with a want of skill which does much to destroy their charm. Hayley's Life, it is true, was made up in the same way; but then Cowper's letters were new, and Hayley was wise enough to know, that to permit Cowper to be his own historian would give the work a surprising attraction. But now, when those who would read a new biography are already familiar with his letters and history, the biographer must adopt a different course, and one which requires higher qualifications. He must, to be sure, set down the incidents of Cowper's life, but this is a trifling part of his duty. He must tell us what Cowper was, and show how far circumstances tended to make him what he was; he must explain to us the nature and spirit of his mind, and the strength and weakness of his heart; he must show us what that mysterious affection was, before which he sometimes bowed down in infant helplessness, while, at other times, he threw it off like dust from the eagle's wing. In short, a biographer, worthy of the subject, must do much which Mr. Taylor never thought of doing, and if he had, would not have been able to do.

The first biographer of Cowper, Hayley, was a man in no respect equal to the undertaking; but, by a fortunate accident, he adopted a plan similar to Mason's in his life of Gray, and thus acquired considerable reputation from the circumstance that so little of the work was his own. He was probably induced to take this course by the embarrassing nature of his subject. Having no taste or capacity for philosophical investigation, he did not venture to inquire into the causes of Cowper's literary success nor of his physical depression; and, knowing that his religious opinions, if expressed, were likely to give offence to some of Cowper's surviving friends, he seems to have been unwilling to provoke them to a conflict, in which his elegant literary repose would have been seriously endangered. There was also another reason for his reserve, which we cannot find it in our hearts to condemn. The details of mental suffering, when they oblige us to follow a man of fine genius to the cells of a madhouse, are painful and revolting. It was natural that he should wish to draw a veil over this dismal scene in the history of his excellent and honored friend: but this forbearance gave an incompleteness to his work, and its readers found many questions starting up in their minds to which it furnished no reply. As often happens in such cases of truths withheld, the imaginations to which it gave

birth were worse than the worst reality. But it was necessary to say something, and nothing can be more misplaced than Hayley's attempt at explanation. He says, 'had Cowper been prosperous in early love, it is probable that he might have enjoyed a more uniform and happy tenor of health.' Here let us stop to say, that we learn only by intimation that Cowper was disappointed in love, not however by the insensibility of his mistress, but the interference of their relations. An event so important in the annals of his life, might surely have been described at large after the lapse of more than a generation. 'Thwarted in love,' says Hayley, 'the native fire of his temperament turned impetuously into the kindred channel of devotion. The smothered flames of desire, uniting with the vapors of constitutional melancholy and the fervency of religious zeal, produced altogether that irregularity of corporeal sensation and of mental health, which gave such extraordinary vicissitudes of splendor and darkness to his mortal career.' This explanation, for doubtless it was so intended, only serves to show the writer's perplexity, and when translated, means that Cowper's malady was owing in part to circumstances, in part to physical constitution, and in part to the habits of his mind. But Hayley does not seem to have been aware of the power of disease to destroy the moral energy: the mind, like the harp, when under firm command, gives out bold, expressive and inspiring sounds; if the moral energy be lost, it is like the harp of the winds, all sadness. But in criticising Hayley's work, we must not forget what does him more honor,-his generous kindness to Cowper; he was one of those matchless friends who remained faithful to the poor invalid, when even the Samaritan would have been tempted to pass by. Nothing in the endeavors and successes of genius can make our hearts burn within us like the self-devotion of those living martyrs, who, unseen by the world, can sit within the shadow of death with the sick and sorrowful, and count it their highest glory to bind up the broken heart.

We shall take advantage of this publication to make a few remarks on Cowper's life and character, and at the same time to express our hope that some one, who is equal to the undertaking, will accomplish that which Mr. Taylor has attempted in vain.

Cowper evidently had, in his constitution, the elements of that disorder, which made such fearful inroads upon the happi

ness of his life; and the circumstances of his childhood brought them into early action. His mother died when he was but six years old; and if we may believe the accounts we have respecting her, she would have had the judgment to detect and control the native tendencies of his feeling. It is not at all uncommon for the young, at a very early age, to be suspicious of kindness, jealous of affection, and to betray all those infirmities which, if not resisted, make their possessor, or rather their victim, a burden to himself, and useless to the world. But so slow and difficult is it to give a new direction to character which has already begun to take its form, that nothing less than a mother's affection has the long patience which it requires. What Cowper's father was, we do not know. His biographers only tell us that he was once chaplain to George II., and afterwards rector of Great Berkhamstead: as to his character we have no information beyond the fact, that he was a learned and respectable man. But whatever he may have been, he could not fulfil that delicate trust, which nature has confided to a mother's hands, nor does it appear that he secured to himself more than an ordinary place in the affection of his son. We do not remember in all his letters any particular allusion to his father, except where he speaks of the sorrow with which he felt that his death dissolved the relations that bound him to the place of his birth. Till his father's death, he had always considered their dwelling-place as a family possession: he had become intimate with every tree that grew near it; and it was with a bitter feeling that he gave it up to the stranger's hands.

Immediately after the death of his mother, which was of itself a sore calamity, he was sent by his father to a public school. Young, shy, and timid as he was, he shrunk back into himself, at witnessing the rough and savage manners of the older boys; and being unable to defend himself, and finding no defender, he was treated by them as lawful prey. Dr. Johnson said to a parent, who wished to overcome the retiring disposition of his child by sending him to a public school, that it was forcing an owl into the sun: a comparison more just than the Doctor himself imagined; for every one familiar with the woods knows, that whenever the owl is forced into the day, the painful glare of the sunshine is not the worst evil he endures. Every thing that has wings takes advantage of his helplessness, and torments him with insults and injuries, till he

is weary of existence. The wonder is, that such discipline did not entirely break the gentle spirit of Cowper. He tells us that one young savage tortured him in such a manner, that he was afraid to lift his eyes upon him, higher than his knees: but he dared not complain, and this dire oppression was discovered by accident at last. Here his heart was confirmed in the habit of keeping to itself its own bitterness; an unfortunate reserve; for there were more instances than one, in which the counsel of a judicious friend, who could have entered into his feelings, would have been worth more to him than all the world besides. The consumptive patient, wasting in loneliness and sorrow, is not a sight more affecting to the thoughtful, than he whose moral energy is withered by disease of mind. But in the world at large, the sight inspires less sympathy than ridicule and scorn.

Though we shall not follow the example of Mr. Taylor, who has considered his subject only in a religious point of view, it would be impossible to speak of Cowper without regarding him in that relation. There must be a time in every man's life, we mean every good man, when he begins to act from principle; and Christians, of course, regard Christian principles as the rule, by which the conduct and feeling should be governed. It is the object of religious education to supply these principles to the young, and to teach them to act upon them; and nature points to the beginning of conscious existence as the time when these principles should be formed, requiring those who have given life to the child to teach him how to live, to give him a right direction, so that, when he becomes responsible for himself, his tastes and habits may be already formed in favor of loving and doing that which is excellent, honorable and good. When the young mind has been so unfortunate as not to receive this early care, it is hard to supply the deficiency in later years. Still it can be done, and not unfrequently is done; and we take it that, when he who has lived at random begins decidedly to form the character of a Christian, and to govern himself by Christian principles in all that relates to himself, to others, and to God, he is said, in the dialect of our religion, to begin life anew, or in other words, passes through the conversion of the Gospel.

Now such is our condition, that energetic principles of action are absolutely necessary. The man without them can no more reach excellence, usefulness, and peace, either in this

world, or another, than a vessel can drift to its destined harbor. The ship, which moves most rapidly and powerfully when under command, would drive most wildly, when left to the winds; and the man most largely gifted with passions and powers is dangerous to himself and others, in exact proportion to the success and glory with which he might exert himself in the way of duty. Cowper, unhappily, by the misfortune of his childhood, lost the benefit of a religious education, which might have formed principles, and taught him to act upon them: nor was there ever a time in the earlier history of his life, though he often lamented the defect, when he could summon energy enough to make himself what he wished to be. He felt that he was living without purpose; but as often as he attempted to break his habits and associations, he was like a man with a withered hand. His conscience perpetually haunted him, but it disturbed him like a dream; the moral energy to act was wanting. We do not believe that he was a profligate wretch, as he afterwards represents himself in his own confessions: we see more evidence of weakness and frailty than hardened guilt, in his course of life: but there certainly was enough to deplore in the loss of his earliest and best years, in which little was done, and that little not what it ought to have been.

That his conscience was always upbraiding him, appears from various incidents recorded by his own hand. His tastes were evidently in favor of what was right, but the force of circumstances was too strong for mere taste; and as for principles, as we have said, they never had been formed. The admonitions of his conscience, which seems to have had power to avenge though not to redress its own wrongs, were deeply felt at the time, but his unhealthy sensibility gave so much force to external things, that her warnings were lost, if not forgotten. Still they returned again and again: he endeavored to escape from them by joining in society with gay companions, but in vain. Even at that early period when he was at the public school, he tells us that one day, when sitting in solitude, he was forcibly struck with a passage of Scripture, which applied to the oppression under which he labored: it started up suddenly in his mind by some association which he could not discover, and he seems to have regarded it as a suggestion made to his soul. While he was at Westminster, happening to cross a churchyard late one evening, a sexton, who was digVOL. XXXVIII.-NO. 82. 2