commencement of his malady. To watch over him in this melancholy Lady Hesketh made Weston her constant, instead of her occasional abode, until the middle of the following year, when her health gave way under the constant pressure of anxiety. Mr. Johnson, who had taken orders, and resided at East Dereham in Norfolk, then undertook the charge of his unhappy relation; removed him and Mrs. Unwin into his own neighbourhood, and watched over their decline with the most unwearied and judicious tenderness. But little could now be done to give Cowper pleasure. The pathetic poem, “To Mary,” is supposed by Mr. Hayley to have been the last thing written by him before quitting Weston; and the only original verses which he composed afterwards were some Latin lines, which he translated into English, on the appearance of some ice islands in the German Sea, and the touching poem called the “Cast-away,” founded on the loss of a man overboard in Anson’s voyage, and alluding in an affecting strain to his own unfortunate condition. After his departure from Weston, he who had been so diligent a correspondent only wrote three or four letters; nor could he be excited to converse by the visits even of his most intimate friends, as Mr. Rose and Sir John Throckmorton. In January, 1800, his final illness, which was dropsy, commenced. He died April 25th in the same year; nor to the last did one gleam of hope break through the darkness which had surrounded him for twenty-seven years. It was Cowper’s especial merit as a poet to cultivate simplicity and nature. He set the example of throwing aside conventional affectations and unmeaning pomp of diction, and in consideration of this great service may well be pardoned for occasionally incurring the opposite fault of being tame and prosaic. His genius was truly original: all his writings, whether moral, satirical, or descriptive, bear the legible impress of his own peculiar constitution of mind and habits of thinking. His minor and occasional poems are very happy, for his imagination could extract a deep and beautiful moral from slight occurrences, which commonly pass unnoticed in the bustle of life. Many of his letters are published in Hayley’s Life of Cowper; and these are embodied with the Private Correspondence afterwards given to the world by Mr. Johnson, in the edition of Cowper’s works by Mr. Grimshawe now in the press. As a letter writer Cowper appears to us to be unequalled in the English language. His correspondence is the genuine intercourse of friend with friend; full of wit and humour, but a humour that never vents itself in the depreciation of others; and abounding in passages of graver beauty, expressed in the most easy, yet elegant and correct language. When once a man knows that his letters are admired, he is in great danger of writing for admiration. Cowper was aware of this, and occasionally alludes to the temptation in lively terms. “I love praise dearly,