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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text
Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1911 Excerpt: ... NOTES WILLIAM COWPER William Cowper was born at Great Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, England, in 1731. He was educated first at a private school and afterwards at Westminster in London. He studied law, but his progress in the profession was blocked because of an attack of insanity brought on in 1763 by nervousness over an oral examination for a clerkship in the House of Commons. After fifteen months he recovered and went to live at Huntingdon, where he met the Unwin family and began what was to be a lifelong friendship with Mrs. Unwin. Upon Mr. Unwin''s death in 1767, Cowper moved with Mrs. Unwin to Olney, passing a secluded life there until 1786. In 1773 he suffered a second attack of melancholia, which lasted sixteen months. Soon after his recovery he cooperated with the Rev. John Newton in writing the well-known Olney Hymns (1779). In 1782 he published his first volume of poems, and a second volume followed in 1785, containing The Task, Tirocinium, and the ballad of John Gilpin. A translation of Homer was completed in 1791. After 1791 his reason became hopelessly deranged, and he passed the time until his death in 1800 in utter misery. Cowper was a man of kind and gentle character, a lover of nature in her milder aspects, and especially fond of animals. As one of the forerunners of the so-called Romantic movement in English poetry, his name is significant. Though at his best in work of a descriptive or satiric kind, he was also gifted with a subtle humor which appears frequently in many short R 241 tales and ballads. A good biography of Cowper is that by Goldwin Smith in the English Men of Letters Series. The Diverting History Of John Gilpin (Page 1) The story of John Gilpin was told to Cowper by his friend, Lady Austen, who had heard it when a child. The p...
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