a. Your smooth eulogium to one crown address'd, Seems to imply a censure on the rest. B. Quevedo, as he tells his sober tale, His quitrent ode, his peppercorn of praise; A subject's faults a subject may proclaim, Before whose infant eyes the flatt'rer bows, And Death awakens from that dream too late. Whose trade it is to smile, to crouch, to please; To be suspected, thwarted, and withstood, Hook disappointment on the public wheels; (For what kings deem a toil, as well they may, To him is relaxation and mere play) tury. Even without awaiting the issue of such trials, he attained a degree of popularity which is almost without a precedent, while the species of popularity which he has acquired is yet more honour able than the extent of it. No man's works ever appeared with less of artificial preparation: no venal heralds proclaimed the approach of a new poet, nor told the world what it was to admire. He emerged from obscurity, the object of no patronage, and the adherent of no party. His fame, great and extensive as it is, arose from gradual conviction, and gratitude for pleasure received. The genius, the scholar, the critic, the man of the world, and the man of piety, each found in Cowper's works something to excite their surprise and their admi. ration-something congenial with their habits and feelings something which taste readily selected, and judgment decidedly confirmed. Cowper was found to possess that combination of energies which marks the comprehensive mind of a great and inventive genius, and to furnish examples of the sublime, the pathetic, the descriptive, the moral, and the satirical, so numerous, that nothing seemed be yond his grasp, and so original, that nothing reminds us of any former poet. If this praise be admitted, it will be needless to inquire in what peculiar charms Cowper's poems consist, or why he, above all poets of recent times, has become the universal favourite of his nation. Yet as he appears to have been formed not only to be an ornament but a model to his brethren, it may not be useless to remind them, that in him the virtues of the man and the genius of the poet were inseparable; that in every thing he respected the highest interests of human kind, the promotion of religion, morality, and benevolence; and that while he enchants the imagination by the decorations of genuine poetry, and even condescends to trifle with innocent gaiety, his serious purposes are all of the nobler kind. He secures the judgment by depth of reflection on morals and manners, and by a vigour of sentiment, and a knowledge of human nature, such as every man's taste and every man's experience must confirm. In description, whether of objects of nature or of artificial society, he has few equals; and whether he passes from description to reasoning, or illustrates the one by the other, he has found the happy art of administering to the pleasures of the senses and of the intellect with equal success. But what adds a peculiar charm to Cowper is, that his language is every where, the language of the heart. |