Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined:

But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,
With all the freaks of wanton wealth array'd,—
In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain,
The toiling pleasure sickens into pain;
And e'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy,
The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy?

Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen, who survey
The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay,
'Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand
Between a splendid and a happy land.
Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore,
And shouting Folly hails them from her shore;
Hoards, e'en beyond the miser's wish, abound,
And rich men flock from all the world around.
Yet count our gains: this wealth is but a name
That leaves our useful products still the same.
Not so the loss: the man of wealth and pride
Takes up a space that many poor supplied;
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds,
Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds.
The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth,

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And, pinch'd with cold, and shrinking from the shower,
With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour,
When idly first, ambitious of the town,

She left her wheel, and robes of country brown.

Do thine, sweet Auburn, thine, the loveliest train, Do thy fair tribes participate her pain;

E'en now,
perhaps, by cold and hunger led,
At proud men's doors they ask a little bread!
Ah, no. To distant climes, a dreary scene,
Where half the convex world intrudes between,
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,
Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.

Far different there from all that charm'd before,
The various terrors of that horrid shore;
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray,
And fiercely shed intolerable day;

Those matted woods where birds begin to sing,
But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling;
Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crown'd,
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around;
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake;
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,
And savage men, more murd'rous still than they;
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies,
Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies.
Far different these from every former scene,
The cooling brook, the grassy-vested green,
The breezy covert of the warbling grove,
That only shelter'd thefts of harmless love.

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In all the glaring impotence of dress: Thus fares the land, by luxury betray'd,

Good Heaven! what sorrows gloom'd that parting day That call'd them from their native walks away;

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In nature's simplest charms at first array'd,
But verging to decline, its splendours rise,
Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise,
While, scourged by famine from the smiling land,
The mournful peasant leads his humble band;
And while he sinks, without one arm to save,
The country blooms-a garden and a grave.
Where, then, ah! where shall poverty reside,
To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride?
If to some common's fenceless limits stray'd,
He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade,
Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide,
And e'en the bare-worn common is denied.
If to the city sped, what waits him there?
To see profusion that he must not share;
To see ten thousand baneful arts combined
To pamper luxury, and thin mankind;
To see each joy the sons of pleasure know
Extorted from his fellow-creatures' woe.
Here while the courtier glitters in brocade,
There the pale artist plies his sickly trade;
Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps display,
There the black gibbet glooms beside the way.
The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign,
Here, richly deck'd, admits the gorgeous train,
Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square,
The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare.

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When the poor exiles, every pleasure past,

Hung round the bowers, and fondly look'd their last,
And took a long farewell, and wish'd in vain
For seats like these beyond the western main;
And, shuddering still to face the distant deep,
Return'd and wept, and still return'd to weep!
The good old sire the first prepared to go
To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe;
But for himself, in conscious virtue brave,
He only wish'd for worlds beyond the grave.
His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears,
The fond companion of his helpless years,
Silent went next, neglectful of her charms,
And left a lover's for her father's arms.

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O Luxury! thou curst by Heaven's decree, How ill exchanged are things like these for thee! How do thy potions, with insidious joy, Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy!

The fiend, Discretion, like a vapour sinks,

And e'en th' all-dazzling Crown

Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks. Such was this heav'n-lov'd isle,

Than Lesbos fairer and the Cretan shore!

No more shall freedom smile?

Shall Britons languish, and be Men no more?

Since all must life resign,

Contented Toil, and hospitable Care,

And kind connubial Tenderness, are there;
And Piety with wishes placed above,
And steady Loyalty, and faithful Love.
And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid,
Still first to fly where sensual joys invade;
Unfit, in these degenerate times of shame,
To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame;
Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried,
My shame in crowds, my solitary pride;
Thou source of all my bliss, and all my woe,
That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so;

Thou guide, by which the nobler arts excel,

Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well!
Farewell; and oh! where'er thy voice be tried,
On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side,
Whether where equinoctial fervours glow,
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow,
Still let thy voice, prevailing over time,
Redress the rigours of th' inclement clime!
Aid slighted truth with thy persuasive strain;
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain;
Teach him, that states of native strength possest,
Though very poor, may still be very blest;
That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away;
While self-dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky.1

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Sir William Jones, the famous Oriental scholarnot knighted until 1783-as a schoolboy at Harrow had shown the turn for poetry that graced his busy and honourable life. One of his odes-it was written in 1781-was

AN ODE IN IMITATION OF ALCEUS.
What constitutes a State?
Not high rais'd battlement or labour'd mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud with spires and turrets crown'd;
Not bays and broad-arm'd ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Not starr'd and spangled courts,
Where low-brow'd baseness wafts perfume to pride.
No: Men, high-minded Men,

With pow'rs as far above dull brutes endued
In forest, brake, or den,

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude;
Men, who their Duties know,

But know their Rights, and knowing, dare maintain,

1 The last four lines were added by Dr. Johnson to the MS.

10

WILLIAM COWPER. (From the Portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence.)

Even the gentle Cowper, withdrawn from the world at Olney, since he had a poet's sympathy with man, felt not less keenly than the men in cities the new impulse of the time. William Cowper was born in 1731, at the rectory of Great Berkhampstead, educated at Westminster School, entered of the Middle Temple, and called to the bar in 1754. He was half-engaged to his cousin, Theodora Cowper, whose sister afterwards became Lady Hesketh. Too nervous and sensitive for practice at the bar, Cowper was driven into actual insanity by the prospect of an examination by the House of Lords, as to his fitness for an office in the House, to which his cousin, Major Cowper, had presented him. He was received into a lunatic asylum at St. Albans, in December, 1763. When he left it he gave up active life, and retired on a small pension from members of his family to a quiet town, where he became acquainted with the Rev. Mr. Unwin and his wife, and presently lodged with them. In June, 1767, Mr. Unwin was killed by a fall from his horse, and Cowper removed with Mrs. Unwin to Olney, in Buckinghamshire. There the

vicar was non-resident, and the curate, Mr. Newton, was an energetic man who had once commanded a vessel in the slave-trade, and after a life full of adventure had become intensely religious, in a form that would tend to increase rather than lighten the innocent and cheerful Cowper's tendency to a disease in which the faith that was the stay and blessing of his life became a source of terrors. Cowper helped Mr. Newton in the composition of a volume of "Olney Hymns." In 1773 he had another attack of insanity, and, as he had done at the accession of the first attack, attempted suicide. In 1779 Mr. Newton left Olney, and the "Olney Hymns" were published. Mrs. Unwin suggested, by way of pleasantly engaging Cowper's mind, that he should make a book of verse. Mr. Newton found a publisher, and in 1782, Cowper, then fifty years old, produced his "Table Talk," and other pieces, his first volume of poems. A new friendship had then been formed with Lady Austen, who, when visiting her sister, a clergyman's wife, near Olney, made her way into the good-will of Cowper and Mrs. Unwin. Lady Austen found herself a summer home at the vicarage, which was to let, and of which the garden joined the garden of Mrs. Unwin's house-Cowper's house-in

COWPER'S HOUSE AT OLNEY.

the market-place. The new friends were much together. They read together in the evening, and talked cheerfully of their reading. One evening, Lady Austen advised Cowper, whose book had been written in rhyming couplets, to try blank verse. He doubted, she persuaded. "On what subject!" he asked. "Oh," she replied, "you can write on anything. Take the sofa." That was his "Task." It was begun in the summer of 1783, finished in 1784, and published in 1785, four years before the fall of the Bastille. The poem will be described among longer works, but it will serve to illustrate the tendency of thought if we here take from it a passage showing how keenly even Cowper in his retirement felt what the world outside was feeling.

THE BASTILLE.

Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts, Ye dungeons, and ye cages of despair, That monarchs have supplied from age to age With music such as suits their sovereign ears, The sighs and groans of miserable men! There's not an English heart that would not leap To hear that ye were fallen at last; to know That even our enemies, so oft employed In forging chains for us, themselves were free. For he who values Liberty confines His zeal for her predominance within No narrow bounds; her cause engages him Wherever pleaded. 'Tis the cause of man. There dwell the most forlorn of human kind, Immured though unaccused, condemned untried, Cruelly spared, and hopeless of escape. There, like the visionary emblem seen By him of Babylon, life stands a stump, And, filleted about with hoops of brass, Still lives, though all its pleasant boughs are gone. To count the hour-bell, and expect no change; And ever as the sullen sound is heard, Still to reflect, that though a joyless note To him whose moments all have one dull pace, Ten thousand rovers in the world at large Account it music; that it summons some To theatre or jocund feast or ball; The wearied hireling finds it a release From labour; and the lover, who has chid Its long delay, feels every welcome stroke Upon his heart-strings, trembling with delight: To fly for refuge from distracting thought To such amusements as ingenious Woe Contrives, hard shifting and without her tools:

To read engraven on the mouldy walls,

In staggering types, his predecessor's tale,
A sad memorial, and subjoin his own:

To turn purveyor to an overgorged
And bloated spider, till the pampered pest
Is made familiar, watches his approach,
Comes at his call, and serves him for a friend:
To wear out time in numbering to and fro
The studs that thick emboss his iron door,
Then downward, and then upward, then aslant,
And then alternate, with a sickly hope
By dint of change to give his tasteless task
Some relish, till the sum exactly found
In all directions, he begins again :-
O comfortless existence! hemmed around
With woes, which who that suffers would not kneel
And beg for exile, or the pangs of death?
That man should thus encroach on fellow-man,
Abridge him of his just and native rights,
Eradicate him, tear him from his hold
Upon the endearments of domestic life
And social, nip his fruitfulness and use,
And doom him, for perhaps a heedless word,
To barrenness, and solitude, and tears,
Moves indignation, makes the name of King
(Of King whom such prerogative can please)
As dreadful as the Manichean god,
Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.

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It was the same kindly and lively Lady Austen who one evening told Cowper the story of "John

Gilpin," which, as told by her, tickled his fancy sc much that he was kept awake by fits of laughter during great part of the night after hearing it, and must needs turn it into a ballad when he got up. Mrs. Unwin's son sent it to the Public Advertiser, where it appeared without an author's name. John Henderson, an actor from Bath, who took the London playgoers by storm in the year 1777, as Shylock, Hamlet, and Falstaff, was then giving readings at the Freemason's Tavern. He had succeeded almost to Garrick's fame. His feeling was so true, his voice so flexible, that Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble often went to hear him read. Henderson, finding "John Gilpin" in print, but not yet famous, chose it for recitation. Mrs. Siddons heard it with delight, and in the spring of 1785 its success was the event of the season. It was reprinted in many forms, and talked of in all circles; prints of "John Gilpin" were familiar in shop-windows; and Cowper, who was finishing the "Task," felt that his more serious work would be helped if it were published with this "John Gilpin," as an avowed piece by the same author. Thus he wrote on the 30th of April, 1785, to Mrs. Unwin's son :—

"I return you thanks for a letter so warm with the intelligence of the celebrity of John Gilpin.' I little thought, when I mounted him upon my Pegasus, that he would become so famous. I have learned also, from Mr. Newton, that he is equally renowned in Scotland, and that a lady there had undertaken to write a second part, on the subject of Mrs. Gilpin's return to London, but not succeeding in it as she wished, she dropped it. He tells me likewise, that the head-master of St. Paul's school (who he is I know not) has conceived, in consequence of the entertainment that John has afforded him, a vehement desire to write to me. Let us hope he will alter his mind; for should we even exchange civilities on the occasion, Tirocinium1 will spoil all. The great estimation, however, in which this knight of the stone-bottles is held, may turn out a circumstance propitious to the volume of which his history will make a part. Those events that prove the prelude to our greatest success are often apparently trivial in themselves, and such as seemed to promise nothing. The disappointment that Horace mentioned is reversed-We design a mug, and it proves a hogshead. It is a little hard, that I alone should be unfurnished with a printed copy of this facetious story. When you visit London next, you must buy the most elegant impression of it, and bring it with you.