talents, and most profound learning, nor have I any doubts about the universality of his knowledge. But by what I have seen of his animadversions on the poets, I feel myself much disposed to question, in many instances, either his candour or his taste. He finds fault too often, like a man that, having sought it very industriously, is at last obliged to stick it on a pin's point, and look at it through a microscope; and I am sure I could easily convict him of having denied many beauties, and overlooked more. Whether his judgment be in itself defective, or whether it be warped by collateral considerations, a writer upon such subjects as I have chosen would probably find but little mercy at his hands.

No winter since we knew Olney has kept us more confined than the present. We have not more than three times escaped into the fields, since last autumn. Man, a changeable creature in himself, seems to subsist best in a state of variety, as his proper element-a melancholy man at least is apt to grow sadly weary of the same walks, and the same pales, and to find that the same scene will suggest the same thoughts perpetually.

Though I have spoken of the utility of changes, we neither feel nor wish for any in our friendships, and consequently stand just where we did with respect to your whole self.

Yours, my dear sir,

W.C.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Feb. 9, 1782.

They are so

I THANK you for Mr. Lowth's verses. good, that had I been present when he spoke them, I should have trembled for the boy, lest the man should disappoint the hopes such early genius had given birth to. It is not common to see so lively a fancy so correctly managed, and so free from irregular exuberance, at so unexperienced an age; fruitful, yet not wanton, and gay without being tawdry. When schoolboys write verse, if they have any fire at all, it generally spends itself in flashes, and transient sparks, which may indeed suggest an expectation of something better hereafter, but deserve not to be much commended for any real merit of their own. Their wit is generally forced and false, and their sublimity, if they affect any, bombast. I remember well when it was thus with me, and when a turgid, noisy, unmeaning speech in a tragedy, which I should now laugh at, afforded me raptures, and filled me with wonder. It is not in general till reading and observation have settled the taste, that we can give the prize to the best writing, in preference to the worst. Much less are we able to execute what is good ourselves. But Lowth seems to have stepped into excellence at once, and to have gained by intuition, what we little folks are happy, if we can learn at last, after much labour of our own, and instruction of others. The compliments he pays to the memory of King Charles, he

would probably now retract, though he be a bishop, and his majesty's zeal for episcopacy was one of the causes of his ruin. An age or two must pass, before some characters can be properly understood. The spirit of party employs itself in veiling their faults, and ascribing to them virtues which they never possessed. See Charles's face drawn by Clarendon, and it is a handsome portrait. See it more justly exhibited by Mrs. Macaulay, and it is deformed to a degree that shocks us. Every feature expresses cunning, employing itself in the maintaining of tyranny --and dissimulation, pretending itself an advocate for truth.

My letters have already apprized you of that close and intimate connexion that took place between the lady you visited in Queen Ann-street, and us. Nothing could be more promising, though sudden in the commencement. She treated us with as much unreservedness of communication, as if we had been born in the same house, and educated together. At her departure, she herself proposed a correspondence, and because writing does not agree with your mother, proposed a correspondence with me. By her own desire I wrote to her under the assumed brother, and she to me as my sister.

relation of a

I thank you for the search you have made after my intended motto, but I no longer need it.-Our love is always with yourself and family.

Yours, my dear friend,

W. C.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

Feb. 16, 1782.

CARACCIOLI says "There is something very bewitching in authorship, and that he who has once written will write again." It may be so- -I can subscribe to the former part of his assertion from my own experience, having never found an amusement, among the many I have been obliged to have recourse to, that so well answered the purpose for which I used it. The quieting and composing effect of it was such, and so totally absorbed have I sometimes been in my rhyming occupation, that neither the past, nor the future (those themes which to me are so fruitful in regret at other times), had any longer a share in my contemplation. For this reason I wish, and have often wished, since the fit left me, that it would seize me again; but hitherto I have wished it in vain. I see no want of subjects, but I feel a total disability to discuss them. Whether it is thus with other writers or not, I am ignorant, but I should suppose my case in this respect a little peculiar. The voluminous writers at least, whose vein of fancy seems always to have been rich in proportion to their occasions, cannot have been so unlike, and so unequal to themselves. There is this difference between my poetship and the generality of them-they have been ignorant how much they have stood indebted to an Almighty power, for the exercise of those talents they have supposed their own. Whereas I know, and know most

perfectly, and am perhaps to be taught it to the last, that my power to think, whatever it be, and consequently my power to compose, is, as much as my outward form, afforded to me by the same hand that makes me, in any respect, to differ from a brute. This lesson if not constantly inculcated might perhaps be forgotten, or at least too slightly remembered.

W. C.

"Caraccioli* appears to me to have been a wise man, and I believe he was a good man in a religious sense. But his wisdom and his goodness both savour more of the Philosopher than the Christian. In the latter of these characters he seems defective principally in this—that instead of sending his reader to God as an inexhaustible source of happiness to his intelligent creatures, and exhorting him to cultivate communion with his Maker, he directs him to his own heart, and to the contemplation of his own faculties and powers, as a neverfailing spring of comfort and content. He speaks even of the natural man as made in the image of God, and supposes a resemblance of God to consist in a sort of independent self-sufficing and selfcomplacent felicity, which can hardly be enjoyed without the forfeiture of all humility, and a flat denial of some of the most important truths in Scripture.

*These cursory remarks of Cowper appear highly worthy of preservation. They were written on separate scraps of paper, without any title, and find perhaps their most suitable place as a sequel to the letter in which he quoted the writer, whose character he has here sketched at full length, and with a masterly hand.