Italy, we believe, as the purest specimens of the favella Toscana that late ages have produced. To us they certainly seem to want something of that flow and sweetness to which we have been accustomed in Italian poetry, and to be formed rather upon the model of Dante than of Petrarca. At all events, it i obvious that the style is highly elaborate and artificial; and that the author is constantly striving to give it a sort of factitious force and energy, by the use of condensed and emphatic expressions, interrogatories, antitheses, and short and inverted sentences. In all these respects, as well as in the chastised gravity of the sentiments, and the temperance and propriety of all the delineations of pas sion, these pieces are exactly the reverse of what we should have expected from the fiery, fickle, and impatient character of the author. From all that Alfieri has told us of himself, we should have expected to find in his plays great vehemence and irregular eloquencesublime and extravagant sentiments-passions rising to frenzy and poetry swelling into bombast. Instead of this, we have a subdued and concise representation of energetic rivalry can be imagined. Alfieri, like all the offer any opinion. They are considered, in continental dramatists, considers a tragedy as a poem. In England, we look upon it rather as a representation of character and passion. With them, of course, the style and diction, and the congruity and proportions of the piece, are the main objects;-with us, the truth and the force of the imitation. It is sufficient for them, if there be character and action enough to prevent the composition from languishing, and to give spirit and propriety to the polished dialogue of which it consists; -we are satisfied, if there be management enough in the story not to shock credibility entirely, and beauty and polish enough in the diction to exclude disgust or derision. In his own way, Alfieri, we think, is excellent. His fables are all admirably contrived and completely developed; his dialogue is copious and progressive; and his characters all deliver natural sentiments with great beauty, and often with great force of expression. In our eyes, however, it is a fault that the fable is too simple, and the incidents too scanty; and that all the characters express themselves with equal felicity, and urge their opposite views and pretensions with equal skill and plausibility. We see at once, that an ingenious discourses-passions, not loud but deep-and author has versified the sum of a dialogue; and never, for a moment, imagine that we hear the real persons contending. There may be more eloquence and dignity in this style of dramatising;-there is infinitely more deception in ours. With regard to the diction of these pieces, it is not for tramontane critics to presume to a style so severely correct and scrupulously pure, as to indicate, even to unskilful eyes, the great labour which must have been be stowed on its purification. No characters can be more different than that which we should infer from reading the tragedies of Alfieri, and that which he has assigned to himself in these authentic memoirs. (April, 1803.) The Life and Posthumous Writings of WILLIAM COWPER, Esq. With an Introductory Letter to the Right Honourable Earl Cowper. By WILLIAM HAYLEY, Esq. 2 vols. 4to. Chichester: 1803. THIS book is too long; but it is composed on a plan that makes prolixity unavoidable. Instead of an account of the poet's life, and a view of his character and performances, the biographer has laid before the public a large selection from his private correspondence, and merely inserted as much narrative between each series of letters, as was necessary to preserve their connection, and make the subject of them intelligible. This scheme of biography, which was first introduced, we believe, by Mason, in his life of Gray, has many evident advantages in point of liveliness of colouring, and fidelity of representation. It is something intermediate between the egotism of confessions, and the questionable narrative of a surviving friend, who must be partial, and may be mistaken: It enables the reader to judge for himself, from materials that were not provided for the purpose of determining his judgment; and holds up to him, instead of a flattering or unfaithful portrait, the living lineaments and features of the person it intends to commemorate. It is a plan, however, that 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, we conceive, for those great and eminent characters that are likely to excite an interest among all orders and generations of mankind. While the biography of Shake speare and Bacon shrinks into the corner of an octavo, we can scarcely help wondering that the history of the sequestered life and solitary studies of Cowper should have ex tended into two quarto volumes. The little Mr. Hayley writes in these vol umes is by no means well written; though certainly distinguished by a very amiable gentleness of temper, and the strongest ap pearance of sincere veneration and affection for the departed friend to whose memory it is consecrated. It will be very hard, too, if they do not become popular; as Mr. Hayley seenis to have exerted himself to conciliate reade of every description, not only by the most hvish and indiscriminate praise of every individual he has occasion to mention, but by a general spirit of approbation and indulgence towards every practice and opinion which he has found it necessary to speak of. Among the other symptoms of book making which this publication contains, we can scarcely forbear reckoning the expressions of this too obsequious and unoffending philanthropy. dence, if we rightly understand his biographer, that was the immediate cause of the unfor tunate derangement that overclouded the remainder of his life. In his thirty-first year, his friends procured for him the office of reading-clerk to the House of Lords; but the idea of reading in public, was the source of such torture and apprehension to him, that he very soon resigned that place, and had interest enough to exchange it for that of clerk of the The constitutional shyness and diffidence journals, which was supposed to require no of Cowper appeared in his earliest childhood, personal attendance. An unlucky dispute in and was not subdued in any degree by the Parliament, however, made it necessary for bustle and contention of a Westminster edu- him to appear in his place; and the consecation; where, though he acquired a consid-quences of this requisition are stated by Mr. erable portion of classical learning, he has Hayley, in the following, not very lucid, achimself declared, that "he was never able to count. nise his eye above the shoe-buckles of the elfer boys, who tyrannized over him." From this seminary, he seems to have passed, without any academical preparation, into the Society of the Inner Temple, where he continued to reside to the age of thirty-three. Neither as biographer nor his letters give any satisrory account of the way in which this large det important part of his life was spent. Although Lord Thurlow was one of his most nate associates, it is certain that he never mate any proficiency in the study of the law; and the few slight pieces of composition, in which he appears to have been engaged in this interval, are but a scanty produce for fifteen years of literary leisure. That a part of those years was very idly spent, indeed, appears from his own account of them. In a letter to his cousin, in 1786, he says, "I did actually live three years with Mr. Chapman, a solicitor; that is to say, I slept three years in his house; but I lived, that is to say, I spent my days in Southampton Row, as you very well remember. There was I, and the future Lord Chancellor, constantly employed, from morning to night, in giggling, and making giggle, instead of studying the law."-Vol. i. p. 178. And in a more serious letter to Mr. Rose, te makes the following just observations. "The colour of our whole life is generally such the three or four first years, in which we are our on masters, make it. Then it is that we may be Sud to shape our own destiny, and to treasure up for ourselves a series of future successes or disappaments. Had I employed my time as wisely as you a situation very similar to yours, I had never een & poet perhaps, but I might by this time have red a character of more importance in socia situation in which my friends would have en better pleased to see me. But three years misspent in an attorney's office, were almost of Course followed by several more equally misspent m the Temple; and the consequence has been, as the Italian epitaph says, "Sto qui."-The only use I can make of myself now, at least the best, is to ere in terrorem to others, when occasion may pen to offer, that they may escape (so far as my admonitions can have any weight with them) my folly and my fate."-Vol. i. pp. 333, 334. Neither the idleness of this period, however, not the gaiety in which it appears to have en wasted, had corrected that radical defect This constitution, by which he was disabled for making any public display of his acquitions: and it was the excess of this diffi "His terrors on this occasion arose to such an astonishing height, that they utterly overwhelmed his reason for although he had endeavoured to prepare himself for his public duty, by attending closely at the office for several months, to examine the parliamentary journals, his application was rendered useless by that excess of diffidence, which might previously acquire, it would all forsake him made him conceive, that whatever knowledge he at the bar of the House. This distressing appre hension increased to such a degree, as the time for his appearance approached, that when the day so anxiously dreaded arrived, he was unable to make the experiment. The very friends, who called on of Lords, acquiesced in the cruel necessity of relinhim for the purpose of attending him to the House quishing the prospect of a station so severely formidable to a frame of such singular sensibility." "The conflict between the wishes of just affectionate ambition, and the terrors of diffidence, so entirely overwhelmed his health and faculties, that after two learned and benevolent divines (Mr. John Cowper, his brother, and the celebrated Mr. Martin Madan, his first cousin) had vainly endeavoured to establish a lasting tranquillity in his mind, by friendly and religious conversation, it was found necessary to remove him to St. Alban's, where he resided a considerable time, under the care of that eminent physician Dr. Cotton, a scholar and a poet, who added to many accomplishments a peculiar I had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with sweetness of manners, in very advanced life, when him."-Vol. i. pp. 25, 26. In this melancholy state he continued for upwards of a year, when his mind began slowly to emerge from the depression under which it had laboured, and to seek for consolation in the study of the Scriptures, and other religious occupations. In the city of Huntingdon, to which he had been removed in his illness, he now formed an acquaintance with the family of the Reverend Mr. Unwin with whose widow the greater part of his after life was passed. The series of letters, which Mr. Hayley has introduced in this place, are altogether of a devotional cast, and bear evident symptoms of continuing depression and anxiety. He talks a great deal of his conversion, of the levity and worldliness of his former life, and of the grace which had at last been vouchsafed to him; and seems so entirely and constantly absorbed in those awful medi tations, as to consider not only the occupations of his earlier days, but all temporal business or amusement, as utterly unworthy of his attention. We do not think it necessary to make any extract from this part of the publication; pieces. When I can fird no other occupation. I and perhaps Mr. Hayley might have spared some of the methodistical raptures and dissertations that are contained in those letters, without any injury either to the memory of his friend, or the reputation of his own performance. After the death of Mr. Unwin, he retired with his widow to the village of Olney in 1768, where he continued in the same pious and sequestered habits of life till the year 1772, when a second and more protracted visitation of the same tremendous malady obscured his faculties for a melancholy period of eight years; during which he was attended by Mrs. Unwin with a constancy and tenderness of affection, which it was the great business of his after life to repay. In 1780, he began gradually to recover; and in a letter of that year to his cousin, describes himself in this manner: "You see me sixteen years older, at the least, than when I saw you last; but the effects of time seem to have taken place rather on the outside of my head than within it. What was brown is become grey, but what was foolish remains foolish still. Green fruit must rot before it ripens, if the season is such as to afford it nothing but cold winds and dark clouds, that interrupt every ray of sunshine. My days steal away silently, and march on (as poor mad King Lear would have made his soldiers march) as if they were shod with felt! Not so silently but that I hear them; yet were it not that I am always listening to their flight, having no infirmity that I had not when I was much younger, I should deceive myself with an imagination that I am still young."-Vol. i. pp. 96, 97. think; and when I think, I am very apt to do it rhyme. Hence it comes to pass, that the season of poetry, unfolds mine, such as they are, a of the year which generally pinches off the flowers crowns me with a winter garland. In this respect, therefore, I and my contemporary bards are by means upon a par. They write when the delightf influence of fine weather, fine prospects, and a brisk motion of the animal spirits, make poetry almost th all the leaves of the Parnassian laurel, and when a language of nature; and I, when icicles depend from reasonable man would as little expect to succeed i verse, as to hear a blackbird whistle. This mast be my apology to you for whatever want of fire and animation you may observe in what you will short. have the perusal of. As to the public, if they ke me not, there is no remedy."-Vol. i. pp. 105, 106, The success of his first volume, which ap peared in the end of the year 1781, was by no means such as to encourage him to proceed to a second; and, indeed, it seems now to be admitted by every body but Mr. Hayley, that it was not well calculated for becoming popu lar. Too serious for the general reader, it had too much satire, wit, and criticism, to be a favourite with the devout and enthusiastic; the principal poems were also too long and desultory, and the versification throughout was more harsh and negligent, than the public had yet been accustomed to. The book therefore was very little read, till the increasing fame of the author brought all his works into notice; and then, indeed, it was discovered, that it contained many traits of strong and original genius, and a richness of idiomatical phrase ology, that has been but seldom equalled our language. In the end of this year, Cowper formed an accidental acquaintance with the widow of Sir Thomas Austen, which, in spite of his insuper able shyness, ripened gradually into a mutual and cordial friendship, and was the immediate source of some of his happiest hours, and most celebrated productions.-The facetious history of "John Gilpin" arose from a suggestion of that lady, in circumstances and in a way that marks the perilous and moody state of Cowper's understanding more strikingly perhaps than any general description. One of the first applications of his returning powers was to the taming and education of the three young hares, which he has since celebrated in his poetry: and, very soon after, the solicitations of his affectionate companion first induced him to prepare some moral pieces for publication, in the hope of giving a salutary employment to his mind. At the age of fifty, therefore, and at a distance from all the excitements that emulation and ambition usually hold out to a poet, Cowper began to write for the public, with the view of diverting his own melancholy, and doing service to the cause of morality. Whatever effect his pub- when his accomplished friend Lady Austen made a "It happened one afternoon, in those years, lications had on the world, the composition part of his little evening circle, that she observed of them certainly had a most beneficial one him sinking into increasing dejection; it was her on himself. In a letter to his cousin he says, custom, on these occasions, to try all the resources "Dejection of spirits, which I suppose may have She told him the story of John Gilpin (which had of her sprightly powers for his immediate reliet prevented many a man from becoming an author, been treasured in her memory from her childhood) to made me one. I find constant employment neces- dissipate the gloom of the passing hour. Its effects sary, and therefore take care to be constantly em- on the fancy of Cowper had the air of enchantment. ployed.-Manual occupations do not engage the He informed her the next morning, that convulsions mind sufficiently, as I know by experience, having of laughter, brought on by his recollection of her tried many. But composition, especially of verse, story, had kept him waking during the greatest part absorbs it wholly. I write, therefore, generally of the night! and that he had turned it into a ballad. three hours in a morning, and in an evening I-So arose the pleasant poem of John Gilpin.' transcribe. I read also, but less than I write.' Vol. i. p. 147. Vol. i. pp. 128, 129. There is another passage in which he talks Lady Austen was fortunate enough to direct In the course of the year 1783, however, of his performance in so light and easy a the poet to a work of much greater importance; manner, and assumes so much of the pleasing, and to engage him, from a very accidental though antiquated language of Pope and Ad-circumstance, in the composition of "The dison, that we cannot resist extracting it. "My labours are principally the production of last winter; all indeed, except a few of the minor Task," by far the best and the most popular of all his performances. The anecdote, which is such as the introduction of that poem has probably suggested to most readers, is given in this manner by Mr. Hayley. translation, about this time, seem to have drawn from him the following curious and unaffected delineation of his own thoughts and feelings. "This lady happened, as an admirer of Milton, to be partial to blank verse, and often solicited her pencal friend to try his powers in that species of Composition. After repeated solicitation, he pro-menced an author, I am most abundantly desirous "I am not ashamed to confess, that having com. mised her, if she would furnish the subject, to comply with her request. 'Oh!' she replied, 'you can never be in want of a subject,-you can write upon any-write upon this sofa!' The poet obeyed her command; and, from the lively repartee of familiar conversation, arose a poem of many thousand verses, exampled, perhaps, both in its origin and excellence."-Vol. i. p. 135. This extraordinary production was finished ra less than a year, and became extremely popular from the very first month of its publicaon. The charm of reputation, however, could not draw Cowper from his seclusion; and his solitude became still more dreary about this enod, by the cessation of his intercourse with Lady Austen, with whom certain little alousies on the part of Mrs. Unwin (which the biographer might as well have passed over in silence) obliged him to renounce any anther connection. Besides the Task and John Gilpin, he appears to have composed several smaller poems for this lady, which are published, for the first time, in the work now before us. We were particularly struck with a ballad on the unfortunate loss of the Royal George, of which the following stanzas may serve as a specimen. "Toll for the brave! Brave Kempenfelt is gone; "His sword was in its sheath; Vol. i. p. 127. The same year that saw the conclusion of The Task," found Cowper engaged in the translation of Homer. This laborious undertaking, is said, by Mr. Hayley, to have been rst suggested to him by Lady Austen also; though there is nothing in the correspondence he has published, that seems to countenance hat idea. The work was pretty far advanced appears to have confided the secret of it to any one. In a letter to Mr. Hill, he explains his design in this manner: before he Knowing it to have been universally the opinion of the literati, ever since they have allowed them elves to consider the matter coolly, that a translation, properly so called, of Homer, is, notwithstand what Pope has done, a desideratum in the English language, it struck me, that an attempt to supply the deficiency would be an honourable one; and having made myself, in former years, somewhat critically a master of the original, I was, by this double translation, induced to make the attempt myself. I am now translating into blank verse the last book of the Iliad, and mean to publish by bscription."-Vol. i. p. 154. Some observations that were made by Dr. Maty and others, upon a specimen of his to succeed as such. I have (what perhaps you little suspect me of) in my nature, an infinite share of ambition. But with it, I have at the same time, as you well know, an equal share of diffidence. To this combination of opposite qualities it has been owing, that, till lately, I stole through life without undertaking any thing, yet always wishing to distinguish myself. At last I ventured: ventured, too, in the only path that, at so late a period, was yet open to me; and I am determined, if God hath not determined otherwise, to work my way through the obscurity that hath been so long my portion, into notice."-Vol. i. p. 190. As he advanced in his work, however, he seems to have become better pleased with the execution of it; and in the year 1790, addresses to his cousin the following candid and interesting observations: though we cannot but regret that we have not some specimens at least of what he calls the quaint and antiquated style of our earlier poets: and are not without our suspicions that we should have liked it better than that which he ultimately adopted. : the success of my translation, though in time past "To say the truth, 1 have now no fears about I have had many. I knew there was a style somewhere, could I but find it, in which Homer ought to be rendered, and which alone would suit him. Long time I blundered about it, ere I could attain to any decided judgment on the matter. At first I was betrayed, by a desire of accommodating my language to the simplicity of his, into much of the quaintness that belonged to our writers of the fifteenth century. In the course of many revisals, I have delivered myself from this evil, I believe, entirely but I have done it slowly, and as a man separates himself from his mistress, when he is going to marry. I had so strong a predilection in favour of this style, at first, that I was crazed to find that others were not as much enamoured with it as myself. At every passage of that sort, which I obliterated, I groaned bitterly, and said to myself, am spoiling my work to please those who have no taste for the simple graces of antiquity. But in I became a convert to their opinion: and in the last measure, as I adopted a more modern phraseology, revisal, which I am now making, am not sensible of having spared a single expression of the obsolete kind. I see my work so much improved by this alteration, that I am filled with wonder at my own the more, when I consider, that Milton, with backwardness to assent to the necessity of it; and whose manner I account myself intimately acquainted, is never quaint, never twangs through the nose, but is every where grand and elegant, without resorting to musty antiquity for his beauties. On the contrary, he took a long stride forward, left the language of his own day far behind him, and anticipated the expressions of a century yet to come." -Vol. i. pp. 360, 361. I The translation was finished in the year 1791, and published by subscription immediately after. Several applications were made to the University of Oxford for the honour of their subscription, but without success. Their answer was, "That they subscribed to nothing."-"It seems not a little extraordinary." says the offended poet on this occasion" that persons so nobly patronised themselves on the score of literature, should resolve to give no encouragement to it in return." We think so too. The period that elapsed from the publication of his first volume in 1781, to that of his Homer in 1791, seems to have been by far the happiest and most brilliant part of Cowper's existence. It was not only animated by the vigorous and successful exertions in which he was engaged, but enlivened, in a very pleasing manner, by the correspondence and Society of his cousin, Lady Hesketh, who renewed, about this time, an intimacy that seems to have endeared the earlier days of their childhood. In his letters to this lady, we have found the most interesting traits of his simple and affectionate character, combined with an innocent playfulness, and vivacity, that charms the more, when contrasted with the gloom and horror to which it succeeded, and by which it was unfortunately replaced. Our limits will not allow us to make many extracts from this part of the publication. We insert, however, the following delightful letter, in answer to one from Lady Hesketh, promising to pay him a visit during the summer. The following is very much in the same style. cupied by us and our Meubles, is as much supenot "This house, accordingly, since it has been oc to what it was when you saw it as you can imagine. The parlour is even elegant. When I say that the parlour is elegant, I do not mean to insinuate that the study is not so. It is neat, warm, and silent, produce in it an incomparable translation of Homer and a much better study than I deserve, if I do not I think every day of those lines of Milton, and cua gratulate myself on having obtained, before I am quite superannuated, what he seems not to have hoped for sooner. And may at length my weary age Find out the peaceful hermitage.' better thing; and you must always understand, For if it is not a hermitage, at least it is a much my dear, that when poets talk of cottages, herm ages, and such like things, they mean a house with six sashes in front, two comfortable parlours, a smart staircase, and three bedchambers of conve nient dimensions; in short, exactly such a house as this."-Vol. i. pp. 227, 228. In another letter, in a graver humour, he says of your own state of health, for I have had my anxieties about you. The winter has been mild; but our winters are in general such, that, when a friend leaves us in the beginning of that season, I always feel in my heart a perhaps, importing that we have possibly met for the last time, and that the robins may whistle on the grave of one of us before the return of summer. 66 Many thanks for the cuckow, which arrived perfectly safe, and goes well, to the amusement and amazement of all who hear it. Hannah lies awake to hear it; and I am not sure that we have not others in the house that admire his music as much as she."-Vol. i. p. 331. In the following passage, we have all the calmness of a sequestered and good-natured man, and we doubt whether there was another educated and reflecting individual to be found in the kingdom, who could think and speak so dispassionately of the events which were passing in 1792. "I am almost the only person at Weston, known to you, who have enjoyed tolerable health this "I shall see you again!-I shall hear your voice-winter. In your next letter give us some account we shall take walks together: I will show you my prospects, the hovel, the alcove, the Ouse, and its banks, every thing that I have described. I anticipate the pleasure of those days not very far distant, and feel a part of it at this moment. Talk not of an inn; mention it not for your life. We have never had so many visitors, but we could easily accommodate them all, though we have received Unwin, and his wife, and his sister, and his son, all at once. My dear, I will not let you come till the end of May, or beginning of June, because before that time my green-house will not be ready to receive us; and it is the only pleasant room belonging to us. When the plants go out, we go in. I line it with mats, and spread the floor with mats, and there you shall sit with a bed of mignonette at your side, and a hedge of honeysuckles, roses, and jesmine; and I will make you a bouquet of myrtle every day. Sooner than the time I mention, the country will not be in complete beauty. And I will tell you what you shall find at your first entrance. Imprimis, As soon as you have entered the vestibule, if you cast a look on either side of you, you shall see on the right hand a box of my "The French, who, like all lively folks, are ex making. It is the box in which have been lodged treme in every thing, are such in their zeal for all my hares, and in which lodges puss at present. freedom; and if it were possible to make so noble But he, poor fellow, is worn out with age, and pro- a cause ridiculous, their manner of promoting it mises to die before you can see him. On the right could not fail to do so. Princes and peers reduced hand stands a cupboard, the work of the same to plain gentlemanship, and gentles reduced to author. It was once a dove-cage, but I transform-level with their own lackeys, are excesses of which ed it. Opposite to you stands a table, which I also made; but a merciless servant having scrubbed it until it became paralytic, it serves no purpose now but of ornament; and all my clean shoes stand under it. On the left hand, at the farther end of this superb vestibule, you will find the door of the parlour into which I shall conduct you, and where I will introduce you to Mrs. Unwin (unless we should meet her before),-and where we will be as happy as the day is long! Order yourself, my cousin, to the Swan at Newport, and there you shall find me ready to conduct you to Olney. they will repent hereafter. Difference of rank and subordination are, I believe, of God's appointment, and, consequently, essential to the well-being of society: but what we mean by fanaticism in reli gion, is exactly that which animates their politics; and, unless time should sober them, they will, after all, be an unhappy people. Perhaps it de serves not much to be wondered at, that at their first escape from tyrannic shackles, they should act extravagantly, and treat their kings as they have sometimes treated their idols. To these, however, they are reconciled in due time again; but their respect for monarchy is at an end. They want nothing now but a little English sobriety, and that they want extremely. I heartily wish them some wit in their anger; for it were great pity that s many millions should be miserable for want of it "My dear, I have told Homer what you say about casks and urns: and have asked him whether he is sure that it is a cask in which Jupiter keeps his wine. He swears that it is a cask, and that it will never be any thing better than a cask to eternity, So if the god is content with it, we must even-Vol. i. p. 379. " |