P. 531, 1. 9.
P. 531, l. 11.

P. 532, 11. 1,

P. 532, 1. 7.

P. 533, 1. 13.

P. 533, 1. 18.

P. 533, 1. 25.

2.

"From yonder wilds" MS.
"Forgetting all their mirth" MS.
"Since we must sorrow and why not

For me I wish no gentler lot" MS.

"No succour" MS.
"Her lovely face" MS.

"Those who seek" MS.

"I bring an offering to thy shrine" MS.

P. 535, title of poem. MS.

The Secrets of Divine Love are not to be divulged,

P. 535, 1. 3 of same poem.

P. 535, 1. 18 of same poem.
P. 537, 1. 19.

P. 537, 1. 38.

"Fear to divulge such love as mine” MS. "Darts its fires" MS.

Ye Lambs that wander in these shades" MS.

"Sunk fathom-line" MS.

P. 538. The Vicissitudes, etc. :-The MS. version of this poem differs more than any other from the version printed by Bull. But here, as elsewhere, it is much closer to Bull's version than the first thoughts which are it and are frequently erased in favour of the rendering The readings peculiar to it are as follows:

still legible in

found in Bull.

P. 538, 1. 32.

P. 538, 1. 36.

P. 539, 1. 7.

P. 539, 1. 9.

P. 539, 1. 19.

P. 539, 1. 23.

P. 539, 1. 26.

P. 539, 1. 31.

P. 539, 1. 33.

P. 539, 1. 34.

P. 539, 1. 40.

P. 540, 1. 1.

P. 540, 1. 2.

P. 540, 1. 3.

P. 540, 1. 5.

P. 540, 1. 6.

P. 540, 1. 7.

P. 540, 1. 9.

P. 540, l. 13.

P. 540, l. 15.

P. 540, l. 18.

"Points my pain” MS.

"Fear, anxious fear, increases every hour" MS. "Come thou, with all thy sacred charms, come yet” MS. "He flies me far-he treats me as his foe" MS.

"All is affliction, all is blank despair,

Life at its lowest ebb, and death denied" MS.
Dangerous beauties" MS.

"Stupid and ignorant" MS.

"Anxious and uninformed" MS.
“I suffer not, I truly love” MS.
"Celestial flame" MS.

"A sea of doubt" MS.

"I neither wish for life nor yet for death" MS.
Illegible words in place of "thine hand."
"A single breath " MS.

"Am sick and cannot find the ailing part” MS.
"I seem as void" MS.

"Ask ye my soul's opinion of her state,

She answers, of her state she nothing knows-
Time was she lived by Faith, but finds of late
In self-forgetfulness her best repose" MS.
"She either floats at random, or she sinks
By her own weight, without a wish to rise" MS.
"Indifference worse than death" MS.
"No transient dream" MS.

P. 540, 1. 19.

P. 540, 1. 23.

P. 540, 1. 24.

P. 540, 1. 26.

""Tis Love inflicts it, whose seraphic flame Felt in the soul is happiness supreme" MS. "That gloomy scene" MS.

"Then neither tempests howl nor billows roll" MS.
"Once more draw nigh" MS.; in this case "appear,"

Bull's reading, has been erased.

P. 540, 1. 27.

P. 540, 1. 28.

P. 540, 1. 29.

P. 540, 1. 31.

P. 540, 1. 32.

MS. I am not something else. P. 541, l. 1.

"Disperse the night" MS.

"Abyss of darkness where I lie ” MS.
"Will no longer hear" MS.
"Wounds me, is become severe" MS.

"Makes (?) me and leaves me weary, sick, and faint" sure whether the first word is "makes

"What, leave me, when" MS.
"That I deplore " MS.

"While humbly I adore" MS.
"Thine explicitly and simply MS.

""

or

"breaks" or

"So strictly that it is not now my own" MS.
""Tis wholly thine" MS.

"Love, sacred love" MS.

"The award is just and I applaud the blow" MS.
"Life, with all its busy stir" MS.

"Fresh perplexities occur

"MS.

P. 541, l. 5.

P. 541, 1. 7.

P. 541, 1. 9.

P. 541, 1. 10.

P. 541, l. 17.

P. 541, 1. 21.

P. 541, 1. 32.

P. 542, 1. 13.

P. 542, I. 15.

P. 542, 1. 28.

P. 543, 1. 12.

P. 543, l. 16.

"Or sprightly psalm" MS.
"Caused to languish " MS.

P. 543, 1. 17.

P. 543, 1. 19.

P. 543, 1. 20.

P. 543, 1. 21.

P. 543, 1. 25.

P. 544, l. 13.

P. 544, l. 18.

Bull gives "my

P. 545, 1. 9.

P. 545, 1. 10.

P. 545, 1. 21.

P. 546, 1. 1.

P. 546, 1. 23.
P. 547, l. 14.
P. 547, l. 15.
P. 547, l. 18.
P. 547, 1. 33.
P. 548, 1. 5.

Trust.

"Wish the hours of light away" MS.

"How I love this peaceful season
"For to me the world with reason

"Seems an evil" MS.

"MS.

" MS.

"Its discourses grieve and hurt me" MS.
"Me they coarse esteem" MS.

"Of the Lord's inspiring" MS.

“My spirit" MS. This is probably the true reading. spirits."

"Is the soul's estate" MS.

"That thwarts" MS.

"Let reason sleep the livelong night" MS. "Obedient to thy love's sweet force

My rapid hours pursue their course "And all beside " MS.

"That deathless flame " MS.

The MS. has no title to this poem. Bull heads Simple

P. 549, l. 10.
P. 549, 1. 20.

P. 549, 1. 36.

"Was become my sole employ" MS.

"Seemed to watch no heart beside" MS.

"Passes all his sins beside" MS.

P. 551. Scenes Favourable, etc. :-There is a MS. of this poem in the British Museum (Add. MSS., 24,155, fol. 148). In the notes below BM. refers to this MS., Ash to the Ash MS.

P. 551, 1. 27.

"Here freely contemplate" BM.

"Love wastes me and wears me away" BM.

P. 552, 1. 2. P. 552, 1. 6. "My sorrows are safely rehearsed," the reading of Bull's 1801 edition, is plainly right, though many of the editors have followed the edition of 1806 in giving "sadly" instead of "safely." "Whether owing to sorrow or joy" Ash.

P. 552, 1. 20.

P. 552, 1. 21.

P. 552, 1. 25.

P. 552, 1. 35.

"I am weak, there is nothing I seem to discern” Ash.
"I live and yet seem BM.

"For where among all I have left" Ash.

P. 553. The translations of Milton's Latin and Italian verses were undertaken in connection with the edition of Milton which Cowper was to have done for Johnson the publisher. It was to be a sort of rival to Boydell's Shakespeare. The only part of the work which was completed, except a few notes, was the English rendering of these poems, which was made during the winter and spring of 1791-2, and revised with Hayley during Cowper's visit to Eartham in the summer of 1792. The translations were left unpublished by Cowper and were first printed by Hayley at Chichester in 1808, in a volume entitled Latin and Italian Poems of Milton translated into English verse, by the late William Cowper, Esq. The book is a beautiful quarto, with designs by Flaxman. It contains the translations, then the Latin and Italian originals; then Cowper's commentary on Paradise Lost, intended for the edition which was never accomplished; and finally notes on the Latin and Italian poems by Cowper and Hayley, as well as some taken from the editions of Todd and Warton.

The MS. of the translations is in the British Museum (Add. MSS., 30,801). I have carefully collated it throughout, and record below the instances in which the printed text varies from it. It gives four renderings which Hayley did not print; two of the epigrams on Morus and Salmasius ("Galli ex concubitu" and "gaudete scombri") which one may feel sure neither Milton nor Cowper would wish to see reprinted; and two of a couple of small Greek pieces by Milton which I have inserted at the end of the translations from the Latin poems, on p. 596.

The MS. is in Cowper's hand, with many corrections in Hayley's hand, many of these being again corrected by Cowper. In a good many of the cases in which Hayley's correction has been allowed to stand it appears to me markedly inferior to Cowper's original rendering. For instance, the original in p. 556, 1. 13, was:

They suit not me these bare unshadowed plains,
Ah, how unfriendly to the poet's pains,”

which is certainly not improved by being altered into:'Nor aught of pleasure in these fields have I That to the musing bard all shade deny."

And in p. 561, 1. 19, Hayley's

66

My friend and favourite inmate of my heart
That now is forced to want its better part,”

is no improvement on Cowper's

"My friend, my other self-alas, my heart-
How is it forced to want its better part.”

And Cowper's original rendering of p. 564, 1. 33:

66

"Night creeps not now, but runs a shorter race
Athwart the pole, and with a swifter pace,"

is free from the obscurity of Hayley's printed version :

"Night creeps not now, yet rules with gentle sway

And drives her dusky horrors swift away."

These, and other cases, might have tempted me to restore Cowper's original rendering throughout, but for the fact that in an immense number of cases Cowper has struck out Hayley's corrections and made a final translation himself. For instance, the text as printed by Hayley 1808, which is that followed in the later editions, is in all the following cases, as well as many others, that substituted by Cowper for Hayley's version: P. 555, 11. 35, 36; p. 558, ll. 94, 95; p. 563, 11. 89, 90; p. 563, 11. 93, 94; p. 563, 11. 99-102, 121, 122; p. 564, ll. 47, 48; p. 565, 11. 55-57; p. 567, 11. 25-35; p. 568, ll. 49-52; p. 568, 11. 77, 78; p. 581, 1. 99; p. 582, 11. 121-123; p. 584, II. 17-23; p. 585, 11. 33-36; p. 585, 11. 52-55; p. 587, 11. 8-10; p. 590, 11. 175-178.

These numerous final corrections by Cowper, followed in all cases by Hayley when he printed the translations, must be allowed to give Cowper's authority to the whole. However inferior, therefore, Hayley's corrections, have appeared to me to be to Cowper's first renderings, where Cowper left them, I have left them, except in one case, p. 596, on which a special note is given. It is true that John Johnson, in a letter written from Weston to his sister in 1792 or 1793 (Letters of Lady Hesketh concerning William Cowper, p. 22) speaks with great indignation of Hayley's alterations, and justly objects to the substitution of Hayley's "flimsy tinsel lines" for "the bold and forcible language of our dear Bard." But it is evident from what he says that the text as he saw it at that time had not received Cowper's final corrections, for he says nothing of them and implies that all Hayley's alterations stood untouched, and that he accordingly had reluctantly to insert them in the fair copy he was making for the press. But this fair copy, if, as is probable, it is that in the Museum to be mentioned presently, was made before Cowper revised the translations. And the fact that John Johnson when he reprinted the translations in 1815, followed the text as given by Hayley in 1808, seems to show that he, who is almost certain to have known the truth, believed that Hayley had printed the

translations as Cowper meant them to be printed. This text has been followed by all subsequent editors, with no variations, so far as I know, except those due to misprints. Bruce, who so often gives varieties of reading, here gives no textual notes, and does not appear to have seen the original MS. which, indeed, did not come into the possession of the British Museum until 1878. The present is, I believe, the first collation of the MS., and its readings, where they differ from the printed text, are here given for the first time. The MS. also contains the notes appended by Cowper to his translations, which Hayley published in the 1808 edition. There are also a few notes in Lady Hesketh's handwriting which is not unlike Cowper's. They may be found, for instance, at foll. 69, 83, and 98, of the MS. Only one is of any interest, that in which she says she knows "by the writing that the alterations were made lately." This refers to the fact, related by Hayley in the Preface to the 1808 edition, that "during the last sad years in Norfolk Johnson induced Cowper to retouch a few passages, and that one of them was the last four lines of the Ode to Rouse, which were written as they now stand on August 22, 1798." These lines are in fact traced in a weak and broken hand; and, in pencil, in John Johnson's writing, the date " August 22, 98, after dinner" is added. Another of these corrections made during the last months of Cowper's life is the passage beginning "We only, an obdurate kind,” line 149 of the Elegy on Damon, which also betrays the feebleness of the hand that wrote it, and also has its date appended by Johnson " August 21, after supper."

Bound up with the MS. is a fair copy of them, part of which is in John Johnson's hand. It is, however, of no authority, as it frequently gives Hayley's versions where in the MS. these have been struck out and rewritten by Cowper. This occurs, for instance, in the following passages among others: P. 585, 1. 29; p. 585, 11. 33-36; p. 590, II. 167, 168; p. 590, 11. 175-178. In the last case it even gives two of the lines in Cowper's original version before the first correction by Hayley.

It was therefore evidently made before the final revision and is of no importance.

P. 555, l. 1. It has not, so far as I know, been pointed out that a stanza of the original is omitted here. The MS. shows that it was translated, and that the version was erased and no correction substituted. The stanza is the seventh of the Italian original, that which begins :

"Di bella gloria amante

Milton, dal ciel natio."

P. 555, 1. 12. The MS. here gives, in Cowper's hand, "That not themselves can boast a richer store" but the line is two syllables short of the number required. I have, therefore, followed the printed text.

P. 555, 1. 42. Here again Cowper, in a final correction of Hayley, though not in his original rendering, got the metre two syllables short by leaving out the word "falt'ring."