ENGLISH LETTER-WRITERS.

WILLIAM COWPER.

A HUNDRED years ago, Dr. Johnson remarked in the Rambler," that " among the numerous writers which our nation has produced, very few have endeavoured to distinguish themselves by the publication of letters, except such as were written in the discharge of public trusts, and during the transaction of great affairs."

This was a strange utterance from one who was anxiously cultivating at this very time the acquaintance of the author of "Pamela,”—a book, as all know, written in the form of familiar letters, and which had been then before the public exactly ten years. It was strange from one who was conducting a periodical on the plan of the "Spectator," where many letters of great elegance were to be found; and it was strange from one who was afterwards to be a biographer, not only of Swift, but of Pope, who certainly did, in 1737, publish a volume of his own correspondence.

His remark seems chiefly to apply to persons who themselves publish letters. But we think it is evident from the rest of his essay that he did not intend to narrow his observations to this class. People rarely publish their own letters; indeed, like diaries, letters cease to be properly described as such when intended for the press. He referred to those who wrote letters worthy of publication.

And he was not alone in complaining of the scarcity of letter-writers. Mr. Melmoth-whose translations of the Epistles of Pliny and Cicero are said to be still the best in the English tongue, if they do not surpass the originals, and who was the author of those models of elegant composition, "Fitzosborne's Letters "-remarks, that "it is to be won

dered we have so few writers in our own language who deserve to be pointed out as good letter-writers ;" and, after naming Sir W. Temple as praiseworthy, adds, that it would be difficult to find another. From this it might be inferred, that his organ of wonder was more fully developed than that either of observation or memory; for, besides Pope, and Richardson, and Swift, there were the authors of “Cato's Letters and "Oldcastle's Letters," and Sterne and Bolingbroke, and many more, much nearer his time, and worthier of quotation, than Temple.

Such statements, incorrect at the time, would be ridiculous now. The period when Johnson and Melmoth flourished was in reality richer in letter-writers than any preceding age, although some of their compositions did not appear in print till long afterwards. It was the period, for instance, of Chesterfield and Horace Walpole; of Langhorne, and Gray, and Mason; of Doddridge, and Cowper, and Junius. And, indeed, Johnson confessed to Boswell, in 1781, that it had become so fashionable to publish letters, that, in order to avoid it, he put as little into his as he could. But, even with this admission, where we may count good letter-writers in those days by units, we can, in ours, count them by scores.

This may be traced to various causes. Thanks to the exertions of such men as Johnson, and Burke, and Watts, and Wesley, and Cowper, and Goldsmith,—thanks also to the excitement caused by the French Revolution, the tone of mind has risen remarkably all through English society. Education has widely spread. The abundance of good literature in newspapers, books, and magazines,—the intensity of competition which men encounter everywhere, -the rush and hurry of modern existence, are constantly exercising and straining the intellectual faculties. And as the variety of occupations dissipates families and sepa

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rates friends, and some go abroad, and some settle in distant places, and every one sees scenes and has experiences and thoughts which do not fall to the lot of others,―as, moreover, the natural result of possessing information is the desire of communicating it, and eagerness to get more, there is no bar to the ceaseless reciprocity of knowledge, except facility of conveying it. This, also, we moderns have; and cheap postage is daily helping to raise us still farther above the people of Johnson's time; when the man who might be able to write, might be unable to send his letter, unless he could procure the dishonest frank, or find some friend to be his postman.

The consequence is, that every man whose memoirs deserve any attention is now found to have left letters worth printing. It seems to be generally admitted, too, that by these, as by the more essentially egotistical autobiography, a writer shows himself more really and vividly than any one else can depict him. His character is seen sometimes from what he praises, and sometimes from what he abuses; sometimes from what he narrates; sometimes from what he defends; sometimes from what he endeavours to suppress, and always from something besides what he pushes most earnestly forward. We get the side-lights of his character, as in a stereoscopic picture: which is far better than the best daguerreotype with its single light, and which is all that a biographer can supply. And so no book of memoirs is perfect which does not give some of the letters written by its hero.

And who does not rejoice in the fact? As we read the delightful composition of some favourite author, and our hearts respond to its eloquence, its wisdom, and its truth, we long to know something of the man,—to get into closer communion with that Intellectual Friend. We would fain learn what moved him personally: whether, when he laughed,

he laughed heartily; whether he was gloomy, or irritable, or genial; whether he was loved, or only respected, or, perhaps, feared,-in a word, what he was; and we put away the composition and take a volume of his Letters, and they tell us much of what we desire to know. The Mentor as an author becomes the loved one as a man, when, as with poor old desolate Defoe, we read that heart-breaking letter to Mr. Baker, in which he tells of the treachery of his son, and of his love to his old wife and daughter, in which he speaks of his trust in God under all his sorrows and miseries, and of the long, last journey he is about to go; and how it closes with his love and blessing to the little grandchild he must never see! The heart yearns and opens to the persecuted, dauntless, old, and dying man, more than to the fierce, high-minded pamphleteer, or the far-seeing essayist, to the vivid historian, or the wondrous novelist. We read those exquisite essays of "Elia" with double gust, when we have been sympathising with the lonely, bereaved brother, who devoted his life to Mary. And we pass from the "Task," notwithstanding all its graces, its wit, its exquisite descriptions, its sense, and vigour, to read and read again some of those charming letters of Cowper's, which are, indeed, things of beauty, and will, to the readers of England, be "a joy for ever."

William Cowper, the son of a chaplain to George II., and of a mother who was descended by four different lines from Henry III., was born in 1731. After expending a dreary and motherless childhood in a boarding-school, and a delicate boyhood amongst the tyrants of Westminster, at eighteen he was articled to a lawyer for three years, and entered at the Temple. But he had no love for the bar. He preferred to "giggle and make giggle" with his fellowclerk, Thurlow, afterwards Lord Chancellor. In 1754, he was called to the bar; but, although a lawyer by pro

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fession, he was a litterateur by practice. In company with George Colman the elder, Robert Lloyd, and others, he wrote in the " Connoisseur," and "St. James's Chronicle;" and was one of the Nonsense Club.

These, however, were not his only occupations. He fell in love. The object of his passion returned it as ardently as he could wish. She was accomplished and elegant; but she was his cousin, and her father refused to sanction their affection. She was obedient: they parted, and never met again. We may add, that they both died single.

He continued till 1763 a resident Templar. He occupied himself with his pleasant literary society; with translating some parts of Voltaire's "Henriade;" with studying Homer, and comparing, or rather contrasting, the original Greek with Pope's English version,- a labour which afterwards produced results in the shape of a version of his own. But at this time his means began to fail. He had been living hitherto on his capital, and it was nearly gone. His family connexions were excellent, and if he had followed up his profession they could have pushed him forward in it. But he had not done so. He had neglected it, and he found, as his little stock of cash failed him, that he had no means of making more. Literature could not help him. That pursuit was not so lucrative then as it is now; and even now we would earnestly dissuade any one from looking to it for a livelihood. Writers for bread, as Balzac somewhere says, "combat misery with a pen." He began, therefore, to be seriously anxious about the future; and was not a little rejoiced when, through the nomination of Major Cowper, he obtained the post of Clerk of the Journals in the House of Lords. But the prospect of an examination before entering on office so worked on his morbidly sensitive spirit, that when the time arrived he made repeated attempts at self-destruction. The consciousness of this, on the other