To Burns he
felt his affinity, across a gulf of social circumstance, and in spite
of a dialect not yet made fashionable by Scott. Besides his poetry, he
holds a high, perhaps the highest place, among English letter writers:
and the collection of his letters appended to Southey's biography
forms, with the biographical portions of his poetry, the materials for
a sketch of his life. Southey's biography itself is very helpful,
though too prolix and too much filled out with dissertations for common
readers. Had its author only done for Cowper what he did for Nelson!
[Our acknowledgments are also due to Mr. Benham, the writer of the
Memoir prefixed to the Globe Edition of Cowper.]
William Cowper came of the Whig nobility of the robe. His great-uncle,
after whom he was named, was the Whig Lord Chancellor of Anne and
George I. His grandfather was that Spencer Cowper, judge of the Common
Pleas, for love of whom the pretty Quakeress drowned herself, and who,
by the rancour of party, was indicted for her murder.
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