loved him most truly, have enabled me to compose! I will tell you, with perfect sincerity, all my motives for addressing them to your Lordship.-First I flatter myself it may be a pleasing, and permit me to say, not an unuseful occupation to an ingenuous young nobleman, to trace the steps, by which a retired man, of the most diffident modesty, whose private virtues did honour to his name, arose to peculiar celebrity.My second motive is, I own, of a more selfish nature, for I am persuaded, that in addressing my Work to you, I give the publick a satisfactory pledge for the authenticity of my materials. I will not pretend to say, that I hold it in the power of any title, or affinity, to reflect an additional lustre on the memory of the departed poet: for I think so highly of poetical distinction, when that distinction is pre-eminently obtained by genius, piety, and benevolence, that all common honours appear to be eclipsed by a splendour more forcible, and extensive. Great poets, my Lord, and that I may speak of them, as they deserve, let me say, in the words of Horace, Primum me illorum, dederim quibus esse poetas, Excerpam numero. Great poets have generally united in their destiny those extremes of good and evil, which Homer, their immortal president, assigns to the bard he describes; and which he exemplified himself in his own person. Their lives have been frequently chequered by the darkest shades of calamity; but their personal infelicities are nobly compensated by the prevalence and the extent of their renown. To set this in the most striking point of view, allow me to compare poeti cal celebrity with the fame acquired by the exertion of different mental powers in the highest department of civil life. The Lord Chancellors of England may be justly regarded among the personages of the modern world, peculiarly exalted by intellectual endowments: with two of these illustrious characters, the poet, whose life I have endeavoured to delineate, was in some measure connected; being related to one, the immediate ancestor of your Lordship, and being intimate, in early life, with a Chancellor of the present reign, whose elevation to that dignity he has recorded in rhyme. Much respect is due to the legal names of Cowper and of Thurlow. Knowledge, eloquence, and political importance, conspired to aggrandize the men, who added those names to the list of English nobility: yet after the lapse of a few centuries, they will shine only like very distant constellations, merely visible in the vast expanse of history! But, at that time, the poet, of whom I speak, will D continue to sparkle in the eyes of all men, like the radiant star of the evening, perpetually hailed by the voice of gratitude, affection, and delight. There is a principle of unperishable vitality (if I may use such an expression) in the compositions of Cowper; which must ensure to them in future ages, what we have seen them so happily acquire and maintain in the present-universal admiration, and love! His poetry is to the heart, and the fancy, what the moral essays of Bacon are to the understanding, a nevercloying feast! "As if increase of appetite had grown Like them it comes "home to the business and bosom of every man.' By possessing the rare and double talent to familiarize and endear the most awful subjects, and to dignify the most familiar, the poet naturally becomes a favourite with readers of every description: his works must interest every nation under Heaven, where his sentiments are understood, and where the feelings of humanity prevail. Yet their author is eminently an Englishman, in the noblest sense of that honourable appellation: he loved the constitution; he revered the religion of his country; he was tenderly, and generously, alive to her real interest and honour, and perhaps of her many admirable poets, not one has touched her foibles, and celebrated her perfections, with a spirit so truly filial.—But I perceive that I am in danger of going far beyond my design in this Introductory Letter, for it was my intention not to enter into the merits of his character here, but to inform you in what manner I wish to make |