William Cowper was born at the rectory of Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, Nov. 26, 1731. He was nearly related to the noble family of that name, his great-uncle having been chancellor and first Earl Cowper: his grandfather, the brother of the chancellor, was a judge of the common pleas. Cowper’s mother died before he was six years old. Soon afterwards he was sent to a country school, from which, at the age of nine, he was removed to Westminster. It is probable that one cause among others of his future unhappiness was the early loss of that tender parent, whose “constant flow of love,” beautifully acknowledged in his verses on receiving her picture, and in many parts of his correspondence, made a deep and lasting impression on his infant mind. Cowper was exactly the boy to require a mother’s care. His constitution was delicate, his mind sensitive and timid; and he discovered a tendency to dejection, which was aggravated by the tyranny then practised at our public schools. Quitting Westminster at eighteen, with a good character for talent and scholarship, he went at once into an attorney’s office; where he spent three years, according to his own account, with very little profit. He then became a member of the Inner Temple, intending to practise at the bar. At this period of life he amused himself with composition, and showed a strong predilection for polite literature and agreeable society; but he had no taste for the law, and took no pains to qualify himself for his profession. Long afterwards he deeply lamented the loss of time during his early manhood, and earnestly warned his young friends against a similar error. In 1763 Cowper was appointed to the lucrative office of reading clerk, and clerk of the private committees of the House of Lords. The fairest prospect of happiness now lay before him, for his union with one of his cousins, it is said, had only been deferred until he should obtain a satisfactory establishment. But the idea of reading in public was intolerable to him; and he gave up this office for the less valuable one of clerk of the journals, in which it was hoped that his personal appearance before the House would not be required. Unfortunately it did prove necessary that he should appear at the bar to qualify himself for the post. “They whose spirits are formed like mine,” he thus expressed himself in after-life, “to whom a public exhibition of themselves is mortal poison, may have some ideas of the horrors of my situation: others can have none.” He fought hard against this morbid feeling; but, when the day arrived for entering upon his duties, such was his terror and distress, that even his friends acquiesced in his abandoning the attempt. But his mind had been disordered in the struggle, and he shortly sank into deep religious despondency; so that it was found necessary, in December, 1763, to place him in a lunatic asylum at St. Albans, under the care of Dr. Cotton.