VI.

The Pitcher, who stood with his hand on his hip,
Shrugged up his round shoulders and curled his brown lip:
And grave to appearance, but laughing inside,
He thus from his orifice coolly replied:-

VII

"I came, noble Vase, from the cottage below,
Where I serve a poor husbandman, if you must know;
And my trade, might I venture to name such a thing,
Is bringing pure water each morn from the spring.

VIII.

"There's a notable lass who, at dawn of the day,
When dewdrops yet glisten on meadow and spray,
When the lark soars aloft, and the breezes are cool,
Sets off on light tiptoe with me to the pool.

IX.

"The pool is surrounded with willow and ash,
At noon in the sun, its dark waters will flash;
And, through the deep shade, you at intervals hear
The lowing of kine in the meadow land near.

X.

"The sheep with their lambkins there browse at their ease, Beneath the cool arch of embowering trees;

While low creeping herbs give their sweets to the air;
Wild thyme, and the violet, and primrose fair.

XI.

""Tis here that myself every morning she bears;
Then back to the cot in the valley repairs:
The faggot is blazing, the breakfast is placed,

And appetite sweetens coarse fare to the taste.

XII.

"In these humble services passes my life,
Remote from the city, its noise and its strife;
Though homely, I'm fit for the work of the day;
And I'm not ashamed of my true British clay.

XIII.

"And now, noble Vase, may I ask if 'tis true,
That you stand every day here with nothing to do?
A poor idle gentleman, up in your niche,

Quite useless, and nothing but handsome and rich!

XIV.

"They neither intrust you with victuals nor drink;
You must have but a poor sorry life on't, I think;
And, though such an elegant creature you're thought,
Pray are you not tired with doing of naught?"

But the Vase would not answer such questions as these;
And the Pitcher felt glad he was not a Chinese.

EXERCISE XVIII.

WILLIAM COWPER, the subject of the following admirable sketch, was born in Hertfordshire, England, in November 1731, and died in 1800.

COWPER THE POET.

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

1. The nature of Cowper's works makes us peculiarly identify the poet and the man in perusing them. As an individual, he was retired and weaned from the vanities of the world; and, as an original writer, he left the ambitious and luxuriant subjects of fiction and passion, for those of real life and simple nature, and for the development of his own earnest feelings, in behalf of moral and religious truth.

2. His language has such a masculine, idiomatic strength,

and his manner, whether he rises into grace or falls into negli gence, has so much plain and fatuiliar freedom, that we read no poetry with a deeper conviction of its sentiments having come from the author's heart; and of the enthusiasm, in whatever he describes, having been unfeigned and unexaggerated. He impresses us with the idea of a being, whose fine spirit had been long enough in the mixed society of the world to be polished by its intercourse, and yet withdrawn so soon as to retain an unworldly degree of purity and simplicity.

3. He was advanced in years before he became an author; but his compositions display a tenderness of feeling so youthfully preserved, and even a vein of humor so far from being extinguished by his ascetic habits, that we can scarcely regret his not having written them at an earlier period of life. For he blends the determination of age with an exquisite and ingenuous sensibility; and, though he sports very much with his subjects, yet, when he is in earnest, there is a gravity of long-felt conviction in his sentiments, which gives an uncommon ripeness of character to his poetry.

4. It is due to Cowper to fix our regard on this unaffectedness and authenticity of his works, considered as representations of nimself, because he forms a striking instance of genius, writing the history of its own secluded feelings, reflections, and enjoyments, in a shape so interesting as to engage the imagination like a work of fiction. He has invented no character in fable, nor in the drama; but he has left a record of his own character, which forms not only an object of deep sympathy, but a subject for the study of human nature. His verse, it is true, considered as such a record, abounds with opposite traits of severity and gentleness, of playfulness and superstition, of solemnity and mirth, which appear almost anomalous; and there is, undoubtedly, sometimes an air of moody versatility in the extreme contrasts of his feelings.

5. But looking to his poetry, as an entire structure, it has a massive air of sincerity. It is founded in steadfast principles of belief; and, if we may prolong the architectural metaphor, though its arches may be sometimes gloomy, its tracery sportive,

and its lights and shadows grotesquely crossed, yet altogether, it still forms a vast, various, and interesting monument of the builder's mind. Young's works are as devout, as satirical, sometimes as merry as those of Cowper; and, undoubtedly, more witty. But the melancholy and wit of Young do not make up to us the idea of a conceivable or natural being. He has sketched, in his pages, the ingenious, but incongruous form of a fictitious mind-Cowper's soul speaks from his volumes.

6. Considering the tenor and circumstances of his life, it is not much to be wondered at, that some asperities and peculiarities should have adhered to the strong stem of his genius, like the moss and fungus that cling to some noble oak of the forest, amidst the damps of its unsunned retirement.

7. In addition to these finely appreciative observations of the poet Campbell, himself among the brightest ornaments in English literature, we give, as showing the secret of his success in the art of composition, the following sentences from a letter of Cowper to one of his most intimate friends: To touch and retouch," says he, " is, though some writers boast of negligence and others would be ashamed to show their foul copies, the secret of almost all good writing, especially in verse. never weary of it myself. With the greatest indifference to fame, which you know me too well to suppose me capable of affecting, I have taken the utmost pains to deserve it.

I am

8 I considered that the taste of the day is refined and delicate to excess, and that to disgust that delicacy of the taste by a slovenly inattention to it, would be to forfeit at once all hope of being useful; and for this reason, though I have written more verse this year than, perhaps, any other man in England, I have finished, and polished, and polished, and touched, and retcuched with the utmost care. Whatever faults I may be chargeable with as a poet, I cannot accuse myself of negligence: I never suffe. a line to pass till I have made it as good as I can; and, though some may be offended at my doctrines, I trust none will be disgusted by slovenly inaccuracy, in the numbers, the rhymes

or the language. If, after all, I should be converted into waste

paper, it may be my misfortune, but it will not be my fault; and I shall bear it with perfect serenity."

EXERCISE XIX.

PASSAGES FROM COW PER.

I.

GOD OBSERVED IN NAURE.

Not a flower

But shows some touch in freckle, streak, or stain,
Of His unrivaled pencil. He inspires

Their balmy odors, and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes,
In grains as countless as the sea-side sands,
The forms with which He sprinkles all the earth.

II.

LOVE OF LIBERTY.

O Liberty! the prisoner's pleasing dream,
The poet's muse, his passion, and his theme;
Genius is thine, and thou art Fancy's nurse;
Lost without thee the ennobling powers of verse;
Heroic song from thy free touch acquires
Its clearest tone, the rapture it inspires:
Place me where Winter breathes his keenest air,
And I will sing, if Liberty be there;

And I will sing at Liberty's dear feet,

In Afric's torrid clime, or India's fiercest heat.

III.

LOVE OF COUNTRY.

England, with all thy faults I love thee still!-
My country! and, while yet a nook is left,