The wise man will not trouble the biographers. He will make for himself a short list of dates, so that he may know where he is at any particular time, and then, poking the fire and (his author notwithstanding) lighting his pipe-- 'Oh, pernicious weed, whose scent the fair annoys--' he will read Cowper's letters. There are five volumes of them in Southey's edition. It would be to exaggerate to say you wish there were fifty, but you are, at all events, well content there should be five. In the course of them Cowper will tell you the story of his own life, as it ought to be told, as it alone can be told, in the purest of English and with the sweetest of smiles. For a combination of delightful qualities, Cowper's letters have no rivals. They are playful, witty, loving, sensible, ironical, and, above all, as easy as an old shoe. So easy, indeed, that after you have read half a volume or so, you begin to think their merits have been exaggerated, and that anybody could write letters as good as Cowper's. Even so the man who never played billiards, and who sees Mr. Roberts play that game, might hastily opine that he, too, could go and do likewise. To form anything like a fair estimate of Cowper, it is wise to ignore as much as possible his mental disease, and always to bear in mind the manner of man he naturally was. He belonged essentially to the order of wags. He was, it is easy to see, a lover of trifling things, elegantly finished. He hated noise, contention, and the public gaze, but society he ever insisted upon. 'I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd, How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! But grant me still a friend in my retreat, Whom I may whisper--"solitude is sweet."' He loved a jest, a barrel of oysters, and a bottle of wine. His well-known riddle on a kiss is Cowper from top to toe: 'I am just two and two; I am warm, I am cold, And the parent of numbers that cannot be told. I am lawful, unlawful, a duty, a fault, I am often sold dear, good for nothing when bought, An extraordinary boon, and a matter of course, And yielded with pleasure when taken by force.' Why, it is a perfect dictionary of kisses in six lines! Had Cowper not gone mad in his thirty-second year, and been frightened out of the world of trifles, we should have had another Prior, a wittier Gay, an earlier Praed, an English La Fontaine. We do better with _The Task_ and the _Lines to Mary_, but he had a light touch. ''Tis not that I design to rob Thee of thy birthright, gentle Bob, For thou art born sole heir and single Of dear Mat Prior's easy jingle. Not that I mean while thus I knit My threadbare sentiments together, To show my genius or my wit, When God and you know I have neither, Or such as might be better shown By letting poetry alone.'