THE LIFE,

AND

POSTHUMOUS WRITINGS,

OF

WILLIAM COWPER, ESQR.

WITH AN

INTRODUCTORY LETTER

TO THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE EARL COWPER.

By WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQR.

"Observatur oculis ille vir, quo neminem ætas nostra graviorem, sanctiorem,
subtiliorem denique tulit: quem ego quum ex admiratione diligere cœpissem, quod eve-
nire contrà solet, magis admiratus sum, postquam penitus inspexi. Inspexi enim peni-
tus: nihil a me ille secretum, non joculare, non serium, non triste, non lætum.”

Chichefter: EW-YORK

PRINTED BY J. SEAGRAVE,

FOR J. JOHNSON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD, LONDON.

WWW.

THE

LIFE OF COWPE R.

THE visit of Lady Hesketh, to Olney, led to a very

favourable change in the residence of Cowper. He had now passed nineteen years in a scene, that was far from suiting him. The house, he inhabited, looked on a market-place, and once, in a season of illness, he was so apprehensive of being incommoded by the bustle of a fair, that he requested to lodge, for a single night, under the roof of his friend Mr. Newton; and he was tempted by the more comfortable situation of the vicarage, to remain fourteen months in the house of his benevolent neighbour. His intimacy with this venerable divine was so great, that Mr. Newton has described it in the following remarkable A

VOL. 3.