LIFE AND LETTERS

OF

WILLIAM COWPER, Esq.

WITH

REMARKS

ON

EPISTOLARY WRITERS.

BY WILLIAM HAYLEY, Esq.

A NEW EDITION.

"Obversatur oculis ille vir, quo neminem ætas nostra graviorem, sanctio
To, subtiliorem denique tulit: quem ego quum ex admiratione diligere cœpissem,
quod evenire contrà solet, magis admiratus sum, postquam penitus inspexi.
Inspexi enim penitus: nihil a me ille secretum, non joculare, non serium,
non triste, non lætum."

Plinii Epist. Lib. 4, Ep. 17.

VOL. III.

Chichester:

PRINTED BY W. MASON,

FOR J. JOHNSON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD, LONDON.

1809.

BOOL LIBR -9 FEB 1846

OXFORD

THE

LIFE OF COWPER.

THE visit of Lady Hesketh, to Olney, led to a very favorable change in the residence of Cowper. He had now passed nineteen years in a scene, that was far from suiting him. The house, he inhabited, looked on a market place, and once, in a season of illness, he was so apprehensive of being incommoded by the bustle of a fair, that he requested to lodge, for a single night, under the roof of his friend Mr. Newton; and he was tempted by the more comfortable situation of the vicarage, to remain fourteen months in the house of his benevolent neighbour. His intimacy with this venerable divine was so great, that Mr. Newton has described it in the following remarkable