not swear aloud, but, by an ejaculation and a frown, called the unwary counsel to a sense of the impropriety he had committed. Pepper Arden.-"I beg your Lordship's pardon: I really forgot where I was." Thurlow.-"I suppose, sir, you thought you were sitting on the bench in your own court administering justice in Wales." Considering Thurlow's relish for literary society, we must wonder and regret that he did not continue to cultivate the friendship of the man with whom he had been so intimate when they were fellow pupils in the solicitor's office; but he does not seem by any means properly to have appreciated the fine imagination, the quiet humour, the simple manners, or the affectionate heart, which ought to have attached him to Cowper. While the poet watched with solicitude the career of the lawyer, rejoicing at every step of his advancement, the lawyer was quite indifferent to the successes or the sorrows of the poet. Cowper, though neglected and forgotten by his brother idler of Southampton Row, who now filled the most exalted office in the kingdom, hearing that he was laid up by the gout, lovingly blind to all his faults, thus writes to Mr. Hill: "These violent attacks of a distemper so often fatal, [MAY 6, 1780.] *This last saying I have from a person who was present. are very alarming to those who esteem and respect the Chancellor as he deserves. A life of confinement and anxious attention to important objects, where the habit is bilious to such a terrible degree, threatens to be a short one; and I wish he may not be made a topic for men of reflection to moralise upon, affording a conspicuous instance of the transient and fading nature of all human accomplishments and attainments." On Thurlow's elevation to the woolsack, Cowper was strongly advised to remind him of their former intimacy, but he declined to do so for the [JAN. 18, 1788.] win:-"I feel much obliged to you for your kind reasons expressed in the following letter to Mr. Unintimation, and have given the subject of it all my best attention, both before I received your letter and since. The result is, that I am persuaded it will be better not to write. I know the man and his disposition well; he is very liberal in his way of thinking, generous and discerning. He is well aware of the tricks which are played on such occasions; and, after fifteen years' interruption of all intercourse between us, would translate my letter into this language,-Pray remember the poor.' This would disgust him, because he would think our former intimacy disgraced by such an oblique application. He has not forgotten me; and if he had, there are those about him who cannot come into his presence without reminding him of me; and he is also perfectly acquainted with my circumstances. It would, perhaps, give him pleasure to surprise me with a benefit; and if he means me such a favour, I should disappoint him by asking it."However, at the continued instigation of his friends, he afterwards sent Thurlow a copy of his published poems, by this time familiar and dear to all men of taste, with the following stiff letter of compliment: "My Lord, 66 Olney, Bucks, Feb. 25, 1782. "I make no apology for what I account a duty; I should offend against the cordiality of our former friendship should I send a volume into the world, and forget how much I am bound to pay my particular respects to your Lordship upon that occasion. When we parted, you little thought of hearing from me again, and I as little thought I should live to write to you, still less that I should wait on you in the capacity of an author. 66 Among the pieces which I have the honour to send, there is one for which I must entreat your pardon; I mean that of which your Lordship is the subject.* My best excuse is, that it flowed almost spontaneously from the affectionate remembrance of a connection which did me so much honour. "I have the honour to be, though with very different impressions of some subjects, yet with the same sentiments of affection and esteem as ever, your Lordship's faithful and most obedient humble servant, "W. CowPER." Strange to say, for at least two months no notice was taken of this * Ante, p. 418. communication, as we learn from a letter to another correspondent from the poet, who, though piqued by this mortifying neglect, tried to reconcile himself to it by recollecting how much the Chancellor's time was occupied. Afterwards, through the mediation of Hayley, Thurlow, who seems to have much admired the tinsel of this versifier, was induced to take some notice of the author of the THE TASK and of JOHN GILPIN, -without either making any provision for him, or soothing him with personal kindness. Yet when Thurlow was out of office in the year 1783, Cowper writes thus tenderly to Mr. Hill:-"I have an etching of the late Chancellor hanging over the parlour chimney. I often contemplate it, and call to mind the day when I was intimate with the original. It is very like him; but he is disfigured by his hat, which, though fashionable, is awkward; by his great wig, the tie of which is hardly discernible in profile; and by his band and gown, which give him an appearance clumsily sacerdotal. Our friendship is dead and buried." After Thurlow had been some years restored to office, Cowper, being again urged to apply to him for some promotion, thus wrote to Lady Hesketh :-"I do not wish to remind [FEB. 11, 1786.] the Chancellor of his promise. Ask you why, my cousin? Because I suppose it would be impossible. He has no doubt forgotten it entirely, and would be obliged to take my word for the truth of it, which I could not bear. We drank tea together, with Mrs. Ce, and her sister, in King Street, Bloomsbury, and there was the promise made. I said, Thurlow, I am nobody, and shall be always nobody, and you will be Chancellor. You shall provide for me when you are.' He smiled, and replied, I surely will. These ladies,' said I, 'are witnesses.' He still smiled and said, 'Let them be so, for I will certainly do it.' But, alas! twenty-four years have passed since the day of the date thereof, and to mention it now would be to upbraid him with inattention to the plighted troth. Neither do I suppose that he could easily serve such a creature as I am if he would." Cowper seems to have persevered in his resolution not to claim performance of the promise. Yet, a few months after, he thus writes to Mr. Hill, showing his disinterested and unabated [JUNE 9.] regard for his surly friend :-" The paper tells me that the Chancellor has relapsed, and I am truly sorry to hear it. The first attack was dangerous, but a second must be more formidable still. It is not probable that I should ever hear from him again if he survives; yet, of what I should have felt for him had our connection never been interrupted, I still feel much. Every body will feel the loss of a man of such general importance."* * Thurlow was probably disinclined to patronise Cowper from the part taken by the poet on the question of the African slave trade. He who thought the condition of the blacks much improved when sent from their own country to the West Indies, must have viewed with contempt While Cowper was thus neglected, the advances of Hayley, a stranger, met with a more flattering reception. From the low taste for poetry then prevailing in England, he was, during a fleeting space, celebrated as a genius, and Thurlow was pleased with being considered one of his patrons. We have, from the very amiable but vapid versifier, a rather amusing account of their meeting: "Nov. 11. "It will, I know, afford you pleasure to hear that I am engaged to breakfast with the Chancellor, at eight to-morrow morning. He has sent me a polite and cordial invitation by our friend Carwardine." "Nov. 12. "Though honours are seldom, I believe, found to be real enjoyments, yet I may truly say that I have had the honour of breakfasting to-day with the Chancellor, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Breakfast, you know, is my favourite social hour; and though I was by no means recovered from an oppressive cold, yet I passed a very pleasant hour, or rather two, with this singular great man. On my entrance, I told him that I was particularly flattered in being admitted at that friendly hour; for that I was such a hermit, and such a humourist, that I had a horror of dining with a great man. As I came away, he said he hoped I would come some day to a private dinner with him where there was no more form than at his breakfast-table; to which I replied, that if I found his dinner like his breakfast, I would come whenever he pleased."* poems. Hayley, emboldened by this condescension, sent the Chancellor a copy of some of the very worst of his poems, and immediately received the following complimentary answer:-"The Chancellor presents his best respects to Mr. Hayley, and returns him many thanks for his They give a bright relief to the subject. William is much obliged to him, and Mary more; and, if it may be said without offence, liberty itself derives advantage from this dress." Hayley exclaimed, "There's flattery for you from the great! Can any poetical vanity wish for more?'"'+ "THE NEGRO'S COMPLAINT. "Forc'd from home and all its pleasures, Afric's coast I left forlorn, To increase a stranger's treasures, "Men from England bought and sold me, Paid my price in paltry gold; But, though slave they have enroll'd me, Minds are never to be sold." The Chancellor's neglect of his early friend is thus ironically recorded by Peter Pindar: "Yet let one action of the day shine forth (And candour loves to dwell upon my tongue), Thurlow could see a Cowper's modest worth, And crown with fair reward his moral song." * Mem. of Hayley, i. 370. † Mem. of Hayley, i. 369. The intercourse between the two Southampton-Row idlers was afterwards renewed. Thurlow, in his retirement, hearing that Cowper was engaged in a blank verse translation of Homer, expressed to a common friend some regret that he should not have preferred rhyme, of which he was so great a master, and in which he had been so successful. The poet thereupon, when he could no longer be suspected of flattering power, thus addressed the ex-Chancellor : "I did not expect to find your Lordship on the side of rhyme, remembering well with how much energy and interest I have heard you repeat passages from the 'Paradise Lost,' which you could not have recited as you did unless you had been perfectly sensible of their music. It comforts me, therefore, to know, that if you have an ear for rhyme, you have an ear for blank verse also. It seems to me that I may justly complain of rhyme as an inconvenience in translation, even though I assert in the sequel, that to me it has been easier to rhyme than to write without, because I always suppose a rhyming translator to ramble, and always obliged to do so." The following answer displays great critical acumen and depth of thought : "The scrawl I sent Harry I have forgot too much to resume now. But I think I could not mean to patronise rhyme. I have fancied that it was introduced to mark the measure in modern languages, because they are less numerous and metrical than the ancient; and the name seems to impart as much. Perhaps there was melody in ancient song. without straining it to musical notes, as the common Greek pronunciation is said to have had the compass of five parts of an octave. But surely that word is only figuratively applied to modern poetry. Euphony seems to be the highest term it will bear. I have fancied also that euphony is an impression derived a good deal from habit, rather than suggested by nature; therefore, in some degree, accidental, and consequently conventional. Else why can't we bear a drama with rhyme, or the French one without it? Suppose the Rape of the Lock,' 'Windsor Forest,' L'Allegro,' Il Penseroso,' and many other little poems which please, stripped of the rhyme, which might easily be done, would they please as well? It would be unfair to treat rondeaus, ballads, and odes in the same manner, because rhyme makes in some sort a part of the conceit. It was this way of thinking which made me suppose that habitual prejudice would miss the rhyme, and that neither Dryden nor Pope would have dared to give their great authors in blank verse. "It is impossible to obtain the same sense from a dead language and an ancient author, which those of his own time and country conceived; words and phrases contract from time and use such strong shades of difference from their original import. In a living language, with the familiarity of a whole life, it is not easy to conceive truly the actual sense of current expressions, much less of older authors. No two languages furnish equipollent words; their phrases differ, their syntax and their idioms still more widely. But a translation, strictly so called, requires an exact conformity in all those particulars, and also in num |