Of the pathetic apostrophe to Omai, and, above all, of the description of the Ice Palace of the Empress Catherine, which, for beauty and novelty of fancy, for charm of expression, and moral aptness and grace of application, may be pronounced equal to any passage preserved among the treasures of verse: No forest fell When thou wouldst build; no quarry sent its stores In such a palace Aristaus found Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale In such a palace, poetry might place The Armoury of Winter, where his troops, And snow that often blinds the traveller's course, Silently as a dream the fabric rose. No sound of hammer or of saw was there. Ice upon ice, the well-adjusted parts Were soon conjoined, nor other cement asked Than water interfused to make them one. Gleamed through the clear transparency, that seemed From heaven to earth, of lambent flame serene. So stood the brittle prodigy, though smooth For grandeur or for use. Long wavy wreathes (What seemed, at least, commodious seat) were there, Sofa, and couch, and high-built throne august; And all was moist to the warm touch, a scene And soon to slide into a stream again. Intrinsically precious; to the foot Treacherous and false, it smiled and it was cold. Cowper has been justly called the Poet of the Affections; and he claims with equal emphasis to be regarded as the Poet of Christianity. Religion is not so much the subject, as the embellisher and seasoner of his poetry. "What there is of a religious cast," he wrote to Mr. Unwin, in reference to the Task, "I have thrown towards the end of it, for two reasons; first, that I might not revolt the reader at his entrance; and secondly, that my best impressions might be made last. Were I to write as many poems as Lope de Vega, or Voltaire, not one of them would be without this tincture. If the world like it not, so much the worse for them. I make all the concessions. I can that I may please them, but I will not please them at the expense of conscience." His verses may be viewed as a series of parables framed to inculcate some admirable moral, some point of duty, or some Christian consolation. Nor is it the least curious among the many anomalies of his character, that while he was living in hourly contemplation, to borrow his own metaphor, of the torrent of God's Judgment, and beneath the glare of his Anger,he would nevertheless deliver to the world a message full of the meekness of wisdom, and breathing all the tenderness of the Gospel of Salvation. In becoming the poet of Christianity, Cowper addressed himself especially to the common business of life. He preached to us in our amusements and occupations. Milton, whose imagination was irradiated with all the splendours of prophecy, and all the beauty of the elder literature, often describes the rites of the true worship with a Grecian ceremonial glittering in the distance; Young frequently dazzles our eyes with the blaze of fashion, or the allurements of ambition; but the poetry of Cowper is uniformly reflective, sober, and harmonious. The inspiration which Milton found in the Old Testament, he finds in the New, and instead of the terrible threatenings of Isaiah, or the dark sayings of Ezekiel, he warns and consoles us from the lips of our Saviour, and builds up our lives from the teaching of His Apostles. COL.COLL LIBRARY. N.YORK. JAMES HURDIS. Of this amiable author, the friend and earliest follower of Cowper, a memoir was prefixed by his sister to the edition of his poems published at Oxford, in 1808. He was born at Bishopstone in Sussex, 1763; and by the death of his father was left, with six brothers and sisters, to the care of his mother. To this circumstance much of the tenderness of his character has been attributed. The situation of his surviving parent was full of difficulty, and the young poet laboured diligently to lighten her burden. He was educated at the Grammar School of Chichester, where his mechanical talents were displayed in the construction of an organ. In 1780 he went to Oxford, a commoner of St. Mary Hall, and in two years was chosen a Demy of Magdalen College, where he obtained the approbation and esteem of the President, Dr. Horne, and of his successor, the late learned and venerable Dr. Routh. Having taken his degree, in the May of 1785, he retired to the curacy of Burwash, in his native county, where he remained six years, having invited three of his sisters to reside with him. In the enjoyment of rural and domestic pleasures, he composed the most popular of his poems, the Village Curate; and in 1791, was presented to the living of Bishopstone, and about the same time wrote his tragedy of Sir Thomas More. In the following year he was deprived of his sister Catherine, the Isabel of his poetry, whose virtues he has affectionately recorded. So, Isabel, Internal worth upon thy cheek bestows Village Curate. While suffering under her loss, he was invited to Eartham to meet Cowper, who had expressed a desire for the interview. His spirits were scarcely equal to the visit. "You would admire him much," Cowper wrote to Lady Hesketh; "he is gentle in his manner, and delicate in his person, resembling our poor friend Unwin, both in face and figure, more than any one I have seen, but he has not at least he has not at present-his vivacity." In 1793, he was elected to the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford; and in 1797, he printed at his own Press at Bishopstone, "Lectures showing the several sources of that Pleasure which the human mind receives from Poetry." They consist of passages from the best-known of the English writers, selected with taste, and connected by a few critical and illustrative observations. The Lectures embrace the Lewesdon Hill of Crowe, and the Sonnets of Mr. Bowles, who at the close of the eighteenth century, first delighted the ear of the scholar with those notes to which time has imparted a still sweeter music. The remaining years of Hurdis present no topic of general interest. He continued to amuse his leisure hours with the pleasures of verse, but his constitution had always been weak, and he expired December 13th, 1808, leaving a widow and three children. He was buried, by his own request, at Bishopstone. The Village Curate was suggested by the Task, and in |