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spair, which darkened, as he advanced in years, into periodical fits of the most deplorable depression.

It may afford an ample field for useful reflection to observe, in speaking of a child, that he was destined to excite in his progress through life, the highest degrees of admiration, and of pity-of admiration for mental excellence, and of pity for mental disorder.

We understand human nature too imperfectly to ascertain in what measure the original structure of his frame, and the casual incidents of his life, contributed to the happy perfection of his genius, or to the calamitous eclipses of his effulgent mind. Yet such were the talents, the virtues, and the misfortunes of this wonderful person, that it is hardly possible for Biography, extensive as her province is, to speak of a more interesting individual, or to select a subject on which it may be more difficult to satisfy a variety of readers. In feeling all the weight of this difficulty, I may still be confident that I shall not utterly disappoint his sincerest admirers, if the success of my endeavours to make him more known, and more beloved, is proportioned, in any degree, to the zeal with which I cultivated his friendship, and to the gratification that I feel in recalling to my own recollection

the delightful extent and diversity of his literary powers, with the equally delightful sweetness of his

social character.

But the powerful influence of such recollection has drawn me, imperceptibly, from the proper course of my narrative-I return to the childhood of Cowper. In first quitting the house of his parents, he was sent to a reputable school at Market-street, in Hertfordshire, under the care of Dr. Pitman, and it is probable that he was removed from it in consequence of an ocular complaint. From a circumstance which he relates of himself at that period, in a letter written to me in 1792, he seems to have been in danger of resembling Milton in the misfortune of blindess, as he resembled him, more happily, in the fervency of a devout and poetical spirit.

"I have been all my life, says Cowper, subject "to inflammations of the eye, and in my boyish days "had specks on both, that threatened to cover them. "My father, alarmed for the consequences, sent me "to a female oculist of great renown at that time, in " whose house I abode two years, but to no good purpose. From her I went to Westminster school, "where, at the age of fourteen, the small-pox seized

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mé, and proved the better oculist of the two, for

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it delivered me from them all: Not however from

great liableness to inflammation, to which I am in

a degree still subject, tho' much less than formerly, "since I have been constant in the use of a hot foot

“bath every night, the last thing before going to "rest."

It appears a strange process in education, to send a tender child, from a long residence in the house of a female oculist, immediately into all the hardships that a little delicate boy must have to encounter at a public school. But the mother of Cowper was dead, and fathers, though good men, are, in general, utterly unfit to manage their young and tender orphans. The little Cowper was sent to his first school in the year of his mother's death, and how ill suited the scene was to his peculiar character, must be evident to all, who have heard him describe his sensations in that season of life, which is often, very erroneously, extolled as the happiest period of human existence. He has been frequently heard to lament the persecution he sustained in his childish years, from the cruelty of his school-fellows, in the two scenes of his education. His own forcible expression, represented him at Westminster as not daring to raise his eye above the shoebuckle of the elder boys, who were too apt to tyra

nise over his gentle spirit. The acuteness of his feelings in his childhood, rendered those important years (which might have produced, under tender cultivation, a series of lively enjoyments) miserable years of increasing timidity and depression, which, in the most cheerful hours of his advanced life, he could hardly describe, to an intimate friend, without shuddering at the recollection of his early wretchedness. Yet to this perhaps the world is indebted for the pathetic and moral eloquence of those forcible admonitions to parents, which give interest and beauty to his admirable poem on public Schools. Poets may be said to realize, in some measure, the poetical idea of the nightingale's singing with a thorn at her breast, as their most exquisite songs have often originated in the acuteness of their personal sufferings. Of this obvious truth, the poem I have just mentioned, is a very memorable example, and if any readers have thought the poet too severe in his strictures on that system of education, to which we owe some of the most accomplished characters that ever gave celebrity to a civilized nation, such readers will be candidly reconciled to that moral severity of reproof, in recollecting, that it flowed from severe personal experience, united to the purest spirit of philanthropy and patriotism.

Cowper's exhortation to fathers, to educate their own sons, is a model of persuasive eloquence, and not inferior to similar exhortations in the eloquent Rousseau, or in the accomplished translator of Tansillo's poem, the Nurse, by which these enchanting writers have induced, and will continue to induce, so many mothers in polished life to suckle their own children. Yet similar as these exhortations may be esteemed, in their benevolent design, and in their graceful expression, there are two powerful reasons, which must, in all probability, prevent their being attended with similar success. In the first place, woman has, in general, much stronger propensity than man to the perfect discharge of parental duties; and secondly, the avocations of men are so imperious, in their different lines of life, that few fathers could command sufficient leisure (if nature furnished them with talents and inclination) to fulfil the arduous office of preceptor to their own children; yet, arduous and irksome as the office is generally thought, there is perhaps no species of mental labour so perfectly sweet in its success: and the poet justly exclaims:

O tis a sight to be with joy perus'd,

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