eatest works of art of their kind that have appeared in English. Had he
written his letters for money we should have praised him as one of the
busiest and most devoted of authors, and never have thought of blaming him
for abstaining from statesmanship as he did from wine. Possibly he had the
constitution for neither. His genius was a genius, not of Westminster, but
of Strawberry Hill. It is in Strawberry Hill that one finally prefers to
see him framed, an extraordinarily likeable, charming, and whimsical
figure. He himself has suggested his kingdom entrancingly for us in a
letter describing his return to Strawberry after a visit to Paris in 1769:

I feel myself here like a swan, that after living six weeks in a
nasty pool upon a common, is got back into its own Thames. I do
nothing but plume and clean myself, and enjoy the verdure and
silent waves. Neatness and greenth are so essential in my opinion
to the country, that in France, where I see nothing but chalk and
dirty peasants, I seem in a terrestrial purgatory that is neither
town or country. The face of England is so beautiful, that I do not
believe Tempe or Arcadia were half so rural; for both lying in hot
climates, must have wanted the turf of our lawns. It is unfortunate
to have so pastoral a taste, when I want a cane more than a crook.
We are absurd creatures; at twenty I loved nothing but London.

Back in Strawberry Hill, he is the Prince Charming among correspondents.
One cannot love him as one loves Charles Lamb and men of a deeper and more
imaginative tenderness. But how incomparable he is as an acquaintance! How
exquisite a specimen--hand-painted--for the collector of the choice
creatures of the human race!

VI.--WILLIAM COWPER

Cowper has the charm of littleness. His life and genius were on the
miniature scale, though his tragedy was a burden for Atlas. He left
several pictures of himself in his letters, all of which make one see him
as a veritable Tom Thumb among Christians. He wrote, he tells us, at
Olney, in "a summerhouse not much bigger than a sedan-chair." At an
earlier date, when he was living at Huntingdon, he compared himself to "a
Thames wherry in a world full of tempest and commotion," and congratulated
himself on "the creek I have put into and the snugness it affords me." His
very clothes suggested that he was the inhabitant of a plaything world.
"Green and buff," he declared, "are colours i