Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/313

 9* s. v. APRIL 21, 1900.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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momentary smile. His hostess kindly welcomed him as ' Mr. Cooper.' After tea we walked for a while in the garden. I kept close to his side, and once he addressed me as 'My little master.' I returned to school ; but that variable, expressive, and interesting countenance I did not forget. In after years, standing, as was my wont, before the shop windows of the London booksellers (I have not quite left off this old habit !), reading the title- pages of tomes that I intensely longed, but had not then the money, to purchase, I recognized at a shop ill St. Paul's Churchyard that well-remembered

or his hair, for his age, was unusually luxuriant) was the only thing that puzzled me. To make ' assurance doublv sure,' 1 hastened to the house of a near relation hard by, and I soon learnt that ' Mr. Cooper ' was William Cowper. The welcome present of a few shillings put me in immediate pos- session of the coveted volumes. I will only just add that I read and re-read them ; that the man whom, in my early boyhood, I had so mysteriously reverenced, in my youth I deeply and devotedly admired and loved ! Many, many years have since passed away : but that reverence, that admiration, and that love have experienced neither diminution nor change.

" It was something, said Washington Irving, to have seen even the dust of Shakspeare. It is some- thing too, good Mr. Editor, to have beheld the face and to have heard the voice of Cowper."

On the 5th of March, 1853, MR. WILLIAM BATES, of Birmingham, contributes a note on ' Cowper and Tobacco Smoking,' and gives a letter of Cowper's which had escaped the research of the Rev. T. S.^Grimshawe. The letter had appeared in a little work entitled " Convivialia et Saltatoria, or a Few Thoughts upon Feasting and Dancing, a poem in two parts, &c., by G. Orchestikos : London, printed for the author, 1800," pp. 62. The author, previous to its being printed, had requested Cowper to write to him a letter to place in the volume. The poet, in his reply, wrote :

" I heartily wish success to your muse militant, and that your reward may be many a pleasant pipe supplied by the profits of your labours."

On the 22nd of October, 1853, MR. YEOWELL, in a note on ' Pope and Cowper, 7 states :

" Prefixed to a copy of Hay ley's ' Life and Letters of William Cowper, Esq.,' in the British Museum, is an extract in MS. of a letter from the late Samuel Rose, Esq., to his favourite sister, Miss Harriet Rose, written in the year before his marriage, at the age of twenty-two, and which, I believe, has never been printed."

The letter, which is dated " Weston Lodge, Sept. 9th, 1789," commences :

" Last week Mr. Cowper finished the ' Odyssey,' and we drank an unreluctant bumper to its success.

You will most probably find it at first less

pleasing than Pope's versification, owing to the difference subsisting between blank verse and

rhyme You will find Mr. Pope more refined:

Mr. Cowper more simple, grand, and majestic ; and, indeed, insomuch as Mr. Pope is more refined than Mr. Cowper, he is more refined than his original, and in the same proportion departs from

Homer himself Pope possesses the gentle and

amiable graces of a Guido : Cowper is endowed

with the bold sublime genius of a Raphael I

hope to refute your second assertion, which was, that women, in the opinion of men, have little to do with literature. I may inform you, that the- ' Iliad ' is to be dedicated to Earl Cowper, and the ' Odyssey ' to the Dowager Lady Spencer."

On the 6th of May, 1854, MR. W. P. STORER asks whether the two additional volumes under the title of ' Oowperiana,' promised by Southey in his preface to the last volume of his edition of Cowper, have ever been pub- lished.

J. B. notes on June 21st, 1856, that Bishop Berkeley, in ' Siris,' paragraph 217, forestalls- Cowper's well-known reference to tea :

" The luminous spirit lodged and detained in the native balsam of pines and firs (the bishop's pet ' Tar Water') is of a nature so mild and benign, and proportioned to the human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer, but not inebriate."

The revived interest in Sou they 's edition of Cowper consequent upon Bohn's reprint is the subject of an interesting note by HARVARDI- ENSIS on the 8th of August, 1857, in which he mentions that some thirty years earlier a Philadelphia bookseller of note in his day sent forth in compact octavo reprints several of the most popular English writers, including Cowper. MR. MAITLAND, in reply, on the 22nd, expresses his satisfaction that Cowper and his works are more highly appreciated in America than in his own country :

" It is, indeed, lamentable that the work of bio- graphy and editing should have been undertaken or meddled with by men like Hayley and Southey bookmakers who, whatever pretensions they might have to criticise the poet, were so void of sympathy with the man, that they could not be expected to form a true opinion, or deliver a just view, of his thoughts, language, and circumstances."'

The first edition of Cowper's 'Table-Talk,'

published in one octavo volume in 1782, forms

the subject of a query by JOHN BRUCE on the

1st of January, 1859 ; and on the 22nd, in

j reply to a query by LETHREDIENSIS in refer-


 * ence to Newton's preface to Cowper's poems,


 * he states that it was written at Cowper's

solicitation. It was dated February, 1782 y

and was set up immediately afterwards :

" Johnson, the printer and publisher, paid great attention to Cowper's volume as it was passing- ! through the press, and gave the inexperienced author many valuable hints. When in due time Johnson saw Newton's Preface, he instantly took alarm. Although by no means devoid of interest, and calculated to please Newton's friends, his com- ments were not of a character to attract that larger