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merely bound together with a few detached paragraphs, to preserve the connexion of each series of letters, and render the subject of them intelligible. But, as the Edinburgh Reviewers justly remark, this plan of biography requires so much room for its execution, and consequently so much money and so much leisure in those who wish to be masters of it, that it ought to be reserved for those great and eminent characters that are likely to excite an interest among all orders and generations of mankind. While the biography of Shakspeare and Bacon shrinks into the corner of an octavo, we cannot help wondering that the history of the sequestered life of Cowper should have extended into two quarto volumes."

In the whole range of English literature, there is perhaps not a single author who is more universally popular than Cowper. While the works of some of our greatest poets are left to slumber upon the shelves, his are perpetually upon the mantelpiece or the table; and although there may be some in the foremost rank of our immortals whose genius awakens a deeper sentiment of veneration, there is none whose writings come more directly home to the "business and bosoms" of all classes of our countrymen. Even in the religious world, where so few of the poets are admitted into the list of innocent or edifying authors, Cowper enjoys a high and unequalled popularity; and when the judicious mother or daughter thinks of adding to the library of a distant son or brother-of selecting a companion for her own morning walk

-or of affixing her name to a literary gift, which she wishes to be prized for its own sake as well as that of the giver, “The Task” is generally the first volume that presents itself to her thoughts. In fact, such is the fame of Cowper, that new editions of his works, in some shape or other, are almost constantly issuing from the press; and it has always struck me as singular, that not one of these editions that I have seen is accompanied by any thing like a memoir of the author. What common sense and custom have in all ages united, editors and publishers have, in this instance, contrived to divide; and, by an arrangement somewhat whimsical, the admirers of a poet, whose original productions can be comprised in one pocket volume, are referred, for the few particulars of his retired and solitary life, to a work extending to ten times the size. It is not my wish, however, to depreciate the editorial labours of Mr Hayley. All I contend for is, that the biography, like the poetry of Cowper, should be placed within the reach of all, either by prefixing it to the different editions of his poems, or by reducing it to a cheaper and more convenient form, as a separate work. Much, no doubt, might be said in praise of the poet's epistolary style; but his letters, lively and unaffected as they are, would be much more prized were they reprinted upon a more rigid principle of selection, and without any view to that arrangement which seems to impose on us the necessity of perusing the whole series. When the history of a favourite author is presented to the reader in convenient dimensions,

he can lift the book at any leisure moment, and, in this way, soon becomes familiar with the subject; but when the same matter, or at least the same facts, come before him in the formidable shape of two quarto volumes, he is extremely apt to delay, like Felix, the performance of a meditated duty till a more convenient season, and may die before he has carried his intention into effect.

To these observations I have only to add, that the Memoir prefixed to the present edition is totally different from that which appeared anonymously in the same work, more than twelve months ago. From the diminutive size in which the volume first appeared, and some other circumstances, I had been misled as to the class of readers into whose hands it was likely to fall; and I was therefore not only careful to confine the narrative within moderate bounds, but also thought it expedient to suppress many general remarks that naturally arose on the subject, from an opinion that they might not be relished or appreciated. But the work having run rapidly to a second edition, I have been induced to revise and extend the only portion of it that can be termed original; and, as the task confided to me implies nothing beyond industry, I believe I may take credit to myself for having brought within a very moderate compass the more important memorabilia of the life and writings of WILLIAM COWPER.

DUMFRIES, 1st September 1819.

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