Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 - Various - Страница 3

In Cowper's letter to Lady Hesketh, dated January 18, 1787, occurs a notice for the first time of Mr. Samuel Rose, with whom Cowper subsequently corresponded. He informs Lady Hesketh that—

"A young gentleman called here yesterday, who came six miles out of his way to see me. He was on a journey to London from Glasgow, having just left the University there. He came, I suppose, partly to satisfy his own curiosity, but chiefly, as it seemed, to bring me the thanks of some of the Scotch professors for my two volumes. His name is Rose, an Englishman."

Prefixed to a copy of Hayley's Life and Letters of William Cowper, Esq., in the British Museum, is an extract in MS. of a letter from the late Samuel Rose, Esq., to his favourite sister, Miss Harriet Rose, written in the year before his marriage, at the age of twenty-two, and which, I believe, has never been printed. It may, perhaps, merit a corner of "N. & Q."

"Weston Lodge, Sept. 9, 1789.

"Last week Mr. Cowper finished the Odyssey, and we drank an unreluctant bumper to its success. The labour of translation is now at an end, and the less arduous work of revision remains to be done, and then we shall see it published. I promise both you and myself much pleasure from its perusal. You will most probably find it at first less pleasing than Pope's versification, owing to the difference subsisting between blank verse and rhyme—a difference which is not sufficiently attended to, and whereby people are led into injudicious comparisons. You will find Mr. Pope more refined: Mr. Cowper more simple, grand, and majestic; and, indeed, insomuch as Mr. Pope is more refined than Mr. Cowper, he is more refined than his original, and in the same proportion departs from Homer himself. Pope's must universally be allowed to be a beautiful poem: Mr. Cowper's will be found a striking and a faithful portrait, and a pleasing picture to those who enjoy his style of colouring, which I am apprehensive is not so generally acceptable as the other master's. Pope possesses the gentle and amiable graces of a Guido: Cowper is endowed with the bold sublime genius of a Raphael. After having said so much upon their comparative merits, enough, I hope, to refute your second assertion which was, that women, in the opinion of men, have little to do with literature. I may inform you, that the Iliad is to be dedicated to Earl Cowper, and the Odyssey to the Dowager Lady Spencer but this information need not be extensively circulated."

J. Yeowell.

50. Burton Street.