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LETTERS TO THE YOUNG.-XIX.

WILLIAM COWPER.

My dear young friends,

I cannot tell how many of those who now "take in" the Juvenile Companion, read it in 1855, and some of the preceding years. I fear that many dear, bright eyes that looked over its pages then, are now closed by death. Many dear young friends who were then living, are now no more in this world. I hope that they died in Jesus, and are now with him in heaven. There may be others who subscribed to them then that have given way to the desire for change, that is, alas, too common both among the old and the young, and have forsaken their former friend, the Hive, for some new one. And it may be that the readers of this little Magazine are many of them fresh ones; so that in resuming his pen, and writing for it, Uncle Joseph may be introducing himself to many new friends; many to whom he is an entire stranger. Both to new and old friends he wishes all blessings, and will be most happy if he can contribute to their happiness and improvement.

To those who have read his former eighteen letters, and to those who are now reading a letter of his for the first time, he wishes in all kindness to introduce once more, his favourite poet William Cowper. In former numbers of this Hive you may find two or three letters of his about Cowper. Little did he think in closing his last letter about him, that it would be so long ere he wrote his concluding one.

Since he wrote you about him before, he has read many authors, but none that have put him out of love with William Cowper. He has a warmer place in Uncle Joseph's heart, and a higher place in his esteem than ever. The more he knows about him, the more he loves and esteems him. The longer and more intimately one reads

his writings, the stronger becomes one's attachment to them.

Since my last letter about him was printed, I have read over again many of his Poems, and many of his charming letters. I have also read more than once George Gilfillan's sketch of his life, and Critical'estimate of his genius. I have also read a volume on Cowper, as I said in my short letter in the January number, by that genial and beautiful writer Dr. Cheever of America. I could read of him for ever, and I am strongly convinced that the more he is read by our young people of the present day, the better. The better it will be for taste, the better it will be for the triumph of the law of kindness, the better it will be for good sense, and the cause of Poetry.

Cowper was truly an original man. He copied no one. He wrote as he thought, and as he felt. His head was clear, his heart was warm, his muse animated by true genius and poetic inspiration, his taste was exquisite, his piety was deep and genuine, and his poetry and prose are alike models of their kind. He is, as a writer, secure of a literary immortality. His influence in the literature of his country has been strong and healthy, and few writers have strove more, among certain classes, to diffuse sound sense, good taste, and genuine religion. His sufferings were intensely painful, and wofully mysterious, and while they tinge all his writings with a peculiar hue, they tend at once to recommend the man and his writings to our special regard. Notwithstanding all he suffered, there is a glow of humour and sunshine, as well as a shade of pensive sadness, on nearly all he wrote. Who has not read, and most heartily laughed as he read, his 'John Gilpin." There is in his letters much of the same drollery. A sample thereof I shall here introduce. It was written to his dear friend the Rev. John Newton. It unveils the motive under which he wrote his excellent poem on "Charity:" and, at the same time, serves as a capital illustration of his genius when in certain moods of mind.

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"My very dear friend, I am going to send, what when

you have read, you may scratch your head, and say I suppose, there's nobody knows, whether what I have got, be verse or not;-by the tune and the time, it ought to be rhyme; but if it be, did ever you see, of late or of yore, such a ditty before? I have writ ' Charity,' not for popularity, but as well as I could, in hope to do good; and if the 'Reviewers,' should say to be sure, the gentleman's muse, wears Methodist shoes, you may know by her pace, and talk about grace, that she and her bard, have little regard for the taste and the fashions, and ruling passions, and hardening play, of the modern day; and though she assume a borrowed plume, and now and then wear a tittering air, 'tis only her plan, to catch if she can, the giddy and gay, as they go that way, by a production of a new construction; she has baited her trap, in the hope to snap all that may come, with a sugar plumb. His opinion in this will not be amiss; 'tis what I intend, my principal end; and if I succeed, and folks should read, till a few are brought to a serious thought, I shall think I am paid, for all I have said, and all I have done, although I have run, many a time, after a rhyme, as far as from hence to the end of my sense, and by hook or by crook, write another book, if I live and am here another year.

"I have heard before, of a room with a floor, laid upon springs and such like things, with so much art in every part, that when you went in, you were forced to begin, a minuet pace, with an air and a grace, swimming about, now in and now out, with a deal of state, in a figure of eight, without pipe or string, or any such thing; and now I have writ, in a rhyming fit, what will make you dance, and as you advance, will keep you still, though against your will, dancing away, alert and gay, till you come to the end of what I have penn'd, which that you may do, ere Madam and you, are quite worn out with jogging about, I take my leave, and here you receive a bow profound, down to the ground, from your humble me, W. C."

He, however, who occasionally wrote in such a style, most frequently put on the garb of a prophet and a teacher, and

lashed the follies and vices of his age with true hearted earnestness. Many of his couplets, and much of his teachings have passed into the current literature of our day, and much that he wrote has become familiar in our mouths as household words. Who well thinks of a fine old English gentleman, without thinking of

An honest man close buttoned to the chin,

Broad cloth without, and a warm heart within.

His letters are generally regarded as the finest models of epistolary cones produced in our language. There is in them so much ease, so much naturalness, so much beauty; and such sound sense in simple words, such artless simplicity and grace, such gentleness of spirit, such a genial flow of warm friendship, such an insight into the writer's own soul, such fine delineations of natural scenery, such portraitures of home scenes, in fact, so much of William Cowper in all his varied feelings, moods, employments, enjoyments, and sufferings, that we could read such letters as his from January to December, without getting weary of them. So much excellency is very rarely met associated with so few imperfections of style and manner; indeed, Robert Hall-that most consummate critic, said, literary faults, he had found none in the letters of William Cowper. Uncle Joseph is very anxious, he might almost say ambitious, to be able to write and speak his mother tongue with ease, naturalness, beauty, correctness, and power; and he turns to Cowper for a model. He hates all big words, when little ones will express his meaning with more clearness and power. There are some speakers and writers that always appear to be walking on stilts. They never set their feet easily and firmly upon the ground. They must, above all things, look large. They cannot afford to be simple and natural. They must always be in full dress, and that dress be a gaudy and fine one; they are not easy themselves, and no one feels easy in listening to, or writing them. This is a great pity, and Uncle Joseph wishes himself and his young friends to guard against such a habit and spirit, themselves. One of

the easiest and most graceful writers of the English language, once said, to another literary character of great mental power, and much elegance, but whose gait was always stately. "Doctor, if you were to write a history of little fishes, you would make your little fishes talk like whales." In Cowper's letters there is the absence of any thing approaching to a style like this. What ease, grace, and beauty, there is in the following specimen of Cowper's style of letter writing. It is the only specimen I have room for :

"My greenhouse is never so pleasant as when we are just upon the point of being turned out of it. The gentleness of the autumual suns, and the calmness of this latter season, make it a much more agreeable retreat than we ever found it in the summer; when, the winds being generally brisk, we cannot cool it by admitting a sufficient quantity of air, without being at the same time incommoded by it. We keep no bees, but if I lived in a hive I should hardly hear more of their music. All the bees in the neighbourhood resort to a bed of mignonette, opposite to the window, and pay me for the honey they get out of it by a hum, which, though rather monotonous, is as agreeable to my ear as the whistling of my linnets. All the sounds that nature utters are delightful, at least in the country. I should not, perhaps, find the roaring of lions in Africa, or bears in Russia, very pleasing, but I know no beast in England whose voice I do not account musical, save and except always the braying of an ass. The notes of all our birds and fowls please me without an exception. I should not indeed think of keeping a goose in a cage, that I might hang him in the parlour for the sake of his melody, but a goose upon a common, or in a farm-yard, is no bad performer; and as to insects, if the black beetle, and beetles indeed of all hues, will keep out of my way, I have no objection to any of the rest; on the contrary, in whatever key they sing, from the gnat's fine treble, to the bass of the humble bee, I admire them all. "Seriously, however, it strikes me as a very observable instance of providential kindness to man, that such an

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