THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED

WITH HER KIND PERMISSION

ΤΟ

LADY HESKETH

OF EASTON NESTON

IN THE

COUNTY OF NORTHAMPTON

N

PREFACE.

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EARLY a century has passed since the death of William Cowper, and few poets have had more written about them. The first to

commence a systematic life of him was his old friend the Rev. John Newton, in 1800, a few months after the poet's death. No more than sixteen pages, however, were actually written, the burden of the author's years proving too great an obstacle. The Life by Hayley, the friend of Cowper's last decade—a work containing much valuable material-first appeared in two volumes in 1 803, to which two more were added in 1806. Hayley's correspondence with Lady Hesketh, now in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 30803 A, B) shows under what difficulties this Life was written. Hayley had the hardest work imaginable to get Lady Hesketh and Theodora to tell him anything. Never, perhaps, in the history of literature was biographer so handicapped. “The biographer of Cowper," her ladyship told him, "whoever he might be, should not consider himself as the writer of a Novel, and indeed I am firmly of opinion that you should deal only in generals, and by no means give a particular account of the life of our That there is no need to make a novel of

friend."