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Society, of which he is so distinguished a member. It is perhaps fortunate that every one had not the same implicit confidence; otherwise the errors might have remained unnoticed to the present hour.'

We cannot but feel some surprize that the author of the Reply, knowing as he must the grounds on which the accusations rested, chose to assume the tone which he has manifested in his remarks. It is probable, however, that he supposed that the same regard to etiquette, which led him to adopt the catalogue in question without examination, ought to have prevented any third person from exposing the errors and omissions of the Secretary of the Board of Longitude; and that, henceforwards, mathematics and astronomy were to be placed under and regulated by courtesy and etiquette, instead of being submitted as heretofore to the dominion of absolute and satisfactory demonstration. It seems to have been altogether overlooked by this writer that the Board of Longitude is a public establishment, that it is supported at the public expence, and that those of the public who are able to form a judgment of the subjects under its management have a right not only to examine its proceedings, but, when they are inadequately or negligently performed, to expose its mal-administration.

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ART. XII. Poems, by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq. To which is prefixed, a Memoir of the Author; also Critical Remarks on his Poems, written expressly for this Work. By John M'Diarmid. Second Edition, revised and extended. 12mo. 5s. Boards. Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh.

So far the frontal title-page of this little work; but it has another title-page, rather of an Irish than a Scotch description, at the end of the volume, on the outside, in which the editor has been betrayed into a lamentable specimen of the art of puffing. After a reprint of the foregoing ample: announcement, we have the subjoin too genuine display of self-applause: "Et mihi plaudo "

The whole exhibiting a condensed view of every important particular of his life and character that is scattered over hist voluminous correspondence, or introduced into the numerous!6) editions of his poetry.

Although there are few authors more popular than Cowper,si and consequently few whose volumes have been oftener reprinted,, it appeared to the present publishers, that there was still room for an improved edition of his poetical works; and that by steering a middle course, between the prolixity of Hayley and the meagre sketches of succeeding compilers, a work might be pro

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duced suited at once to the means and the leisure of general readers. With this view the Editor has selected from every source open to his industry the leading features of the personal and literary character of the poet, together with many interesting notices of that cruel malady of which he was through life the victim; and has thus been enabled to condense into a space comparatively limited a greater body of information than was ever offered to the public, on terms equally advantageous.'

Nothing can more deeply disgrace the literature of any age, than the frequency of such book-selling practices; and, certainly, many of our best authors labor under the imputation of having been unguarded, at least, in this particular. Leaving them to their own better reflections, we cannot but expöstulate with the editor of so unambitious, or at all events so delicate, and so scrupulous a person as Cowper, for having labored to set off his works in so ostentatious a manner. This circumstance, we confess, did not make a favorable impression on us; and, on examining the book, all our illomened anticipations were but too completely realized. We are far from denying that it is a neatly printed (though eyetrying) little edition, of a very convenient pocket-size, and pleasant and pretty to behold ;" and we allow it also the distinct merit of a very tolerably compiled life of Cowper, and of a rational exposure of the causes and consequences of his most unhappy malady. Especially in that part of the biography in which Cowper's incalculable loss of the society of Lady Austen is recorded, the editor has shewn much feeling and judgment; and we shall feel bound to present our readers with an extract from this portion of the work. In our judg ment, however, nothing can be more common-place than the "Critical Remarks' on the poems of Cowper.

66

"Ad libitum, ex alienis haurio libris,"

seems to be the motto of the remarker; and, whether he adverts to the "mighty dead" or the glorious living in the lists of criticism, he plunders all, without remorse. Now we have an extract from Johnson's Lives of the Poets, and then from the anonymous labors of some contemporary critic; the editor's own observations intervening like some coarse canvass on which these splendid patches are sown, so thickly as almost to hide it. The first instance of imperfect judgment in the remarker occurs in his very first illustration. He compares the Rape of the Lock" and the "Task," what, gentle reader? In the circumstance of their both having arisen from the request of a friend, and both relating to a trifling subject! This is, really, much like the similarity of

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Macedon

Macedon and Monmouth; both having rivers, and both beginning with the same letter. Thomson's "Castle of Indolence" is also lugged into the analogy. As to the first comparison, can any thing be more injurious to Cowper, as a poet, (for we are not now talking of moral essays,) than to suggest the contrast of his lame and halting versification with the perfect melody of Pope? Or of his loose rambling diction with the exquisitely accurate and illumined language of our English Horace? - Rendering, we trust, due justice to Cowper's varied merits, to his endearing love of nature and gentleness of soul, to his honest indignation at all that is base and mean in speculation or action, and to his manly preference of simplicity to art, we must, at the same time, be aware of the excesses into which a want of steady judgment, and of sufficient worldly knowlege, betrayed these noble qualities. Then as to taste! Are we yet to be subjected to Gothic or Caledonian theories, on this purely classical subject? "Usque adeo NIHIL est, quod nostra infantia cælum Hausit Aventini, baccá nutrita Sabina ?"

The mania of comparing things unlike, or the laying hold of a partial and imperfect resemblance, seems to be the sin that most easily besets the present editor. Witness the following grotesque comparison. We are obliged to copy both passages, to enable our readers to judge adequately of the absurdity which we are pointing out; and the prose of Mr. Curran, although well-known, will bear to be quoted again, in this noble example of eloquence. Cowper is speak-" ing of the slave-trade, and speaks as follows:

"We have no slaves at home-then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loos'd.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;

They touch our country, and their shackles fall.”

In Mr. Curran's defence of Hamilton Rowan, accused of the publication of a seditious libel, there occurs a passage which some have thought the finest burst of eloquence in the English lan guage; but which, after a critical examination, appears to be little more than an amplification of the beautiful lines which have[ just been quoted.

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"I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, British soil; which proclaims even to the stranger and sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced;

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-no matter what complexion, incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, that burst from around him; and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the genius of universal emancipation." "

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Will our readers believe that the editor has ushered in these parallel passages, as he supposes them to be, by calling Mr. Curran's expressions a remarkable instance of plagiarism? What would such a critic say to the "I præ, sequar," of Terence, and to the "Go on! I'll follow thee !" of Shakspeare?

Not satisfied with raising his author to Pope, the editor must sink him to Grahame; and Cowper is here laid alongside, fairly brought to bear, in the warfare of literary fame, against the author of the poem on the "Sabbath !"

At page 495. we find some facetious arguments adduced in defence of card-playing; which, as the editor himself has denominated them sportive,' he may excuse us for considering as silly but in the remarks that follow on state-lotteries, (although they are wholly unnecessary, and seem to be inserted because Cowper has not mentioned the subject,) we fully agree, lauding the virtuous zeal of the remarker, in a cause calculated to excite the interest of every reasonable patriot.

The editor seems duly aware of the great ruggedness of Cowper's verse, and does not make the old hackneyed excuse of its having been studied for purposes of variety, &c. &c.; an excuse which implies a libel on poetical harmony, and accuses it of being unable to delight without discords. On the contrary, he justly observes that no writer can be said to have obtained the highest mastery of his art, who does not combine with the utmost energy of thought the utmost polish of diction; and, as he should have added, the utmost harmony of versification. No other doctrine will raise our poetry to its antient standard; sad havoc as it will cause among our most honored living models.

In the quotation which the editor makes from Cowper's well-known description of the "Sanctimonious Prude," he has not observed the striking resemblance (which as a finder of likenesses we might have expected him to discover) between this picture and Hogarth's antient Virgin, with her foot-boy

carry

carrying her Bible to church. Cowper's lines are indeed a versification of the portrait.

In page 504. we remark another unkind hit at Mr. Hayley, who had before been very flippantly treated; and it originates, as we conceive, in a mistake of the meaning of the terms "exquisite pleasantry," which we conclude Mr. H. applied to the vein of laughing though bitter sarcasm that appears in several of the delineations. For instance, the very one which the editor has quoted,

"Perhaps a grave physician, gathering fees,

Punctually paid for lengthening out disease," &c. &c. Immediately following, we have a hint thrown out that Mr. Montgomery probably derived his idea' of writing a poem on "Greenland" from a passage in Cowper on Greenland, and from the allusion to the Missionaries which precedes it!" Surely the germs of future poems will hereafter be discovered in Ainsworth's Dictionary, and embryo speeches in Parliament must wait the publication of the next Flora Cantabrigiensis. As Sir George Saville said,

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"What beauties does Flora disclose !" &c. &c.

We return with pleasure to the Memoir of Cowper," and shall now present our readers with the promised extract; of which, whether we refer to the subject or the style, we cannot but entertain a favorable sentiment:

The amiable and accomplished Lady Austen was still his friend and neighbour, or rather his constant companion; and the blank-verse translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which he commenced at this period, (November, 1784,) were also, it is said, undertaken at her suggestion. But the time was at hand when he was to be deprived of the society of a female, who had proved invaluable to him, from the rare art she possessed of dissipating that melancholy which we suspect the sombre hue of Mrs. Unwin's mind rather tended to foster; and of whose services in this respect he was so sensible, that he repeatedly, in the fulness of his gratitude and affection, ascribes the circumstance that led to their acquaintance to the immediate interposition of Providence. But his devout old friend saw nothing very providential in the ascendency of a female so much more accomplished than herself; and it is painful to think, that the jealousy of this otherwise exemplary character should have led to a separation, which may be numbered among the misfortunes of our author's life. Mr. Hayley observes, that "no person can blame Mrs. Unwin for feeling apprehensive, that Cowper's intimacy with a lady of such extraordinary talents might lead him into perplexities of which he was by no means aware." What perplexities he alludes to it is difficult to discover: by his own account, and that of his contemporaries, Lady Austen

was

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