PREFACE. THIS Volume contains all the original Poems of Cowper, except the Olney Hymns; it includes, also, the translations from Milton, Vincent Bourne, Madame Guyon, and some miscellaneous Authors. The Text has been revised with care. Cowper was extremely watchful in preserving the measure of his verse, particularly distinguishing the dactyle from the spondee; with that view he introduced very frequent elisions, which his later Editors seem, with one consent, to have erased. These are now restored. The punctuation of the Poems presents many difficulties. "I know no use of points," Cowper wrote to Mr. Unwin, "unless to direct the voice;" and his own inclination led him to claim for the author an authority quite independent of the grammarian. A man of fine taste may, indeed, regulate the inflection, the cadence, and the pause by the instinct of his own ear; but the general reader requires some distinctive guides. In the present Volume I have endeavoured to supply them. The number and the length of the Poems prevented me from inserting many critical remarks; but the footnotes are numerous, and will be found, I hope, illustrative of the Poet. The introductory notice of Cowper is designed for a picture-sketch of his life. and genius. St. Catherine's, Bear Wood, October 9, 1854. CONTENTS. PAGR Verses written at Bath, on finding the Heel of a Shoe, in 1748 An Epistle to Robert Lloyd, Esq., 1754 The Fifth Satire of the First Book of Horace. Book V.-The Winter Morning Walk Book VI.-The Winter Walk at Noon An Epistle to Joseph Hill, Esq. In Brevitatem Vitae Spatii Hominibus Concessi Lines composed for a Memorial of Ashley Cowper, Esq. On the Queen's Visit to London, the Night of the 17th March, $73 On a Similar Occasion, for the year 1788 On a Similar Occasion, for the year 1789 On a Similar Occasion, for the year 1790 On a Similar Occasion, for the year 1792 On Mrs. Montagu's Feather Hangings On the Death of Mrs. Throckmorton's Bullfinch 407, 408 408 |