DESULTORY REMARKS,

&c.

THE popular favour, shewn to this work on its first appearance, may be justly ascribed to that irresistible attraction, which readers of every class have felt and acknowledged, in perusing the Letters of the departed poet. They breathe, like his verse, such a pure spirit of morality and religion, they are so enlivened by a simple and graceful display of the benevolent affections, that our country seems to have received them, as a meritorious mother receives a legacy of honour from a dear distinguished son, when it appears to confirm, and to justify, all the fervent and proud tenderness of her parental feelings.

These sentiments on the Letters of my deceased friend, led me to seize an opportunity of imparting to the public a more ex

tensive collection, which the kindness of some respectable individuals, who love the memory of the poet, had induced them to communicate to his biographer.

The excellence of Cowper's Letters has a visible proportion to the warmth and purity of his affection towards his correspondents; and as his heart was truly attached both to his young friend, Mr. Unwin, and to his old and venerable associate, Mr. Newton, his Letters to these gentlemen are interesting in a very high degree. In writing to Mr. Newton on a subject of great nicety, the solicited communication of his new, and then unpublished poem the TASK, the poet gives every thing, that is due to the delicacy of friendship, and maintains at the same time the dignity and independence of his own powerful and upright mind.

The remarks, that I now prefix to the Life of Cowper, were first printed as an introduction to a supplemental volume of his Letters, most of which were addressed to these two confidential friends of the poet-several were written at the time when he was employed on his greatest performance, and such Letters were the more welcome, as the former correspondence afforded very few, that relate to that interesting period. In reprinting the Life I have endeavoured to place the whole series of Letters in their proper chronological order, except in a few instances, where some occasional motive seemed to require à different arrangement.

Regarding the heart of Cowper, as one of the most pure and friendly, that Heaven ever bestowed upon a mortal, and knowing that it was at all times his custom to display his own heart to his

confidential correspondents, not only with the utmost frankness? and fidelity, but with an enchanting talent peculiar to himself, it has been my constant endeavour to illustrate the different periods of his life by such documents as time and chance enabled me to discover in the custody of his surviving friends. I had often heard him mention his very early and his renewed intimacy with an accomplished and amiable scholar, once numbered among his favorite school-fellows at Westminster, now the Reverend Walter Bagot, of Blithfield, in Staffordshire. The kindness of a young and zealous coadjutor afforded me a safe and easy communication with this gentleman. I had soon the gratification of perceiving, that he retains in advanced life all the! cheerful, active good-nature, and the classical erudition, which endeared him to Cowper in his juvenile days. He expressed a most obliging readiness to assist me in promoting the renown of that excellent writer, whose memory both as a poet and a friend we equally revere; and he most kindly submitted to my inspection and use the collected manuscripts of Cowper, that he had preserved from their earliest intercourse. After a sportive lju venile Letter, dated November, 1749, their correspondence was suspended for many years. But it was renewed in 1785, and con-T tinued with reciprocal kindness, till the depression of Cowper's health precluded him from that affectionate intercourse with dis tant friends, in which he delighted, and excelled. 19sta fallos I have made such a selection from the whole correspon dence as my sentiments of regard both to the living and the deadt have suggested. Those who feel the charm of Cowper's epist tolary language, will be pleased to find several new Letters, both

serious and sportive. There is a passage in one Letter, of the

recent selection, in which the author displays his moralizing disposition with peculiar felicity. Perhaps that rich and ample field of morality, his whole collected works, afford not any remark more truly original and sublime.

The public will make all due, allowance for my partiality to the Letters of my friend which I am ever ready to allow, and in which (I am inclined to believe) the majority of readers will sympathize with me in proportion as they compare him with the most eminent Letter-writers of the ancient and modern world; a comparison, which these desultory remarks were designed to promote. I have been fortunately enabled to select and preserve; such an extensive collection of Cowper's Letters, as, may give my reader a great degree of intimacy with this excellent personage. Yet many (I am persuaded) have perished, that were perfectly worthy of the press. A correspondence once existed between Cowper and his early friend, Mr. Rowley, a gentleman, who died not long ago in Ireland. His Letters to Cowper were French. The poet replied in Latin, a language, of which he was particularly fond, and which he wrote with great facility and elegance. These Letters have been all destroyed. But it may gratify the relations and friends of Mr. Rowley to observe, that Cowper has spoken of him repeatedly to other correspondents in terms of the most cordial esteem. The praise of Cowper is so singularly valuable, from the reserve and purity of his disposition, that it would almost seem a cruel injury to suppress a particle of it, when deliberately, or even cursorily bestowed. His sensibility was of a generous kind, his perception of excellence was exquisite, and his

delight in praising it most liberal, even when he was a stranger to the person he praised. Witness the affectionate warmth and eloquence, with which he describes the writings of Beattie! Those Letters of Cowper will not be esteemed the least interesting, in which he has expressed his own critical opinions on several of his most celebrated contemporaries. Some readers will probably think, that his own attachment to the graces of simplicity in composition has rendered him severe, to excess, in criticizing the style of two eminent historians, Robertson and Gibbon.

It is pleasing however to discover the genuine sentiments that literary characters, of high distinction, entertained of other successful candidates for fame, who lived in their days. Cowper in criticizing the popular authors of his own nation, cannot fail to interest an English reader. Indeed the Letters of the poet have been honoured with the notice, and the applause, of foreigners. A polite and liberal scholar of France, deeply versed in our literature, has confessed that he never thought the writers of this country equal to those of his own, in all the excellencies of epistolary writing, till he read the Letters of Cowper.

Gratified as I am by a compliment so honorable to my departed friend, I am too zealous an advocate for the literary glory of our country to admit, that the Letter-writers of England are collectively inferior in merit to those of any nation in the modern world.

I am aware that some elegant and respectable critics of our island have made this humiliating concession in favour of France. Melmoth and Warton have both expreseed their regret, that we have not equalled our neighbours, the French, in this branch