which he sent to Newton on June 2, 1780. It com

mences

"Reasoning at every step he treads,
Man yet mistakes his way."

"The male dove," adds Cowper, "was smoking a pipe, and the female dove sewing, while she delivered herself as above. This little circumstance may lead you perhaps to guess what pair I had in my eye."

70. The Poet draws Mountains and
Dabchicks.

In the February of 1780 Cowper added drawing to his other amusements. That he ever did anything of value in this department is not to be expected; but it served to amuse him, and he made "such surprising proficiency in the art" in the short space of two months, that when he showed his productions to Mrs. Unwin she was "all admiration and applause." He put his heart and soul into it, as he did into everything else that pleased him. He tells Newton that his application to it was unwearied. "I never," he says,

"received a little pleasure from anything in my life; if I am delighted it is in the extreme. The unhappy consequence of this temperature is, that my attachment to any occupation seldom outlives the novelty of it." The origin of Cowper's taking up with the particular art of drawing is not far to seek. There was living in Olney at this time a worthy local artist and sculptor, named James Andrews, whose productions, considering

that he was entirely self-taught, are remarkably good. Though he excelled in painting, it was in sculpture that he exhibited most talent, and it is much to be regretted that his carved gravestones in Olney churchyard and other places were not preserved from the weather. The rains and frosts of a hundred years have had the effect that might be expected, and ere long but little of his work will be discernible. The best stone is that near the porch, to the memory of William Lambry, a pasture-keeper of Weston Underwood, who died in 1779. It represents a farmyard scene in winter-cut hayrick, sheep, fowls, trough, crook, ladder, shears. Of his other stones, one represents death-a skeleton-drawing aside the curtains of a sick man's bed, and with a pair of scissors cutting the thread of life; in another a child is holding an extinguisher over a flame on a tripod; a third, now let into the churchyard wall, is engraved with cherubs' heads, and contains a triangle and a circle, in the midst of which is the name in Hebrew of the Deity.

Thinking that he too might derive pleasure from the art of drawing, Cowper had secured Andrews' services. Most of his letters in the spring of this year contain allusions to his new pastime. "I draw mountains,' says he, " valleys, woods, and streams, and ducks and dabchicks. I admire them myself, and Mrs. Unwin admires them, and her praise and my praise put together are fame enough for me." In a letter to Newton he writes: "James Andrews "-his "Michael Angelo," as he dubs him-" pays me many compliments on my success in the art of drawing; but I have not yet the vanity to think myself qualified to furnish your apartment." Spite of the praises of Mrs. Unwin and

"Michael Angelo," Cowper seems never to have been imbued with the belief that his skill in drawing would ever be above the ordinary. In commissioning Unwin to purchase for him some Indian ink, a few brushes, and a pencil or two, he limits him to the sum of five shillings, observing, "I do not think my talent in the art worth more."

The drawing mania lasted nearly a year, and might have extended even longer, only he found it hurtful to his eyes. He told Mrs. King (October 11, 1788): Many figures were the fruit of my labours, which had at least the merit of being unparalleled by any production either of art or nature. But, before the year was ended, I had occasion to wonder at the progress that may be made, in despite of natural deficiency, by dint alone of practice; for I actually produced three landscapes, which a lady thought worthy to be framed and glazed. I then judged it high time to exchange this occupation for another, lest, by any subsequent productions of inferior merit, I should forfeit the honour I had so fortunately acquired."

The lady in question was Lady Austen. An engraving from one of these drawings may be seen in the Gentlemen's Magazine for June, 1804. The poet gave up drawing, but " Michael Angelo" continued to paint and to carve until 1817, when they laid him to rest in the churchyard he had so loved to adorn, and put over his head a stone with a wheatsheaf on it—a fitting emblem of the fecundity of his invention. Another of the poet's amusements was carpentering. "There is not a squire in all this country," he says, "who can boast of having made better squirrel-houses, hutches

for rabbits, or bird-cages, than myself; and in the article of cabbage-nets I had no superior."

The carpentering, however, was even more injurious to his eyes than the drawing. "In the character of a carpenter, indeed," says he, "I almost put them out.” So this occupation had to be abandoned also.

71. Cowper's "Whisking Wit."

Even before he commenced drawing Cowper had done a little again at versifying, his first attempts after his derangement having been four political pieces. One was suggested by the defeat of the French admiral D'Estaing at St. Lucia (in December, 1778), another by the repulse of the same at Savannah (October, 1779). Of these two Cowper was "rather proud; but as they contained prophecies of "an illustrious consummation" of the American War, which subsequent events did not verify, he was fain to destroy them. The other two, "On the Trial of Admiral Keppel," and an address to the mob "On the occasion of the late Riot at the House of Sir Hugh Palliser," though apparently thrown aside as being not of much account, have been preserved. Both Keppel and his viceadmiral, owing to mutual recriminations, had been put on their trials, before courts-martial, for dereliction of duty. "Each was declared to have conducted himself like a brave man, while the populace showed its versatility by first abusing Keppel, and then, on his acquittal, forcing open Palliser's house, destroying his furniture, and hanging him in effigy, as the persecutor of Keppel."

The Universal Review for June, 1890, in which these poems were first printed, also contains another poem that had not previously been published-namely, "The Bee and the Pine-apple," which commences:

"A bee, allured by the perfume

Of a rich pine-apple in bloom."

The well-known poem, "The Pine-apples and the Bee" (commencing "The Pine-apples in triple row"), was written on the same paper, and entitled, “ Another on the same." In December, 1779, in consequence of a letter from Unwin, Cowper had written the humorous lines entitled, "The Yearly Distress; or, Tithing Time, at Stock, in Essex ;" and now (February, 1780) his "whisking wit " produced the fable of the "Nightingale and Glowworm," founded on a statement in the Register that the glowworm is the nightingale's food. Another poem of this year was "A Fable," commencing, “A raven, while with glossy breast," the bird in question being one that had built a nest in one of the trees of Guinea Field.

Among these offshoots of his whisking wit must also be numbered the lost poem alluded to in his letter to Lady Hesketh of January 1, 1788, in which he speaks of it as having been written some ten years previously. He does not even mention the subject, but he certainly manages to rouse our curiosity when he declares that neither Mrs. Unwin nor he ever laughed more at any production of his, "perhaps not even at John Gilpin.'" "But," continues the poet, "for all this, my dear, you must, as I said, give me credit, for the thing itself is gone to that limbo of