she chose to retain in her service under the guidance of poetry. Men believed, or were willing to believe, that spirits were yet hovering around who brought with them airs from heaven, or blasts from hell: that the ghost was duly released from his prison of torment at the sound of the curfew; and that fairies imprinted mysterious circles on the turf by moonlight. Much of this credulity was even consecrated by the name of science and profound speculation. Prospero had not yet broken and buried his staff, nor drowned his book deeper than did ever plummet sound. It was now that the alchymist, and the judicial astrologer, conducted his occult operations by the potent intercourse of some preternatural being, who came obsequious to his call, and was bound to accomplish his severest services, under certain conditions, and for a limited duration of time. It was actually one of the pretended feats of these fantastic philosophers to evoke the queen of the fairies in the solitude of a gloomy grove, who, preceded by a sudden rustling of the leaves, appeared in robes of transcendent lustre. The Shakspere of a more instructed and polished age would not have given us a magician darkening the sun at noon, the sabbath of the witches, and the caldron of incantation.

Undoubtedly most of these notions were credited and entertained in a much higher degree in the preceding periods. But the arts of composition had not then made a sufficient progress, nor would the poets of those periods have managed them with so much address and judgment. We were now arrived at that point when the national credulity, chastened by reason, had produced a sort of civilised superstition, and left a set of traditions, fanciful enough for poetic decoration, and yet not too violent and chimerical for common sense.

Hobbes, although no friend to this doctrine, observes happily, "In a good poem both judgment and fancy are required; but the fancy must be more eminent, because they please for the extravagancy, but ought not to displease by indiscretion."

In the mean time the Gothic romance, although somewhat shook by the classical fictions, and by the tales of Boccace and Bandello, still maintained its ground; and the daring machineries of giants, dragons, and enchanted castles, borrowed from the magic storehouse of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, began to be employed by the epic muse. The Gothic and pagan fictions were now frequently blended and incorporated. The Lady of the Lake floated in the suite of Neptune before Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth, and assumes the semblance of a seanymph; and Hecate, by an easy association,

conducts the rites of the weird sisters in Macbeth.

Allegory had been derived from the religious dramas into our civil spectacles. The masques and pageantries of the age of Elizabeth were not only furnished by the heathen divinities, but often by the virtues and vices impersonated, significantly dec orated, accurately distinguished by their proper types, and represented by living actors. The ancient symbolical shows of this sort began now to lose their old barbarism and a mixture of religion, and to assume a degree of poetical elegance and precision. Nor was it only in the conformation of particular figures that much fancy was shown, but in the contexture of some of the fables or devices presented by groups of ideal personages. These exhibitions quickened creative invention, and reflected back on poetry what poetry had given. From their familiarity and public nature they formed a national taste for allegory: and the allegorical poets were now writing to the people. Even romance was turned into this channel. In the "Faery Queen" allegory is wrought upon chivalry, and the feats and figments of Arthur's Round Table are moralized. The virtues of magnificence and chastity are here personified; but they are imaged with the forms and under the agency of romantic knights and damsels. What was an afterthought in Tasso appears to have been Spenser's premeditated and primary design. In the mean time we must not confound these moral combatants of the "Faery Queen" with some of its other embodied abstractions, which are purely and professedly allegorical.

It may here be added that only a few critical treatises, and but one Art of Poetry were now written. Sentiment and images were not absolutely determined by the canons of composition, nor was genius awed by the consciousness of a future and final arraignment at the tribunal of taste. A certain dignity of inattention to niceties is now visible in our writers. Without too closely consulting a criterion of correctness, every man indulged his own capriciousness of invention. The poet's appeal was chiefly to his own voluntary feelings, his own immediate and peculiar mode of conception; and this freedom of thought was often expressed in an undisguised frankness of diction.

No satires, properly so called, were written till towards the latter end of the queen's reign, and then but a few. Pictures drawn at large of the vices of the times did not suit readers who loved to wander in the regions of artificial manners. The muse, like the people, was too solemn and reserved,

again; and he who tastes them oftenest will relish them best.

And now, could the author flatter himself that any one would take half the pleasure in reading the following exposition which he hath taken in writing it, he would not fear the loss of his labour. The employment detached him from the bustle and hurry of life, the din of politics, and the noise of folly; vanity and vexation flew away for a season, care and disquietude came not near his dwelling. He rose fresh as the morning to his task; the silence of the night invited him to pursue it; and he can truly say that food and rest were not preferred before it. Every Psalm improved infinitely upon his acquaintance with it, and no one gave him uneasiness but the last; for then he grieved that his work was done. Happier hours than those which have been spent in these meditations on the Songs of Sion he never expects to see in this world. Very pleasantly did they pass, and moved smoothly and swiftly along: for when thus engaged, he counted no time. They are gone, but have left a relish and a fragrance upon the mind, and the remembrance of them is sweet. A Commentary on the Book of Psalms: Preface.

WILLIAM COWPER,

born 1731, from his tenth to his seventeenth year was educated at Westminster School, where he acquired an intimate acquaintance with the classics; nominally studied, but really neglected, law for three years, and afterwards resided for eleven years at the Temple, and in the last of those years (1763) was appointed Reading Clerk and Clerk of the Committees in the House of Lords, but by his dread of appearing at the bar of the House for examination was driven to attempts at suicide; subsequently resided in retirement, chiefly at Olney, and after repeated attacks of melancholia, died in 1800. Cowper is chiefly known as a poet,-as the author of Truth, Table Talk, Hope, Charity, Conversation, etc. (all published in one volume, Lond., 1782. 8vo), John Gilpin, 1782, The Task, Lond., 1784, 12mo,-and increased his fame by his translation of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, in English Blank Verse, Lond., 1791, 2 vols. 4to, 2d edit., 1802, 4 vols. 8vo; but his Letters entitle him to a high position among the English Prose Writers.

"I have always considered the Letters of Mr. Cowper as the finest specimen of the epistolary style in our language.. To an air of inimitable ease and carelessness they unite a high degree of correctness, such as could result only from the clearest intellect, combined with the most finished

..

taste. I have scarcely found a single word which is capable of being exchanged for a better.. In my humble opinion the study of Cowper's prose may on this account be as useful in forming the taste of young persons as his poetry."-Rev. ROBERT HALL TO REV. DR. JOHNSON.

THE FUTURE STATE OF THE HEATHEN. MONDAY, April 23, 1781.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

MY DEAR FRIEND,-Having not the least doubt of your ability to execute just such a preface as I should wish to see prefixed to my publication, and being convinced that you have no good foundation for those which you yourself entertain upon the subject, I neither withdraw my requisition, nor abate one jot of the earnestness with which I made it. I admit the delicacy of the occasion, but am far from apprehending that you will therefore find it difficult to succeed. You can draw a hair-stroke where another man would make a blot as broad as a sixpence.

With respect to the Heathen and what I have said about them, the subject is of that kind which every man must settle for himself, and on which we can proceed no further than hypothesis and opinion will carry us. I was willing, however, to obviate an objection I foresaw, and to do it in a way not derogatory from the truth of the Gospel, yet at the same time as conciliatory as possible to the prejudices of the objector. After all, indeed, I see no medium: either we must suppose them lost, or if saved, saved by virtue of the only propitiation. They seem to me, on the principles of equity, to stand in much the same predicament, and to be entitled (at least according to human apprehensions of justice) to much the same allowance as Infants: both partakers of a sinful nature, and both unavoidably ignorant of the remedy. Infants I suppose universally saved, because impeccable; and the virtuous Heathen, having had no opportunity to sin against Revelation, and having made a conscientious use of the light of Nature, I should suppose saved too.—But I drop a subject on which I could say a good deal more, for two reasons: first, because I am writing a letter, and not an essay; and, secondly, because after all I might write about it, I could come to no certain conclusion.

I once had thoughts of annexing a few smaller pieces to those I have sent you; but having only very few that I account as worthy to bear them company, and those for the most part on subjects less calculated for utility than amusement, I changed my mind. If hereafter I should accumulate a sufficient number of these minutia to make a miscel

laneous volume, which is not impossible, I may perhaps collect and print thein.

I am much obliged for the interest you take in the appearance of my Poems, and am much pleased by the alacrity with which you do it. Your favourable opinion of them affords me a comfortable presage with respect to that of the public; for though I make allowance for your partiality to me and mine, because mine, yet I am sure you would not suffer me unadinonished to add myself to the multitude of insipid rhymers with whose productions the world is already too much pestered.

ON HIS OWN POEMS.

To MRS. COWPER.

to me.

Oct. 19, 1781.

MY DEAR COUSIN,-Your fear lest I should think you unworthy of my correspondence, on account of your delay to answer, may change sides now, and more properly belongs It is long since I received your last, and yet I believe I can say truly, that not a post has gone by me since the receipt of it that has not reminded me of the debt I owe you, for your obliging and unreserved communications both in prose and verse, especially for the latter, because I consider them as marks of your peculiar confidence. The truth is, I have been such a verse-maker myself, and so busy in preparing a volume for the press [Truth, Table Talk, Hope, Charity, Conversation, etc., Lond., 1782, Svo] which I imagine will make its appear ance in the course of the winter, that I hardly had leisure to listen to the calls of any other engagement. It is, however, finished, and gone to the printer's, and I have nothing now to do with it but to correct the sheets as they are sent to me, and consign it over to the judgment of the public. It is a bold undertaking at this time of day, when so many writers of the greatest abilities have gone before, who seem to have anticipated every valuable subject, as well as all the graces of poetical embellishment, to step forth into the world in the character of a bard, especially when it is considered that luxury, idleness, and vice have debauched the public taste, and that nothing hardly is welcome but childish fiction, or what has at least a tendency to excite a laugh. I thought, however, that I had stumbled upon some subjects that had never before been poetically treated, and upon some others to which I imagined it would not be difficult to give an air of novelty by the manner of treating them. My sole drift is to be useful; a point which, however, I knew I should in vain aim at unless I could be likewise entertaining. I have therefore fixed these two strings upon my bow, and by the help

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of both have done my best to send my arrow to the mark. My readers will hardly have begun to laugh before they will be called upon to correct that levity, and peruse me with a more serious air. As to the effect, I leave it alone in His hands who alone can produce it: neither prose nor verse can reform the manners of a dissolute age, much less can they inspire a sense of religious obligation, unless assisted and made efficacious by the power who superintends the truth he has vouchsafed to impart.

You made my heart ache with a sympathetic sorrow when you described the state of your mind on occasion of your late visit into Hertfordshire. Had I been previously informed of your journey before you made it I should have been able to have foretold all your feelings with the most unerring certainty of prediction. You will never cease to feel upon that subject: but with your principles of resignation, and acquiescence in the divine will, you will always feel as becomes a Christian. We are forbidden to murmur, but we are not forbidden to regret; and whom we loved tenderly while living we may still pursue with an affectionate remembrance without having any occasion to charge ourselves with rebellion against the sovereignty that appointed a separation. A day is coming when I am confident you will see and know that mercy to both parties was the principal agent in a scene the recollection of which is still painful. W. C.

LORD THURLOW, JOSEPHUS, AND TACITUS. Nov. 24, 1783.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

MY DEAR WILLIAM,-An evening unexpectedly retired, and which your mother and I spend without company (an occurrence far from frequent), affords me a favourable opportunity to write by to-morrow's post, which else I could not have found. You are very good to consider my literary necessities with so much attention, and I feel proportionally grateful. Blair's Lectures (though I suppose they must make a part of my private studies, not being ad captam fœminarum) will be perfectly welcome.

You say you felt my verses. I assure you that in this you followed my example, for I felt them first. A man's lordship is nothing to me, any farther than in connexion with qualities that entitle him to my respect. If he [Lord Thurlow] thinks himself privileged by it to treat me with neglect, I am his humble servant, and shall never be at a loss to render him an equivalent. . . .

...

I will not, however, belie my knowledge of mankind so much as to seem surprised at a treatment which I had abundant reason to expect. To these men, with whom I was once intimate, and for many years, I am no longer necessary, no longer convenient, or in any respect an object. They think of me as of the man in the moon; and whether I have a lantern, or a dog and faggot, or whether I have neither of those desirable accommodations, is to them a matter of perfect indifference: upon that point we are agreed; our indifference is mutual; and were I to publish again, which is not possible, I should give them a proof of it.

L'Estrange's Josephus has lately furnished us with evening lectures. But the historian is so tediously circumstantial, and the translator so insupportably coarse and vulgar, that we are all three weary of him. How would Tacitus have shone upon such a subject! great master as he was of the art of description, concise without obscurity, and affecting without being poetical. But so it was ordered, and for wise reasons no doubt, that the greatest calamities any people ever suffered, and an accomplishment of one of the most signal prophecies in the Scripture, should be recorded by one of the worst writers. The man was a temporizer too, and courted the favour of his Roman masters at the expense of his own creed; or else an infidel, and absolutely disbelieved it. You will think me very difficult to please: I quarrel with Josephus for the want of elegance, and with some of our modern historians for having too much. With him, for running right forward like a gazette, without stopping to make a single observation by the way; and with them for pretending to delineate characters that existed two thousand years ago, and to discover the motives by which they were influenced, with the same precision as if they had been their contemporaries. Simplicity is become a very rare quality in a writer. In the decline of great kingdoms, and where refinement in all the arts is carried to an excess, I suppose it is always rare. The latter Roman writers are remarkable for false ornament: they were yet no doubt admired by the readers of their own day; and with respect to authors of the present æra the most popular among them appear to me equally censurable on the same account. Swift and Addison were simple; Pope knew how to be so, but was frequently tinged with affectation; since their day I hardly know a celebrated writer who deserves the character.

Your mother wants room for a postscript, so my lecture must conclude abruptly. Yours, W. C.

GEORGE WASHINGTON,

the illustrious Commander-in-Chief of the American armies during the Revolutionary war, born on Pope's Creek, county of Westmoreland, Virginia, Feb. 22, 1732, died at Mount Vernon, Dec. 14, 1799, wrote a great deal and wrote very well; and therefore

not for the first time-we rank him with authors.

"He read little, but with close attention. Whatever he took in hand he applied himself to with ease; and his papers which have been preserved show how he almost imperceptibly gained the power of writing correctly, always expressing

himself with clearness and directness, often with felicity of language and grace."-George BanCROFT: Hist. of the United States, vol. vii., 1858.

ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF TRENTON. HEAD-QUARTERS, MORRISTOWN, Dec. 27, 1776. To THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS.

SIR, I have the pleasure of congratulating you upon the success of an enterprise which I had formed against a detachment of the enemy lying in Trenton, and which was executed yesterday morning.

The evening of the twenty-fifth I ordered the troops intended for this service to parade back of McKonkey's ferry, that they might begin to pass as soon as it grew dark, imagining we should be able to throw them all over, with the necessary artillery, by twelve o'clock, and that we might easily arrive at Trenton by five in the morning, the distance being about nine miles. But the quantity of ice made that night impeded the passage of the boats so much that it was three o'clock before the artillery could all be got over; and near four before the troops took up their line of march.

This made me despair of surprising the town, as I well knew we could not reach it before the day was fairly broke. But as I was certain there was no making a retreat without being discovered, and harassed on re-passing the river, I determined to push on at all events. I formed my detachment into two divisions, one to march by the lower or river road, the other by the upper or Pennington road. As the divisions had nearly the same distance to march, I ordered each of them, immediately upon forcing the out-guards, to push directly into the town, that they might charge the enemy before they had time to form.

The upper division arrived at the enemy's advanced post exactly at eight o'clock: and in three minutes after I found, from the fire on the lower road, that that division had also got up. The out-guards made but small opposition, though, for their numbers, they behaved very well, keeping up a constant