on receiving her picture, he "dwelt as fondly on the cherished features as if he had just mourned her death." Writing to his cousin, Mrs. Bodham, who had sent him the portrait, he says, "I received it the night before last, and viewed it with a trepidation of nerves and spirits somewhat akin to what I should have felt had the dear original presented herself to my embraces. I kissed it, and hung it where it is the last object that I see at night, and of course the first on which I open my eyes in the morning." His lines, "On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture out of Norfolk," form one of the most touching elegies in the language. How pathetic, for example, is the following :

66 My mother! when I learned that thou wast dead,
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?
Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son,
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun?
Perhaps thou gavest me, though unfelt, a kiss ;
Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss-
Ah, that maternal smile!—it answers-Yes.
I heard the bell tolled on thy burial day,
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away,
And, turning from my nursery window, drew
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu !"

To his friend Hill, after the lapse of forty-seven years, he wrote: "I can truly say, that not a week passes (perhaps I might with equal veracity say a day) in which I do not think of her: such was the impression her tenderness made upon me, though the opportunity she had for showing it was so short." The poet pleased himself with thinking that he bore a very near resemblance, both in mind and body, to his mother's family To his cousin, Mrs. Bodham, in 1790, he

wrote: "There is in me, I believe, more of the Donne than of the Cowper; and though I love all of both names, and have a thousand reasons to love those of my own name, yet I feel the bond of nature draws me vehemently to your side. I was thought in the days of my childhood much to resemble my mother; and in my natural temper, of which at the age of fifty-eight I must be supposed to be a competent judge, can trace both her and my late uncle, your father. Somewhat of his irritability; and a little, I would hope, of his and of her I know not what to call it, without seeming to praise myself, which is not my intention; but speaking to you, I will even speak out, and say good-nature."

Mrs. Cowper was buried in the chancel of her husband's church, where a monument was shortly after erected to her memory, with an epitaph, composed by her niece, afterwards Lady Walsingham. This monument is affixed to the south wall of the chancel. The stone within the communion rails that actually covered the remains of the poet's mother, and that contains an inscription recording her death and the deaths of her six infant children, has since been removed to the north transept.

2. "The School at Market Street."-1737-39.

Shortly after the death of his mother, little William, who was, however, only six, was sent away to a boarding school. It may seem curious that so young a child should have been sent from home, but it must be remembered that the school (Dr. Pitman's at Market,

Street, on the borders of Beds and Herts) was distant only seven miles from Berkhamsted. Had proper supervision been placed over the pupils, all would have been well. Unfortunately it was otherwise, and the timid little fellow suffered in no common degree from the brutality of his schoolfellows. "Here," he tells us in his "Memoir," "I had hardships of different kinds to conflict with, which I felt more sensibly in proportion to the tenderness with which I had been treated at home. But my chief affliction consisted in my being singled out from all the other boys by a lad about fifteen years of age as a proper object upon whom he might let loose the cruelty of his temper. I choose to forbear a particular recital of the many acts of barbarity with which he made it his business continually to persecute me. It will be sufficient to say, that he had, by his savage treatment of me, impressed such a dread of his figure upon my mind, that I well remember being afraid to lift up my eyes upon him, higher than his knees; and that I knew him by his shoe-buckles better than any other part of his dress."

One day as Cowper was sitting alone on a bench troubled with his sufferings, a verse of Scripture came into his mind-"I will not be afraid of what man can do unto me," with the result a briskness of spirits and a cheerfulness took possession of him, such as he had never before experienced. Many years after, Cowper cites this as his first serious impression of the religious kind, withal a transitory one. The cruelty of the tormentor, which had been practised in "so secret a manner that no creature suspected it, was at length

discovered, and he was expelled from the school." After having been at Market Street two years Cowper began to be troubled with specks in his eyes, and his father, alarmed for the consequences, removed him from Market Street, and placed him under the care of an eminent surgeon and oculist named Mr. Disney.

3. At the House of Mr. Disney the Oculist.. 1739-41.

In his memoir Cowper says he was "sent to Mr. D ," but he told Hayley in a letter written in 1792, and quoted on p. 5 of Hayley's "Life of Cowper," that his father sent him "to a female oculist of great renown at that time." This apparent discrepancy is explained by the fact that both Mr. Disney and his wife had obtained celebrity in the same branch of medical science. At this house, says Cowper, religion was neither known nor practised-a statement which was made when, as Southey puts it, "he looked back through a distorted medium." His words probably mean that family prayers were not performed in that house. To quote Southey again, "What the opinions. of the family were, he could as little know as he was likely to inquire, further than as to the place of worship which they frequented; and of their private devotions. it was impossible that he could know anything."

As we have seen, William Cowper, even as a child, had plenty of trouble, but he also had his joys. It was always a pleasure to look back at the time when he and his cousins from Norfolk romped together in the

rectory garden at Berkhamsted; or at Catfield among the Norfolk Broads, the residence of his uncle, the Rev. Roger Donne, with whom he now and again spent a holiday. Of his cousin Harriet (afterwards Mrs. Balls) he says, "She and I have been many a time merry at Catfield, and have made the parsonage ring with laughter." Then there was Ann, whom he persisted in calling Rose-"the Rose that used to sit smiling on my knee, I will not say how many years ago "-the same who became Mrs. Bodham, and long after presented the poet with his mother's picture; Elizabeth (afterwards Mrs. Hewitt) was his "playfellow at Berkhamsted." Their brother Castres was equally a favourite with Cowper, who says, "He was an amiable boy, and I was very fond of him." The Norfolk cousins, in short, made up for what Cowper lacked in brothers and sisters-none of the seven children of Mrs. Cowper, as we before observed, having survived her, except William and John. To what particular period of his childhood these enjoyable hours belonged we cannot say, but probably there would be holidays of some kind upon leaving Mr. Disney's, which he did after a stay of about two years.

Even as a child Cowper was fond of reading. The Fables of Gay were special favourites with him, and he used to recite "The Hare and Many Friends" for the amusement of company. The child, too, was brought up in an atmosphere of poetry. Dr. Cowper, his father, wrote verses, and had caught the contagion of ballad writing, in which, says his son, he "succeeded well." The taste for this species of composition Cowper counted that he inherited from his father.