exemplified, but too forcibly, his own affecting description of melancholy silence:

That silent tongue

Could give advice, could censure, or commend,
Or charm the sorrows of a drooping friend;
Renounc'd alike its office and its sport,

Its brisker and its graver strains fall short:
Both fail beneath a fever's secret sway,
And, like a summer-brook, are past away.

On the twenty-fourth of July, Cowper had the honour of a visit from a lady, for whom he had long entertained affectionate respect, the Dowager Lady Spencer-and it was rather remarkable, that on the very morning she called upon him he had begun his revisal of the Odyssey, which was originally inscribed to her. Such an incident in a happier season would have produced a very enlivening effect on his spirits; but, in his present state, it had not even the power to lead him into any free conversation with his distinguished visitor.

The only amusement that he appeared to admit without reluctance was the reading of his kinsman, who, indefatigable in the supply of such amusement, had exhausted a successive series of works of fiction, and at this period began reading to the poet his own works. To these he listened also in silence, and heard all his poems recited in order, till the reader arrived at the history of John Gilpin, which he begged not to hear. Mr. Johnson proceeded to his manuscript poems; to these he willingly listened, but made not a single remark on

any.

In October 1798, the pressure of his melancholy seemed to be mitigated in some little degree, for he exerted himself so far as to write the following letter, without solicitation, to Lady Hesketh.

Dear Cousin-You describe delightful scenes, but you describe them to one, who, if he even saw them, could receive no delight from them: who has a faint recollection, and so faint, as to be like an almost forgotten dream, that once he was susceptible of pleasure from such causes. The country that you have had in prospect has been always famed for its beauties; but the wretch who can derive no gratification from a view of nature, even under the disadvantage of her most ordinary dress, will have no eyes to admire her in any.

In one day, in one minute, I should rather have said, she became an universal blank to me, and though from a different cause, yet with an effect as difficult to remove as blindness itself.

On his return from Mundsley to Dereham, in an evening towards the end of October, Cowper, with Miss Perowne and Mr. Johnson, was overturned in a post-chaise: he discovered no terror on the occasion, and escaped without injury from the accident.

-In December he received a visit from his highly esteemed friend, Sir John Throckmorton, but his malady was at that time so oppressive that it ren

dered him almost insensible to the kind solicitude of friendship.

He still continued to exercise the powers of his astonishing mind: upon his finishing the revisal of his Homer, in March 1799, his kinsman endeavoured in the gentlest manner to lead him into new literary occupation.

For this purpose, on the eleventh of March he laid before him the paper containing the commencement of his poem on "The Four Ages." Cowper altered a few lines; he also added a few, but soon observed to his kind attendant-" that it was too great a work for him to attempt in his present situation."

At supper Mr. Johnson suggested to him several literary projects that he might execute more easily. He replied" that he had just thought of six Latin verses, and if he could compose any thing it must be in pursuing that composition."

The next morning he wrote the six verses he had mentioned, and subsequently added the remainder, entitling the poem, "Montes Glaciales."

It proved a versification of a circumstance recorded in a newspaper, which had been read to him a few weeks before, without his appearing to notice it. This poem he translated into English verse, on the nineteenth of March, to oblige Miss Perowne. Both the original and the translation appear in the Poems.

On the twentieth of March he wrote the stanzas entitled "The Cast-away," founded on an anecdote in Anson's Voyage, which his memory suggested

to him, a though he had not looked into the book for many years.

As this poem is the last original production from the pen of Cowper, we shall introduce it here, persuaded that it will be read with an interest proportioned to the extraordinary pathos of the subject, and the still more extraordinary powers of the poet, whose lyre could sound so forcibly, unsilenced by the gloom of the darkest distemper, that was conducting him, by slow gradations, to the shadow of death.

THE CAST-AWAY.

Obscurest night involv'd the sky;
Th' Atlantic billows roar'd,
When such a destin'd wretch as I,
Wash'd headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home for ever left.

No braver chief could Albion boast
Than be with whom he went,
Nor ever ship left Albion's coast,

With warmer wishes sent.

He lov'd them both, but both in vain,
Nor him behold, nor her again.

Not long beneath the 'whelming brine,
Expert to swim, he lay ;

Nor soon he felt his strength decline,
Or courage die away;

But wag'd with death a lasting strife,
Supported by despair of life.

He shouted; nor his friends had fail'd
To check the vessel's course,
But so the furious blast prevail'd,
That, pitiless per force,

They left their out-cast mate behind,
And scudded still before the wind.

Some succour yet they could afford;
And, such as storms allow,

The cask, the coop, the floated cord,
Delay'd not to bestow.

But he (they knew) nor ship, nor shore,
Whate'er they gave, should visit more.

Nor cruel, as it seem'd, could he
Their haste himself condemn,
Aware that flight, in such a sea,
Alone could rescue them;

Yet bitter felt it still to die
Deserted, and his friends so nigh.

He long survives, who lives an hour
self-upheld:

In ocean,

And so long he, with unspent pow'r,
His destiny repell❜d:

And ever, as the minutes flew,
Entreated help, or cry'd—" Adieu!"

At length, his transient respite past,
His comrades, who before

Had heard his voice in ev'ry blast,

Could catch the sound no more.
For then, by toil subdued, he drank
The stifling wave, and then he sank.

No poet wept him: but the page
Of narrative sincere,

That tells his name, his worth, his age,
Is wet with Anson's tear.

And tears by bards or heroes shed,
Alike immortalize the dead.

I therefore purpose not, or dream,
Descanting on his fate!

To give the melancholy theme
A more enduring date,