water.

"Alas!" says Cowper, "when I wish for a favourable sentence from that quarter (to confess a weakness that I should not confess to all), I feel myself not a little influenced by a tender regard to my reputation here, even among my neighbours at Olney. Here are watchmakers, who themselves are wits, and who at present perhaps think me one. Here is a carpenter and a baker, and, not to mention others, here is your idol, Mr. Teedon, whose smile is fame. All these read the Monthly Review, and all these will set me down for a dunce if those terrible critics should show them the example. But oh! wherever else I am accounted dull, dear Mr. Griffith, let me pass for a genius at Olney."

This was on the 12th of June (1782). At length the dreaded review came out, the "critical Rhadamanthus" spoke, and not unfavourably. Most modern poets, it said, copy their sentiments and diction from those who have sung before them, "their very modes of thinking as well as versification are copied from the said models. This, however, is not the case with Mr. Cowper; he is a poet sui generis; for, as his notes are peculiar to himself, he classes not with any known species of bards that have preceded him; his style of composition, as well as his modes of thinking, are entirely his own." To give two more excerpts: "Mr. Cowper's predominant turn of mind, though serious and devotional, is at the same time duly humorous and sarcastic. Hence his very religion has a smile that is arch, and his sallies of humour an air that is religious." "His language is plain, forcible, and expressive." Cowper could now face without fear the carpenter, the baker, and the schoolmaster, for had not the Monthly

Review pronounced that it was on the whole a very decent volume? But though praise had been bestowed by the various magazines, it had been bestowed in most cases only grudgingly, and Cowper did not feel any particular encouragement to keep on writing. To Unwin he said: "You tell me you have been asked if I am intent upon another volume. I reply not at present, not being convinced that I have met with sufficient encouragement. I account myself happy in having pleased a few, but am not rich enough to despise the many. I do not know what sort of a market my commodity has found, but if a slack one, I must beware how I make a second attempt.' As it subsequently appeared, the book sold but slowly.

87. The Case of Simon Browne.

In the suppressed preface Newton said: "The hope that the God whom Cowper served would support him under his affliction, and at length vouchsafe him a happy deliverance, never forsook me. The desirable crisis, I trust, is now nearly approaching; the dawn, the presage of returning day, is already arrived."

In respect to which Cowper had observed (December 21, 1780): "Your sentiments with respect to me are exactly Mrs. Unwin's. She, like you, is perfectly sure of my deliverance, and often tells me so. I make but one answer, and sometimes none at all. That answer gives her no pleasure, and would give you as little ; therefore, at this time, I suppress it." In another letter to the same, Cowper compares himself to a criminal

being taken to execution, who, "though carried through the roughest road, when he arrives at the destined spot would be glad, notwithstanding the many jolts he met with, to repeat his journey." Mr. Newton then wondered whether it would be any use to draw his attention to something resembling his state in another person, and he mentioned the case of Simon Browne. Simon Browne had been minister of the Dissenters' Meeting in Old Jewry, to which he had been called in 1716. In 1723 he lost both his wife and only son, as a result of which he fell into a deep melancholy, which ended in a settled persuasion that "he had fallen under the sensible displeasure of God, who had caused his rational soul gradually to perish, and left him only an animal life, in common with the brutes."

Like Cowper, he considered it "profane for him to pray, and incongruous to be present at the prayers of others." Like Cowper, too, he at times felt strong temptations to suicide. Resigning his ministry under this delusion, he returned to his native place, Shepton Mallet, in Somersetshire, where he devoted himself to literature. For one of his books ("A Defence of the Religion of Nature") he prepared an extraordinary dedication to Queen Caroline, the object of which was to request the queen's prayers in her "most retired address to the King of kings, that the reign of her beloved consort might be renowned to all posterity by the recovery of a soul in the utmost ruin "-meaning of course himself. Though suppressed at the time by Mr. Browne's friends, this curious epistle found its way twenty years later into the hands of Dr. Hawkesworth, who printed it in the Adventurer as a literary curiosity.

Simon Browne's delusion remained with him till his death, which occurred in 1732.

In reply to Newton's letter concerning this person Cowper wrote (March 14, 1782): "I was not unacquainted with Mr. Browne's extraordinary case before you favoured me with his letter and his intended dedication to the queen, though I am obliged to you for a sight of these two curiosities, which I do not recollect to have ever seen till you sent them. I could, however, were it not a subject that would make us all melancholy, point out to you some essential differences between his state of mind and my own, which would prove mine to be by far the most deplorable of the two." And in this strain he proceeds. It was in fact perfectly useless to argue with Cowper on the state of his mind. Upon one subject he was unreasonable, and it was impossible to move him. "I must deal with you,” he says, "as I deal with poor Mrs. Unwin, in all our disputes about it, cutting all controversy short by an appeal to the event."

88. Lady Austen again.-June, 1782.

Towards the end of June Lady Austen was at Clifton again, and one of her first actions was to send her sister with a letter to Cowper. The result was a perfect reconciliation. Lady Austen, he tells Unwin, "seized the first opportunity to embrace your mother with tears of the tenderest affection, and I, of course, am satisfied." The passing cloud that had obscured this friendship having now blown over, there were once again pleasant

journeyings to and from Clifton. Lady Austen even proposed that Cowper and Mrs. Unwin should leave Olney and hire Clifton Hall.

"We are as happy," he writes to Mr. Unwin (July 16, 1782), "in Lady Austen, and she in us, as ever. Having a lively imagination, and being passionately desirous of consolidating all into one family (for she has taken her leave of London), she has just sprung a project which at least serves to amuse us and to make us laugh; it is to hire Mr. Small's house, on the top of Clifton Hill, which is large, commodious, and handsome, will hold us conveniently, and any friends who may occasionally favour us with a visit. The house is furnished; but if it can be hired without the furniture, will let for a trifle."

By and by the walks to Clifton were suddenly interrupted by the autumn rains, which swelled the river and covered the meadows with one great sheet of water. But although parted from his affectionate "sister," the poet, instead of suffering himself to be depressed by the weather, amuses himself by striking off, from a small printing-press she had given him, a short poem on the flood, which poem, by the by, is said to have been the earliest matter printed in Olney; and with characteristic drollery, instead of expressing a wish that the waters may abate, cries rather, "Oh that I were a Dutchman, that I need not repine at the mud!"

"Or meadows deluged with a flood,

But in a bog live well content,

And find it just my element."

This Dutch weather seems to have penetrated even the parlour walls, for the printed lines "turn up their