remarkably attractive about Cowper, for, with all his shyness, he had more and better friends than almost any poet we could name. To know him was to love him, and few loved him by halves; indeed, the devotion paid to him partook more of the mingled respect and affection which is rendered to an accomplished female than what are enjoyed by his sex. With the Unwins he lived on the most cordial terms. "I am much happier," he writes to Major Cowper, "than the day is long, and sunshine and candle-light alike see me perfectly contented."

No certain information has been obtained of his means of subsistence. He inherited some money from his father; and a subscription made at this time by his friends placed him in comfortable circumstances. It is believed that Miss Theodora Cowper privately contributed fifty pounds a year. He does not seem to have obtained much for the copyright of his poems. The crown granted him £300 a year in

1794; but too late to be of much advantage.

The sudden death of Mr Unwin, by a fall from his horse, caused the removal of the Unwins from Huntingdon; and Cowper removed with them. The Rev. John Newton, whose acquaintance they had recently made, engaged for them a house in Olney, to which they removed in October 1767. The warmest friendship grew out of this connexion; there was a private passage between the vicarage and the house in which they lived, and seven hours, we are told, rarely passed without the two families being together. Here Cowper spent two or three years in great comfort. His employments were various, he learned to draw, he cultivated flowers, and he handled the tools of the carpenter with considerable address. "There is not a squire in all the country," he writes, "who can boast of having made better squirrel-houses, hutches for rabbits, or bird-cages, than myself. I had even the hardiness to take in hand the pencil. Many figures were the fruit of my labours, which had at least the merit of being unparallelled by any production of art or nature." And he talks of sending "tables,

such as they were, and joint-stools, such as never were." Three hares which he tamed afforded him much amusement. His account of them, which was inserted in the Gentleman's Magazine, has often been reprinted. He also visited the houses of the villagers, administering spiritual counsel and relieving the wants of the poor, which he was the better enabled to do from a fund placed at his disposal by the benevolent Thornton, so celebrated for his philanthropy. At the suggestion of Newton, he began his contributions to that collection so well known as the " Olney Hymns." These were commenced in the year 1771, but, owing to a return of the melancholy disease under which he laboured, not completed till 1779.

The death of his brother, to whom he was warmly attached, and which took place in 1770, has been supposed to furnish the cause of the new attack of his malady; but he never was entirely free from it,—his mind was like the coast of Holland, which requires the embankments to be constantly renewed to exclude the encroachments of the tide; and it is scarcely worth while, when so many causes were in operation, to ask which was the greatest. The attack lasted for four years, during which he was watched by Mrs Unwin with a self-devotion and tenderness which happily found its reward in seeing him restored to the full measure of his former powers, though it left him with weakened nerves and a constant tendency to relapse into moodiness. Thus, after Newton had left Olney for London, he writes"It is no attachment to the place that binds me here, but an unfitness for every other. I lived in it once, but now I am buried in it, and have no business with the world on the outside of my sepulchre."

Cowper had now reached the age of fifty, and was as yet unknown to the world. "A few light and agreeable poems, two hymns written at Huntingdon, with about sixty others composed at Olney, are almost the only known poetical productions of his pen between the years 1749 and 1780." The long pent-up stream of his genius was now to break

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out. At the suggestion of Mrs Unwin, he wrote "Table Talk," the first poem in the present collection of his works, to which were afterwards added, "The Progress of Error," "Truth," "Expostulation," "Hope," Charity," "Conversation," and "Retirement." These were all written in little more than a year, and were published in one volume in 1781. It met with a favourable reception from the critics of the day, and slowly found its way into the esteem of the public. The vein thus opened was not allowed to remain unwrought. "Dejection of spirits," he informs Lady Hesketh," which may have prevented many a man from becoming an author, made me one. I find constant employment necessary, and therefore take care to be constantly employed." "When I can find no other occupation, I think; and when I think, I am very apt to do it in rhyme. Hence it comes to pass, that the season of the year which generally pinches off the flowers of poetry unfolds mine, such as they are, and crowns me with a wintry garland."

About this time he formed an acquaintance with a highlyaccomplished woman, Lady Austen; she was wealthy, had seen much of the world, and possessed a liveliness of manner which charmed away his melancholy. After three years' intimacy, this friendship was unfortunately broken up by the not unnatural jealousy of Mrs Unwin, who was afraid it might end in a nearer connexion. To Lady Austen we owe the amusing ballad of "John Gilpin," and his great poem the "Task." A merry tale which she told to amuse the poet was the groundwork of the first; it soon became a universal favourite, though few suspected the melancholy Cowper to be the author. Surprise has been expressed that it should have been written while suffering from despondency; but it is the very nature of this disease to admit of violent alternations from the liveliest gaiety to the deepest gloom.

The "Task" was begun in the summer of 1783, and completed before the close of 1784. Lady Austen, who, as an admirer of Milton, was partial to blank verse, had often solicited Cowper to try his power in that species of

composition. To his objection that he knew of no suitable subject, she replied, "Oh, you can never be in want of a subject-you can write upon any; write upon this sofa." The idea struck him, he took up the pen and began,—

"I sing the Sofa, I who lately sung

Faith, Hope, and Charity."

The poem thus casually suggested grew into six books, and is deservedly the most popular of his larger poems. Many passages in his first volume are not inferior to the best pieces of the "Task;" but in the "Task" he takes a wider range, and flies with freer and bolder wing.

This work brought him into immediate notice, and drew attention to his former publications. His attached cousin, Lady Hesketh, who had been abroad, hastened to renew her corre spondence. His letters to her are the most finished and delightful specimens of epistolary writing in the language. The strong aversion which John Foster expressed to composition was unknown to Cowper. He wrote from choice, and was quite capable of extracting amusement from the most trivial incidents of daily life; so that, though he was almost a recluse in his habits, and his letters sometimes embraced no other subjects than the death of a viper, or the loss of one of his hares, or the overturning of a market-woman's cart, they are full of wit and sensibility. Lady Hesketh proved a most valuable friend. Finding his residence at Olney neither commodious nor cheerful, she rented and furnished for him a house bordering on a handsome park at the neighbouring village of Western Underwood, and throughout his life her purse and her services were always at his disposal. He says touchingly, on leaving Olney-"I found that I not only had a tenderness for that ruinous abode, because it had once known me happy in the presence of God, but that even the distress I had suffered for so long time on account of His absence, had endeared it to me as much."

In 1785 he began a translation of Homer's Poems, and worked with great assiduity and pleasure at the task. It

was finished in 1790, and published in two quarto volumes in 1791. He next undertook to edit an edition of Milton's Poetical Works, and with this view translated his Latin Poems; but the work was never completed. A poem, entitled "The Seven Ages," was begun, but only a few lines were written.

His beautiful lines to Mrs Unwin, beginning—

and his lines "On Receipt of his Mother's Picture," were written at this period, and exhibit the unabated force of his mind and imagination.

Of the remainder of his life we have little to record. Mrs Unwin fell into an infirm state of health, and his own mind became extremely depressed. Lady Hesketh flew to his help, and he rallied so far as to be able to visit his biographer, Hayley; but he soon relapsed. His relation, Dr Johnson, removed him from Weston to North Tudderham in Norfolk, and from thence to various places, for change of air and scene, but without perceptible advantage to his health. In 1796, Mrs Unwin died. "In the dusk of the evening of her death, he attended Dr Johnson to survey the corpse, and after looking a very few moments, he started suddenly away, with a vehement but unfinished sentence of passionate sorrow. He spoke of her no more." Dr Johnson's attentions to him were never surpassed in delicacy and self-denial. Any other man would have shrunk from undertaking the charge of an infirm hypochondriac, who rarely spoke, and seemed to derive no pleasure from either the world or religion.

The cloud which had now settled over his intellect was never removed. He had long lived under the delusion, that the mercy of God, which is free to all the world besides, was denied to him. There were momentary intervals in which a ray of hope gleamed upon his mind, but they were tran