great hopes from the air and exercise which this fine season affords her opportunity to use, that ere we return she will be herself again.

LETTER CLXXXII.

W. C.

To SAMUEL ROSE, Esqr.

Eartham, August 18, 1792.

Wishes in this world are ge

nerally vain, and in the next we shall make none. Every day I wish you were of the party, knowing how happy you would be in a place where we have nothing to do but enjoy beautiful scenery, and converse agreeably.

Mrs. Unwin's health continues to improve ; and even I, who was well when I came, find myself

still better.

Yours,

W. C.

THE kind wishes, that my guest thus addressed to Mr. Rose from Eartham, recall so forcibly to my heart a sense of Cowper's cordial and merited esteem for this very interesting friend, and of my severe affliction in having recently lost him, that I trust the reader will forgive me, if I here make a pause in the work before me, and terminate the present volume with a tribute of regard to the memory of a highly promising character, whose early death has proved to all who had the pleasure of knowing him, a source of affectionate regret.

The preceding letters of Cowper to this amiable young man must have prepared even such of my readers, as may be strangers to his person, to take an interest in his fate; and the generous zeal,with which he delighted to assist me in illustrating the life of the poet, whom he fervently loved and revered, entitle him to a record of tender distinction in these pages. Our mutual attachment to Cowper led us to become intimate and confidential friends to each other: and the inscrutable decrees of Heaven have now made it my duty to commemorate the endearing qualities of

my younger friend, whose amiable and affectionate hand I could have wished employed in rendering such

an office of kind remembrance to me, instead of his receiving it from mine.

SAMUEL ROSE was born on the 20th of June, 1767, at Chiswick, in Middlesex, where his father, Doctor William Rose, a native of Scotland, conducted an academy during many years, with considerable emolument, and unblemished reputation. This gentleman had married a daughter of Dr. Samuel Clark, a divine of talents and eminence among the dissenters. She bare him many children, but Samuel was his only surviving son, educated with fond and successful care by a parent, who had devoted the chief attention of a very active, benevolent, and chearful mind, to the important duties of education. Rose, being duly prepared by his father for a Scottish university, was sent in 1784 to Glasgow. There he resided in the house of Professor Richardson, a philosopher, and a poet; amiable in every character; and so just to the merits of youth, that a friendship and correspondence commenced between the tutor and his pupil, which terminated only with the life of the latter. Rose was very soon distinguished by that turn of mind, which Lord Clarendon has mentioned

as a characteristic of his own early life, an eager, yet a modest desire to cultivate the acquaintance of men, who had risen to eminence by their intellectual endowments. He gained the esteem of several, whose writings reflect honor on Scotland, and he maintained, through life, a constant correspondence, not only with his domestic tutor of Glasgow, but with Professor Young, Professor Millar, and Mr. Mackenzie, the Addison of the North! Of Rose's juvenile studies it may be sufficient to say, that he obtained every prize, except one, for which he contended as a student of the university. After passing three winters at Glasgow, he attended the courts of law in Edinburgh.

His acquaintance with the literature of Scotland rendered him ambitious of a personal introduction to the celebrated Adam Smith, which he easily obtained, Smith was so highly pleased with the lively English student, young as he was, that as long as he resided in Edinburgh, he was constantly invited to the literary circle of that eminent philosopher.

I have thought it proper to notice Rose's early acquaintance with literary men, because his chief title to be commemorated in this work arises from his intimacy with Cowper, and the circumstan

stances already mentioned, may serve to shew how well prepared the young scholar was on his return from Edinburgh to England, to prove a visiter peculiarly agreeable and animating to the sequestered poet of Weston. As the origin and progress of their friendship is perfectly displayed in the Letters of Cowper, I proceed to an account of the princpal occurrences in the life, alas! the brief life, of my younger friend. He had the misfortune to lose his excellent father, while he was pursuing his studies in the North; but a loss so unseasonable did not induce him to shrink from the first irksome labours of an arduous profession. Having entered his name at Lincoln's Inn, November 6, 1786, Rose devoted himself to the law, a line of life for which he seemed equally prepared by nature and education.

With a mind acute and powerful, with a fund of classical learning, and of general knowledge, with an early command of language, and with manners peculiarly conciliating, he had every thing to hope. Though his spirit was naturally ardent, he submitted to the most tiresome process of early discipline in his profession, placing himself under a special pleader in 1787, and attending him three years---being called to the bar in 1796, he attached himself to