FOOTNOTES:
[1] Such is the recorded testimony of Charles James Fox, and the late Robert Hall. The latter observes as follows:—"The letters of Mr. Cowper are the finest specimens of the epistolary style in our language. To an air of inimitable ease they unite a high degree of correctness, such as could result only from the clearest intellect, combined with the most finished taste. There is scarcely a single word capable of being exchanged for a better, and of literary errors there are none. I have perused them with great admiration and delight."
[2] Of the letters contained in the "Private Correspondence" he emphatically remarked, "Cowper will never be clearly and satisfactorily understood without them."
[3] This gentleman was a writer of English verse, and, with rare munificence, bestowed both an epitaph and a monument on that illustrious divine, the venerable Hooker. In the edition of Walton's Lives, by Zouch, the curious reader may find the epitaph written by Sir William Cowper.
[4] Sir William Russel, the favourite friend of the young poet.
[5] Miss Theodora Cowper.
[6] Private correspondence.
[7] The author is supposed to mean Mrs. Hill and her two daughters. The word theirs cannot so well refer to the last antecedent, the persons who stand in that relation with it being both dead at the time he wrote, as is evident from the context.
[8] Cowper's pecuniary resources had been seriously impaired by his loss of the Clerkship of the Journals in the House of Lords, and by his subsequent resignation of the office of Commissioner of Bankrupts. At the kind instigation of Major Cowper, his friends had been induced to unite in rendering his income more adequate to his necessary annual expenditure.
[9] Private correspondence.