The brilliant, wide, celeftial scene to view; J. S. AN ADDRESS TO VIRTUE, AT THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR. NOME thou dear majestic form, C VIRTUE fair! my bofom warm ; Guide my footsteps by thy ray, Which earthly things cannot deftroy: A fpark of thy celestial ray Shall drive my gloomy fears away; In their employment I fhall join, L. H. Literary Review. Public Characters of 1799-1800. Hurst. 9s. in boards. TH HE former volume of this work, entitled British Characters, has been already noticed by us; and we now bring forward this publication in connection with it. The biography of living characters is attended with confiderable difficulties, and we felt them in the perufal of the production before us. To reprobate their vices would be unfafe, and to praise their virtues would fubject the writer to the fufpicion of adulation. There are fome sketches in this collection extravagantly panegyrical, particularly that of Mr. Godwin, who, according to this account, may be deemed the paragon of perfection! Surely it is not poffible for human credulity to be thus abufed. Eccentricity and irreligion are not the objects of our admiration. We muft be excufed-the new light has not yet poured upon us its fovereign conviction. The characters delineated are, Earl St. Vincent, Sheridan, Erskine, Dr. Parr, Dr. Hutton, Lord Hawksbury, Dean Milner, Bishop of Meath, Reverend Mr. Farish, Sir Francis Bourgeois, Duke of Richmond, Mrs. Abington, Mr. Saurin, Dr. Arnold, Lord Bridport, Marquis of Lanfdown, Sir John Parnell, Mr. Southey, Dr. Duigenan, Mr. Ponfonby, Mr. Granville Sharpe, Mr. Pelham, Duke of Grafton, Mr. Secretary Cooke, Major Cartwright, Duke of Leinfter, Mrs. Inchbald, Earl Fitzwilliam, Mr. Godwin, VOL. VIII. Reverend M m Reverend Mr. Graves, Mr. Shield, Sir G. Younge, Dr. Garnett, Lord Dillon, Lord Caftlereagh, Dr. Adam Ferguson. Mr. Hayley, Countefs of Derby, Mr. Pratt, Dr. Harrington, Duchefs of Gordon, Dr. Currie, Duke of Bedford, Mr. Cowper, Mifs Linwood, Mr. Haftings, and Lord Kenyon. Such is the bill of fare; and we confess that, in several respects, we have been gratified. As an agreeable specimen, we fhall felect the memoir of MR. CowPER, with whofe original poetry we have all been delighted: MR. COWPER. WITH SOME ORIGINAL PIECES OF HIS POETRY. It has been frequently observed, that the life of a man of genius is marked by few incidents. The mind, which grows up amidst the privacies of study, and the character, which is framed by folitary meditation, belong, in a great degree, to a world of their own, from which the paffions and events of ordinary life are equally excluded. There is, therefore, nothing very remarkable in the life of the poet to whom these pages are devoted. But in the hiftory of those who have done honour to the English nation, and added richness to the Englifh language, no circumftance is trifling, and no incident unworthy of record'; especially, as there is a fort of sanctity attached to these men, which diffufes itself to the minutest tranfaction, in which they have been concerned. "Mr. Cowper was born at Berkhamstead, in Buckinghamhire, his father being the incumbent of the living of that place. Our poet is defcended from the first Earl Cowper, Lord Chancellor of England, his grandfather, being one of the children of that nobleman. "Mr. Cowper received his education at Westminster fchool; and a place of confiderable profit, that of the clerkfhip to the House of Lords, a patent office, and which had been a confiderable time in the family, was referved for him. But upon his quitting fchool and entering into the Temple, he found himself reluctant to undertake a function of activity and business. His native love of retirement, a constitutional timidity timidity of mind, and the languor of a very weak and precarious ftate of health, difcouraged him from undertaking the duties of a fituation, which required the most unremitting attention and diligence. "About this time he lived in habits of close and familiar communication with Dr. Cotton, the elegant and ingenious au thor of the Fire-fide. His intimacy with this gentleman must, in no inconfiderable degree, have contributed to his inclination for poetry, by the inftructions and example of his friend. But the first foundation of his poetic excellence was laid by his famili arity with the best and most unaffected authors of antiquity. "At Huntingdon, a place in which he refided for a few years, he contracted a strong friendship with the Rev. Mr. Unwin, and on the death of that gentleman, accompanied his widow to Olney. It was in this village, and about this period of his life, that Mr. Cowper produced the earliest compofitions that are traced to his pen. The poems he wrote upon this occafion, were hymns published in a collection, called the Olney Hymns, and diftinguished by the letter C. They bear internal evidence of a cultivated understanding, and an original genius. His time was now wholly dedicated to that literary leifure, in which the mind, left to its own operations, pursues that line of purfuit which is the most congenial to its tafte, and the moft adapted to its powers. In his garden, in his library, and in his daily walks, he seems to have difciplined his mufe to the picturesque and vivid habits of defcription, which will always diftinguish Cowper among our national poets. No writer with the exception only of Thomson, seems to have ftudied nature with more diligence, and to have copied her with more fidelity. An advantage which he has gained over other men, by his difdaining to study her "through the fpectacles of books," as Dryden calls it, and by his pursuing her through her haunts, and watching her in all her attitudes, with the eye of a philofopher as well as of a poet. "Mr. Cowper had no propensity for public life; it was not, therefore, fingular that he should have neglected the ftudy of the law, on which he had entered. That knowledge of active life, which is fo requifite for the legal profeffion, would fcarcely be acquired in lonely wanderings on the banks of the Oufe, and in filent contemplations of the beauties of nature. M m 2 In In this retreat, he exchanged, for the fociety and converse of the muses, the ambition and tumult of a forenfic life; dedicating his mind to the cultivation of poetry, and storing it with those images, which he derived from the inexhaustible treasury of a rich and varied scenery in a most beautiful and romantic country. "The first volume of poems, which he published, confifts of various pieces, on various fubjects. It feems that he had been affiduous in cultivating a turn for grave and argumentative verfification, on moral and ethical topics. Of this kind is the Table Talk, and feveral other pieces in the collection. He, who objects to thefe poems as containing too great a neglect of harmony in the arrangement of his words, and the ufe of expreffions too profaic, will condemn him on principles of criticism, which are by no means juft, if the object and Ayle of the fubject be confidered. Horace apologized for the carelessness of his own fatires, which are, ftrictly speaking, only ethical and moral discourses, by obferving that those topics required the pedeftrian, and familiar diction, and a form of expreffion, not elevated to the heights of poetry. But, if the reader will forego the delight of fmooth verfification, and recollect that poetry does not altogether confift in even and polished metre, he will remark in these productions no ordinary depth of thinking and of judgment, upon the most important objects of human concernment; and he will be occafionally truck with lines, not unworthy of Dryden for their ftrength and dignity. "The lighter poems are well known. Of thefe, the verses fuppofed to be written by Alexander Selkirk, on the island of Juan Fernandez, are in the most popular estimation. There is great originality in the following stanza I am out of humanity's reach; It would be abfurd to give one general character of the pieces that were published in this volume: yet this is true concerning Mr. Cowper's productions; that in all the varieties of his ftyle there may still be difcerned the likeness and impreffion of 1 |