heart, the person with whom I had formerly taken sweet counsel, no longer useful to me as a minister, no longer pleasant to me as a Christian, was a spectacle that must necessarily add the bitterness of mortification to the sadness of despair." Mr. Newton, who was accompanied by his wife, stayed at Olney three weeks, but Cowper did not mention to him what he was engaged upon, and curiously enough he said nothing to Newton about it till May of the next year (1784), when the poem was nearly completed. Mr. Bull, however, was let into the secret very early. On the 3rd of August Cowper writes to that gentleman : "The

Sofa' is ended, but not finished ;-a paradox, which your natural acumen, sharpened by habits of logical attention, will enable you to reconcile in a moment. Do not imagine, however, that I lounge over it; on the contrary, I find it severe exercise to mould and fashion it to my mind!"

Cowper, as was his way, continued to revise this poem and interpolate passages right up to the time when the whole book was sent to the press. For example, late in the year he inserted the reference to Mrs. Unwin :

"Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceive
Fast locked in mine."

Whilst the compliment to Mr. Throckmorton—:
"Thanks to Benevolus, he spares me yet," &c.,

could not have been paid till the following spring. Cowper did not by any means write with uniform speed. Commenting on what he had done at a later

date, he says: "Tully's rule- Nulla dies sine linea' -will make a volume in less time than one would suppose. I adhered to it so rigidly that, though more than once I found three lines as many as I had time to compass, still I wrote; and, finding occasionally, and as it might happen, a more fluent vein, the abundance of one day made me amends for the barrenness of another."

Though Lady Austen had suggested the "Task," Cowper now found that she was a hindrance to its progress.

He had got into the habit of paying his "devoirs to her ladyship every morning at eleven.' Customs," says he, “very soon become laws. I began the Task.' Being once engaged in the work, I began to feel the inconvenience of my morning attendance. We had seldom breakfasted ourselves till ten; and the intervening hour was all the time that I could find in the whole day for writing; and occasionally it would happen that the half of that hour was all that I could secure for the purpose. But there was no remedy. Long usage had made that which at first was optional a point of good manners, and consequently of necessity, and I was forced to neglect the Task' to attend upon the Muse who had inspired the subject."

94. Reading Aloud.

Cowper found the evenings the most agreeable portion of the day. When not amusing himself with his hares he was generally employed in reading aloud. "My

evenings," he says, are devoted to books. I read aloud for the entertainment of the party "-meaning, of course, Mrs. Unwin and Lady Austen—“ thus making amends by a vociferation of two hours for my silence at other times." He had no library of his own, the books being obtained from a London library to which he was a subscriber, and from Mr. Bull, Mr. Unwin, Lord Dartmouth, and other friends. Among the works he perused in this way were the "eight volumes of Johnson's Prefaces, or Lives of the Poets." "In all that number," he says, "I observe but one man-a poet of no great fame-of whom I did not know that he existed till I found him there, whose mind seems to have had the slightest tincture of religion; and he was hardly in his senses. His name was Collins. He sunk into a state of melancholy, and died young. Not long before his death he was found at his lodgings in Islington, by his biographer, with the New Testament in his hand. He said to Johnson: I have but one book, but it is the best.' Of him, therefore, there are some hopes. But from the lives of all the rest there is but one inference to be drawn-that poets are a very worthless, wicked set of people."

The works that pleased him most, however, were books of travels. The voyages of Cook and Forster he had read with avidity, and in October, 1783, we find him commencing Hawkesworth. "My imagination," he tells Newton, "is so captivated upon these occasions, that I seem to partake with the navigators in all the dangers they encountered. I lose my anchor; my mainsail is rent into shreds; I kill a shark, and by signs converse with a Patagonian, and all this without

moving from the fireside. The principal fruits of these circuits that have been made round the globe seem likely to be the amusement of those that stayed at home. Discoveries have been made, but such discoveries as will hardly satisfy the expense of such undertakings. We brought away an Indian, and, having debauched him, we sent him home again to communicate the infection to his country-fine sport, to be sure, but such as will not defray the cost. Nations. that live upon bread-fruit, and have no mines to make them worthy of our acquaintance, will be but little visited for the future. So much the better for them; their poverty is indeed their mercy."

It is to Hawkesworth he refers in "Task," IV.:

"He travels, and I too. I tread his deck,
Ascend his topmast, through his peering eyes
Discover countries, with a kindred heart
Suffer his woes, and share in his escapes."

95. He had not Prayed for Ten Years.A Side Reference to the Dream.-October 27, 1783.

But amid all these agreeable circumstances Cowper was never, even for a single day, able to free himself from the effects of his terrible dream. Among those who attempted to reason with him concerning the belief that had infixed itself in his mind was Mr. Bull, but with as little success as Newton. In respect to Mr. Bull's counsel, Cowper observes: "There is not a man upon earth that might not be the better for it, myself only excepted. Prove to me that I have a right to pray,

and I will pray without ceasing; yea, and pray too, even in the belly of this hell,' compared with which Jonah's was a palace-a temple of the living God! But let me add, there is no encouragement in the Scripture so comprehensive as to include my case, nor any consolation so effectual as to reach it. I do not relate it to you, because you could not believe it; you would agree with me if you could. And yet the sin by which I am excluded from the privileges I once enjoyed, you would account no sin; you would tell me that it was a duty. This is strange; you will think me mad; but I am not mad, most noble Festus! I am only in despair; and those powers of mind which I possess are only permitted to me for my amusement at some times, and to acuminate and enhance my misery at others. I have not even asked a blessing upon my food these ten years, nor do I expect that I shall ever ask it again."

To Newton, on February 24, 1783, he had written : "We think of you often, and one of us prays for you; the other will, when he can pray for himself!"

It may be remarked that before meals, when the rest of the party stood for grace, it was Cowper's custom to sit down and take his knife and fork in his hand, "to signify that he had no part in the exercise."

96. Another Fire at Olney, and what followed. November 1, 1783.

On Saturday, November 1, 1783, the town was visited with another fire-a description of which fills