translated the Iliad, with a high degree of success. He wrote a number of hymns, that are highly prized as aids to Christian worship. He died in 1800, having survived by two years his faithful friend and guardian, Mary Unwin.

Characterization

The nature of Cowper's works makes us peculiarly identify the poet and the man in perusing them. As an individual, he was retired and weaned from the vanities of the world; and as an original writer, he left the ambitious and luxuriant subjects of fiction and passion for those of real life and simple nature, and for the development of his own earnest feelings in behalf of moral and religious truth.

His language has such a masculine, idiomatic strength, and his manner, whether he rises into grace or falls into negligence, has so much plain and familiar freedom, that we read no poetry with a deeper conviction of its sentiments having come from the author's heart; and of the enthusiasm, in whatever he describes, having been unfeigned and unexaggerated. He impresses us with the idea of a being whose fine spirit had been long enough in the mixed society of the world to be polished by its intercourse, and yet withdrawn so soon as to retain an unworldly degree of purity and simplicity. THOMAS CAMPBELL.

Tirocinium, a Latin word, signifies the first military service, or the first campaign, of a young soldier. Cowper's "Tirocinium" is perhaps the most powerful arraignment of schools that has ever been made in any nation or age. Cowper's preface to a book of his poems refers to the "Tirocinium" in the following words: "In the poem on the subject of education, he [the author] would be very sorry to stand suspected of having aimed his censure at any particular school. His objections are such as naturally apply themselves to schools in general. If there were not, as for the most part there is, willful neglect in those who manage them, and an omission even of such discipline as they are susceptible of, the objects are yet too numerous for minute attention; and the aching hearts of ten thousand parents, mourning under the bitterest of disappointments, attest the truth of the allegation. His quarrel, therefore, is with the mischief at large, and not with any particular instance of it." Though written by the greatest English poet of his time, and by one of the most truthful of men, the descriptions are probably exaggerated as applied even to the schools of Cowper's time. Moreover, the remedy he proposes the general substitution of private instruction for that of schools-is fallacious, and contrary to our ideas of public policy. The poem serves a valuable purpose, however, as a warning to all who have in charge the training of youth.

Tirocinium; or, a Review of Schools

1785

To the Rev. William Cawthorne Unwin, rector of Stock in Essex, the tutor of his two sons, the following poem recommending private tuition in preference to an education at school, is inscribed by his affectionate friend. WILLIAM COWPER.

OLNEY, November 6th, 1784.

It is not from his form, in which we trace
Strength join'd with beauty, dignity with grace,
That man, the master of this globe, derives
His right of empire over all that lives.
That form, indeed, the associate of a mind
Vast in its powers, ethereal in its kind,
That form, the labor of Almighty skill,
Framed for the service of a freeborn will,
Asserts precedence, and bespeaks control,
But borrows all its grandeur from the soul.
Hers is the state, the splendor and the throne,
An intellectual kingdom, all her own.

For her, the memory fills her ample page
With truths pour'd down from every distant age,
For her amasses an unbounded store,

The wisdom of great nations now no more,
Though laden, not encumber'd with her spoil,
Laborious, yet unconscious of her toil,
When copiously supplied then most enlarged,
Still to be fed, and not to be surcharged.
For her, the fancy, roving unconfined,
The present Muse of every pensive mind,
Works magic wonders, adds a brighter hue
To nature's scenes than nature ever knew;
At her command winds rise and waters roar;
Again she lays them slumbering on the shore;
With flower and fruit the wilderness supplies,
Or bids the rocks in ruder pomp arise.

For her, the judgment, umpire in the strife
That grace and nature have to wage through life,
Quick-sighted arbiter of good and ill,
Appointed sage preceptor to the will,

Condemns, approves, and, with a faithful voice,
Guides the decision of a doubtful choice.

Why did the fiat of a God give birth To yon fair Sun and his attendant Earth? And when, descending, he resigns the skies, Why takes the gentler Moon her turn to rise, Whom Ocean feels, through all his countless waves, And owns her power on every shore he laves? Why do the seasons still enrich the year, Fruitful and young as in their first career? Spring hangs her infant blossoms on the trees, Rocked in the cradle of the western breeze; Summer in haste the thriving charge receives, Beneath the shade of her expanded leaves, Till Autumn's fiercer heats and plenteous dews Dye them at last in all their glowing hues.—

'Twere wild profusion all, and bootless waste, Power misemployed, munificence misplaced,

Had not its Author dignified the plan,

And crowned it with the majesty of man.

Thus formed, thus placed, intelligent and taught, Look where he will, the wonders God has wrought, The wildest scorner of his Maker's laws

Finds in a sober moment time to pause,

To press the important question on his heart, "Why form'd at all, and wherefore as thou art?"

If man be what he seems, this hour a slave, The next, mere dust and ashes in the grave;

Endued with reason only to descry

His crimes and follies with an aching eye;
With passions, just that he may prove, with pain,
The force he spends against their fury vain;
And if, soon after having burned, by turns,
With every lust with which frail Nature burns,
His being end where death dissolves the bond,
The tomb take all, and all be blank beyond;
Then he, of all that Nature has brought forth,
Stands self-impeached the creature of least worth,
And useless while he lives, and when he dies,
Brings into doubt the wisdom of the skies.

Truths that the learned pursue with eager thought
Are not important always as dear-bought,
Proving at last, though told in pompous strains,
A childish waste of philosophic pains;

But truths on which depend our main concern,
That 'tis our shame and misery not to learn,
Shine by the side of every path we tread
With such a lustre, he that runs may read.
"Tis true, that if to trifle life away

Down to the sunset of their latest day,
Then perish on futurity's wide shore
Like fleeting exhalations, found no more,

Were all that Heaven required of human kind,

And all the plan their destiny designed,

What none could reverence all might justly blame, And man would breathe but for his Maker's shame.

But reason heard, and nature well perused,

At once the dreaming mind is disabused.
If all we find possessing earth, sea, air,
Reflect his attributes who placed them there,
Fulfil the purpose, and appear design'd
Proofs of the wisdom of the all-seeing Mind,

'Tis plain, the creature whom he chose to invest
With kingship and dominion o'er the rest,
Received his nobler nature, and was made
Fit for the power in which he stands array'd,
That, first or last, hereafter, if not here,
He too might make his Author's wisdom clear,
Praise him on earth or, obstinately dumb,
Suffer his justice in a world to come.

This once believed, 'twere logic misapplied
Το prove a consequence by none denied,
That we are bound to cast the minds of youth
Betimes into the mould of heavenly truth,
That taught of God they may indeed be wise,
Nor, ignorantly wandering, miss the skies.

In early days the conscience has, in most,
A quickness, which in later life is lost.
Preserved from guilt by salutary fears,
Or, guilty, soon relenting into tears.
Too careless, often, as our years proceed,

What friends we sort with, or what books we read,

Our parents yet exert a prudent care

To feed our infant minds with proper fare,

And wisely store the nursery by degrees

With wholesome learning, yet acquired with ease.
Neatly secured from being soiled or torn
Beneath a pane of thin translucent horn,
A book (to please us at a tender age
'Tis called a book, though but a single page)
Presents the prayer the Savior deigned to teach,
Which children use, and parsons-when they preach.
Lisping our syllables, we scramble next

Through moral narrative, or sacred text,

And learn with wonder how this world began,

Who made, who marred, and who has ransomed man;