POSTSCRIPT.

It has been once more my lot, during the process of printing an extensive work, to lose a friend, whom I had anxiously hoped to please with a sight of my completed publication. I allude to Lady Austen, whose name is justly mentioned with honor in the Life of Cowper, as she possessed and exerted an influence so happily favorable to the genius of the poet. Before I began the present work, I had the pleasure, and the advantage, to form a personal acquaintance with this lady: she favored me, in a very graceful and obliging manner, with much valuable information, and with some highly interesting materials for the history of our friend, who had sportively given her the title of sister, and who, while their intercourse lasted, treated her with all the tenderness, and all the confidence of a brother.

Her maiden name was Richardson; she was married very early in life to Sir Robert Austen, Baronet, and resided with him in France, where he died. Her intercourse with Cowper is already

related;-in a subsequent period she was married to a native of France, Mr. De Tardiff, a gentleman, and a poet, who has expressed, in many elegant French verses, his just and deep sense of her accomplished, endearing character. In visiting Paris with him in the course of the summer of 1802, she sunk under the fatigue of the excursion, and died in that city on the 12th of August.

My obligations to her kindness induce me to terminate this brief account of a person so cordially regarded by Cowper, and so instrumental to the existence of his greatest work, with an offering of respect and gratitude, in the shape of

AN EPITAPH.

Honor and Peace! ye guardians kindly just,
Fail not in duty to this hallow'd dust!

And mortals (all, whose cultur'd spirits know
Joys that pure faith, and heav'nly verse bestow,)
Passing this tomb, its buried inmate bless!

And obligation to her powers confess,

Who, when she grac'd this Earth, in Austen's name,

Wak'd in a Poet inspiration's flame!

Remov'd by counsel, like the voice of spring,
Fetters of diffidence from fancy's wing ;

Sent the freed eagle in the sun to bask,

And from the mind of Cowper-call'd the TASK!

I close my work with these verses, from a persuasion, that I can pay no tribute to the memory of Cowper more truly acceptable to his tender spirit, than praise sincerely bestowed on the objects of his affection.

THE

APPENDIX.

No. 1. Original Poems.

Translations of Greek Verses.

3. Translations from Horace and Virgil.
4. Translations from the Latin Poems of
Bourne, and the Epigrams of Owen.
5. Montes Glaciales, in English and Latin.
Verses to the Memory of Dr. Lloyd.
7. Translations from the Fables of Gay.
8. The Connoisseurs, No. 119, 134, & 138.
Motto on the King's Clock.

6.

VOL. IV.