133 



POETRY AND POETS. 



all modes of affectation ; but I 

 think you would be surprised to 

 find yourself forgetting, in a do- 

 mestic and confiding feeling, that 

 you were talking with the woman 

 whose name is best established 

 among the female writers of her 

 country ; in short, forgetting every- 

 thing but that you were in the 

 society of a most charming private 

 gentlewoman. She might would 

 that all female writers could take 

 for her device a flower that closes 

 itself against the noontide sun, and 

 unfolds in the evening shadows." 



COWPER' s LETTERS. 

 "William Cowper is pre-eminently 

 the Christian poet of our age and 

 nation, and, high as is the rank 

 assigned to his verse by the unani- 

 mous consent of the whole lite- 

 rary world, it is not higher than 

 that to which his prose is entitled. 

 Robert Hall, himself a master of 

 English, said " I have always con- 

 sidered the letters of Mr. Cowper 

 as the finest specimens of the 

 epistolary style in our language." 

 Southey, who was also distin- 

 guished as a prow-writer, pays a 

 similar tribute to Cowper's letters. 

 Such, indeed, is the universal judg- 

 ment passed upon the unstudied 

 grace and inimitable ease of those 

 compositions with which the poet 

 charmed his friends and occupied 

 the leisure of his secluded life, 

 when not engaged in the work of 

 Lis high poetical vocation. 



COWPER'S SCHOOLBOY TORMENTOR. 



At school, first in his native vil- 

 lage, and subsequently at West- 

 minster, Cowper suffered much 

 from the cruelty of boys older and 

 .stronger than himself, who took a 

 malicious delight in tyrannizing 

 over hint ; and such was the effect 

 of the savage treatment upon his 

 gentle spirit, that, speaking of a 

 lad of about fifteen years of age, 

 who acted towards him with pecu- 



liar barbarity, " I well remember," 

 he says, "being afraid to lift my 

 eye upon him higher than his 

 knees, and that I knew him better 

 by his shoe-buckles than by any 

 other part of his dress. May the 

 Lord pardon him, and may we 

 meet in glory !" 



FELICIA HEMANS. 



A traveller who called on Mrs. 

 Hemans, at Waver tree, in 183-, 

 gives us some pleasing recollec- 

 tions. " After some conversation 

 in the parlour," he says, " Mrs. H. 

 proposed a visit to her study. 



" ' Come,' said she, ' I will show 

 you my poetic mint ;' and she led 

 the way to a room over the one in 

 which we were sitting. It was a 

 very small place, but neat almost 

 to a fault. There were no author 

 litterings. Everything was in 

 order. An open letter lay on the 

 table. She pointed to it, and said, 

 laughingly 



" ' An application for my auto- 

 graph, and the postage unpnld. 

 You cannot imagine how I am 

 annoyed with albums and such 

 matters. A person who ought to 

 have known better sent me an al- 

 bum lately, and begged a piece 

 from me, if it were only long 

 enough to fill up a page of sky- 

 blue tinted paper, which he had 

 selected for me to write upon.' 



" In incidentally referring to her 

 compositions, she said, ' They often 

 remain chiming in my mind for 

 days, before I commit them to pa- 

 per ; and sometimes I quite forget 

 many, which I compose as I lie 

 awake in bed. Composition is less 

 a labour with me than the act of 

 writing down what has impressed 

 me, excepting in the case of blank 

 verse, which always involves some- 

 thing like labour. My thoughts 

 have been so used to go in the 

 harness of rhyme, that when they 

 are suffered to ran without it, they 

 arc often diffused, or I lose sight, 



