ROBERT FERGUSSON, the poet of Scottish city-life, was born in Edinburgh, on the seventeenth of October, 1751. He was educated at the university of St. Andrews, where he passed his time from the thirteenth to the seventeenth year of his age, after which he became a copying clerk in a lawyer's office. In this mechanical and irksome duty his days were spent, while his evenings were devoted to the tavern, where, over 'caller oysters,' with ale and whisky, the choice spirits of Edinburgh used to assemble. His conversational powers were of a very superior order, and he could adapt them at will to humor, pathos, or sarcasm, as the occasion might require. He was well educated, had a fund of youthful gayety, and sang Scottish songs with taste and elegance. To these qualifications he soon added the reputation of a poet, and for the last two years of his life he was a constant contributor to Ruddiman's 'Weekly Magazine,' a popular periodical established in Edinburgh, in 1768.

In 1773, Fergusson collected and published his poems in one volume, and that the book was well received by the public is evident from the fame and popularity of its author. His dissipations, however, increased with his years; and his tavern life and boon companions soon hastened him to a premature and painful death. His reason first gave way; and his widowed mother being unable to maintain him at home, he was sent to an asylum for the insane. The religious impressions of his youth returned, at times, to overwhelm him with dread, but his gentle and affectionate nature was easily soothed by the attentions of his relatives and friends. His recovery was anticipated, but after about two months' confinement, he died in his cell, on the sixteenth of October, 1774, one day before he had reached the twentythird year of his age. His remains were interred in the Canongate churchyard, where they lay unnoticed, till Burns, twelve years afterwards, erected a simple stone to mark the poet's grave.

A happy talent for portraying the peculiarities of local manners, a nice perception of the ludicrous, a vein of original comic humor, and language at once copious and expressive, form Fergusson's chief merits as a poet. His best pieces are The King's Birthday, The Sitting of the Session, Leith Races, Guid Braid Claith, and the Address to the Tron Kirk Bell. His Farmer's Ingle suggested 'The Cotter's Saturday Night' of Burns, though the latter added passion, sentiment, and patriotism to the subject. Indeed Burns is represented to have had an excessive admiration for the writings of Fergusson, and even to have preferred them to those of Ramsay. This opinion must, however, be attributed to the partial admiration of youthful associations. From Auld Reekie we take the following extract:

A SUNDAY IN EDINBURGH.

On Sunday, here, an altered scene
O' men and manners meets our een.
Ane wad maist trow, some people chose
To change their faces wi' their clo'es,

And fain wad gar ilk neibour think
They thirst for guidness as for drink;
But there's an unco dearth o' grace,
That has nae mansion but the face,
And never can obtain a part
In benmost corner o' the heart.
Why should religion mak' us sad,
If good frae virtues 's to be had?
Na rather gleefu' turn your face,
Forsake hypocrisy, grimace;
And never hae it understood
You fleg mankind frae being good.
In afternoon, a' brawly buskit,
The joes and lasses loe to frisk it.
Some tak' a great delight to place
The modest bon-grace owre the face;
Though you may see, if so inclined,
The turning o' the leg behind.
Now, Comely-Garden and the Park
Refresh them, after forenoon's wark;
Newhaven, Leith, or Canonmills,

Supply them wi' their Sunday's gills;
Where writers aften spend their pence,
To stock their heads wi' drink and sense.
While danderin cits delight to stray
To Castlehill or public way,

Where they nae other purpose mean,
Than that fool cause o' being seen,
Let me to Arthur's Seat pursue,
Where bonnie pastures meet the view,
And mony a wild-lorn scene accrues,
Befitting Willie Shakspeare's muse.
If fancy there would join the thrang,
The desert rocks and hills amang,
To echoes we should lilt and play,
And gie to mirth the live-lang day.

Or should some cankered biting shower
The day and a' her sweets deflower,
To Holyrood-house let me stray,
And gie to musing, a' the day;
Lamenting what auld Scotland knew,
Bein days forever frae her view.
O Hamilton, for shame! the Muse
Would pay to thee her coutly vows,
Gin ye wad tent the humble strain,
And gie's us our dignity again!
For, oh, wae 's me! the thistle springs

In domicile o' ancient kings,

Without a patriot to regret

Our palace and our ancient state.

Lecture the Fortieth.

WILLIAM COWPER-THOMAS MOSS-WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE-JAMES BEATTIEJAMES MACPHERSON-MICHAEL BRUCE-JOHN LOGAN-ROBERT BURNS.

(OWPER, to whom our attention is next to be directed, was, according Wo Sou boy, the quest popular poet of his generation, and the best

COWE

of English letter writers.' In contemplating his literary merits, the mind very naturally reverts to Thomson; for between these two poets there are stronger marks of affinity than between any others in the language. They are both emphatically descriptive poets, and in description lay the strength of each. Cowper, it is true, had not the genius of Thomson, but then he had much more taste; and while his range is neither so wide nor so lofty, as far as it extends, it is peculiarly his own. He could not paint the plague, or the snow storm, or the earthquake as Thomson has done; but place him by the banks of the Ouse, or see him taking his 'winter walk at noon,' or accompany him in his rambles through his flower garden, and where is the author to be found who can compare with him for a moment? The pictures of domestic life, too, which he has painted, are so inimitable, that it is hard say whether his sketches of external nature or of indoor life, are the best. He does not attempt the same variety of scene that Thomson did; but in what he does attempt, he always succeeds. The grander features of nature, such as mountains and cataracts, frowning rocks, and wide-spreading seas, were, perhaps, beyond his grasp; but the meadow and the hay-field, the gurgling rill, and the flower-crowned porch, he places before our eyes in verisimilitude. Sometimes, too, he takes a flight beyond his ordinary stretch; and his personification of winter, commencing with the line

to

Oh Winter! ruler of the inverted year!

is powerful, and even sublime.

Cowper's minor poems are full of beauties, and of beauties of the most varied kind. Some of his hymns are remarkable for deep piety and touching pathos; and for fervor of feeling, his lines On his Mother's Picture are absolutely unrivalled. His Review of Schools, and his piece entitled Con

versation, display an acute observation of men and manners, and are replete with the keenest, but, at the same time, the most polished satire; while his John Gilpin is a master-piece of quiet and unforced, but, at the same time, strong and racy humor.

WILLIAM COWPER belonged emphatically to the aristocracy of England. His father, the Rev. Dr. Cowper, chaplain to George the Second, 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, the lord chancellor. His mother was allied to some of the noblest families in England, descended, by four different lines, from King Henry the Third. This lofty lineage, though it does not add to the lustre of the poet's fame, still sheds additional grace on his piety and humility.

Dr. Cowper, besides his royal chaplaincy, held the rectory of Great Berkhamstead, in Hertford, and there the poet was born on the fifteenth of November, 1731. In the sixth year of his age he lost his mother, and was placed at a boarding-school, where he continued two years. The tyranny of one of his school-fellows 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, as he says, he served a seven years' apprenticeship to the classics; and at the age of eighteen was articled to an attorney. In 1754 Cowper was called to the bar, but he had never made the law his study; for, in the solicitor's office he and Thurlow, afterwards lord chancellor, were constantly employed, from morning to night, in giggling and making giggle.' After he had taken chambers in the Temple, instead of devoting himself to his profession, he passed his time in company with Lloyd and other wits, contributing an occasional paper to the Connoisseur, and to St. James's Chronicle.

In 1762 Cowper lost his father; and now, in the thirty-second year of his age, with a small patrimony, he was 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 readily accepted the situation; but the labor of studying the forms of procedure, and the dread of qualifying himself by appearing at the bar of the House of Lords, plunged him into the deepest misery. 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; and the appointment being given up, Cowper was placed in the private insane asylum, kept by Dr. Cotton, to which we alluded in our notice of that author. The cloud of horror gradually passed away, and on his recovery he resolved to retire from the society and business of the world. He had still a small portion of his funds left, and his friends subscribed a farther sum, to enable him to live frugally in retirement.

The bright hopes of Cowper's youth seemed thus to have all vanished: