saw this morning at nine o'clock a group of about twelve figures very closely engaged in a conference, as I suppose upon the same subject. The scene of consultation was a blacksmith's shed (on the Market-place adjoining the Shiel Hall), very comfortably screened from the wind, and directly opposed to the morning sun. Some held their hands behind them, some had them folded across their bosom, and others had thrust them into their breeches pockets. Every man's posture bespoke a pacific turn of mind; but, the distance being too great for their words to reach me, nothing transpired. I am willing, however, to hope that the secret will not be a secret long, and that you and I, equally interested in the event, though not perhaps equally wellinformed, shall soon have an opportunity to rejoice in the completion of it."

To Unwin Cowper writes on the 2nd of February : "I give you joy of the restoration of that sincere and firm friendship between the kings of England and France, that has been so long interrupted. It is a great pity, when hearts so cordially united are divided by trifles. Thirteen pitiful colonies, which the king of England chose to keep, and the king of France to obtain, if he could, have disturbed that harmony which would else no doubt have subsisted between those illustrious personages to this moment. If the king of France, whose greatness of mind is only equalled by that of his queen, had regarded them, unworthy of his notice as they were, with an eye of suitable indifference; or, had he thought it a matter deserving in any degree his princely attention, that they were in reality the property of his good friend the king of England; or,

had the latter been less obstinately determined to hold fast his interest in them, and could he, with that civility and politeness in which monarchs are expected to excel, have entreated his majesty of France to accept a bagatelle, for which he seemed to have conceived so strong a predilection, all this mischief had been prevented."

On the 24th of February he writes: "As to the Americans, perhaps I do not forgive them as I ought; perhaps I shall always think of them with some resentment as the destroyers, intentionally the destroyers, of this country. They have pushed that point farther than the house of Bourbon could have carried it in half a century. I may be prejudiced against them, but I do not think them equal to the task of establishing an empire. Great men are necessary for such a purpose; and their great men, I believe, are yet unborn. They have had passion and obstinacy enough to do us much mischief; but whether the event will be salutary to themselves or not, must wait for proof. I agree with you that it is possible America may become a land of extraordinary evangelical light; but at the same time I cannot discover anything in their new situation peculiarly favourable to such a supposition."

It was not permitted to Cowper to look forward a hundred years and behold the mighty state that today flourishes on the other side of the Atlantic. America was to him only "thirteen pitiful colonies." Though, like the rest of his countrymen, he quarrelled greatly with the peace at first, imagining that by it England was disgraced, Cowper afterwards came to like it better. He was not now, however, much of a politician. He says to Newton (February 8, 1783):—

"You will suppose me a politician; but in truth I am nothing less. These are the thoughts that occur to me while I read the newspaper; and, when I have laid it down, I feel myself more interested in the success of my early cucumbers than in any part of this great and important subject. If I see them droop a little, I forget that we have been many years at war; that we have made an humiliating peace; that we are deeply in debt, and unable to pay. All these reflections are absorbed at once in the anxiety I feel for a plant, the fruit of which I cannot eat when I have procured it. How wise, how consistent, how respectable a creature is man!"

CHAPTER XIV.

THE WRITING OF THE "TASK."

(July, 1783-June, 1785.)

"A la démande de Lady Austen, il composa la poëme didactique 'La Tache' en 1783, rempli d'admirables descriptions, de nobles pensées, d'un sentiment profond."-L'Encyclopédie des Gens du Monde, Paris, 1836.

C

93. "The Sofa.”—July, 1783.

OWPER'S great poem, the immortal "Task," was commenced probably in July, 1783. The story of its origin has been told again and again. Lady Austen had often urged him to try his powers in blank verse-a species of composition he had hitherto not attempted. At last he promised to comply with her request if she would give him a subject. "Oh," she replied, "you can never be in want of a subject; you can write upon any — write upon this sofa!" Consequently upon that sofa he wrote.

Whilst he was engaged on the first book of the "Task," the Rev. John Newton made a second visit to the scene of his former labours. Writing to him in September, Cowper says: "You know not what I suffered while you were here. . . . The friend of my