Poems, we have already noticed. Among his other productions were "An Ode on reading Richardson's 'History of Sir Charles Grandison,'" which was published in 1753 (with Richardson Cowper was personally acquainted); two two satires from Horace, printed in Duncombe's Horace in 1757, and lines "Addressed to Miss Macarteny" on reading her

Prayer for Indifference," which appeared in the "Annual Register" for 1762. The Duncombes, father and son, were of Hertfordshire; the elder was an intimate friend of Cowper's father, and the younger, about the same age as Cowper's brother John, was connected with Benet College, Cambridge. As one of his early associates told Hayley, Cowper at this time frequently amused himself in translation from ancient and modern poets, and devoted his composition to the service of any friend who requested it. For his brother John, who was engaged on a translation of that poem, he did into English a couple of Cantos of Voltaire's "Henriade."

We also learn that between Cowper and his brother was conducted a rhyming correspondence, which for some time was all in Cowper's possession; but, with the exception of a few lines, it all perished" in the wreck of a thousand other things" when he left the Temple. (Letter to Hesketh, August 9, 1788.)

Perhaps during the whole of the period at the Temple there was only one pursuit in which he was really diligent, and that was the study of the classics, a study that throughout the whole of his life gave him as much pleasure as any other thing. He had read through the Iliad and Odyssey at Westminster with Sutton,

afterwards Sir Richard, and went through them again in the Temple with a friend—“ a slothful and forgetful fellow," but withal "a person of fine classic taste ”— named Alston, comparing Pope's translation throughout with the original. They were not long in discovering "that there is hardly the thing in the world of which Pope was so entirely destitute as a taste for Homer;" nevertheless they persevered in the comparison, though disgusted at finding, "when they looked for the simplicity and majesty of Homer in his English representation, puerile conceits instead, extravagant metaphors, and the tinsel of modern embellishment in every possible position." So disgusted, indeed, were they with it that they were half disposed to treat it as they had lately done another book that had displeased them-"The Life and Opinions of Bertram Montfitchet, Esq."-and pitch it on the fire.

It was the recollection of these studies that caused Cowper in after years to commence a translation of Homer himself; and in 1788, reminding Rowley, a friend of Alston as well as of himself, of these old times, he says, "We are strange creatures, my little friend; everything that we do is really important, though half that we do seems to be push-pin: consequences follow that were never dreamt of." In these days, too, Cowper likewise made himself intimately acquainted with Shakspere, Beaumont and Fletcher, Kit Marlow, Swift, Dryden, Mat Prior, and other head-and-shoulder men of our literature; but Homer and Milton always had the first place in his affections. Cowper, however, had numerous ways of spending his time besides writing poetry and studying the belles

lettres. Like other gilded youth of those days, he was often to be seen among the pleasure-loving throngs that visited Vauxhall and its rival Marylebone Gardens. To the last he thus alludes in the aforequoted Latin epistle: "A few days ago I set off for Marylebone Gardens (ad Hortos Bona Maria), the delights of which place it is impossible to do justice to. Theatrical plays have been organized, which they perform there in the Italian fashion, only in our language. The portions styled recitatives are absurd beyond measure, but the songs are most sweet. There is this one thing, however, to be feared, namely, that sitting in the open air you may catch a cold if not a fever." His excursions into the country were not infrequent, some of his poems, as we have seen, being dated Catfield and Drayton, and he sometimes also found himself at Taplow and Hertford. The rage for frequenting seaside spots, too, had now developed itself, and instead of flocking to Bristol, Bath, and Tunbridge Wells, people were beginning to take to Margate and Brighton, or, as it was then called, Brighthelmston, Cowper, of course, as he belonged to the beau monde, following the popular custom, though subsequently, in his poem called "Retirement," he took upon himself to satirise it :

"But now alike, gay widow, virgin, wife,
Ingenious to diversify dull life,

In coaches, chaises, caravans, and hoys,
Fly to the coast for daily, nightly joys,
And all, impatient of dry land, agree

With one consent to rush into the sea."

To his visits to Brighton and neighbourhood, one of which took place in September, 1762, Cowper refers

in a letter to Bull ("Memoirs of Bull," p. 126). "T am acquainted," he says, "with Rottingdean and all its charms the downs, the cliff, and the agreeable opportunities of sauntering that the seaside affords." He found Brighton "a scene of idleness and luxury, music, dancing, cards, walking, riding, bathing, eating, drinking, coffee, tea, scandal, dressing, yawning, sleeping" at least, this was his recollection of it twenty years after.

It may seem strange to picture Cowper as a sportsman, yet at this period of his life he certainly had no aversion to occasionally playing that role; though, during the time he was in love, if at no other, he made but a poor hand at the business. In "The Symptoms of Love" he says:

"Let her guess what I muse on, when, rambling alone,

I stride o'er the stubble each day with my gun,

Never ready to shoot till the covey is flown."

His chambers in the Temple looked "into Pump Court, in which there are lime trees, and where the sound of water, though passing only into pails and pitchers, is rather agreeable" (Letter, June 20, 1789); and we learn that he used every year to purchase myrtles for them in Covent Garden; on the familiar objects of the neighbourhood he afterwards drew for his poetry, as when, in "Table Talk," he compared the creamy smoothness common with the poetasters of the time to that sight of old London, the figures at St. Dunstan's :

"When labour and when dulness, club in hand,
Like the two figures at St. Dunstan's stand,
Beating alternately, in measured time,

The clockwork tintinnabulum of rhyme."

"The dial of the clock," says Northouck, in his "History of London" (1773), "projects over the street at the extremity of a beam; and over it, by a kind of whimsical conceit, is an Ionic porch, containing the figures of two savages, carved and painted, as big as life, which with knotted clubs alternately strike the hours and quarters on two bells hung between them."

In T. Thorpe's Catalogue of MSS., 1844, Art. 79, appears the following entry: "Common Place Book of William Cowper the poet, in his autograph 4to in the original wrapper 1757. Evidently compiled while studying the law." I do not know what has since become of it, but Mr. Bruce, who had apparently perused it, says that it was "devoted to legal subjects, the greater part of the volume consisting of a treatise entitled 'An Institute relative to trials at Nisi Prius, in seven parts.'" As Mr. Bruce observes, this volume is "the only known evidence of Cowper's having given himself to any legal studies."

17. Cowper at the Inner Temple.

In 1759 Cowper removed to the Inner Temple, having bought chambers there for £250. The little money he had was now fast diminishing, and though he speaks lightly of his circumstances to his friends,