time existed, and many of whom spoke eloquently on each side, Tucker was the only one who was not puzzle-headed. And he obtained some small share of late credit, but present contempt.-WHATELY, RICHARD, 1856, ed. Bacon's Essays, with Annotations, Essay LV. Josiah Tucker, whose works on Trade anticipated some of the established doctrines on political economy.-BURTON, JOHN HILL, 1860, ed. Autobiography of Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle. A bitter Tory, but one of the best living writers on all questions of trade. -LECKY, WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE, 1882, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. III, ch. xii, p. 421. Holds a distinguished place among the immediate predecessors of Smith. Most of his numerous productions had direct reference to contemporary questions, and, though marked by much sagacity and penetration are deficient in permanent interest. The most important of his general economic views are those relating to international commerce. He is an ardent supporter of free-trade doctrines, which he bases on the principle that there is between nations no necessary antagonism, but rather a harmony, of interests, and that their several natural advantages and different aptitudes naturally prompt them to exchange. He had not, however, got quite clear of mercantilism, and favored bounties on exported manufactures and the encouragement of population by a tax on celibacy.-INGRAM, J. K., 1885, Political Economy, Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth edition, vol. XIX, p. 378. Tucker was a very shrewd though a rather crotchety and inconsistent writer. He is praised by McCulloch and others who shared his view of the inutility of colonies; and he argued very forcibly that a "shopkeeping nation" would not improve its trade by beating its customers. The war with the colonies would, he said, hereafter appear to be as absurd as the crusades. He retained, as McCulloch complains, a good many of the prejudices which later economists sought to explode. He is not clear about the "balance of trade"; he believes in the wickedness of forestalling and regrating, and wishes to stimulate population by legislation. In spite, however, of his inconsistencies and narrowness of views, he deserves credit, as Turgot preceived, for attacking many of the evils of monopolies, and was so far in sympathy with the French economists and with Adam Smith. He deserves the credit of anticipating some of Adam Smith's arguments against various forms of monopoly, but, though he made many good points, he was not equal to forming a comprehensive system. STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1899, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. LVII, p. 283. William Cowper 1731-1800 Born, at Great Berkhamstead Rectory, 15 Nov. 1731. At a school in Market Street, Herts, 1737-39. Under the care of an oculist, 1739-41. At Westminster School, 1741-49. Student at Middle Temple, 29 April 1748. Articled to a solicitor for three years, 1750. Called to Bar, 14 June 1754. Depression of mind began. Commissioner of Bankrupts, 1759-65. Contrib. nos. 111, 115, 134, 139 to "The Connoisseur," 1756; to Duncombe's "Translations from Horace," 1756-57; to "The St. James's Chronicle," 1761. Symptoms of insanity began to appear; taken to a private asylum at St. Albans, Dec. 1763. Left there and settled in Huntingdon, June 1765. Began to board in house of Mr. and Mrs. Unwin there, Nov. 1765. Removed with Mrs. Unwin and family to Olney, Bucks, autumn of 1767. Assisted John Newton, curate of Olney, in parochial duties. Fresh attack of insanity, 1773-74. On recovery, showed more activity in literary work. Friendship with Lady Austen, 1781-83. Contrib. to "Gentleman's Mag.," June 1784 and Aug. 1785. Removed from Olney to Weston, Nov. 1786. Attack of insanity, 1787. Contrib. to "Analytical Review," Feb. 1789. Crown pension of £300 a year granted, 1794. Visited various places in Norfolk with Mrs. Unwin, summer of 1795. Settled in Dereham Lodge, Oct. 1795. Died there, 25 April 1800. Buried in Dereham Church. Works: "Olney Hymns" (anon., with J. Newton), 1779; "Anti-Thelyphthora" (anon.), 1781; "Poems," 1782; "John Gilpin" (anon.), 1783; "The Task," 1785 (the fly-leaf bears the words: "Poems... PERSONAL Vol. II."); Translation of "Iliad and Odyssey," 1791; "Poems" ("On the receipt of my mother's picture"-"The Dog and the Water Lily"), 1798. Posthumous: "Adelphi," 1802; "Life and Posthumous Writings," ed. by Hayley, 1803 (2nd edn., 1804; 3rd. entitled "Life and Letters," 1809); "Memoir of the early life of William Cowper" (autobiographical), 1816; "Table Talk," 1817; "Hymns," 1822; "Private Correspondence" (2 vols.), 1824; "Poems, the early productions of W. Cowper," ed. by J. Croft, 1825; "Minor Poems," 1825;" "The Negro's Complaint," 1826. He translated: "Homer," 1791; "The Power of Grace," by Van Lier, 1792; "Poems by Mme. De la Motte Guion" (posth.), 1801; Milton's Latin and Italian poems (posth.), 1808. Collected Works: ed. by Newton (10 vols.), 1817; ed. by Memes (3 vols.), 1834; ed. by Grimshawe (8 vols.), 1835; ed. by Southey (15 vols.), 1836-37. Life: by Hayley, 1803; by Bruce, in Aldine edn. of Works, 1865; by Benham, in Globe edn. of Works, 1870.-SHARP, R. FARQUHARSON, 1897, A Dictionary of English Authors, p. 67. than delicate in the form of his limbs: the colour of his hair was a light brown, that of his eyes a bluish, and his complexion ruddy. In his dress he was neat, but not finical; in his diet temperate and not dainty. He had an air of pensive reserve in his deportment, and his extreme shyness sometimes produced in his manners an indescribable mixture of aukwardness and dignity; but no being could be more truly graceful when he was in perfect health and perfectly pleased with his society. Towards women, in particular, his behaviour and conversation was delicate and fascinating in the highest degree.--HAYLEY, WILLIAM, 1803, Life and Posthumous Writings of William Cowper, vol. II, p. 124. The morning is my writing time, and in the morning I have no spirits. So much the worse for my correspondents. Sleep, that refreshes my body, seems to cripple me in every other respect. As the evening approaches, I grow more alert, and when I am retiring to bed, am more fit for mental occupation than at any other time. So it fares with us whom they call nervous. By By a strange inversion of the animal economy, we are ready to sleep when we have most need to be awake, and go to bed just when we might sit up to some purpose. The watch is irregularly wound up, it goes in the night when it is not wanted, and in the day stands still.-COWPER, WILLIAM, 1784, Letter to John Newton, Feb. 10. IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ. Of talents, dignified by sacred zeal, Sense, fancy, wit, suffice not all to raise From his figure, as it first appeared to me, in his sixty-second year, I should imagine that he must have been very comely in his youth; and little had time injured his countenance, since his features expressed, in that period of life, all the powers of his mind, and all the sensibility of his heart. He was of a middle stature, rather strong It appears to the present writer, from a careful perusal of that instructive piece of biography published by Mr. Hayley, that Cowper, from his infancy, had a tendency to errations of the mind; and without admitting this fact in some degree, it must seem extremely improbable that the mere dread of appearing as a reader in the house of lords should have brought on his first settled fit of lunacy. Much, indeed, has been said of his uncommon shyness and diffidence, and more, perhaps, than the history of his early life will justify. Shyness and diffidence are common to all young persons who have not been early introduced into company, and Cowper, who had not, perhaps, that advantage at home, might have continued to be shy when other boys are forward. But had his mind been, even in this early period, in a healthful state, he must have gradually assumed the free manners of an ingenuous youth, conscious of no unusual imperfection that should keep him back. At school, we are told, he was trampled upon by the ruder boys who took advantage. of his weakness, yet we find that he mixed in their amusements, which must in some degree have advanced him on a level with them and what is yet more extraordinary, we find him associating with men of more gaiety than pure morality admits, and sporting with the utmost vivacity and wildness with Thurlow and others, when it was natural to expect that he would have been glad to court solitude for the purposes of study, as well as for the indulgence of his habitual shyness, if, indeed, at this period it was so habitual as we are taught to believe.-CHALMERS, ALEXANDER, 1814, English Poets, Life of Cowper. I could have wished a stronger tone of severity to have been expressed, in the authority last referred to, against the publication of those "Memoirs of Cowper," 1816, 8vo., which were written by himself, and which betrayed his morbid and unhappy state of feelings in an attempt to commit suicide. There is perhaps no species of mental depravation, connected with a lust of lucre, more deserving of reproof and castigation, than that which led to the publication of these Memoirs. First, this composition could never have been intended for the public eye; and was therefore on every account sacred. Secondly, it could only lead to the debasement of that amiable creature, whom it was the bounden duty of the publisher to have kept as free from all imputation as the pages of Hayley had justly represented him. Thirdly, if the feeling which lead to this publication were a religious one, I must say that it is one of the most perverted and mischievous views of religion with which I am acquainted. Cant, or lucre, in its genuine form, was, I fear, the source or the motive of this highly injudicious publication. We love and respect Cowper too sincerely, to "drag his frailties from their drear abode."-DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL, 1824, The Library Companion, p. 533, note. Had Cowper's mind been sane, no rational views of religion could unquestionably have produced the hallucination; but when his mind was clouded with hypochondria, as in early life before it had taken any definite form, nothing was wanting to convert his melancholy into monomania, and to change the wandering reveries of the former into the settled gloom of the latter, but the exclusive application of Cowper, from his earliest years, was delicate in constitution, and timid in his disposition. Excessive application to professional studies in the Temple increased the delicacy of his health, the nervous system and the cerebral organs became disturbed or disordered in their functions, and his natural timidity merged into a morbid sensibility which wholly disqualified him for the active duties of that profession in which he had been so improperly placed.-MADDEN, R. R., 1833, The Infirmities of Genius, vol. II, pp. 47, 99. His prevailing insanity, so far as it could be called insanity at all, in those long intervals of many years, during which his mind was serene and active, his habit of thought playful, and his affections more and more fervent, was simply the exclusion of a personal religious hope to such a degree as to seem like habitual despair. This despair was his insanity, for it could be only madness that could produce it, after such a revelation of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ as he had been permitted in the outset to enjoy. If Paul had gone deranged after being let down. from his trance and vision in the third heavens, and the type of his derangement had been the despair of ever again beholding his Saviour's face in glory, and the obstinate belief of being excluded by Divine decree from heaven, though his affections were all the while in heaven, even that derangement would have been scarcely more remarkable than Cowper's. In the case of so delicate and profound an organization as his, it is very difficult to trace the effect of any entanglement or disturbance from one side or the other between the nervous and mental sensibilities of his frame. There was a set of Border Ruffians continually threatening his peace, endeavoring to set up slavery instead of freedom, and ever and anon making their incursions, and defacing the title-deeds to his inheritance, which they could not carry away; and Cowper might have assured himself with the consolation that those documents would not be destroyed, being registered in heaven, and God as faithful to them, as if their record in his own heart had been always visible. CHEEVER, GEORGE B., 1843, Lectures on the Life, Genius and Insanity of Cowper, Introduction, p. vii. O poets! from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing! O Christians! at your cross of hope, a hopeless hand was clinging! O men! this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling, Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling! And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story, How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory, And how when one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights departed, He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted; He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation, And bow the meekest Christian down in meeker adoration: Nor ever shall he be, in praise, by wise or good forsaken; Named softly as the household name of one Here Cowper was fond of coming, and sitting within the hollow boll for hours, around him stretching the old woods, with their solitude and the cries of woodland birds. The fame which he has conferred on this tree has nearly proved its destruciton. Whole arms and great pieces of its trunk have been cut away with knife and axe and saw to prepare different articles from. The Marquis of Northampton, to whom the chase belongs, has had multitudes of nails driven in to stop the progress of this destruction, but, finding that not sufficient, has affixed a board bearing this inscription: "Out of respect to the memory of the poet Cowper, the Marquis of Northampton is particularly desirous of preserving this oak. Notice is hereby given that any person defacing or otherwise injuring it will be prosecuted according to law." In stepping round the Yardley Oak it appeared to me to be, at the foot, about thirteen yards in circumference.-HOWITT, WILLIAM, 1847, The Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, vol. 1, p. 458. Few things are more touching than the history of Cowper's life, as it is related, with more than feminine grace, innocence, and tenderness, in his own inimitable letters; and we can understand the devotedness with which so many of his friends sacrificed their whole existence to cherish and console a being so gifted, so fascinating, and so unhappy. The dim shadow, too, of an early and enduring, but hopeless love, throws over the picture a soft and pensive tint, like moonlight on some calm landscape.-SHAW, THOMAS B., 1847, Outlines of English Literature, p. 305. Words are wanting to describe the sense of relief with which we close this saddest, most mysterious narrative. The man were granite who could refrain from sympathy, amounting to bitter anguish, with this poor unfortunate. And then, there are questions arising out of his story, which descend into the very depths of those awful relations which connect us with God and Eternity Why did this man suffer thus? Why was he ever born to endure such wretchedness? What the rationale of his long martyrdom and darkness? . . . Truly William Cowper was still more a marvellous, than he was a mild and gentle spirit, stronger, even, than he was amiable a very Prometheus chained to his rock, let us call him, --the rock being his rugged, deep-rooted woe; the chain his lengthened life; and himself the Titan, in his earnestness, lofty purpose, and poetic power. GILFILLAN, GEORGE, 1854, ed. Cowper's Poetical Works, Life, vol. 1, pp. XXV, xxvii. His talent is but the picture of his character, and his poems but the echo of his life. He was one of those to whom women devote themselves, whom they love maternally, first from compassion, then by attraction, because they find in them alone the contrivances, minute and tender attentions, delicate observances which men's rude nature cannot give them, and which their more sensitive nature nevertheless craves. -TAINE, H. A., 1871, History of English Literature, tr. Van Laun, vol. II, bk. iv, ch. i, pp. 243–4. It must have been a disappointment to Cowper that the songs or ballads he wrote on the slave trade, for the express purpose of being sung in the streets, and by that means widely circulated among the people, came to nothing. "If you hear ballads sung in the streets on the hardships of the negroes in the islands," he writes to Mr. Rose, "they are probably mine." But Mr. Rose heard them not, nor was the song writer ever to have that satisfaction himself.-JACOX, FRANCIS, 1872, Self-Heard in Song, Aspects of Authorship, p. 48, So sad and strange a destiny has never before or since been that of a man of genius. With wit and humour at will, he was nearly all his life plunged in the darkest melancholy. Innocent, pious and confiding, he lived in perpetual dread of everlasting punishment: he could only see between him and heaven a high wall which he despaired of ever being able to scale; yet his intellectual vigour was not subdued by affliction. What he wrote for amusement or relief in the midst of "supreme distress," surpasses the elaborate efforts of others made under the most favourable circumstances; and in the very winter of his days, his fancy was as fresh and blooming as in the spring and morning of existence. That he was constitutionally prone to melancholy and insanity, seems undoubted; but the predisposing causes were as surely aggravated by his strict and secluded mode of life.-CHAMBERS, ROBERT, 1876, Cyclopædia of English Literature, ed. Car ruthers. If Cowper's retirement was virtuous, it was so because he was actively employed in the exercise of his highest faculties: had he been a mere idler, secluded from his kind, his retirement would not have been virtuous at all. His flight from the world was rendered necessary by his malady, and respectable by his literary work; but it was a flight and not a victory. His misconception was fostered and partly produced by a religion which was essentially ascetic, and which, while it gave birth to characters of the highest and most energetic beneficence, represented salvation too little as the reward of effort, too much as the reward of passive belief and of spiritual emotion.-SMITH, GOLDWIN, 1880, Cowper (English Men of Letters.), p. 52. The time of William Cowper seems now, so far as Westminster is concerned, equally remote as that of Raleigh. It was in the churchyard of St. Margaret's, while he was a scholar at Westminster, that he received one of those impressions which had so strong an effect on his after life. Crossing the burialground one dark evening, towards his home in the school, he saw the glimmering lantern of a grave-digger at work. approached to look on, with a boyish craving for horrors, and was struck by a skull heedlessly thrown out of the crowded earth. He To the mind of William Cowper such an accident had an extraordinary significance. In after life he remembered it as the occasion of religious emotions not readily suppressed. On the south side of the church, until the recent restorations, there was a stone the inscription of which suggests the less gloomy view of Cowper's character. It marked "The Burial-Place of Mr. John Gilpin ;" the date was not to be made out, but it must have been fresh when Cowper was at school, and it would be absurd to doubt that the future poet had seen it, and perhaps unconsciously adopted from it the name of his hero.LOFTIE, WILLIAM JOHN, 1883-4, History of London, vol. II, ch. xvi. In William Cowper is one of the strangest and most pathetic figures in the literary history of England. He had much in common with another famous writer, and it would be easy to draw a parallel between William Cowper and Charles Lamb. nothing is the resemblance closer than in the circumstance that both began by writing poetry and produced much sweet verse, while the prose of each is far more noteworthy than his poetry, and is among the best in the language. If neither had written a line or a sentence, the personal story of each would have ensured his name being remembered. Though the career of both was chequered and painful, yet it has a fascination for every reader, and, of the two, Cowper's is the sadder and the more curious.-RAE, W. FRASER, 1891, The Bard of Olney, Temple Bar, vol. 91, p. 503. On the 19th of April it was evident that death was near, and Mr. Johnson ventured to speak of his approaching dissolution as the signal for his deliverance from the miseries of both mind and body. Cowper making fewer objections than might have been supposed, Johnson proceeded to say, "that in the world to which he was hastening, a merciful Redeemer had prepared unspeakable happiness for all His children, and therefore for him." To the first part of this sentence he listened with composure, but upon hearing the concluding words he passionately entreated that no further observations might be made on the subject. He lingered five days longer. On Thursday he sat up as usual in the evening. In the course of the night, when he was exceedingly exhausted, Miss Perowne offered him some refreshment, which he |