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On August 3, 1782, he writes to Unwin: "Mr. Bull, a dissenting minister of Newport, a learned, ingenious, good-natured, pious friend of ours, has put into my hands three volumes of French poetry composed by Madame Guyon ;-a quietist, say you, and a fanatic, I will have nothing to do with her. It is very well, you are welcome to have nothing to do with her, but in the meantime her verse is the only French verse I ever read that I found agreeable: there is a neatness in it equal to that which we applaud with so much reason in the compositions of Prior. . . . Mr. Bull is her passionate admirer, rode twenty miles to see her picture in the house of a stranger, which stranger politely insisted on his acceptance of it and it now hangs over his parlour chimney. It is a striking portrait, too characteristic not to be a strong resemblance, and were it accompanied with a glory instead of being dressed in a nun's hood might pass for the face of an angel." In another letter (undated, Wright, ii. 19) he writes that "the strain of simple and unaffected piety in the original is sweet beyond expression," and on August 3, 1783, he wrote a letter to Bull, quoted by Bull in his Preface, in which he says: "I have but little leisure, strange as it may seem that little I devoted for a month after your departure to the translation of Madame Guyon. I have made fair copies of all the pieces I have produced upon this last occasion, and will put them into your hands when we meet. They are yours, to serve you as you please; you may take and leave as you like, for my purpose is already served. They have amused me, and I have no further demands upon them."

Jeanne Marie Guyon, daughter of Claude Bouvier de la Motte, was born in 1648, married Jacques Guyon in 1664, and died in 1717. After her husband's death in 1676 she felt herself called to a special religious mission. She obtained the friendship of Madame de Maintenon, and of Fénelon, but her doctrines were condemned, and she was imprisoned in the Bastille in 1695, where she remained, except for a short period of release, till 1702, and where she wrote her religious poems. The rest of her life was spent in a retirement devoted to religious exercises.

Among the Ash MSS. are copies in the poet's handwriting of all the translations from Madame Guyon, except "The Acquiescence of Pure Love" on p. 529, and the short piece, "Living Water" on p. 523. They vary, in some cases very considerably, from the text printed by Bull. But, though their versions are sometimes preferable to the printed text, there is no evidence that Cowper ever returned to the work of translating Madame Guyon after he had once handed over his fair copies to Bull. Indeed if he had made any further revision, Bull would have been the first to know it, and, as we have seen, Bull says he never revised the translation. It must therefore be assumed that the MSS. in the possession of Mr. Ash give us the translations as they stood before the poet made the fair copy of which he speaks in the letter of August 3, 1783. And this conclusion is confirmed by the fact that the MSS. exhibit frequent erasures, and the version erased is not that printed by Bull, while the correction

P. 549, 1. 10.

P. 549, 1. 20.

P. 549, 1. 36.

"Was become my sole employ" MS.

"Seemed to watch no heart beside" MS.

"Passes all his sins beside" MS.

P. 551. Scenes Favourable, etc. :-There is a MS. of this poem in the British Museum (Add. MSS., 24,155, fol. 148). In the notes below BM. refers to this MS., Ash to the Ash MS.

P. 551, 1. 27.

P. 552, 1. 2. P. 552, 1. 6. 1801 edition, is

"Here freely contemplate" BM.

“Love wastes me and wears me away" BM.

“My sorrows are safely rehearsed," the reading of Bull's plainly right, though many of the editors have followed the edition of 1806 in giving “sadly” instead of "safely.” "Whether owing to sorrow or joy" Ash.

P. 552, 1. 20.

P. 552, 1. 21.

“I am weak, there is nothing I seem to discern" Ash. "I live and yet seem" BM.

66

P. 552, 1. 25. P. 552, 1. 35. P. 553. The translations of Milton's Latin and Italian verses were undertaken in connection with the edition of Milton which Cowper was to have done for Johnson the publisher. It was to be a sort of rival to Boydell's Shakespeare. The only part of the work which was completed, except a few notes, was the English rendering of these poems, which was made during the winter and spring of 1791-2, and revised with Hayley during Cowper's visit to Eartham in the summer of 1792. The translations were left unpublished by Cowper and were first printed by Hayley at Chichester in 1808, in a volume entitled Latin and Italian Poems of Milton translated into English verse, by the late William Cowper, Esq. The book is a beautiful quarto, with designs by Flaxman. It contains the translations, then the Latin and Italian originals; then Cowper's commentary on Paradise Lost, intended for the edition which was never accomplished; and finally notes on the Latin and Italian poems by Cowper and Hayley, as well as some taken from the editions of Todd and Warton.

For where among all I have left” Ash.

The MS. of the translations is in the British Museum (Add. MSS., 30,801). I have carefully collated it throughout, and record below the instances in which the printed text varies from it. It gives four renderings which Hayley did not print; two of the epigrams on Morus and Salmasius ("Galli ex concubitu" and "gaudete scombri") which one may feel sure neither Milton nor Cowper would wish to see reprinted; and twe of a couple of small Greek pieces by Milton which I have inserted at the end of the translations from the Latin poems, on p. 596.

The MS. is in Cowper's hand, with many corrections in Hayley's hand, many of these being again corrected by Cowper. In a good many of the cases in which Hayley's correction has been allowed to stand it appears to me markedly inferior to Cowper's original rendering. For instance, the original in p. 556, 1. 13, was :

"They suit not me these bare unshadowed plains,
Ah, how unfriendly to the poet's pains,"

which is certainly not improved by being altered into:"Nor aught of pleasure in these fields have I That to the musing bard all shade deny.”

And in p. 561, 1. 19, Hayley's

"My friend and favourite inmate of my heart
That now is forced to want its better part,”

is no improvement on Cowper's

"My friend, my other self—alas, my heart—
How is it forced to want its better part."

And Cowper's original rendering of p. 564, 1. 33:

"Night creeps not now, but runs a shorter race
Athwart the pole, and with a swifter pace,"

is free from the obscurity of Hayley's printed version :

"Night creeps not now, yet rules with gentle sway
And drives her dusky horrors swift away."

These, and other cases, might have tempted me to restore Cowper's original rendering throughout, but for the fact that in an immense number of cases Cowper has struck out Hayley's corrections and made a final translation himself. For instance, the text as printed by Hayley 1808, which is that followed in the later editions, is in all the following cases, as well as many others, that substituted by Cowper for Hayley's version: P. 555, ll. 35, 36; p. 558, 11. 94, 95; p. 563, 11. 89, 90; p. 563, 11. 93, 94; p. 563, 11. 99-102, 121, 122; p. 564, ll. 47, 48; p. 565, 11. 55-57; p. 567, 11. 25-35; p. 568, 11. 49-52; p. 568, 11. 77, 78; p. 581, 1. 99; p. 582, 11. 121-123; p. 584, ll. 17-23; p. 585, 11. 33-36; p. 585, 11. 52-55; p. 587, 11. 8-10; p. 590, 11. 175-178.

These numerous final corrections by Cowper, followed in all cases by Hayley when he printed the translations, must be allowed to give Cowper's authority to the whole. However inferior, therefore, Hayley's corrections, have appeared to me to be to Cowper's first renderings, where Cowper left them, I have left them, except in one case, p. 596, on which a special note is given. It is true that John Johnson, in a letter written from Weston to his sister in 1792 or 1793 (Letters of Lady Hesketh concerning William Cowper, p. 22) speaks with great indignation of Hayley's alterations, and justly objects to the substitution of Hayley's "flimsy tinsel lines" for "the bold and forcible language of our dear Bard." But it is evident from what he says that the text as he saw it at that time had not received Cowper's final corrections, for he says nothing of them and implies that all Hayley's alterations stood untouched, and that he accordingly had reluctantly to insert them in the fair copy he was making for the press. But this fair copy, if, as is probable, it is that in the Museum to be mentioned presently, was made before Cowper revised the translations. And the fact that John Johnson when he reprinted the translations in 1815, followed the text as given by Hayley in 1808, seems to show that he, who is almost certain to have known the truth, believed that Hayley had printed the

"Chloris too came " printed text.

P. 589, 1. 127. P. 596. These two translations, The Philosopher and the King, and On the Engraver of his Portrait, are printed here for the first time. After Milton's lines to his father, there are-printed among his Latin poems— three pieces in Greek verse, a rendering of Psalm cxiv., and these two pieces. In the corresponding MS. of Cowper at the British Museum (Add. MSS., 30,801, fol. 61, 62), I find that he did not translate the Psalm, saying it needed no translation, but that he made these renderings of the other two Greek pieces. Why Hayley did not include them, when he published all the others except two rather objectionable epigrams, it is now impossible to say. In the case of the Epigram on the Engraver of his Portrait, I have ventured to prefer the translation as Cowper originally wrote it to Hayley's free correction, which is as follows:

"Survey my features: you will own it clear

That little skill has been exerted here;

My friends who know me not here smile to see
How ill the model and the work agree."

The fact that Hayley printed no translation of the epigram in the 1808 edition would have tempted me to think that his correction in this case was made later than in others, and that, as it had not received Cowper's approval, he did not think it right to print it. But the fair copy bound up with the original at the Museum, part of which is in John Johnson's hand, here gives Hayley's rendering though in many other cases it does not give the latest corrections, even Cowper's own. Hayley's version, therefore, was probably made when the others were made, and may have been approved by Cowper. Or Cowper may have decided to omit the translation altogether, and therefore took no trouble to revise it.

P. 600. Translations from Vincent Bourne :-For Vincent Bourne see note to p. 231.

P. 600. On the Picture of a Sleeping Child :-This piece was first published in Croft's Early Poems, 1825, and has generally been placed with the other poems coming from that volume. But it seems more convenient to print it with the other translations from Bourne.

P. 612. The Cantab :-A MS. of this in the poet's hand is in the British Museum (Add. MSS., 24,154, ii. 150). In the third line it omits the word "for"; in the fourth it gives "Part paid into hand"; in the tenth, "is barked at and laughed at”; and in the fifteenth, "gentleman" instead of "gentlemen."

Here, as elsewhere, the explanation no doubt is that Cowper made several versions with small variations.

P. 614, 1. 22. Verses to the Memory of Dr. Lloyd :-"Etsi superbum nec vivo tibi." The line is a foot too long, and there does not appear to be any way of putting the metre right, such as I have suggested in the case of the unmetrical line in the Montes Glaciales. The lines are said by

Southey to have been written by Dr. Vincent, afterwards Headmaster of Westminster, so that the mistake, whatever it is, must probably have come not from the author of the Latin lines, but from Cowper, or Hayley, or the printer.

Dr. Lloyd was, for fifty years, undermaster at Westminster School. There is a different version of Cowper's translation among the MSS. at the British Museum (Add. MSS., 24,155, fol. 132). It is as follows:

"Th' old man, our amiable old man is gone,
Second in harmless pleasantry to none.
Ye, once his pupils, who with reverence just
Viewed him, as all that were his pupils must,
Whether, his health yet firm, he gently strove
To rear and form you with a parent's love,
Or worn with age, and pleased to be at large,
He came still mindful of his former charge,
To smile on this glad circle every year,
And charm you with his humour, drop a tear.
Simplicity graced all his blameless life,
And he was kind, and gentle, hating strife.
Content was the best wealth he ever shared,
Though all men paid him love and One reward.
Ye titles! we have here no need of you
Go, give the great ones their Eulogiums due,
If Fortune more on others chose to shine,
'Twas not in him to murmur or repine.
Placid old man! the turf upon thy breast,

May it lie lightly, sacred be thy rest,

Though living, thou hadst none thy fame to spread,

Nor even a stone to chronicle thee, dead."

:

P. 617. These two translations, of the fifth and ninth satires of Horace's first book, were originally published in the second volume of John Duncombe's Works of Horace in English Verse. By Several Hands, 1759. The first is headed "By William Cowper, Esq." and the second (Satire ix.) "By W. C. Esq."

P. 625. Virgil's Aeneid, Book VIII. :-This was first printed by John Johnson in his edition of 1815. Among the papers at Welborne there is a letter from one of the poet's Cowper cousins to Johnson urging him to print it and also the translation from Ovid.

P. 630, 1. 203. "In this old solemn feasting" has crept into several editions, as the Aldine and the Globe, but "our," the reading of Johnson's 1815 edition where the translation was first printed, is certainly right. There is nothing in the Latin to demand "old"; "our" is the rendering of "nobis."