COWPER AND MRS FROGS

COWPER (WILLIAM, 1731-1800, poet) FINE, LARGELY UNPUBLISHED AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED ('Wm C'), to Samuel Rose, beginning with a rhyming riddle ('Say what is the thing by my Riddle designd / Which you carried to London, and yet left behind?'), he takes Rose to task 'for high crimes and misdemeanours committed since you left us' in sending a barrel of oysters and while conceding that they were excellent ('...Never were better oysters...'), he attempts to deflect Rose from repeating his generosity because he has a friend who sends 'regularly Fish by the Honey Coach' and because he is aware of his intention ('...I have a guess at the tricks you intend, for I saw you busy in your Pocket-book one day when fish was mention'd, and the next day you were very inquisitive about Diligences, Inn &c...'), 'observe -- you are forbidden'; he then cautions Rose to attend to his injured knee advising him 'not to take such extravagant wacks [sic] in future' ('...Should you live to be a judge, as if I augur right you will, I shall expect to hear of a Walking Circuit...'); Cowper proceeds to relate in detail two tragedies that have occurred at Weston, firstly to the 'piping Bull-Finch' belonging to 'Mrs Frogs' [his nickname for Mrs Throckmorton] which has been eaten by a rat ('the villain left nothing but poor Bully's beak behind him'), a circumstance which he is sure will employ his 'versifying passion' ('Did ever fair Lady, from the Lesbia of Catullus to the present day, lose her bird and find no poet to commemorate the loss?'), and secondly to his own dog Beau who when out on a walk and retrieving a stick Cowper had specially fashioned for him took it into his mouth awkwardly ('...I saw him instantly throw it out...again vomiting at a terrible rate. I ran to him, he whined most piteously, lost all his vivacity, and I found his throat so tender that he could not endure the least touch on the outside of it...for some time I actually believed he would die...but the next day he was well again, and now thanks you for your kind enquiries...'); the letter concludes with a note that the ladies have come down to breakfast ('...and being at this moment extremely talkative, would put an end to my letter even if my paper would still permit me to proceed...') which he does above the address on the first page thanking Rose for 'the punctuality & exactness' with which he had executed his commissions at Johnsons, presumably Cowper's publisher, with whom Rose was Cowper's go-between, 4 pages, quarto including integral address panel, Weston Underwood, small repair where opened, intact seal, slight trace of former guard, manuscript and stamped postmarks, 11 November 1788

Cowper's poem 'On the Death of Mrs. Throckmorton's Bullfinch', occasioned by the tragedy recounted in this letter, and not mentioned elsewhere in his correspondence, was first published in the Gentleman's Magazine for February 1789. It begins 'Ye Nymphs, if e'er your eyes were red / With tears o'er hapless favourite shed, / Oh, share Maria's grief!...'.

Samuel Rose (1767-1804), called 'Cowper's best friend' by George Canning, was a barrister whose close friendship with Cowper began the year before this letter was written. In 1804 he defended William Blake at his trial for high treason. His father, a scholar and schoolmaster, was much liked by Johnson, who, however, blamed his leniency with the rod 'for what the boys gain at one end they lose at the other.' Samuel Rose collected and published the miscellaneous works of Goldsmith and acted as Cowper's scribe for his version of the twelfth book of the Iliad. One of his sons was named Cowper Rose.

Of the present letter only an extract is quoted in The Letters and Prose Writings of William Cowper, edited by J. King and C. Ryskamp, vol. iii, 1982, p. 228.

Cowper is widely accepted as one of the great exponents of the letter as an art form.

£2,850