merits were perfectly understood, humanely felt, and honourably acknowledged by persons who, while they declared that he ought to receive an immediate public support, seemed to possess both the inclination, and the power, to ensure it. But such is the difficulty of doing real good, experienced even by the great and powerful, or so apt are statesmen to forgét the pressing exigence of meritorious individuals, in the distractions of official perplexity, that month after month elapsed, in which the intimate friends of Cowper confidently, yet vainly, expected to see him happily rescued from some of the darkest evils impending over him, by an honourable provision for life.

Imagination can hardly devise any human concondition more truly affecting than the state of the poet at this period. His generous and faithful guardian, Mrs. Unwin, who had preserved him through seasons of the severest calamity, was now, with her faculties and fortune impaired, sinking fast into second childhood. The distress of heart that he felt in beholding the cruel change in a companion so justly dear to him, conspiring with his constitutional melancholy, was gradually undermining the exquisite faculties of his mind. But deprest as he was by these

complicated afflictions, Providence was far from deserting this excellent man. His female relation, whose regard he had cultivated as his favourite correspondent, now devoted herself very nobly to the superintendence of a house, whose two interesting inhabitants were rendered, by age and trouble, almost incapable of attending to the ordinary offices of life.

Those only, who have lived with the superannuated, and the melancholy, can properly appreciate the value of such magnanimous friendship, or perfectly apprehend what personal sufferings it must cost the mortal, who exerts it, if that mortal has received from nature a frame of compassionate sensibility. The lady to whom I allude, has felt too severely, in her own health, the heavy tax that mortality is forced to pay for a resolute perseverance in such painful duty.

The two last of Cowper's Letters to me, that breathe a spirit of mental activity, and cheerful friendship, were written in the close of the year 1793, and in the beginning of the next. They arose from an incident that it may be proper to relate, before I insert the Letters.

On my return from Weston, I had given an account of the poet to his old friend, Lord Thurlow.

That learned and powerful critic, in speaking of Cowper's Homer, happened to declare himself not satisfied with his version of Hector's admirable prayer in caressing his child. We both ventured on new translations of the prayer, which I immediately sent to Cowper, and the following Letters will prove with what just and manly freedom of spirit he was at this time able to criticize the composition of his friends, and his own.

LETTER LX.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, Esqr

Weston, Dec. 17, 1793.

Oh Jove! and all ye Gods! grant this my son

To prove, like me,

pre-eminent in Troy !

In valour such, and firmness of command!

Be he extoll'd, when he returns from fight,

As far his sire's superior! may he slay

His enemy, bring home his gory spoils,

And may his mother's heart o'erflow with joy!

I rose this morning, at

six o'clock, on purpose to translate this prayer again,

and to write to my dear Brother. Here you have it, such as it is, not perfectly according to my own liking, but as well as I could make it, and I think better than either your's, or Lord Thurlow's. You with your six lines have made yourself stiff and ungraceful, and he with his seven has produced as good prose as heart can wish, but no poetry at all. A scrupulous attention to the letter has spoiled you both, you have neither the spirit nor the manner of Homer. A portion of both may be found, I believe, in my version, but not so much as I could wish-it is better however than the printed one. His Lordship's two first lines I cannot very well understand; he seems to me to give a sense to the original that does not belong to it. Hector, I apprehend, does not say, "Grant "that he may prove himself my son, and be emi

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nent, &c.-but grant that this my son may prove "eminent"which is a material difference. the latter sense I find the simplicity of an antient ; in the former, that is to say, in the notion of a man proving himself his father's son by similar merit, the finesse and dexterity of a modern. His Lordship too makes the man, who gives the young hero his commendation, the person, who returns from battle, whereas Homer makes the young hero himself that

person, at least if Clarke is a just interpreter, which I suppose is hardly to be disputed.

If my old friend would look into my Preface, he would find a principle laid down there, which perhaps it would not be easy to invalidate, and which properly attended to would equally secure a translation from stiffness, and from wildness. The principle I mean is this-" Close, but not so close as to be servile! free, but not so free as to be licentious!" A superstitious fidelity loses the spirit, and a loose deviation the sense of the translated author-a happy moderation in either case is the only possible way of preserving both.

Thus have I disciplined you both, and now, if you please, you may both discipline me. I shall not enter my version in my book till it has undergone your strictures at least, and should you write to the noble critic again, you are welcome to submit it to his. We are three awkward fellows indeed, if we cannot amongst us make a tolerable good translation of six lines of Homer.

Adieu !

W. C.