superintendence of his mother, by attending for a few hours. daily at the school of his native village, he had already made some progress in education. Of the tenderness with which the little wants of his childhood were cared for at this period, he has left an exquisite picture, a delineation of maternal endearments, which comes home to every heart with the warmth of its own first and purest feelings.

When we thus contemplate two beings united by the most touching of all relations, and to whose separate fate so deep an interest now attaches- —one so willing, so tenderly qualified to act a mother's part, so speedily to be removed from a son, than whom few ever stood more in need of a mother's care, and none could have repaid it more nobly or more duteously

-we shall hardly find lines more affecting than the poetical record which Cowper has left of his childhood. When we reflect also, that the former, in the very prime of life and usefulness, was taken to a rest above, while the latter, helpless and weak, was left behind to struggle alone with madness and self-inflicted banishment from those heavenly comforts which his writings administer to others,-how mysterious seem the ways of Providence! Yet, when we think again that but for this separation the poet's mental visitations might have been averted, and he would not have sung the heart-searching strains which he has left us; his lyre would have been silent, save as a refuge against despair; and the God whom he dared not approach in appointed ordinances, mercifully rendered the genius He had bestowed, like the harp of the Psalmist of old, the instrument of praise! we behold

Still all His ways the surest wisdom shew,
Good counteracting ill, and gladness wo!*

Instead of the endearing solicitude which had hitherto watched over his infancy, the near village school, and his home at night, Cowper now found himself alone among strangers, and exposed to the rough encounter of a public

* See the Letters, in passages too numerous even for reference, where Cowper thus represents his poetical labours as the only relief which proved certainly and permanently efficacious against his fearful malady.

seminary. When this removal took place is not exactly ascertained. The following lines imply some interval after his mother's decease:

Thy maidens grieved themselves at my concern,
Oft gave me promise of thy quick return;
What ardently I wish'd, I long believed,
And disappointed still, was still deceived.
By expectation every day beguiled,
Dupe of to-morrow even from a child.
Thus many a sad to-morrow, &c.

But the expressions in his Letters, where the events of his early life are only casually introduced, would strictly imply an immediate removal. The just inference, therefore, seems to be, that he left the paternal roof, it may almost be said, for ever, within a very brief period after his first irreparable loss. Some doubt also attaches to the exact situation of his new abode. His biographers, after Hayley, call it a reputable school at Market Street in Hertfordshire. In the Memoir, published in 1816, and which bears every mark of being, what it professes,—a narrative from his own pen, the account is, "At six years old I was taken from the nursery, and from the immediate care of a most indulgent mother, and sent to a considerable town in Bedfordshire." Supposing, as must necessarily be done, that the same school is meant, the apparent contradiction is reconciled by the fact of Market Place lying near the confines of the two counties.

Cowper's instructor was a Dr Pitman, a respectable scholar, and a humane man. This, however, did not prevent the poor boy from being very miserable in his new mode of life. Indeed, with his shy and timid disposition, so ill adapted to withstand the rude tyranny of bad-tempered companions, and labouring under a feebleness of constitution which disqualified him from mingling in the boisterous amusements of even the good-natured, it was next to impossible that he could have been otherwise than unhappy. "Here," to quote his own words, "I had hardships of different kinds to conflict with, which I felt more sensibly in proportion to the tenderness with which I had been treated at home. But my chief

affliction consisted in my being singled out from all the other boys, by a lad about fifteen years of age, as a proper object upon whom he might let loose the cruelty of his temper. I choose to forbear a particular recital of the many acts of barbarity with which he made it his business continually to persecute me. It will be sufficient to say, that he had, by his savage treatment of me, impressed such a dread of his figure upon my mind, that I well remember being afraid to lift up my eyes upon him higher than his knees, and that I knew him from his shoe-buckles better than any other point of his dress. The cruelty of this boy, which had long been practised in so secret a manner, that no creature suspected it, was at length discovered, and the perpetrator expelled from the school."

Soon after his release from this youthful depravity, and as a distinguished poet has termed it "fiendish malevolence," Cowper, having resided there two years, was himself removed from the seminary. This description of his sufferings, leaves it no matter of surprise that through life he should have held public education in horror and aversion. But, as is naturally to be expected where the feelings were so deeply wounded, with much truth, as we shall have occasion to shew, there mingles fully as much prejudice in his views of this matter. Of these first two years of boyhood, only one other particular is preserved. The anecdote, however, is valuable, when we compare the impressions of religion stored in his young mind, with the subsequent forgetfulness of religious principle which marked his career of early manhood. "One day," to continue his own Narrative, as I was sitting alone on a bench in the school, melancholy, and almost ready to weep at the recollection of what I had already suffered, and expecting at the same time my tormentor every moment, these words of the Psalmist came into my mind, I will not be afraid of what man can do unto me.' I applied this to my own case, with a degree of trust and confidence in God, that would have been no disgrace to a much more experienced Christian. Instantly I perceived in

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* Narrative.

myself a briskness of spirits, and a cheerfulness which I had never before experienced; and took several paces up and down the room with joyful alacrity, - His gift in whom I trusted. Happy had it been for me if this early effort towards a dependence on God had been frequently repeated by me. But, alas! it was the first and last instance of the kind between infancy and manhood."

The immediate cause of young Cowper's being removed from his first scene of study, was a severe distemper in his eyes, which, originating probably in a scorbutic habit of body —the real source, indeed, of his physical maladies. threatened for a time total blindness, by the appearance of specks upon either eye. In this alarming situation, he was consigned by his father to the care of an eminent oculist. There occurs here, however, considerable difficulty in ascertaining the precise circumstances of his case. Hayley, indeed, says that Cowper, in a letter on some passages in his early life, gives the following statement: "I have been all my life subject to inflammations of the eyes, and, in my boyish days, had specks on both, that threatened to cover them. My father, alarmed for the consequences, sent me to a female oculist of great renown at that time, in whose house I abode two years, but to no good purpose." The substance of this extract has been adopted implicitly in all the biographies of Cowper. The author of the Pleasures of Hope, however, suggests that Hayley should have read famous instead of female in the manuscript of his friend.* This emendation, it must be owned, corresponds but inelegantly with the context, and we can hardly credit that a writer so uniformly correct and graceful as Cowper is, even in his most familiar letters, would have written " famous oculist of great renown.” In the Narrative, again, the poet certainly styles his medical attendant" Mr D- -, an eminent surgeon and oculist." Perhaps this discrepancy may be reconciled by the supposition that Cowper, being at this time a mere child, and of a generally weak state of health, was left principally to the care of the

* See Campbell's British Poets, vol. vii. page 33, note 2.

lady, whose functions he might thus readily misinterpret in a hasty notice to a correspondent. Be this as it may, there still remain doubts concerning the duration and even place of his residence while under medical treatment. In the letter just quoted, two years are mentioned as the period of his stay, while in another statement he says, "I continued a year in this family, and from thence was despatched to Westminster." This latter occurrence enables us to decide between the various dates here employed by different writers. The poet elsewhere informs us "that he served a seven years' apprenticeship to the classics at Westminster ;" and we know that he "came out" in his eighteenth year. Consequently he must have entered that celebrated seminary in the commencement of his eleventh year, and therefore resided two years in the house of the oculist.* It will also have been remarked, that though London is not mentioned by name, several collateral circumstances prove this interval to have been passed in the capital.

The reader will perhaps contemplate with some degree of surprise these numerous contradictions in the life of one of whom so many accounts have been given to the world: and probably with this surprise will mingle a melancholy regret that uncertainty should exist, where, from the admiration and gratitude due to the individual, the warmest interest is felt in even the slightest details which at any time influenced his circumstances or character. But we should also consider, that the course of genius usually resembles the path of the meteor, which, rising in darkness, kindles only mid-way in its flight. In the case of Cowper, likewise, there were special peculiarities, tending to throw obscurity over the events of his early

In a letter to the Rev. J. Newton, Cowper says, "You had been married thirty-one years last Monday. When you married I was eighteen years of age, and had just left Westminster school." This letter is dated February 18, 1781: Cowper's school attendance must therefore have closed with the Christmas holydays, 1749-50. This corresponds with the dates given in the text, and rectifies the mistake of all his biographers, who make him enter Westminster in his ninth year, which necessarily implies a residence of nine years.