That, with a black, infernal train,

Make cruel inroads in my brain,

And daily threaten to drive thence

1

My little garrison of sense;

The fierce banditti, which I mean,

Are gloomy thoughts, led on by spleen.
'Then there's another reason yet,

Which is, that I may fairly quit

The debt, which justly became due
The moment, when I heard from you;
And you might grumble, crony mine,
If paid in any other coin;

Since twenty sheets of lead, God knows,
(I would say twenty sheets of prose)

Can ne'er be deem'd worth half so much,
As one of gold, and your's was such.
Thus, the preliminaries settled,

I fairly find myself PITCH-KETTLED;*

And cannot see, tho' few see better,

How I shall hammer out a letter.

First, for a thought-since all agree

*Pitch-kettled, a favorite phrase at the time when this Epistle was

written, expressive of being puzzled, or what, in the Spectator's time would have been called bamboozled.

Dame Gurton thus, and Hodge her son
That useful thing, her needle, gone;
Rake well the cinders;- -sweep the floor;
And sift the dust behind the door;
While eager Hodge beholds the prize
In old Grimalkin's glaring eyes;
And gammer finds it on her knees
In every shining straw she sees.
This simile were apt enough;
But I've another critic-proof!
The virtuoso thus, at noon,
Broiling beneath a July sun,

The gilded butterfly pursues,

O'er hedge and ditch, thro' gaps and mews,

And after many a vain essay,

To captivate the tempting prey,
Gives him at length the lucky pat,
And has him safe, beneath his hat:
Then lifts it gently from the ground;
But ah! 'tis lost, as soon as found;
Culprit his liberty regains;

Flits out of sight, and mocks his pains.
The sense was dark; twas therefore fit

With simile t' illustrate it;

But as too much obscures the sight,

As often as too little light,

We have our similies cut short,

For matters of more grave import.

That Mathew's numbers run with ease,

Each man of common sense agrees;

All men of common sense allow,

That Robert's lines are easy too;

Where then the preference shall we place,"
Or how do justice in this case?

Matthew (says fame) with endless pains,

Smooth'd, and refined, the meanest strains;

Nor suffer'd one ill-chosen rhyme

An't please your ladyship (quoth I)

For 'tis my business to reply;

Sure so much labour, so much toil,

Bespeak at least a stubborn soil;

Theirs be the laurel-wreath decreed,

Who both write well, and write full speed!

Who throw their Helicon about

As freely as a conduit spout!

Friend Robert, thus like CHIEN SCAVANT,

Lets fall a poem EN PASSANT,

Nor needs his genuine ore refine;

'Tis ready polished from the mine.

It may be proper to observe, that this lively praise on the playful talents of Lloyd, was written six years before that amiable, but unfortunate, author

published the best of his serious poems, "The Actor," a composition of considerable merit, which proved a prelude to the more powerful, and popular, Rosciad of Churchill; who, after surpassing Lloyd as a rival, assisted him very liberally as a friend. While Cowper resided in the Temple, he seems to have been personally acquainted with the most eminet writers of the time; and the interest, which he probably took in their recent works, tended to increase his powerful, though diffident, passion for poetry, and to train him imperceptibly to that masterly command of language, which time and chance led him to display, almost as a new talent, at the age of fifty. One of his first associates has informed me, that before he quitted London, he frequently amused himself in translation from antient and modern poets, and devoted his composition to the service of any friend who requested it. In a copy of Duncombe's Horace, printed in 1759, I find two of the satires translated by Cowper. The Duncombe's, father and son, were amiable scholars, of a Hertfordshire family; and the elder Duncombe, in his printed Letters, mentions Dr. Cowper (the father of the poet) as one of his friends, who possessed a talent for poetry, exhibiting at the same time a respectable specimen of his verse. The Dun

combes, in the preface to their Horace, impute the size of their work to the poetical contributions of their friends. At what time the two satires I have mentioned were translated by William Cowper, I have not been able to ascertain; but they are worthy his pen, and will therefore appear in the Appendix to these volumes.

Speaking of his own early life, in a Letter to Mr. Park, (dated March 1792) Cowper says, with that extreme modesty, which was one of his most remarkable characteristics. "From the age of twenty

to thirty-three I was occupied, or ought to have "been, in the study of the law; from thirty-three to

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sixty, I have spent my time in the country, where

my reading has been only an apology for idleness, "and where, when I had not either a magazine, or a "a review, I was sometimes a carpenter, at others, a

bird-cage-maker, or a gardener, or a drawer of landscapes. At fifty years of age I commenced an "author:-it is a whim, that has served me longest, "and best, and will probably be my last."

Lightly as this most modest of poets has spoken of his own exertions, and late as he appeared to himself in producing his chief poetical works, he had received from nature a contemplative spirit, perpe