English portraits Author:Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 'i WILLIAM COWPER. HIIE life of this original poet, at once serious and charming, is most exceptional, being wholly simple outwardly and strewn inwardly with ... more »obstacles and precipices ; he traversed a very roundabout road, far remote from ordinary paths, and one he would not recommend to anybody, in order to compose his works which are so moral and so attractive. We now possess all desirable explanations respecting him. Southey, a poet and a critie, published an ample biography of Cowper in 1835 by way of introduction to an edition of his works ; the whole is now reprinted. This edition of Cowper and this biography by Southey and, moreover, the edition furnished by the Rev. Mr. Grimshawe (1850) supply the materials for a complete study, or, to speak more correctly, this study has been already made by Southey himself ; but Cowper's Correspondence, which rivals in merit and in thought his poetical works, and which is still more natural and far more graceful, presents a kind of reading in which every one can choose matter for reflection and favourite passages. William Cowper, born on the 20th of November 1731, belonged to a most honourable family which, indeed, had produced distinguished members. His father was a clergyman of the Church of England and Rector of Berkhamstead when William came into the world there. His mother Anna Donne, of noble birth, died young in 1737 leaving two sons ; William was then pnly six years old, but he retained a keen and profound recollection of the early period of his infancy and of his mother's tenderness, which was the more deeply engraven on his heart by the very different treatment he underwent on the morrow of her death ; he has embalmed this recollection, after an interval of more than fifty years, in verses composed by him on receiving his ...« less