SOUTHEY'S COWPER.
THE third volume of SOUTHEY'S edition of COWPER completes the Lfe and commences the Letters. Of the latter it is unnecessary to speak ; they are beyond the need or the power of criticism. Of the former it may now be pronounced with certainty, that not only is it by far the hest Life of Cowena extant, but one of the best biographies ever written. The time of the present volume extends over a period of ten years, (1790 to 1800,) and Wilt the darkest and gloomiest of the poet's career. The delusions which had formerly attacked him only at intervals now began to assume a chronic farm, till they finally settled down in a " moping melancholy," which sometimes rendered hint a mere living automaton, a dreadful spectacle for his friends, and at other times reduced him to a state of despair, still more terrible to himself. The approach of this insidious malady is seen at the opening of the volume, a hen his literary engagement to edit Mu-roN, instead of yielding him the plea- sure he formerly derived from literary occupation, became a source of anwying solicitude; and it is more distinctly visible in his correspoodence with the country schoolmaster TEEnesr, who professed to receive revelations from heaven concerning COWPER'S daily employments and state of mind. The imbe- cility to which Mrs. UNWIN was reduced by age and disease, and the sort of slavery in which she appears to have held him, aggravated the constitutional tendency ; and if his pecuniary prospects were unfelt, it was simply because the circumstances which would have produced his difficulties happily rendered him regardless of their probable coming. Yet amid all this mental darkness, his literary powers were as brilliant as ever. Grant the truth of his matter, and- even his lust gloomy outpourings to Lady HESKETH may compete with any other of his epistles for style. How well the details of this sadly interesting picture of mental hallucination—this intellectual tragedy—are brought before the reader by Dr. SOUTHEY, can only be felt after perusal. It may perhaps be objected by hypercriticism, that some few passages are less like the history of a life than the narrative of a case ; but shat a case, and what a mind ! COWPER himself, however, is not all that the volume contains. Besides some incidental allusions to persons of whom little more than a name remains, there are two excellent notices of HAYLEY and ROMNEY. That of HAYLEY may almost be called a life, so vividly is the character of the man brought out, as well as the principal circumstances of his career, his strange peculiarities, and his literary merits. That of ROMNEY is briefer, but in reading it we seem to have the essence of a quarto volume presented to us in a few pages. Indeed, it may be said without undue panegyric, that Dr. SOUTHEY has not only industry into his work the spirit of all that a careful and taste- ful ndustry could discover respecting COWPER, but that he has also given us the cream of a multifarious reading relative to the time and contemporaries of his hero. Nothing is required to complete his task but an estimate of the poet's genius and a de- tailed criticism of his works; and that will doubtless be supplied hereafter.
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