were seriously disposed were often cheered and animated by his prayers. Of their intimacy the same writer speaks in these emphatic terms:-"For nearly twelve years we were seldom separated for seven hours at a time, when we were awake and at home. The first six I passed in daily admiring and endeavouring to imitate him during the second six I walked pensively with him in the valley of the shadow of death." Among other friendly services about this time, he wrote for Mr. Newton some beautiful hymns, which the latter introduced in public worship, and published in a collection long before Cowper was known as a poet.

In 1770, his brother John died at Cambridge, an event which made a lasting, but not unfavourable, impression on the tender and affectionate mind of our poet. While the circumstances of this event were recent, he committed them to paper, and they were published by Mr. Newton, in 1802. Cowper afterwards introduced some lines to his memory in The Task:'

"I had a brother once.

Peace to the memory of a man of worth,
A man of letters, and of manners too," &e.

For some years this brother withstood, but finally adopted our author's opinions in religious matters; and severely as the survivor felt the loss of so amiable a relation, it produced no other effect on his mind than to increase his confidence in the principles he had adopted, and to rejoice in the consolations he had derived from them.

From this period, his life affords little for narrative, until 1773, when, in the language of his biographer," he sunk into such severe paroxysms of religious despondency, that he required an attendant of the most gentle, vigilant, and inflexible spirit. Such an attendant he found in that faithful guardian (Mrs. Unwin), whom he had professed to love as a mother, and who watched over him during this long malady, extended through several years, with that perfect mixture of tenderness and fortitude, which constitutes the inestimable influence of maternal protection."

His recovery was slow; and he knew enough of his

malady, to abstain from literary employment, while his mind was in any degree unsettled. The first amusement which engaged his humane affections, was the taming of three hares; a circumstance that would scarcely have deserved notice, unless among the memoranda of natural history, if he had not given to it an extraordinary interest, by the animated account he wrote of this singular family. While he thus amused himself, his friends were indefatigable in their endeavours to promote his recovery; and, in the summer of 1778, they had the gratification of seeing their attentions rewarded by his restoration to health.

Our author continued to amuse himself with reading such new books as his friends could procure, with writing short pieces of poetry, tending his tame hares and birds, and drawing landscapes, a talent which he discovered in himself very late in life, and in which he displayed considerable skill. In all this, perhaps, there was not much labour, but it was not idleness. A short passage in one of his letters to the Rev. William Unwin, dated May, 1780, will serve to make the distinction. "Excellence is providentially placed beyond the reach of indolence, that success may be the reward of industry, and that idleness may be punished with obscurity and disgrace. So long as I am pleased with an employment, I am capable of unwearied application, because my feelings are all of the intense kind. I never received a little pleasure from anything in my life: if I am delighted, it is in the extreme. The unhappy consequence of this temperament is, that my attachment to any occurst on seldom outlives the novelty of it."

Urged, however, by his amiable friend and companion, Mrs. Unwin, he employed the winter of 1780-1, in preparing his first volume of poems for the press, consisting of The Table Talk,' Hope,' The Progress of Error,' Charity,' & But such was his diffidence in their success, that he appears to have been in doubt whether any bookseller would be willing to print them on his own account. He was fortunate enough, however, to find in Mr. Johnson (his friend Mr. Newton's publisher), one whose spirit and liberality immediately set his mind at rest. The volume was accord

ingly published in 1782, but its success was by no means equal to its merit; for, as Mr. Hayley has observed, "it exhibits such a diversity of poetical powers as have been given very rarely indeed to any individual of the modern or of the ancient world." As an apology for the inattention of the public to a present of such value, Mr. Hayley has supposed that he gave offence by his bold eulogy on Whitfield, "whom the dramatic satire of Foote, in his comedy of The Mirror,' had taught the nation to deride as a mischievous fanatic;" and that he hazarded sentiments too precise and strict for public opinion. The character of Whitfield, however, had long been rescued from the buffooneries of Foote, and the public could now bear his eulogium with tolerable patience; but that there are austerities in these poems, which indicate the moroseness of a recluse, Cowper was not unwilling to allow. It may be added, that the volume was introduced into the world without any of the quackish parade so frequently adopted, and had none of those embellishments by which the eye of the purchaser is caught, at the expense of his pocket. The periodical critics, whose opinion Cowper watched with more anxiety than could have been wished, in a man so superior to the common candidates for poetic fame, were divided; and even those who were most favourable, betrayed no extraordinary raptures. In the mean time the work crept slowly into notice, and acquired the praise of those who knew the value of such an addition to our stock of English poetry.

Some time before the publication of this volume, Cowper made a most important acquisition in the friendship and conversation of Lady Austen, widow of Sir Robert Austen, whom he found a woman of elegant taste, and such critical powers as enabled her to direct his studies by her judgment, and encourage them by her praise. An accidental visit which this lady made to Olney served to introduce her to the Poet, whose shyness generally gave way to a display of mental excellence and polished manners. In a short time Lady Austen shared his esteem with his older friend Mrs. Unwin, although not without exciting some little degree of jealousy, which Mr. Hayley has noticed with hiạ

usual delicacy. Cowper, without at first suspecting that the feelings of Mrs. Unwin could be hurt, "considered the cheerful and animating society of his new accomplished friend as a blessing conferred on him by the signal favour of providence." Some months after their first interview, Lady Austen quitted her house in London, and having taken up her residence in the parsonage-house of Olney, Cowper, Mrs. Unwin, and herself, became like one family, dining always together, alternately in the houses of the two ladies.

Among other small pieces which he composed at the suggestion of Lady Austen was the celebrated ballad of John Gilpin,' the origin of which Mr. Hayley thus relates" It happened one afternoon that Lady Austen observed him sinking into increasing dejection; it was her custom, on these occasions, to try all the resources of her sprightly powers for his immediate relief. She told him the story of John Gilpin (which had been treasured in her uemory from her childhood) to dissipate the gloom of the passing hour. Its effect on the fancy. of Cowper had the air of enchantment: he informed her the next morning, that convulsions of laughter, brought on by the recollection of her story, had kept him awake during the greatest part of the night, and that he had turned it into a ballad." Mrs. Unwin sent it to the Public Advertiser, where Henderson the comedian first saw it, and conceiving it might display his comic powers, read it at Freemason's Hall, in a course of similar entertaiments given by himself and Mr. Thomas Sheridan. It afterwards became extremely popular among all classes of readers, but was not generally known to be Cowper's until it was added to his second volume.

The public was soon laid under a far higher obligation to Lady Austen for having suggested our author's principal poem, The Task,'-"a poem," says Mr. Hayley, "of such infinite variety, that it seems to include every subject, and every style, without any dissonance or disorder; and to have flowed without effort from inspired philanthropy, eager to impress upon the hearts of all readers whatever may lead them most happily to the full enjoyment of human life, and to the final attainment of Heaven." This admirable poem appears

to have been written in 1783 and 1784, but underwent many careful revisions. The public had not done much for Cowper, but he had too much regard for it, and his own character, to obtrude what was incorrect, or might be made better. It was his opinion, and we fully subscribe to the doctrine, that poetry, in order to attain excellence, must be indebted to labour; and it was his correspondent practice to revise his poems with scrupulous care and severity. In November 1784, The Task' was sent to press; and he began the Tirocinium,' the purport of which in his own words, was to censure the want of discipline, and the scandalous inattention to morals, that obtain in public schools, especially in the largest, and to recommend private tuition as a mode of education preferable on all accounts; to call upon fathers to become tutors of their own sons, where that is practicable, to take home a domestic tutor, where it is not, and if neither can be done, to place them under the care of some rural clergyman, whose attention is limited to a few. In 1785 this work was published with other pieces, which composed his second volume, and which soon engaged the attention and admiration of the public, in a way that left him no regret for the cool reception and slow progress of his first. Its success also obtained for him another female friend and associate, Lady Hesketh, his cousin, who had long been separated from him. Their intercourse was first revived by a correspondence, of which many interesting specimens are given in Hayley's Life of Cowper, and of which it is there said, with great truth, that "Cowper's letters are rivals to his poems in the rare excellence of representing life and nature with graceful and endearing fidelity." In explaining the nature of his situation to Lady Hesketh, who came to reside at Olney in the month of June 1786, he informs her that he had lived twenty years with Mrs. Unwin, to whose affectionate care it was owing that he lived at all; but that for thirteen of those years he had been in a state of mind which made all her care and attention necessary. He tells her, at the same time, that dejection of spirits, which may have prevented many a man from becoming an author, had made him one. He found employment