Allow me to offer You a plain and simple, but sincere and cordial assurance of my gratitude for the great honour you have done me, and the great gratification you have given me, by your elegant and beautiful Poem ^[2] . Tho I feel myself, (and there is no affectation in declaring it) very unworthy of the kind and flattering things it contains, yet I feel a considerable addition of pleasure in perusing it, from the idea that it is your approbation of the serious Spirit in the little work^[3] which you are so good to commend which disposes You to overlook any defects in the composition; defects multiplied by bad health which indisposes, and partly incapacitates me from correcting coolly, tho it does not yet always prevent me from writing rapidly, and therefore I fear, carelessly.

As the friend of Cowper I concluded your ‘ear was patient of a serious song’^[4] ; as his Biographer^[5] I have had experience of your candour in judging. How my heart rises when I hear that exquisite poet condemned, that holy Man misrepresented! tho I trust he can be misrepresented only where he is misunderstood. I never read a page of him either in prose or verse without as much affection as admiration; and I often feel my heart overflowing with gratitude to God for having united such piety to such talents, and by this means made way for his acceptance to readers who forgive the one for the sake of the other, and to whom his religion would not have made its way without this splendid accompanyment. Every lover of genius, virtue and true taste are indebted to you Sir for his life and letters. The ease the grace the spirit the temper of those familiar compositions set at a disgraceful distance the elaborate periods, and over done efforts of more studied compositions.

I have had /great/ pleasure in shewing your fine Verses to one of the nearest survivi[ng] [tear] relations of Cowper, the daughter of the pious Major and M^rs. Cowper to whom his more devout letters are addressed.^[6] They have also afforded a great treat to the excellent M^r. Gisborne with whom I am now on a visit. I need not tell You he is the Author of some of our best Modern Sermons ^[7] ; of two valuable treatises on the ‘Duties of Man /&/ duties of women’^[8] ; and his ‘Walks in a Forest^[9] enable him to appreciate M^r. Hayley as a Poet.