instead of being in a nun's hood, might pass for the face of an angel. Mr. Bull, who possessed Madame Guion's poems in three volumes, lent them to Cowper, whom they so much pleased that he looked out "a Liliputian paper book" which he happened to have by him, and set to work at translating them.

Mr. Bull encouraged the poet in this work, and from the best of motives, but one cannot help thinking that the writings of Madame Guion were more calculated to cause Cowper to brood over his great trouble than to do him good. To a man like Cowper, for instance, the less he was led to muse on such subjects as "The Vicissitudes experienced in the Christian Life" the One verse of this poem runs as follows:

better.

"My claim to life, though sought with earnest care,

No light within me or without me shows;

Once I had faith, but now in self-despair

Find my chief cordial and my best repose."

-

Here was Cowper's own case. It was like seeing one's face in a glass.

Cowper's account of a later visit to Mr. Bull is thus told in a letter to Newton (September 23, 1783):

"Since you went we dined with Mr. Bull. I had sent him notice of our visit a week before, which, like a contemplative studious man as he is, he put in his pocket and forgot. When we arrived the parlour windows were shut, and the house had the appearance of being uninhabited. After waiting some time, however, the maid opened the door, and the master

presented himself. It is hardly worth while to observe so repeatedly that his garden seems a spot contrived only for the growth of melancholy, but being always affected by it in the same way, I cannot help it. He showed me a nook, in which he had placed a bench, and where he said he found it very refreshing to smoke his pipe and meditate. Here he sits with his back against one brick wall and his nose against another, which must, you know, be very refreshing and greatly assist meditation. He rejoices the more in this niche because it is an acquisition made at some expense, and with no small labour; several loads of earth were removed in order to make it, which loads of earth, had I the management of them, I should carry thither again, and fill up a place more fit in appearance to be a repository for the dead than the living. I would on no account put any man out of conceit with his innocent enjoyments, and therefore never tell him my thoughts upon this subject, but he is not seldom low-spirited, and I cannot but suspect that his situation helps to make him so."

Whatever Cowper thought, Bull was exceedingly attached to this favourite nook. It was overshadowed by a lilac tree. In his garden Mr. Bull had a circular walk, which was accurately measured that he might know how many times round it would make a mile. At one point near the garden gate stood a sun-dial, and at its side was a little ledge for holding bullets, which bullets Mr. Bull moved from one hollow to another at every round. This was his mode of taking

exercise.

90. "John Gilpin."-October, 1782.

The vicarage was soon ready for the reception of Lady Austen, and as soon as she was settled therein, the door in the wall that had been in use when Newton was at Olney was opened again. Henceforward Lady Austen, the poet, and Mrs. Unwin allowed never a day to pass without meeting; and so intimate did they become that "a practice obtained at length of dining with each other alternately every day, Sundays excepted.”

Then Lady Austen would play on the harpsichord and sing the songs Cowper wrote for her-" No longer I follow a sound," "When all within is peace,". or the dirge commencing "Toll for the brave." So the days passed happily, but in the autumn of 1782 a dark time seemed at hand, the poet's mind clouded, and he moved about with a vacant and woebegone look. Nothing seemed to afford him pleasure; his books, his favourite hares, his birds, were unnoticed, and he cared not to pace his thirty yards of gravel walk, or to meditate among his apple-trees and hollyhocks in the garden of which he had formerly been so fond.

Mrs. Unwin saw with apprehension his dejection and his altered demeanour, and did all that an affectionate woman could do to dispel the darkness, but apparently in vain, and both she and Lady Austen feared that a winter of distress and sorrow was about to succeed a summer of so much happiness. Ten years had passed since his last attack, ten had interposed between that and the second attack, and ten between that and the first; and to all appearance another of these

Mrs. Unwin readily

decennial periods of madness awaited the poet. The tenderness of Mrs. Unwin and the vivacity of Lady Austen were equally unavailing, and gloom was thrown over the little circle. But one evening, in the famous parlour, the three friends being seated, a droll tale, that she had heard when a girl, came into Lady Austen's mind, and she proposed to tell it. assented, but Cowper was silent, for by this time he had got into that pitiable state in which nothing seemed to interest him. This was not very encouraging to Lady Austen, but she began her story, and told how a certain citizen, "of famous London town," rode out to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his weddinghow he went farther than he intended, and all his misadventures. The poet, indifferent at first, and apparently paying no attention to what was going on, gradually grew interested as the story proceeded, and Lady Austen, seeing his face brighten, and delighted with her success, wound up the story with all the skill at her command. Cowper could now no longer control himself, but burst out into a loud and hearty peal of laughter. The ladies joined in the mirth, and the merriment had scarcely subsided by supper-time. The story made such an impression on his mind that at night he could not sleep; and his thoughts having taken the form of rhyme, he sprang from bed, and committed them to paper, and in the morning brought down to Mrs. Unwin the crude outline of "John Gilpin." All that day and for several days he secluded himself in the greenhouse, and went on with the task of polishing and improving what he had written. As he filled his slips of paper he sent them across the

Market-place to Mr. Wilson, to the great delight and merriment of that jocular barber, who on several other occasions had been favoured with the first sight of some of Cowper's smaller poems. This version of the origin of "John Gilpin" differs, we are aware, from the one generally received, which represents the famous ballad as having been commenced and finished in a night; but that the facts here stated are accurate we have the authority of Mrs. Wilson; moreover, it has always been said in Olney that "John Gilpin" was written in the "greenhouse," and that the first person who saw the complete poem, and consequently the forerunner of that noble army who have made merry over its drolleries, was William Wilson, the barber.I "The story of 'John Gilpin,'" observes Hazlitt, "has perhaps given as much pleasure to as many people as anything of the same length that ever was written."

Who the real John Gilpin was remained unknown until 1839, when it was revealed in the Aldine Magazine by Mr. William West. After describing the "short, squat, grotesque figure" of Mr. Vanhagen, a famous confectioner of those days, Mr. West observes that the original of John Gilpin was none "other than Mr. Beyer, at the top of Paternoster Row, or rather the corner of Cheapside. He was an eminent linendraper, superlatively polite-somewhat taller than my friend V., not quite so stout. This is not generally known, but that Cowper had Beyer in his eye when he wrote the poem I had the assurance fifty years ago from John Annesley Colet, who knew Beyer better than I did, and also Mr. Cowper and some of his con* "The Town of Cowper."