Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

"The number of German treatises on Letter writing (says Gellert) is considerable, those in Latin however are by far the most numerous. They have been chiefly composed by men of deep erudition, and serve to shew that the attempt to reduce Letter-writing to a regular art is a fruitless undertaking."

Gellert, after enumerating some of these unprofitable attempts, proceeds thus" The short Letter of Gregory Nazianzen to Nicobulus, on the conciseness, perspicuity, and elegance of a Letter, is worth more perhaps than many cumbrous treatises." This animated eulogy led me to examine the Letter so recommended, and a very lively passage at the end of it pleased me particularly. " I will close (says Gregory to his correspondent) by telling you what I heard from a man of judgment, speaking of the eagle-when the birds assembled to chuse a sovereign, and most of them had adorned themselves with a variety of ornaments, the eagle was allowed to be the most beautiful, because he made no pretensions to beauty." This little fable may serve to illustrate the singular charm that belongs to Cowper, in his epistolary character-the language of his Letters is the eagle of Gregory.

I am the less inclined to fear, that partiality to my incomparable friend may have led me to over-rate the excellence of his Letters, because several most competent judges of their merit, not personally acquainted with Cowper, have assured me, that they feel in them an attraction, which they do not find in the printed Letters of any other man, antient or modern. If it is possible to express by any single word the peculiarities of the writer, in which this attraction consists, I apprehend

they may be comprised in the word delicacy; and to render my meaning perfectly clear, I annex to that comprehensive word the following definition of it, as applied to language, which Dr. Lancaster introduced in his celebrated Essay on this enchanting quality of exquisite composition.

"Delicacy is good sense, but good sense refined, which produces an inviolable attachment to decorum and sanctity, as well as elegance of manners, with a clear discernment and warm sensibility of whatever is pure, regular and polite, and at the same time an abhorrence of whatever is gross, rustic, or impure, of unnatural, effeminate, and over-wrought ornaments of every kind; it is in short the graceful, and the beautiful, added to the just and the good."

Such delicacy reigned in the mind and heart of Cowper, and has given to his Letters a peculiar distinction.

Page xv. line 28.-For Barbou, read Barbauld.

LIFE OF COWPE R.

PART THE FIRST.

INGENIUM PROBITAS, ARTEMQUE MODESTIA VINCIT.

THE

HE family of CowPER appears to have held, for several centuries, a respectable rank among the merchants and gentry of England. We learn from the life of the first Earl Cowper, in the Biographia Britannica, that his ancestors were inhabitants of Sussex, in the reign of Edward the fourth. The name is found repeatedly among the Sheriffs of London, and William Cowper, who resided as a country gentleman in Kent, was created a Baronet by King Charles the first, in 1641.* But the family rose to higher distinction in VOL 1.

A

This gentleman was a writer of English verse, and with rare munificence bestowed both an epitaph and a monument on that illustrious divine the venerable Hooker. In the edition of

the beginning of the last century, by the remarkable circumstance of producing two brothers, who both obtained a seat in the House of Peers by eminence in the profession of the law. William, the eldest, became Lord

Walton's Lives, by Mr. Zouch, the curious reader may find the epitaph written by Sir William Cowper.

His descendant the Poet of Weston in speaking with moral pleasantry on the common pride of pedigree, exprest a persuasion that one of his progenitors migrated from Scotland in a very humble condition. Since the first publication of this Life I chanced to find in a scarce little book of biography, John Fuller's Abel Redivivus, quarto, 1651, an account of a Scottish William Cowper, a religious author, so remarkable for the warmth of his piety, and the elegance of his language, that if his works had fallen into the hands of his namesake at Weston, the English poet might have felt a liberal satisfaction in supposing himself allied to the Scottish divine. The person to whom I allude migrated indeed into England, and certainly in an humble state, according to his own account of his early life, in the following words : Having passed my course in Saint Andrew's, I returned to my parents in Edenborough. I was pressed by them to enter into "sundry sorts of life I liked not, for my heart still inclined to "the study of holy scriptures, whereupon I resolved to go into "England, where I evidently perceived the Lord going before

[ocr errors]

66

me, and providing for me at Hoddesden, within 18 miles of "London: my meane portion, which I had, being all spent (I

66

speak it to his glory that cared for me) in that same place, "that same day, was I desired by our kind countryman Master "Guthrie, to help him in the teaching of a school." The young enthusiastic pilgrim was at this time only sixteen. He afterwards studied theology under some learned divines in London, with the consent of his friend Guthrie. At the age of nineteen he returned

High Chancellor in 1707.

Spencer Cowper, the youngest, was appointed Chief Justice of Chester in 1717, and afterwards a Judge in the court of Common Pleas, being permitted by the particular favour of the king to hold those two offices to the end of his A 2

to Edinburgh, and in the course of a devout, active, and exemplary life, became Bishop of Galloway. He died as he had lived, eminent for the tranquil fervency of his faith. Ten years after his death his collected works were published at London in a neat and copious folio, 1629. They breathe a spirit of cordial piety, and if we consider the time and country of the writer, the simplicity and the strength of his style may be thought peculiarly worthy of commendation. He introduces several of his religious treatises with a variety of dedicatory epistles, which shew that his ardent devotion was united to great elegance of manners. He appears to have been familiar with many illustrious persons of his time, and there is a Sonnet prefixed to his Commentary on the Revelation, by that admirable Scottish Poet Drummond of Hawthornden, which as it is omitted in the collected works of Drummond, printed in 1711, I should have inserted here had I nót seen it again in a recent and interesting publication, the Lives of the Scottish Poets, by Mr. David Irving. As the learned Bishop of Galloway addrest some of his compositions to King James the first, to his Queen, and to his son Prince Henry, it seems not improbable that the person made a Baronet by Charles the first, might be related to this eloquent and highly esteemed Bishop Cowper, of whom I will only add that he was buried in Edinburgh, his native city, 1619, and attended to the grave by the Earl of Dumfermeline, chancellor, with the lords of council, &c. and honoured in a funeral sermon by the Archbishop of Saint Andrew's

« ElőzőTovább »