Note 782 — ADELPHI.
Reading edition
The late Samuel Whitbread, Esq., was an enthusiastic admirer of the poetry of Cowper, and solicitous to obtain a relic of the Yardley oak. Mr. Bull, of Newport Pagnel, promised to send a specimen, but some little delay having occurred, Mr. Whitbread addressed to him the following verses, which, emanating from such a man, and not having met the public eye, will, we are persuaded, be considered as a literary curiosity, and of no mean merit.
"Send me the precious bit of oak, Which your own hand so fondly took From off the consecrated tree, A relic dear to you and me. To many 'twould a bauble prove Not worth the keeping.—Those who love The teeming grand poetic mind, Which God thought fit in chains to bind, Of dreadful, dark despairing gloom; Yet left within such ample room, For coruscations strong and bright: Such beams of everlasting light, As make men envy, love, and dread, The structure of that wondrous head, Must prize a bit of Judith's stem, That brought to light that precious gem— The fragment: which in verse sublime Records her honours to all time."