the action of putting a plaster on a barber's block. Cowper's own wig-block is still preserved in the summer-house.

Even in his brightest years Cowper was subject to brief periods of melancholy, and Wilson when he called would sometimes perceive that vacant, woebegone look that only too accurately betrayed the state within. On such occasions, whilst shaving him, the barber was obliged again and again "to chuck up his lower jaw," which had the habit of falling.

After the summer of 1781, when he made a public profession of religion by joining the Baptist church in the town, Mr. Wilson, contrary to his previous habit, was very strict in his observance of the Sabbath. "The barber and hairdresser who officiates for me," says Cowper in June of that year, "would not wait upon the king himself on a Sunday."

Previous to this it had been his custom to go out every Sunday morning to dress the hair of Lady Austen, but he now sent word that although he should be only too happy to attend her other days, he could no longer do so on Sundays.

At first thought the reader may not look upon this as a very great calamity to Lady Austen, but calling to mind the lofty and elaborate head-dresses of the last century, he will form some idea of the dilemma in which she found herself. Probably, too, whilst honouring the one, who sacrificed his interest to his conscience, he will sympathize just a little with the other, and think none the worse of her for being vexed and rating Mr. Wilson roundly. All, however, to no effect; and as in the small town of Olney there

was only one barber (Cowper adds, "one bellman, one poet"), she was obliged to have her hair dressed on Saturday evenings. And we are told that more than once she sat up all night to prevent its disarrangement.1

Besides Wilson and Raban, there were several other townsfolk with whom Cowper was more or less acquainted, and whom he refers to as making visits to him, generally for the purpose of bringing news. Two of them, with Mr. Wilson, he describes as entering on this errand on November 27, 1781. "First Mr. Wilson, then Mr. Teedon, and lastly Mr. Whitford, each with a cloud of melancholy on his brow, and with a mouth wide open, have just announced to us this unwelcome intelligence from America." Of Teedon we shall have a good deal to say by and by. Whitford was the minister of the Independent meeting at Olney, of which he was pastor from 1776 to 1783. He was an old friend of John Newton's, having, in fact, at one time studied under him.

85. The Publication of the First Volume.— February, 1782.

The volume which had been so long in the press was now put before the world. Cowper had made his "public entrée."

The "Task." has been read, and read again, by almost everybody, but these earlier and, to use Cowper's own description of them, "serio-comic" poems, although containing many passages of beauty "The Town of Cowper."

and a great deal of humour, have been somewhat neglected. What can be droller than "the smirking, smart Abbé" in "The Progress of Error," "the Splenetic" in "Conversation," or "the Persian" in the same poem ?—

"A Persian, humble servant of the sun,

Who, though devout, yet bigotry had none,
Hearing a lawyer, grave in his address,
With adjurations every word impress,
Supposed the man a bishop, or at least,
God's name so much upon his lips, a priest;
Bowed at the close with all his graceful airs,

And begged an interest in his frequent prayers."

What more beautiful than the account of the two disciples journeying to Emmaus in "Conversation," the contrast between Voltaire and the Cottager in "Truth," or the lines on Whitefield (Leuconomus) in " Hope"? To quote from the last :

"He loved the world that hated him: the tear
That dropped upon his Bible was sincere :
Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife,
His only answer was a blameless life;

And he that forged and he that threw the dart
Had each a brother's interest in his heart."

But perhaps the greatest charm of all is the abundance of delightful couplets, often proverbial verses, that, as Hayley says, express a simple truth with perfect grace and precision." You meet with them on almost every page. To take a few of the best:

"None sends his arrow to the mark in view
Whose hand is feeble or his aim untrue."
-Progress of Error.

"Called to the temple of impure delight,
He that abstains, and he alone, does right."

-Progress of Error.

""Tis hard if all is false that I advance,

A fool must now and then be right by chance."

-Conversation.

"Vociferated logic kills me quite,

A noisy man is always in the right.”

-Conversation.

"Where men of judgment creep and feel their way
The positive pronounce without dismay."

Shafts of wit are levelled at anybody and everybody whom, having weighed in the balance, he finds wanting -not excluding himself—

"Patriots who love good places at their hearts,-
... Admirals extolled for standing still,

Or doing nothing with a deal of skill.

Generals who will not conquer when they may,
Firm friends to peace, to pleasure, and good pay."

The "cassocked huntsman" and the " fiddling priest." Geologists and antiquaries likewise get a drubbing, and the geologists and antiquaries of those days, as anybody may know who has taken the trouble to inquire into the matter, were not undeserving of chastisement.

The picture of the smart abbé encountering some loitering English travellers is inimitable. The abbé

and

"Points to inscriptions wheresoe'er they tread,
Such as when legible were never read;"

"Exhibits elevations, drawings, plans,
Models of Herculanean pots and pans,

And sells them medals, which, if neither rare
Nor ancient, will be so, preserved with care."

Cowper also has a fling at the novelist with his. "sentimental frippery;" and at dancing and cardplaying.

Dr. Doran, in his "Habits and Men," thus sums up the poems in this first volume: "Cowper is certainly the sweetest of our didactic poets. He is elevated in his Table Talk;' acute in detailing 'The Progress of Error;' and he chants the praises of 'Truth' in more dulcet notes than were ever sounded by the fairest swan in Cayster. His Expostulation' is made in the tones of a benevolent sage. His 'Hope' and his Charity' are proofs of his pure Christianlike feeling-a feeling which also pervades his Conversation' and his 'Retirement,' and which barbs the shafts of his satire without taking away from their strength."

Along with Cowper's original poems there were printed in this first volume his translations from his old schoolmaster, Vincent Bourne, a man whose memory he ever cherished, and of whose poems he said :—

"His humour is entirely original-he can speak of a magpie or a cat in terms so exquisitely appropriated to the character he draws, that one would suppose him: