ter in some near valley of an affluent of the Trent, shining amid billows of foliage; while within the stately home,1 the Suffolk doctor could have regaled himself with examples of Rubens and of Murillo, of Teniers, Poussin, and Vandyke.

The Duke of Rutland was a kindly man, a sentimental lover of literature, enjoying the verse of Crabbe, and proud of patronizing him, but lacking the supreme art of putting him at ease among his titled visitors; perhaps enjoying from his high poise, the disturbing embarrassments with which the good-natured poet was beset under the bewildering attentions of some butler, who outshone the host in his trappings, and in his lordly condescension to the level of an apothecary's apprentice.

It was not altogether pleasant for Crabbe; and when afterward he had married his old flame of Aldborough, and by invitation of the Duke (who was absent in Ireland) was allowed to partake of the hospitalities of the castle, the ironical obsequience of the flunkeys all, drove him away from the baronial roof. Through the influence of friends he secures livings,— first in Dorset, and afterward in Leicestershire

1The old castle was burned in 1816, but has been rebuilt with more than its old splendor.

(1789), almost within sight of Belvoir towers. Hereabout, or in near counties, where he has parochial duties, he vegetates slumberously, for twenty years or more. He preaches, practises his old apothecary craft, drives (his wife holding the reins), idles, writes books and burns them, grows old, has children, loves flowers, and on one occasion, mounts his horse and gallops sixty miles for a scent of the salt air which he had snuffed as a boy. Meanwhile the old haunts in London, which he knew for so brief a day, know him no more; his old friends are dead, his hair is snowy, his purposes wavering.

But his children are of an age now to spur him to further literary effort; with the opening of the present century he rallies his power for new songs; and thereafter the slowly succeeding issues of the Parish Register, The Borough, and the Tales of the Hall, pave a new way for him into the courts of Fame. He secures another and more valuable living in the South of England (Wiltshire), where the incense of London praises can reach him more directly. One day in 1819 he goes away from his publishers with bills for £3,0001 in his poc

1

Smiles, in his Memoirs of John Murray-the publisher in question-intimates, however, that the sum was

ket; must take them home to show them to his boy, John; he loves that boy and other children over much-more, it is to be feared, than he frad ever done that mother, the old flame of Aldborough, in respect of whom there had been intimations of incompatibility; hence, perhaps, the interjection of that sixty-mile ride for a snuff of the freedom of the waves. He died at last down in Trowbridge (his new living), a little way southward of Bradford in Wiltshire; and his remains lie in the chancel of the pretty church there.

We must think of him, I believe, as a good, honest-minded, well-meaning man; dull, I dare say as a preacher; diffuse, meandering, homely and lumbering as a poet; yet touching with raw and lively colors the griefs of England's country poor; and with a realism that is hard to match, painting the flight of petrels and of the curlew, and the great sea waves that gather and roll and break along his lines.

WILLIAM COWPER

THE other poet, to whom allusion has been made, living beside him, in that country of

far too large, and Murray a loser by the bargain. Chap. xxii., p. 72, vol. ii. See also Murray's own statement to that effect, p. 385, vol. ii.

England, yet not near him nor known to him, was William Cowper. You know him better : you ought to know him better. Yet he would have managed a church-if a parish had been his-worse than Crabbe did. I fear he would not have managed children so prudently; and if he had ever married, I feel quite sure that his wife would have managed him.

Cowper was of an excellent family, being the son1 of a church rector, and was born at the rectory (now destroyed), which once stood under the wing of the pretty church that, with its new decorations, still dominates the picturesque valley town of Great-Berkhamsted, on the line of the London and Birmingham Railway. He studied at Westminster-being school-fellow with Churchill, the poet, and with Warren Hastings-of whose Trial we have had somewhat to say afterward he entered a solicitor's office at the Temple, where Thurlow (later, Lord Chancellor) chanced to be clerk at the same time. He had fair amount of money, good prospect of a place under Government-his un

'William Cowper, b. 1731; d. 1800. Life by Hayley, 1804; another, by Southey (regarded as standard), published with edition of his works in 1833-37. A recent life by Thomas Wright, chiefly valuable for its local details.

cle, Ashley Cowper, being a man of position and influence.

This uncle had two daughters, to one of whom this young gentleman said tender things;-too tender to be altogether cousinly— in which regard she proved as over-cousinly as he. But the Papa stamped out that little fire of love before it had grown into great flame. There is reason, however, to believe that the smouldering of it had its influences upon Miss Theodora all through her life; and who shall say that it did not touch the great melancholy of the future poet with a sting of tenderness? There was, however, no outspoken lamentation; the feminine nature of the man accepted the decision of the uncle as a decree of fate; there was never any great capacity in him for struggle or for controversy, either with men, or with untoward circumstance.

Meantime, the expected preferment came to young Cowper-a place, or places of value and permanence, which he had need only to take with a bold hand and purpose; but the bold hand was lacking; and his hesitancy multiplied difficulties which could only be met by examination for fitness before the Lords; that examination stares him awfully in the face; he wilts under the bare prospect; is hedged by