"There is a pleasure in poetic pains, Which only poets know. The shifts, and turns,

The expedients and inventions multiform To which the mind resorts, in chase of

terms,

Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to winTo arrest the fleeting images, that fill The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast,

And force them sit, till he has pencil'd off A faithful likeness of the forms he views; Then to dispose his copies with such art, That each may find its most propitious light,

And shine, by situation, hardly less

Than by the labour and the skill it cost;
Are occupations of the poet's mind
So pleasing, and that steal away the
thought,

With such address, from themes of sad import,

That, lost in his own musings, happy man! He feels the anxieties of life-denied Their wonted entertainment, all retire." From a tree planted by his hands I plucked three apples; one I would fain bestow on the visitor of Ellisland, and one on his "congenial spirit" Mr J. M'Diarmid, author of the "Life of Cowper." In the midst of his desolate parlour I stood, and heard him say:

"Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,

Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round."

But I refrain, for the associations are endless and indescribable. I proceeded towards Weston by the public road, which gently rises in a northwest direction till it passes Sir George Throckmorton's. I met a tall, genteel, and elderly man with his wife, a respectable and most animated-looking lady, each carrying a lantern, with provident anticipation of the dark hour when they might return from Olney. I made inquiry respecting the probability of access to the Park, the wilderness, and the Lodge, (the title always given to the poet's house in Weston.) The man answered all my inquiries in the frankest and most satisfactory manner; and in alluding to the memory of Cowper, he betrayed, in his mild and expressive countenance, a mixture of reverence and affection beyond any thing I ever beheld. The lady at that moment, probably feeling, with the electric

sympathy of the sex, the softened tone of his voice, said, "This, Sir, is Samuel Roberts, who was Mr Cowper's servant." I cannot refrain from making another extract from one of Cowper's letters to Lady Hesketh, in which the name of his servant ocsurs, though the interest of the passage is of a different character.

Το

"The Lodge, Nov. 27, 1787.-On Monday morning last, Sam brought me word that there was a man in the kitchen who desired to speak with me. I ordered him in. A plain, decent, elderly figure, made its appearance, and being desired to sit, spoke as follows: Sir, I am clerk of the parish of All Saints, in Northampton; brother of Mr C. the upholsterer. It is customary for the person in my office to annex to a bill of mortality, which he publishes at Christmas, a copy of verses. You will do me a great favour, Sir, if you would furnish me with one.' this I replied, Mr C. you have several men of genius in your town, why have you not applied to some of them? There is a namesake of your's in particular, C, the statuary, who, every body knows, is a firstrate maker of verses. He surely is the man of all the world for your purpose.'-' Alas! Sir, I have heretofore borrowed help from him, but he is a gentleman of so much reading, that the people of our town cannot understand him.' I confess to you, my dear, I felt all the force of the compliment implied in this speech, and was almost ready to answer,

Perhaps, my good friend, they may find me unintelligible too for the same reason. But on asking him whether he had walked over to Weston on purpose to implore the assistance of my muse, and on his replying in the affirmative, I felt my mortified vanity a little consoled; and pitying the poor man's distress, which appeared to be considerable, promised to supply him. A fig for poets who write epitaphs upon individuals. I have written one, that serves two hundred persons!" As I approached the Park, a heavy shower of rain obliged me to look for shelter, and I made my way, I believe, illegally, into a close covert on my right, and in the nearest corner of the Park. To my surprise and delight, I found myself in

To eminence fit only for a god,
Should ever drivel out of human lips,
Even in the cradled weakness of the
world!-

But is it fit, or can it bear the shock
Of rational discussion, that a man,
Compounded and made up like other men
Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust
And folly in as ample measure meet,
As in the bosoms of the slaves he rules,
Should be a despot absolute, and boast
Himself the only freeman of his land ?"
In the above lines there is a spirit
more lyrical than even Apollo's, but
the incomparable felicity of terms
and expressions must penetrate even
the obtusest word-monger. Cowper's
Homer is a monument of the power
of a master over the English lan-
guage, which might be called mira-
culous, if human powers had not
presented it to our scrutiny. That
this should not be universally con-
ferred, is not unaccountable, for Ho-
mer is not universally intelligible.
Cowper himself, who, like Horace,
is equally felicitous as a critic and as
a poet, says: "I am well aware
that many, especially many ladies,
missing many turns and prettinesses
of expression, that they have admir-
ed in Pope, will account my transla-
tion in those particulars defective.
But I comfort myself with the
thought, that, in reality, it is no de-
fect; on the contrary, that the want
of all such embellishments as do not
belong to the original, will be one of
its principal merits, with persons in-
deed capable of relishing Homer,"

But Cowper is altogether unequalled, and utterly inimitable in the art of placing us constantly in his own, often endearing, ever interesting presence. Quinctilian prescribes that an orator should be a good man. The power of such a qualification was never so forcibly illustrated as by Cowper. His errors-his fearful religious apprehensions-his bigotry, terrible only to himself-his distorted notions of God and of human destiny-all deepen our interest in his behalf. If an innocent, amiable, angelic lady, utter harsh judgments of others, and invoke curses on herself, under the delirium of a fever, raging in her brain, do her friends, therefore, feel less affection for her? If Cowper's system of religion be utterly false, and of this I am anxious to

say nothing, his descriptions and illustrations of its excellence, operation, and final rewards, are not therefore the less interesting. The influence of that system on human feelings and passions is a reality of the deepest interest even to those who feel it not, and deny its reasonableness, and therefore forms a subject fit for the highest efforts of poetry. In this department Cowper stands alone. In his minor poems, which are entirely religious, there are passages of the most splendid poetry. Let the sceptic turn to the passage, in the poem entitled " Truth," be ginning

"See where it smokes along the sounding plain,

Blown all aslant, a driving, dashing rain, Peal upon peal redoubling all around, Shakes it again and faster to the ground."

In "Charity" is to be found the sublimest adoration of liberty which an ancient Roman could have uttered:“Oh, could I worship aught beneath the skies,

That earth hath seen, or fancy can devise, Thine altar, sacred Liberty, should stand Built by no mercenary vulgar hand; With fragrant turf, and flowers as wild and fair

As ever dress'd a bank, or scented summer air.

Duly, as ever," &c.

In the 5th Book of "the Task," the praises of liberty would do honour to, the noblest mind that ever felt the inspiration of poetry and of patriotism; and the picture of religious conversion which follows them is not surpassed by any picture of the human mind to be found even in Shakespeare. Let not religious controversy blind us to the independent achievements of poetical genius. But I can trust myself with no more extracts.

Has it come under your observation, Mr Editor, that Lord Byron has lately informed the public that

66

Cowper is no poet," and asked them what human being has ever read his translation of Homer?" This naughty boy-this spoiled child, first of his parents, and then of the public-in early youth published something in the form of poetry, which some of you Northern pedagogues censured with becoming scverity. The pampered truant kicked,

and flung his heels in his castigator's face. Yet in that poem, of which it may most truly be said, natura negat, facit indignatio versus-his lordship exclaims:

"What! must deserted poesy still weep Where her last hopes with pious Cowper sleep ?"

But his lordship, by the fury of illregulated passions' or by the inspiration of genius, has produced poems of great merit and of greater success. As he had unseasonably resented just castigation, so he became extravagantly elated by liberal praise and delusive popularity. Bowles was bleating incessantly about nature and her poetry: My lord, in the mood of Ajax, sallies forth, and imagines that he massacres giants, when he only cleaves a mutton. Then, all of a sudden, conceiving himself to be Olympian Jove, and to be called on to signify, by his awful and cloudcompelling nod, who are poets, and who are not, he nods "pious Cowper" no poet. A mortal is generally excessively ridiculous when he

Assumes the god, Affects to nod,

And seems to shake the spheres ; but no mortal ever assumed the god so ridiculously as Lord Byron. He who was whipt into indignant poetry, and who has mixed up some really poctical thoughts and embellishments with a ruthless disregard of consider ations and feelings which mankind have agreed to venerate or to dread, till he has excited a sensation at least as powerful as that produced by genuine poetry, naturally mistakes the essence of poetry and the character of his own success. The first efforts of passion may be effectual and just; but its continued career will render it contemptible and odious. Longinus distinguishes the sublimity of Sophocles from that of Euripides, by saying that the former was the natural fury of the lion, the latter was the fury of the lion, but forced by the lashing of his own tail. Lord Byron's sublimity is not the result of a delicately sensitive frame, or of a quick and powerful imagination,

but of turbid and violently-agitated passions. Hence he possesses no steady or correct criterion of poetical genius or poetical merit, and hence he imagines that his feeling is the standard of taste, and his judgment the fiat of fame. Cowper was too modest, and too much of a poet ;— he was too intimately and delicately conversant with the very spirit of admit into his consideration ideas pure and classical composition, to

and allusions which seem to be favourite guests with Lord Byron. But it were profane to compare the two. I may, however, without much injustice, address his lordship, with reference to Cowper's comparative title to the character of poet, in the terms addressed by Swift's bee to a proud manufacturer of cobwebs, and contemptuous scorner of humble industry:" You boast indeed of being indebted to no other creature, but of drawing and spinning out all from yourself; that is to say, if we may judge of the liquor in the vessel by what issues out, you possess a good plentiful store of dirt and poison in your breast. And though I would by no means lessen or disparage your genuine stock of either, yet I doubt you are somewhat obliged for an increase of both to a little foreign assistance. Your inherent portion of dirt does not fail of acquisitions by sweepings exhaled from below; and one insect furnishes you with a share of poison to destroy another. So that in short the question comes all to this. Whether is the nobler being of the two, that which, by a lazy contemplation of four inches round, by an over-weening pride, which, feeding and engendering on itself, turns all into excrement and venom, producing nothing at all but flybane and cobweb; or that which, by an universal range and long search, much study, true judgment, and distinction of things, brings home honey and wax?"

But, Mr Editor, I have spun out my letter to an unreasonable length; so take my best wishes for your success and happiness, while you' instruct and amuse the public without disturbing sound principles, or alarming salutary prejudices.

London.

SCOTO-ANGLUS,

CURIOUS EXPERIMENTS.

IN our Number for January last, we took notice of some experiments which were performed by our townsman, Mr John Deuchar, Lecturer on Chemistry. In the course of these, several curious results were obtained. Since our notice was published, Mr Deuchar has laid before the Wernerian Society two additional papers on the subject; and, although he has not yet brought the subject to a close, yet he has communicated some important doctrines on the subject of Flame. We refer those who wish to examine the papers in full, to the 3d Volume of the Memoirs of the Wernerian Society; or to the 4th Volume of the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal; whilst, for the information of those of our readers who have not an opportunity of consulting either of these volumes, we beg to add the following condensed view of the subject. From the experiments performed, Mr Deuchar found, 1. That a portion of flame extricated by certain chemical decompositions, may be propelled through the whole of an empty tube, not exceeding 23 inches long; and yet be sufficiently energetic to inflame gunpowder, placed at the distant end of

the tube.

2. That the same flame could pass through even twelve pieces of wire gauze, (containing 1296 meshes in the square inch of gauze). These were fixed at different situations in a tube 15 inches long, and the flame, after passing through them, was seen darting from the bottom of the tube. The flame, when propelled through three pieces of the wire gauze, was still capable of inflaming gunpowder at 15 inches distance.

3. That sometimes the flame could pass through portions (about five grains each) of gun-powder, placed in different parts of a tube 15 inches long, without altering the gunpowder in the least.

4. That the flame passes through one or two pieces of paper without scorching it; leaving the same appearance as if it had been torn, and the slender fibres of the paper on cach side unaltered.

5. That when it passes through one or two pieces of flannel, no change

takes place; but when a third is added, one of the three is slightly scorched.

6. That the flame propelled through a bent tube acts in nearly a similar way, although the distance requires to be somewhat shortened.

The powder which Mr Deuchar had invented, for the purpose of trying a mode of firing ordnance, proposed by Colonel Yule, and which was used in the above experiments, has since been found to suit equally well for fowling-pieces with that of Mr Forsythe, without leaving any residuum at the prime-hole.

In next number we mean to present our readers with some of the conclusions which Mr Deuchar draws from these facts; at the same time, we shall add a cut, representing the apparatus.