His fellow-clerk in
the office, and his accomplice in giggling and making giggle, was one
strangely mated with him; the strong, aspiring, and unscrupulous
Thurlow, who though fond of pleasure was at the same time preparing
himself to push his way to wealth and power. Cowper felt that Thurlow
would reach the summit of ambition, while he would himself remain
below, and made his friend promise when he was Chancellor to give him
something. When Thurlow was Chancellor, he gave Cowper his advice on
translating Homer.
At the end of his three years with the attorney, Cowper took chambers
in the Middle, from which he afterwards removed to the Inner Temple.
The Temple is now a pile of law offices. In those days it was still a
Society. One of Cowper's set says of it: "The Temple is the barrier
that divides the City and suburbs; and the gentlemen who reside there
seem influenced by the situation of the place they inhabit. Templars
are in general a kind of citizen courtiers. They aim at the air and
the mien of the drawing-room, but the holy-day smoothness of a
'prentice, heightened with some additional touches of the rake or
coxcomb, betrays itself in everything they do.
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