10. +Poets.+-- The chief poets of the latter half of the eighteenth century belong to a new world, and show very little trace in their writings of eighteenth-century culture, ideas, or prejudices. Most of the best poets who were born in this half of the eighteenth century and began to write in it-- such as Crabbe and Wordsworth-- are true denizens, in the character of their minds and feelings, of the nineteenth. The greatest poets of the period are +Cowper+, +Crabbe+, and +Burns+; and along with these may be mentioned as little inferior, +Chatterton+ and +Blake+, two of the most original poets that have appeared in any literature. 11. WILLIAM COWPER (+1731-1800+), one of the truest, purest, and sweetest of English poets, was born at Great Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, in 1731. His father, Dr Cowper, who was a nephew of Lord Chancellor Cowper, was rector of the parish, and chaplain to George II. Young Cowper was educated at Westminster School; and “the great proconsul of India,” Warren Hastings, was one of his schoolfellows. After leaving Westminster, he was entered of the Middle Temple, and was also articled to a solicitor. At the age of thirty-one he was appointed one of the Clerks to the House of Lords; but he was so terribly nervous and timid, that he threw up the appointment. He was next appointed Clerk of the Journals-- a post which even the shyest man might hold; but, when he found that he would have to appear at the bar of the House of Lords, he went home and attempted to commit suicide. When at school, he had been terribly and persistently bullied; and, about this time, his mind had been somewhat affected by a disappointment in love. The form of his insanity was melancholia; and he had several long and severe attacks of the same disease in the after-course of his life. He had to be placed in the keeping of a physician; and it was only after fifteen months’ seclusion that he was able to face the world. Giving up all idea of professional or of public life, he went to live at Huntingdon with the Unwins; and, after the death of Mr Unwin, he removed with Mrs Unwin to Olney, in Buckinghamshire. Here, in 1773, another attack of melancholia came upon him. In 1779, Cowper joined with Mr Newton, the curate of the parish, in publishing the +Olney Hymns+, of which he wrote sixty-eight. But it was not till he was past fifty years of age that he betook himself seriously to the writing of poetry. His first volume, which contained +Table-Talk+, +Conversation+, +Retirement+, and other poems in heroic metre, appeared in 1782. His second volume, which included +The Task+ and +John Gilpin+, was published in 1785. His translation of the +Iliad+ and +Odyssey+ of Homer-- a translation into blank verse, which he wrote at the regular rate of forty lines a-day-- was published in 1791. Mrs Unwin now had a shock of paralysis; Cowper himself was again seized with mental illness; and from 1791 till his death in 1800, his