[15] Once certainly in the lines “On the Death of Mr. Robert Levet”:—
Well try’d through many a varying year,
See Levet to the grave descend,
Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of ev’ry friendless name the friend.
[18] Prayers and Meditations: composed by Samuel Johnson, LL.D., and published from his Manuscripts by George Straham, D.D., Prebendary of Rochester and Vicar of Islington in Middlesex, 1785. Dr. Birkbeck Hill suggests that Johnson could not have contemplated the publication of the work in its entirety, but the world is the better for the self revelation, notwithstanding Cowper’s remark in a letter to Newton (August 27, 1785), that “the publisher of it is neither much a friend to the cause of religion nor to the author’s memory; for by the specimen of it that has reached us, it seems to contain only such stuff as has a direct tendency to expose both to ridicule.”
[19] There is an edition with a brief Introduction by Augustine Birrell, published by Elliot Stock in 1904, and another, with an Introduction by “H. C.,” was issued by H. R. Allenson in 1906.
[31] The Rev. Angus Mackay, author of The Brontës In Fact and Fiction. He was Rector of Holy Trinity Church, Dean Bridge, Edinburgh, when he died, aged 54, on New Year’s Day, 1907. Earlier in life he had been a Curate at Olney.
[34] John Newton (1725-1807) had been the captain of a slave ship before his ‘conversion.’ He became Curate of Olney in 1764 and published the famous Olney Hymns with Cowper in 1779. In 1780 Newton became the popular Incumbent of St. Mary Woolnoth, London.
[35] See the Globe Cowper, with an Introduction by the Rev. William Benham, the Rector of St. Edmund’s, Lombard Street. Canon Benham has written many books, but he has done no better piece of work than this fine Introduction which first appeared in 1870.
[36] Thomas Scott (1747-1821). His commentaries first appeared in weekly parts between 1788 and 1792, and were first issued in ten volumes, 1823-25. He was Rector of Astin Sandford in Buckinghamshire from 1801 until his death. His Life was published by his son, the Rev. John Scott, in 1822.
[37] Thomas Percy (1729-1811) became Vicar of Easton Maudit, Northamptonshire, in 1753. Johnson visited him here in 1764. In 1765 Percy published his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. He became Bishop of Dromere in 1782.
[38a] William Hayley (1745-1820) was counted a great poet in his day and placed in the same rank with Dryden and Pope. He wrote Triumphs of Temper 1781, Triumphs of Music 1804, and many other works; but he is of interest here by virtue of his Life and Letters of William Cowper, Esq., with Remarks on Epistolary Writers, published in 1803.