[393] Formerly Vicar of Olney, and also one of the Librarians of the British Museum
[394] Mr. Postlethwaite.
[395] This letter proves how much the sensitive mind of Cowper was liable to be ruffled by external incidents. Life presents too many real sources of anxiety, to justify us in adding those which are imaginary and of our own creation.
[396] Private correspondence.
[397] We insert Pope's translation, as being the most familiar to the reader.
"Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the following spring supplies,
They fall successive, and successive rise;
So generations in their course decay,
So flourish these, when those have pass'd away."
Pope's Version
[398] For the gratification of those who are not in possession of this poem, we insert the following extract:—
"Whene'er to Afric's shores I turn my eyes,
Horrors of deepest, deadliest guilt arise;
I see by more than Fancy's mirror shown,
The burning village and the blazing town:
See the dire victim torn from social life,
The shrieking babe, the agonizing wife;
. . .
By felon hands, by one relentless stroke,
See the fond links of feeling nature broke!
The fibres twisting round a parent's heart
Torn from their grasp, and bleeding as they part."
We add one more passage, as it contains an animated appeal against the injustice of this nefarious traffic.