volume of his poems was in the press when that sentence was written; and the figure which he soon afterwards made in the field of literature showed the benefit which he had derived 10 both from the discipline of Westminster and its indiscipline,.. from the instruction which a man of genius willingly imparts to an apt and docile pupil in the regular course of schoolbusiness; and from that play and exercise of the intellect which, in the little less profitable hours of school-idleness, he enjoyed with those schoolfellows who may properly be called his peers, Lloyd, Churchill, and Colman.

Among his other contemporaries at Westminster who distinguished themselves in after life, were Cumberland", Impey, and Hastings; for the latter he had a particular value. His favourite school friend is said to have been Sir William Russell, the representative of a family often allied by intermarriages 12 with the Cromwells. This is the friend to whom Cowper alludes in some of the earliest of his verses which have been preserved:

Still, still, I mourn with each returning day,
Him snatch'd by fate in early youth away.

12

10 "Men who are partial to public schools," says Hayley, "will probably doubt if any system of private tuition could have proved more favourable to the future display of his genius than such an education as he received at Westminster. There, indeed, the peculiar delicacy of his nature might expose him to an extraordinary portion of present discomfort, yet he undoubtedly acquired the accomplishment and the reputation of scholarship, with the advantage of being known and esteemed by some aspiring youths of his own age, who were destined to become conspicuous and powerful in the splendid scene of the world.”

11 Cumberland and I," he says, "boarded together in the same house at Westminster. He was at that time clever, and I suppose has given proof sufficient to the world that he is still clever; but of all that he has written, it has never fallen in my way to read a syllable, except perhaps in a magazine or review, the sole sources at present of all my intelligence." This was written in 1788.

12 One of this family was bedchamber-woman to the Princess Amelia, and Mr. Noble relates what he calls a most excellent anecdote of her. "Frederick, the then Prince of Wales, came into the room on the 30th of January, when she was adjusting some part of the princess's dress. 'Ah! Miss Russell,' said he, are you not at church to endeavour to avert the judgments of Heaven from falling upon the nation for the sins of your ancestor Oliver?' To which she instantly replied, 'Is it not humiliation enough for a descendant of the great Cromwell to be pinning up the tail or your sister?" "

In a letter wherein Cowper delivers a strong opinion against public education, he says, "Connexions formed at school are said to be lasting, and often beneficial. There are two or three stories of this kind upon record, which would not be so constantly cited as they are whenever this subject happens to be mentioned, if the chronicle that preserves their remembrance had many besides to boast of. For my own part, I found such friendship, though warm enough in the commencement, surprisingly liable to extinction; and of seven or eight whom I had selected for intimates, out of about three hundred, in ten years time not one was left me." This was written in a splenetic mood, induced perhaps by neglect of some who, if they were men of letters, were also, in the worst acceptation of the phrase, men of the world. Some of his early intimates he had at that time lost by death; and the circumstances which drove him into retirement separated him from others, of whom, nevertheless, he continued to think with kindness and affection, .. this too in cases when he must strongly and justly have condemned the course of their lives. And in one instance that which had been no more than an acquaintance at school ripened, after an interval of many years, into esteem and friendship.

When his intention of publishing a translation of Homer was made known, and Lord Dartmouth on that occasion recalled himself to his recollection as an old schoolfellow who took a friendly interest in his success, Cowper felt for how much intellectual wealth he was indebted to that sound learning which he had brought from school. "When his lordship and I," said he, "sat side by side in the sixth form at Westminster, we little thought that in process of time one of us was ordained to give a new translation of Homer; yet at that very time it seems I was laying the foundation of this superstructure."

CHAPTER II.

COWPER IN A SOLICITOR'S OFFICE, AND IN THE TEMPLE. FIRST INDICATIONS OF A DISEASED MIND. HIS EARLY FRIENDS. THURLOW. HILL. THE NONSENSE CLUB.

"AT the age of eighteen," says Cowper, "being tolerably well furnished with grammatical knowledge, but as ignorant of all kinds of religion as the satchel at my back, I was taken

from Westminster; and having spent about nine months at home was sent to acquire the practice of the law with an attorney." This is said in that memoir of a certain part of his life which was published several years after his death, as "detailing particularly the exercises of his mind in regard to religion; and as eminently calculated to benefit those who are labouring under a depression of mind arising from similar causes, to promote the interests of evangelical religion, and to vindicate the character of the 'Christian Poet' from the unjust and illiberal insinuations, not of his enemies, for he had none, but of the enemies of our adorable Redeemer!"

The state of mind in which he composed this brief memoir is indicated by its exaggerated language upon this point. Speaking of himself elsewhere in a calmer strain, he says, "At that time I valued a man according to his proficiency and taste in classical literature, and had the meanest opinion of all other accomplishments unaccompanied by that. I lived to see the vanity of what I had made my pride; and in a few years found that there were other attainments which would carry a man more handsomely through life than a mere knowledge of what Homer and Virgil had left behind them. In measure as my attachment to these gentry wore off, I found a more welcome reception among those whose acquaintance it was more my interest to cultivate. But all this time was spent in painting a piece of wood that had no life in it. At last I began to think indeed; I found myself in possession of many baubles, but not one grain of solidity in all my treasures'."

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Having fixed on the law for his study, or the law having been fixed on for him, he was articled for three years to a Mr. Chapman, and resided with him during that time. Here," he says, "I might have lived and died without seeing or hearing any thing that might remind me of one single Christian duty, had it not been that I was at liberty to spend my leisure hours (which were well nigh all my time) at my aunt's, in Southampton Row. By this means I had opportunity of seeing the inside of a church whither I went with the family on Sundays, and which probably I should otherwise never have seen 2.5 He seems not to have considered that as he passed his Sunday regularly with a family that was nearly 1 Letter to Mr. Newton, Feb. 18, 1781. 2 Memoir, p. 19.

related to him, his master might well think himself under no responsibility for the manner in which he discharged the duties of the day.

The transition from the sixth form in Westminster to a solicitor's office, was likely to be as great, and as little agreeable, in the point of society as of the employment to be pursued there. He had, however, for fellow-clerk, no less a person than the after Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who had been educated at Canterbury school. Dr. Donne, one of the prebendaries of that cathedral, had a quarrel with Mr. Talbot, the then head master of the school, and he is said to have brought young Thurlow out of Suffolk and placed him there, as a daring, refractory, clever boy, who would be sure to torment his master3. This charitable intention was perfectly fulfilled, but the primary purpose of making the boy a good scholar was equally accomplished; for Thurlow was one of those persons who have the rare power of doing much while they seem to be doing nothing. There was no similarity of disposition between these youths; but there was enough of intellectual sympathy to produce at least the appearance of friendship, and on one part certainly the reality for a time. Cowper introduced his new associate to his aunt's house. Writing to Lady Hesketh many years afterwards, and reminding her of those days, he says, "I did actually live three years with Mr. Chapman, a solicitor, that is to say, I slept three years in his house; but I lived, that is to say I spent my days, in Southampton Row, as you very well remember. There was I and the future Lord Chancellor, constantly employed, from morning to night, in giggling and making giggle, instead of studying the law. O fie, cousin! how could you do so?"

It is evident from this account that Cowper's condition during those years could not have been, as Hayley supposed, peculiarly irksome to his delicate feelings; and that there is no ground for assuming that it tended to promote rather than to counteract his constitutional tendency to melancholy: no such tendency had at that time manifested itself, and it has too hastily been said that the law was chosen for him without the slightest regard to his fitness or inclination. The motives for

> I am obliged to Sir Egerton Brydges for this and some other anecdotes, in this volume. Thurlow's father, he adds, was a neighbour of Dr. Donne's, and he supposes Donne to have been related to Cowper's mother.

the choice are evident; his connections were such, that there was a sure prospect of his being well provided for in this profession; and he had given proof at Westminster of two of its essential qualifications, talents and diligence. The opinion that he was entirely unfitted for it by nature he sometimes entertained in after life, but it was when he considered himself as equally unfitted for any other calling. "What nature," says he, "expressly designed me for, I have never been able to conjecture, I seem to myself so universally disqualified for the common and customary occupations and amusements of mankind." At other times he took blame to himself and imputed no fault to nature. Writing to a young friend who was then studying the law, he says to him, "You do well my dear sir, to improve your opportunity; to speak in the rural phrase, this is your sowing time, and the sheaves you look for can never be yours, unless you make that use of it. The colour of our whole life is generally such as the three or four first years in which we are our own masters, make it. Then it is that we may be said to shape our own destiny, and to treasure up for ourselves a series of future successes or disappointments. Had I employed my time as wisely as you, in a situation very similar to yours, I had never been a poet perhaps, but I might by this time have acquired a character of more importance in society; and a situation in which my friends would have been better pleased to see me. But three years

mis-spent in an attorney's office were, almost of course, followed by several more equally mis-spent in the Temple; and the consequence has been, as the Italian epitaph says, 'Sto qui' (here I am!) The only use I can make of myself now, at least the best, is to serve in terrorem to others, when occasion may happen to offer, that they may escape (as far as my admonitions can have any weight with them) my folly and my fate."

'He had been entered at the Middle Temple (April 29, 1748) before he left school; and upon leaving the solicitor's office in his twenty-first year, and becoming, as he says, in a manner, complete master of himself, he took chambers there in 1752. And here, when he first began to live alone, that malady began, which at different times, and under different symptoms, darken

4 To Mr. Unwin, May, 1781. 5 To Samuel Rose, Esq. July 23, 1789. S. C.-1.

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