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instance of a poem obtaining so rapidly a great reputation. But it appeared,.. if the expression may be permitted, . just at the fulness of time, when the way had been prepared for it. It was at once descriptive, moral, and satirical. The descriptive parts every where bore evidence of a thoughtful mind and a gentle spirit, as well as of an observant eye; and the moral sentiment which pervaded them, gave a charm in which descriptive poetry is often found wanting. The best didactic poems, when compared with the Task, are like formal gardens in comparison with woodland scenery."

In a letter to Lady Hesketh, written soon after the renewal of their correspondence, Cowper says, "Now my dear, I am going to tell you a secret: it is a great secret, that you must not whisper even to your cat. No creature is at this moment apprized of it, but Mrs. Unwin and her son. I am making a new translation of Homer, and am on the point of finishing the twenty-first book of the Iliad." It appears from the same letter, that he began this translation on the 12th of November, 1784, which was as soon as he had completed his labours for the second volume of his Poems, by finishing the piece entitled Tirocinium. Perhaps no work of equal magnitude was ever commenced with so little preparation ;-except the course of his former studies, indeed, there had been none. It does not appear that he ever saw any other translation than Pope's; and so entirely unprovided was he with books, that he translated the whole Iliad with no other help than a Clavis. But he "equipped himself better for this immense journey" when he revised the work; a task which was performed with so much diligence, that the first copy bore very little resemblance to the second all the way through. Our limits will not permit us to enter into the details connected with this translation. Sufficient to say, that whatever merit it possesses, it was better adapted to furnish the poet with amusement than to add to his popularity. It was published by subscription in 2 vols. 4to, in 1791. (See Scott and Webster's Memoirs, p. 16.)

From the renewal of Lady Hesketh's intercourse with Cowper, she had manifested the most sincere and affectionate solicitude for her poor kinsman's welfare. Her offers of pecuniary assistance had been accepted as frankly as they were made, this being one of those cases in which it is equally blessed to give and to receive. She had inquired minutely into the state of his health, and finding that he suffered much from indigestion, insisted upon his sending for a physician from Northampton. She sent him wine, and ordered him a supply of oysters through the season. The physician's opinion was favourable; he saw no reason to doubt a speedy recovery :-indeed his medicines seem to have produced their desired effect, and Cowper reported, in playful sport, his progress toward recovery. Of mental malady there was at that time (Nov. 1785) no manifestation.

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Among the circumstances which cheered Cowper at this time, there is one that proves how strong an interest he had excited in an individual. In a letter to Lady Hesketh he alludes to this anonymous correspondent, and mentions his obligations to him. He says: "In the last place, he gives his attention to my circumstances, takes the kindest notice of their narrowness, and makes me a present of an annuity of fifty pounds a year, wishing that it were five hundred pounds. In a P. S. he tells me that a small parcel will set off by the Wellinborough coach on Tuesday next, which he hopes will arrive safe." In his next letter he says, " It is very pleasant, my dearest cousin, to receive a present so delicately conveyed as that which I received so lately from Anonymous; but it is also very painful to have nobody to thank for it. I find myself therefore driven by stress of necessity to the following resolution, viz. that I will constitute you my Thanks-receiver-general, for whatsoever gift I shall receive hereafter, as well as for those that I have already received, from a nameless benefactor. I therefore thank you, my cousin, for a most elegant present, including the most elegant compliment that ever poet was honoured with; for a snuff-box of tortoise-shell, with a beautiful landscape on the lid of it, glazed with crystal, having the figures of three hares in the foreground, and inscribed above with these words, The Peasant's Nest; and below with these, Tiney, Puss, and Bess." I have no means of ascertaining who this benefactor was; though undoubtedly Lady Hesketh was, as Cowper supposed, in the secret. It was not Lady Hesketh herself, because, after her offer of assistance had been made and accepted, she would not have affected any mystery in bestowing it. Nor is it likely to have been her father. Could it be his daughter Theodora? Were it not that the comparison which the letter-writer drew between Cowper and himself, seems to be one which would have occurred only to a man, I should have no doubt that Theodora was the person; and notwithstanding that obvious objection, am still inclined to think so; for the presents were what a woman would have chosen, and it is certain that her love was as constant as it was hopeless. Hers was a melancholy lot; but she had the consolation of knowing now wherefore, and how wisely her father had acted in forbidding a marriage which must have made her miserable indeed.

About the middle of June, 1786, Lady Hesketh visited Cowper at Olney. In a letter to Hill he said that his dear cousin's arrival had made them happier than they ever were before at Olney, and that her company was a cordial of which he should feel the effect, not only while she remained there, but as long as he lived. Upon this visit Lady Hesketh discovered that her cousin's habitation was as miserable in itself, as it was inconvenient in its situation. The expense of a removal was more than Cowper and Mrs. Unwin could at that time have incurred, even if they could have roused

themselves to the effort. Lady Hesketh gave the impulse, and supplied the means; and before she had been a week at Olney, a house at Weston belonging to the Throckmortons was taken. "The change," says Cowper, "will, I hope, prove advantageous both to your mother and me, in all respects. Here we have no neighbourhood: there we shall have most agreeable neighbours in the Throckmortons. Here we have a bad air in winter, impregnated with the fishy-smelling fumes of the marsh miasma; there we shall breathe in an atmosphere untainted. Here we are confined from September to March, and sometimes longer; there we shall be upon the very verge of pleasure-grounds, in which we can always ramble, and shall not wade through almost impassable dirt to get at them."

Cowper soon began to feel the pleasures, and some of the inconveniences, of being an eminent author. Odes were composed to his honour and glory, the report of which reached him, though he was not always "gratified with their sight." "But I have at least," says he, "been tickled with some douceurs of a very flattering nature by the post. A lady unknown addresses the 'best of men ;' an unknown gentleman has read my 'inimitable poems,' and invites me to his seat in Hampshire; another incognito gives me hopes of a memorial in his garden; and a Welsh attorney sends me his verses to revise, and obligingly asks,

Say shall my little bark attendant sail,

Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale!"

But the most amusing proof both of his celebrity and his good nature, is thus related to Lady Hesketh: "On Monday morning last, Sam brought me word that there was a man in the kitchen who desired to speak with me. I ordered him in. A plain, decent, elderly figure made its appearance, and being desired to sit, spoke as follows: Sir, I am clerk of the parish of All Saints in Northampton; brother to Mr. Cox the upholsterer. It is customary for the person in my office to annex to a bill of mortality, which he publishes at Christmas, a copy of verses. You will do me a great favour, sir, if you would furnish me with one."" After a little demur, Cowper promised to supply him; and he continues, "The waggon has accordingly gone this day to Northampton loaded in part with my effusions in the mortuary style. A fig for poets who write epitaphs upon individuals! I have written one that serves two hundred persons." Seven successive years did Cowper, in his excellent good nature, supply the clerk of All Saints in Northampton with his Mortuary verses.

In the winter of 1787 Mrs. Unwin providentially escaped death, and such a death as must have given Cowper a shock which would probably have completely overthrown his intellect. "This morning," he writes to Lady Hesketh, "had very near been a tragical one to me, beyond all that

have ever risen upon me. Mrs. Unwin rose as usual at seven o'clock. At eight she came to me and showed me her bed-gown, with a great piece burnt out of it. Having lighted her fire, which she always lights herself, she placed the candle upon the hearth. In a few moments it occurred to her, that if it continued there it might possibly set fire to her clothes, therefore she put it out. But in fact, though she had not the least suspicion of it, her clothes were on fire at that very time. She found herself uncommonly annoyed by smoke, such as brought the water into her eyes. Supposing that some of the billets might be too forward, she disposed them differently; but finding the smoke increase, and grow more troublesome, (for by this time the room was filled with it,) she cast her eye downward, and perceived not only her bed-gown, but her petticoat on fire. She had the presence of mind to gather them in her hand, and plunge them immediately into the basin, by which means the general conflagration of her person, which must probably have ensued in a few moments, was effectually prevented."

The interruptions which took him sometimes from his now regular and favourite occupation, the translation of Homer, were neither unwelcome nor unseasonable, occasional change being as salutary for the mind as for the body. It was suggested to him by his cousin, that he might further a good cause by composing a poem upon the slave trade, which, by the unparalleled exertions of Clarkson, and the zeal and eloquence of Wilberforce, had been brought before the public so as to make a deep and permanent impression. But though he felt inclined to start in that career, could he have allowed himself to desert Homer long enough, yet upon seeing a poem by Hannah More, he dropped the half-formed inclination. He had been asked to write songs upon the subject, as the surest way of reaching the public ear. And though at first he felt not at all allured to the undertaking, as thinking that it offered only images of horror by no means suited to that style of composition, yet after "turning the matter in his mind as many ways as he could," he produced five. "If you hear ballads sung in the streets on the hardships of the negroes in the islands," he says to Rose, they are probably mine. It must be an honour to any man to have given a stroke to that chain, however feeble."*

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In 1790, Mrs. Bodham, who had been a favourite cousin of Cowper's in her childhood, sent to him at Weston a picture of his mother, being the only portrait of her in existence, accompanied by a letter written in the fulness of her heart. He replied to it with kindred feeling. He said, "I received the portrait the night before last, and viewed it with a trepidation of nerves and spirits somewhat akin to what I should have felt, had the dear original presented herself to my em

These are to be found amongst his Miscellaneous Poems.

braces. I kissed it, and hung it where it is the last object that I see at night, and, of course, the first on which I open my eyes in the morning. She died when I completed my sixth year; yet I remember her well, and am an ocular witness of the great fidelity of the copy. I remember, too, a multitude of the maternal tendernesses which I received from her, and which have endeared her memory to me beyond expression." His beautiful lines written on this occasion are to be found p. 484.

At this time Mrs. Unwin was afflicted with almost constant head-aches, and a pain in the side, the cause of which was not understood; her lameness consequent upon her fall was very little amended, but her looks had not altered for the worse, "and her spirits," Cowper said, "were good, because supported by comforts which depend not on the state of the body." The time came when she was rendered, by infirmities of mind and body, as unlike her former self in other things, as she now was in strength.

After the King's recovery, in 1789, Lady Hesketh had urged her cousin to write some verses on an event which had filled the nation with joy. Accordingly he "violated for once his engagements to Homer, and gave the morning to the King, the Queen, and her." See p. 445, 448. The laureateship became vacant by Warton's death in the year following. This office, which had never been worthily bestowed since it was taken from Dryden till Whitehead succeeded Cibber in it, had been rendered respectable by its two last possessors; and Lady Hesketh wished to procure it for Cowper, who was always ready at occasional verses, and had written so willingly at her suggestion upon the King's restoration to health. This however he declined.

Homer was now ready for the press. Upon receiving the list of subscribers from Johnson, Cowper saw how much he had been indebted to Hill's solicitation, and to Mrs. Hill's. Thanking them both for their friendly assistance, "it is," said he, "an illustrious catalogue, in respect of rank and title; but methinks I should have liked it as well had it been more numerous. The sum subscribed, however, will defray the expense of printing; which is as much as, in these unsubscribing days, I had any reason to promise myself. I devoutly second your droll wish, that the booksellers may contend about me. The more the better. Seven times seven, if they please; and let them fight with the fury of Achilles,

Till every rubric-post be crimson'd o'er
With blood of booksellers, in battle slain,
For me, and not a periwig untorn."

The work was published in the summer of 1791, and Cowper received from his friends in all quarters good reports of its reception.

He was now idle for awhile, both on account of his eyes,

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