sole difference was that Lady Austen to the pitch of devotion. Instead of bedined with them. Thus it continued tilling, as he was, among the worthiest of the summer of 1784, when the poet during men, he must have been a monster of her absence wrote her a letter, in which, ingratitude if he could have been so little with many expressions of tender regret, touched by Mrs. Unwin's self-sacrifice and he broke off the intimacy. His reason affection as to desert her in her age for a for this step was the supposition of Lady newly-discovered acquaintance, and leave Austen that his love meant marriage. He her to solitude and neglect. Neither is addressed "Sister Anne" some affection- there the slightest reason to suppose that, ate verses; and Hayley, who received his apart from his sense of duty, he would information from herself, says that, though have given the preference to her rival. it is not the inference he should have In conversation Lady Austen was more drawn," she might easily be pardoned if brilliant than Mrs. Unwin, but the most she was induced by them to hope that dazzling are seldom the most valuable they might possibly be a prelude to a still qualities, and the fascinations which were dearer alliance." The letter in which a pleasing supplement to existence would Cowper put an end to this expectation have ill-supplied the place of the endurwas burnt by the disappointed lady in a ance, the meekness, the sterling sense, moment of vexation, but she spoke of its and sympathetic tastes of his old and contents to Hayley, who expressly declares faithful ally. Her character has been that it would have "exhibited a proof drawn by Lady Hesketh, who says of her, that, animated by the warmest admira- that she loved him as well as one human tion of the great poet, she was willing to being could love another, that she had no devote her life and fortune to his service will or shadow of inclination that was not and protection." It is extraordinary that his, and that she went through her almost there should have been any speculation incredible fatigues with an air of ease upon the cause of the severance, when we which took away every appearance of have the direct testimony of a man of hardship. Notwithstanding her trials, delicate feelings, who was far too scru- she preserved a great fund of gayety, and pulous upon such subjects to have pub- laughed upon the smallest provocation. lished a conjecture in the form of an Her knowledge and intelligence were both assertion.* considerable. She was well-read in the poets, and had a true taste for what was excellent in literature. Cowper bad the highest opinion of her judgment. submitted all his writings to her criticism, and asserted that she had a perception of what was good and bad in composition that he never knew deceive her. He always abided by her decision, altered where she condemned, and, if she approved, had no fear that any body else could find fault with reason. Such a rare combination of merits was not likely, with a person of Cowper's disposition, to be cast into the shade by the cleverness, vivacity, and personal charms of Lady Austen. He proved, indeed, by his conduct a few years later, that his attachment to his admirable Mary was as deep as hers had been to him, and that he realized in practice the beautiful ideal which he had drawn of friendship in his " Valediction," where he describes it as a

It is certain that Cowper, on his part, had never entertained the notion of matrimony. He had contracted obligations towards Mrs. Unwin which must have precluded the idea, even if no other objection had existed. For twenty years she had waited upon him with a tender assiduity of which women alone are capable, spending her health in his service, and never wearying of her mournful task. In his repeated fits of dejection she could hardly venture to leave him for a moment, night or day, and her poor bark, he said, was shattered by being tossed so long by the side of his own. Lady Hesketh never recovered the effects of a winter which she spent with him during one of his attacks. Lovable as he was from his genius and disposition, the exhaustion of body and spirit which the attendance upon him involved would have tired out any person who had not carried friendship

*Mr. Willmott is of the same opinion, and says that the cause of the separation from Lady Austen is "stated by Hayley with a positiveness and authority that can not be questioned."

He

"Union of hearts without a flaw between."

The literary fame of Cowper caused some of the friends and relations, who supposed him lost to themselves and the

cle." Cold, dreary, dirty, and ruinous, it seemed unfit to be the abode of human beings. His eyes notwithstanding had filled with tears when he first bid adieu to it, for he remembered how often he had enjoyed there in happier days a sense of the presence of God, and that now, as he supposed, he had lost it forever.

world, to reopen their intercourse with at the hazard of their lives. Once the him. Foremost among the number was poet returned to take a look at his old his cousin Lady Hesketh. Their corre- tottering dwelling. "Never," he says, spondence had been suspended for nearly" did I see so forlorn and woful a spectanineteen years, when she once more addressed him in October, 1785. He was transported with pleasure at the renewal of his intimacy with this dear companion of his youth. His letters to her thenceforth overflow with fondness, and were only interrupted by her annual visits to him. She went to Olney in June, 1786, and was lodged in the rooms which Lady Any gratification which may have been Austen had vacated at the vicarage. produced by the removal to Weston was Never did the poet look forward to any quickly dispelled. He had not been there event with more eager delight than to the above two or three weeks when Mr. Unanticipated meeting, and the reality did win caught a fever and died. Cowper not belie his expectations. Her company, spoke of the loss with calmness in his lethe said, was a cordial of which he should ters; and, affectionate and united as the feel the effect as long as he lived. Her friends had always been, they met so selarrival brought with it another advantage. dom that the event could have left little Cowper had become friendly with the void in his life. Mrs. Unwin bore her Throckmortons, a Roman Catholic family, heavier share in the calamity with the reswho lived at the pretty village of Weston, ignation she had acquired from prolonged about a mile from Olney. They had a trials and habitual piety; but, depressed house to let, which was commodious in it- herself, she must have been less equal self, and had the additional recommenda- than usual to cheering her companion, tion that it adjoined their own pleasure- and the deeper gloom which overshadowgrounds, "where a slipper would not be ed him may have been the cause of the soiled even in winter," and where in sum- fresh attack of lunacy which shortly after mer avenues of limes and elms afforded a supervened. There is a gap in his corredelicious shade. Of all the places within spondence from January 18 to July 24, his range it was the one which the poet 1787; and he passed the interval in a preferred for its beauties, but it was ren- state of almost total insanity. As in his dered inaccessible to him in bad weather two previous attacks, he attempted suiby the intervening road of mud, and in cide. He hanged himself, and was only sultry weather "he was fatigued before saved by the accident of Mrs. Unwin he reached it, and when he reached had coming in before he was dead and cutting not time to enjoy it." Though the him down. When he recovered he inThrockmortons were anxious to have him formed Mr. Newton that for thirteen for a tenant for the sake of his society, years he had believed him not to be the and he was equally anxious to embrace friend he loved, but some body else. He the offer for the sake of their walks and considered it at least one beneficial effect prospects, as well as their company, his of his illness that it had released him inability to bear the expense of furnishing from this disagreeable suspicion, and that would not permit him to entertain the he no longer doubted the identity of his project. No sooner did Lady Hesketh old familiar companion, nor was compelled appear upon the scene than she insisted to act a deceitful part when he addressed upon defraying the cost of the removal; him. No limits can be placed to the haland November saw her cousin comforta-lucinations of a disordered understandbly housed in the "Lodge" at Weston. He had not shifted his quarters before it was necessary. The ceilings of his miserable tenement at Olney were cracked, the walls were crumbling; and when a shoemaker and a publican proposed after his departure to share it between them, the village carpenter pronounced that unless it was propped they would inhabit it

ing; and it would be possible in the nature of things that, when he emerged from the visitation of 1773, he might fancy, in spite of the evidence of his senses, that the pastor at the vicarage was a mockery and a cheat, and only the outward semblance of the genuine man. In this case, however, it is certain that no such delusion had existed, and that the impression

was a chimera engendered by the disease | for as he did not go out of himself for of 1787. After Mr. Newton settled in his materials he soon exhausted the stock London, Cowper wrote to him once a of his experience. In his early manhood fortnight, or oftener, and his letters have he had read Homer with a fellow Templar, none of the constraint which the alleged and as they read they compared the origiconviction must have produced. They nal with the translation of Pope. They are, on the contrary, peculiarly confiden- were disgusted to find that puerile contial. They chiefly turn upon those fearful ceits, extravagant metaphors, and modern secrets of his heart which he would have tinsel had been substituted for the majesty been the least willing to lay bare to a and simplicity of the Grecian, and they stranger, and display throughout a strong were often on the point of burning his attachment and a reverential regard. unfaithful representative. The recollec They have not the same playfulness as his tion came back upon Cowper when he sportive epistles to Mr. Unwin, but this was at a loss for employment, and induced was because he thought it due to the him, as an experiment, to take up the apostolical character of Mr. Newton to Iliad and turn a few lines into blank abstain from trifling. Religion had been verse. With no other design than the the original bond of their intimacy, and amusement of the hour he went on with when the poet ceased to partake of the the work, till, pleased with his success, he consolations of Christianity, the point of resolved to translate both the Epics of sympathy was not changed, though the Homer. He determined that he would instrument sent forth a melancholy, in- accomplish at least forty lines a day; and stead of a cheerful sound. He poured as he was firm in his purpose, and never his spiritual grief, as he had once poured intermitted his task, the vast project prohis spiritual joys, into the ears of his con- ceeded rapidly. He had been two years fessor, and told him that to converse with engaged upon it when it was interrupted him, even upon paper, was the most de- by his illness, and he resumed it with lightful of all employments, since it helped eagerness the moment his madness abated. to make things seem as they had been. His first version was full of the quaint He would not have penned these words if language of the writers of the fifteenth he had believed that he was addressing an century, which he imagined was the kind impostor, any more than he would have of English that made the closest approach signified to him, as he did, the extreme sat- to the simplicity of the Greek. isfaction he had derived from his society friends objected to his obsolete phraseolowhen this honored friend came to stay gy. He began by altering it with reluc with him at Olney. He gave practical tance, and ended by wondering that he proofs of the sincerity of his professions. had ever adopted it. His corrections He submitted his first volume of poems amounted to a re-translation of the work, to Mr. Newton's revision, asked him to and his re-translation went through two write the preface, and requested that he elaborate revisions. Five years of inceswould allow his name to appear on the ti- sant labor were expended on the undertle-page as editor. His habitual words taking, nor was it time thrown away. His and acts all alike discountenance the idea Homer is a great performance. He has that in his more lucid years his madness preserved the vivid pictures, the naked was carried to the pitch of discrediting grandeur, and the primitive manners of the identity of one of his dearest in- the original. He does not excel Pope timates. It was a retrospective notion more in fidelity than in true poetic power. created and fixed in his mind during his The style may seem austere at a casual latest fit of frenzy. glance, but will be found on a close acquaintance to be full of picturesqueness, dignity, and force. In the passages where he creeps, the old bard himself has seldom soared very high. The combined majesty and melody of the ancient measure could not be approached, but the blank verse of Cowper's translation has a fuller swell and greater variety of cadence than his Task and is in general, sufficient to sustain the ideas. His version is not,

It was fortunate for the poet that before his attack he had embarked in an occupation which engaged without trying his faculties, and which assisted to promote his returning convalescence. When he had completed the Task he found that a fresh scheme was essential to draw off his attention from his distempered thoughts. He was unable, he says, to produce another page of original poetry,

His

and never will be popular, but those who turn from the English Homer with distaste would probably be devoid of a genuine relish for the Greek.

In 1789, while Homer was still in progress, John Johnson, then an under. graduate at Cambridge, and grandson of Roger Donne, who was the brother of Cowper's mother, made a pilgrimage into Buckinghamshire, out of pure admiration for his kinsman's works. Charmed with the young man's simplicity, enthusiasm, and affection, the poet treated him like a son. Through his means a communication was opened with some of the great author's other maternal relations; and a cousin, Mrs. Bodham, sent as a present to Weston the portrait of his mother, which produced the famous lines that are known and treasured by thousands who care little for poetry. He tells us that he wrote them "not without tears," and without tears they have rarely been read. The description was as usual the literal transcript of his feelings, and the language was the worthy vehicle of his lifelong affection for the revered mother who inspired them. He struck a chord which found an echo in every heart that ever loved; and the touching allusions to his own tragic story redoubled the pathos. It is the glorious distinction of Cowper that he is the domestic poet of England, and has his hold upon the mind by more pervading and charming sentiments than any other writer of verse.

ances, he was no sooner brought in contact with a congenial spirit than his social feelings flamed forth. His later correspondence glows with affection for the new friends who were attracted to him by the delight they had received from his writings. But he did not long enjoy this accession to his pleasures. In December, 1791, Mrs. Unwin had a slight paralytic attack. "I feel," he said, "the shock in every nerve. God grant that there may be no repetition of it!" The repetition came nevertheless, and with increased severity, in May, 1792. She lost her powers of speech, and the use of her legs and right arm, and could neither read, nor knit, nor do any thing to amuse herself. "I have suffered," wrote the poet, "nearly the same disability in mind on the occasion as she in body." He abandoned Milton, took upon himself the office of nurse, and wore out his strength and spirits in attending on her. He who had been unable to bear his burthen without her assistance, had now to carry her load as well as his own. Bowed down by the double pressure, his gloom increased upon him. His dreams were more troubled; he heard voices more frequently, and their language was more threatening. He was prevailed upon to visit Hayley at his place in Sussex, in the hope that his patient would be benefited by the change. His long seclusion and his shattered nerves made a stage-coach journey appear more alarming to him His Homer dismissed, Cowper had than a campaign would be to men of again to seek a scheme on which to em- sterner stuff. He set off in August, 1792, ploy his thoughts. His publisher pro- and remained at Eartham six or seven jected a splendid edition of Milton's weeks. Mrs. Unwin derived no substanworks, and engaged him to translate the tial advantage, and shortly afterwards Latin poems and annotate the English. grew weaker both in mind and body. Hayley was employed about the same Cowper said of the lines on his mother's time to write a Life of the illustrious picture that he composed them with more bard for another edition; and the news-pleasure than any he had ever written, papers represented the two editors as with a single exception, and that excepantagonists. Upon this, Hayley sent a tion was the sonnet in which he celesonnet and a letter to Cowper disclaiming brated the devoted woman whom one of the rivalry, and expressing the warmest his friends described "as an angel in admiration of his poetry. From being every thing but her face." The poet total strangers, a vehement friendship now addressed to her a more famous sprang up between them. An invitation piece. His verses To Mary are among to Weston was accepted by Hayley. The the most touching and beautiful ever personal intercourse increased their mutual attachment, and "dear brother" was the title they bestowed on one another. Shy and reserved as Cowper was, and little as he was disposed to seek acquaint

penned. The intensity of his affection for his poor paralytic informs every line, and is summed up in the exclamation "My Mary!" which forms the burthen to each stanza. Simple as is the phrase,