ter an event, which, when viewed in connexion with his remaining years, will scarcely yield, in importance, to any feature of his life. Concerning these engaging persons, whose general habits of life, and especially whose piety rendered them the very associates that Cowper wanted, he thus expresses himself in a letter, written two months after, to one of his earliest and warmest friends ;* "Now I know them, I wonder that I liked Huntingdon so well before I knew them, and am apt to think I should find every place disagreeable that had not an Unwin belonging to it."

The house which Mr. Unwin inhabited was a large and convenient dwelling in the High-street in which he had been in the habit of receiving a few domestick pupils to prepare them for the University. At the division of the October Term, one of these students being called to Cambridge, it was proposed that the solitary lodging which Cowper occupied should be exchanged for the possession of the vacant place. On the 11th of November, therefore, in the same year, he commenced his residence in this agreeable family. But the calamitous death of Mr. Unwin, by a fall from his horse, as he was going to his church on a Sunday morning, the July twelvemonth following, proved the signal of a further removal to Cowper, who, by a series of providential incidents, was conducted with the family of his deceased friend to the town of Olney, in Buckinghamshire, on the 14th of October 1767. The instrument whom it pleased God principally to employ in bringing about this important event, was the Rev. John Newton, then curate of that parish, and afterwards rector of St. Mary Woolnoth in London: a most exemplary divine, indefatigable in the discharge of his ministerial duties; in which, so far as was consistent with the province of a layman, it became the happi ness of Cowper to strengthen his hands.

* Joseph Hill, Esq.

Great was the value which Cowper set on the friendship and intercourse which for some years he had the privilege of enjoying with the estimable author of Cardiphonia. This appears by the following passage in one of his letters to that venerable pastor; "The honour of your preface, prefixed to my poems, will be on my side; for surely to be known as the friend of a much favoured minister of God's word, is a more illustrious distinction in reality than to have the friendship of any poet in the world to boast of." A correspondent testimony of the estimation in which our poet was held by his friend Mr. Newton is clearly deducible from the introductory words of the preceding sentence; and is abundantly furnished in the preface itself.

A very interesting part of the connexion thus happily established between Mr. Cowper and Mr. Newton, was afterwards brought to light in the publication of the Olney Hymns, which was intended as a monument of the endeared and joint labours of these exemplary christians. To this collection Mr. Cowper contributed sixty-eight compositions.

From the commencement of his residence at Olney till January, 1773, a period of five years and a quarter, it does not appear that there was any material interruption either of the health or religious comfort of this excellent man. His feelings, however, must have received a severe shock in February, 1770, when he was twice summoned to Cambridge by the illness of his beloved brother, which terminated fatally on the 20th of the following month. How far this afflictive event might conduce to such a melancholy catastrophe, it is impossible to judge; but certain it is, that at this period a renewed attack of his former hypochondriacal complaint took place. It is remarkable that the prevailing distortion of his afflicted imagination became then not only inconsistent with the dictates of right reason, but was entirely at variance with every distinguishing characteristick of that religion which had so long provVOL. III. 3

ed the incitement to his useful labours, and the source of his mental consolations. Indeed, so powerful and so singular was the effect produced on his mind by the influence of the malady, that while for many subsequent years it admitted of his exhibiting the most masterly and delightful display of poetical, epistolary, and conversational ability, on the greatest variety of subjects, it constrained him from that period, both in his conversation and letters, studiously to abstain from every allusion of a religious nature. Yet no one could doubt that the hand and heart from which, even under so mysterious a dispensation, such exquisite descriptions of sacred truth and feeling afterwards proceeded, must have been long and faithfully devoted to his God and Father. The testimonies of his real piety were manifested to others, when least apparent to himself. But where it pleased God to throw a veil over the mental and spiritual consistency of this excellent and afflicted man, it would ill become us rudely to invade the divine prerogative by attempting to withdraw it.

Under the grievous visitation above-mentioned, Mrs. Unwin, whom he had professed to love as a mother, was as a guardian angel to this interesting sufferer. Day and night she watched over him. Inestimable likewise was the friendship of Mr. Newton: "Next to the duties of my ministry," said that venerable pastor, in a letter to the author of this memoir, more than twenty years afterwards, "it was the business of my life to attend him."

For more than a twelvemonth subsequent to this attack, Cowper seems to have been totally overwhelmed by the vehemence of his disorder. But in March, 1774, he was so far enabled to struggle with it, as to seek amusement in the taming his three hares, and in the construction of boxes for them to dwell in. From mechanical amusements he proceeded to epistolary employment, a specimen of which, addressed to his friend Mr. Unwin who had been some years settled at Stock,

in Essex, in the summer of 1778, shows that he had, in a great measure, recovered his admirable faculties.

In 1779 he accompanied Mrs. Unwin in a post-chaise to view the gardens of Gayhurst; an excursion of which he informs her son in a playful letter.

In the autumn of this year we find him reading the Biography of Johnson, and, with the exception of what he terms his "unmerciful treatment of Milton," expressing himself "well entertained" with it.

One of his earliest amusements, in 1780, was the composition of the beautiful fable of "The Nightingale and the Glow-worm;" after which he betook himself to the drawing of landscapes: an employment of which he gresionately fond, though he had never been instructed in the art. This attachment to the pencil was particularly seasonable, as in the midst of it he lost his friend Mr. Newton, who was called to the charge of St. Mary Woolnoth, in London. With a provident care, however, for his future welfare, this excellent man obtained his permission to introduce to him the Rev. William Bull, of Newport Pagnell, who from that time regularly visited him once a fortnight: and whom Cowper afterwards described to his friend Unwin, as "a man of letters and of genius, master of a fine imagination, or rather not master of it;" who could be "lively without levity, and pensive without dejection." As the year advanced, Hume's History, and the Biographia Britannica engaged his attention, though the amusements of the garden were his chief resource, and had banished drawing altogether. These, with the frequent exercise of his epistolary talent, and the occasional production of a minor piece of poetry, in the composition of which the entertainment of himself and his friends was his only aim, led him to the important month of December, in this year, when he was to sit down with the secret intention of writing for the publick; an intention, however, which his extreme humility took care to couple in his mind with

this proviso, that a bookseller could he found who would run the risk of publishing his productions.

Between that time and March, 1781, the four first of his larger poems were completed; namely, Table Talk, The Progress of Errour, Truth, and Expostulation. These, together with the small pieces contained in the earliest edition of that volume, were sent to the press in the following May: Mr. Johnson, of St. Paul's Church-yard, who had been recommended to the poet by Mr. Newton, having, as he informed his friend at Stock, "heroically set all peradventures at defiance," as to the expense of printing, "and taken the whole charge upon himself."

The operation of the press, however, had scarcely commenced, when it was suggested to the author, that the season of publication being so far elapsed, it would be adviseable to postpone the appearance of his book till the ensuing winter. This delay was productive of two advantages; it enabled him to correct the press himself, and nearly to double the quantity of the projected volume; to which, by the 24th of June, he had added the poem of Hope; by the 12th of July, that of Charity, and by the 19th of October, those of Conversation and Retirement.

Whilst the poet was occupied in the extension of his work, there arrived at the neighbouring village of Clifton, a lady who was, in due time, to make a most agreeable addition to his society, and to whom the publick were afterwards indebted for the first suggestion of the Sofa, as they were also to Mrs. Unwin for that of the Progress of Errour, as a subject for Cowper's muse. The writer alludes to Lady Austen, the widow of Sir Robert Austen, Baronet, whose first introduction to the poet and his friends occurred in the summer of 1781; a memorable era in the life of Cowper. The limits, however, of a contracted narrative, such as this professes to be, will only allow me here to introduce the brief character of this accomplished lady, which Cow