The

very butt of slander, and the blot
For every dart that malice ever shot.

The man that mention'd him at once dismiss'd
All mercy from his lips, and sneer'd, and hiss'd;
His crimes were such as Sodom never knew,

And Perjury stood up to swear all true.
His aim was mischief, and his zeal pretence,
His speech rebellion against common sense.

The world's best comfort was, his doom was pass'd,—
Die when he might, he must be damn'd at last.
Now Truth, perform thy office; waft aside
The curtain drawn by prejudice and pride:
He loved the world that hated him; the tear
That dropp'd upon his Bible was sincere;
Assail'd by scandal, and the tongue of strife,
His only answer was a blameless life;

And he that forged, and he that threw the dart,

Had each a brother's interest in his heart."-Hope.

Some of these lines have the energy of Dryden. The picture of the poor bobbin-maker, contrasted with Voltaire, is wrought out with equal delicacy and skill. Southey, alluding to the blasphemous inscription-DEO EREXIT VOLTAIRE - observes, that in Voltaire's bedroom, at Ferney, is a sort of monument with something like an urn in the middle, and these words: Son esprit est partout, et son cœur est-ici it would have said, but the heart was not there any more than the manes, which some verses above had engaged to be there also. In a grove some hundred yards distant, there is a flat black marble monument thus inscribed

AU CHANTRE

DU PÈRE DES BOURBONS.
AU FONDATEUR

DE

FERNEY.

This monument is covered with a black pyramid of wood to preserve it from the weather. Some devotee of the arch-infidel had chalked upon this covering, with great precision of hand, an eulogistic epigram, quite worthy of being written in chalk upon wood:

"Voltaire des hommes la gloire et le flambeau,
Méritoit les honneurs suprêmes;

Et s'il étoit dans son tombeau

Les lauriers y croitroient d'eux-mêmes."

The offerings which had recently been placed on the top of this pyramidal covering (not in derision) were literally a withered laurel wreath, a worse quill than ever pen was made of, and a child's penny trumpet.-MS. Journal, 1817.

It is, however, as a descriptive poet, as the adorner of the domestic charities of life,-that Cowper has obtained a home in every heart of sensibility. He has brought the Muse in her most attractive form to sit down with us by our hearths, and breathed a sanctity and a charm over the commonest transactions of life. He builds up no magic castles, he leads us into no enchanted gardens, or bowers of bliss; no silver lutes sigh through his verse; no wings of faery glisten upon his page; instead of wandering along the twilight shores of old Romance, he is teaching over the book of life, and unfolding to our eyes that conjugation of many duties which forms our intercourse with the world. How pleasantly with him glides away the morning in all the rural delights of The Garden, and what a delicious warmth and comfort breathe over his Winter Evening:

While

"Gath'ring at short notice in one group The family dispers'd, and fixing thought, Not less dispers'd by daylight and its cares."

"The needle plies its busy task;

The pattern grows; the well-depicted flower,
Wrought patiently into the snowy lawn,
Unfolds its bosom; buds, and leaves, and sprigs,
And curling tendrils gracefully dispos'd,

Follow the nimble finger of the fair

The poet's or historian's page by one

Made vocal for the amusement of the rest;

The sprightly lyre, whose treasure of sweet sounds
The touch from many a trembling chord shakes out;
And the clear voice symphonious, yet distinct,
And in the charming strife triumphant still,
Beguile the night."

The Winter Evening.

We may, perhaps, understand his descriptive powers more accurately by comparing them with Thomson's. Addison observed, in reply to the hyper-critics of Paradise Lost, that if they would not allow it to be an heroic poem, they might call it a Divine Poem. So we may say of Thomson; if the Seasons are not a sacred composition, in the strict sense of the term, they breathe a pure spirit of didactic religion, at once beautiful, simple, and impressive. Through every page gleams of promised heaven seem to pour their lustre, and we know that the poet is continually leading us from Nature up to Nature's God. The Source of Being, the Universal Soul, the Essential Presence, are ever present to his mind.

"Father of Light and Life! thou Good Supreme!
O teach me what is good! teach me THYSELF!"

Such is the prayer of the poet, and we feel its influence over his

verse, chastening, kindling, elevating the whole. Thus Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, are only so many types and shadows of the Universal Love:

"These as they change, Almighty Father, these
Are but the varied God; the rolling year
Is full of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring
Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love.
Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm ;
Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles;
And every sense, and every heart is joy.
Then comes thy glory in the summer months,
With light and heat refulgent. Then thy sun
Shoots full perfection through the swelling year;
And oft thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks.
And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve,
By brooks and groves in hollow whispering gales,
Thy bounty shines through Autumn unconfin'd.
In Winter, awful Thou! with clouds and storms
Around Thee thrown, tempest o'er tempest roll'd,
Majestic darkness."

In this noble hymn, with which the minstrel consecrates his work to the service of his Creator, his fancy seems to have glowed with the purest inspiration, until, lost in light ineffable, he calls upon Silence to "muse HIS praise." In this particular the Task and the Seasons offer a mutual resemblance; but Thomson had a more daring pencil than Cowper. They were, indeed, both meek nature's children. It was the boast of Cowper, that in the descriptions of scenery he had borrowed nothing from books, they are all studies from nature. One of the most perfect passages in the Task is only a reminiscence of a favourite walk:

"How oft upon yon eminence our pace

Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne
The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,
While admiration, feeding at the eye

And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene!

Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned
The distant plough slow moving, and beside
His lab'ring team that swerv'd not from the track
The sturdy swain diminished to a boy!
Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain
Of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er,
Conducts the eye along its sinuous course
Delighted. There, fast rooted in the bank,
Stand, never overlook'd, our favourite elms,
That screen the herdsman's solitary hut;
While far beyond, and overthwart the stream
That as with molten glass inlays the vale,

The sloping land recedes into the clouds ;
Displaying on its varied sides the grace

Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,
Tall spire from which the sound of cheerful bells
Just undulates upon the listening ear,

Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote."

One who has recently trodden in the footsteps of the poet has enabled us to accompany him in his usual walk, which, as appears in the arrangement of his subjects, extended, he thinks, westward from the village of Olney, by a gradual ascent through the fields to the grounds of Weston House.* Pursuing this route, the visitor, after crossing some fields, attains the eminence whence the poet and his companion so often surveyed the prospect here described. In this position, due south, and almost immediately beneath him, the spectator overlooks "Ouse slow winding," the level plains, the spacious meads with their various garniture, till the distance recedes into the clouds. Eastwards the square tower marks Clifton Church, where Lady Austen first resided with her sister. In this direction the horizon is skirted by Clifton Wood, till due east rises the "tall spire" of Olney Church, where Newton once officiated: continuing this panoramic survey, towards the south-east is seen the village of Emberton, distant about three miles; and beyond, on the horizon, are Bowbrick Hill, crowned by its church, and Steventon, in Bedfordshire" the smoking villages remote." The commentary magnifies the accurate beauty of the scene. Nothing, indeed, can excel the minuteness of his drawing, or the delicate truth of his colouring; his views are all finished with the laborious touches of cabinet pictures; you may look close into them; even the veins of his foliage are distinct and vivid. Thomson, on the other hand, with the same liveliness of observation, and the same eye for the beautiful, combined more force and freedom of manner. You always see Cowper by the side of Mrs. Unwin; Thomson is not afraid to trust himself to the thundering forest. The Task contains no sketch like the storm in Autumn: Cowper, moreover, produces his effects by a multitude of tender strokes. Thomson often dashes off his pictures—a single epithet brings the scene before you; you behold the salmon rising to the " dimpled water;" the young bird trying its wings "upon the giddy verge;" the withered leaf playing, " snatch'd in short eddies." Nor when he comes among the more domestic imagery of life, is he less admirable; some of his home-views are charming. The same pencil that lighted up the glaring eyes of the famished wolves descending the Appenines, scatters its hues over the little robin, that, half-afraid,

* Memes, in his Edition of Cowper.

Against the window beats; then brisk alights

On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the smiling family askance.'

Cowper's scenes from nature delight by their reality. We can all appreciate their beauty, for we have seen them with our own eyes; but they want that poetical illumination which gilds the landscapes of Thomson. Cowper could never have produced the stanza in the Castle of Indolence, where the heavy branches of the trees send a sleepy horror through the blood. In contrasting their descriptive powers, we are comparing Claude with Gainsborough.

The example of Cowper introduced a revolution into our poetry, the effects of which were only partially developed in his own day he put the sickle into the glittering and baneful fertility which Darwin was scattering over the land, and recalled the popular taste to nature and truth. The poetic springs were re-opened, and diffused their healthful waters amongst us. Here, in after days, Southey and Wordsworth quenched their thirst, and many others of unequal fame, who have not laboured in vain; streams like these freshen as they flow. Of the immediate disciples and imitators of Cowper, the only one we shall notice is Hurdis, once Poetry Professor at Oxford. His works have obtained little attention; for a pastoral reed, like the Village Curate's, is not often heard out of the hamlet. Without echoing the high opinion of Dr. Southey, who advised the collection of his writings among the British Poets, we could gather some picturesque passages well worthy of preservation; and there was about his character a charm resulting from his brotherly tenderness, and the general amiability of his manners, that powerfully disposes us in his favour.

It is to be regretted that he rode his Pegasus "without a rein." His endless digressions destroy the symmetry of his poems; and they want the masculine sense and the thoughtful wisdom of Cowper to recommend them. His incidental touches of satire upon the vices of the age are generally ineffective: the arrows are launched from a feeble bow. His excellence consists in the vividness and truth of his natural sketches: in these he occasionally rivals his master. Cowper might have watched the owl that, in quest of prey,