altogether seemly, I shall consent to your adoption of a more grave demeanour."

Cowper made the discovery, too, that on two points at least Johnson resembled himself. Says he: "You are a scatter-brain. I made the discovery perhaps the sooner, because in this you very much resemble myself, who, in the course of my life, through mere carelessness and inattention, lost many advantages; an insuperable shyness has also deprived me of many. And here again there is a resemblance between us. You will do well to guard against both, for of both, I believe, you have a considerable share as well as myself."

Among the accomplishments of Mr. Johnson was that of playing on the fiddle. Cowper tells him on July 31, 1790: "You may treat us too, if you please, with a little of your music, for I seldom hear any, and delight much in it. You need not fear a rival, for we have but two fiddles in the neighbourhood-one a gardener's, the other a tailor's terrible performers both!"

When Mr. Johnson arrived on the visit alluded to Cowper found him some transcribing to do, for he was now in the middle of the Odyssey, and had just lost his "best amanuensis," Mr. George Throckmorton, who had gone to Bath. When Johnson told Cowper that he had never read the Odyssey, the latter observed to him: "You are a man to be envied, who have never read the Odyssey, which is one of the most amusing story-books in the world. There is also much of the finest poetry in the world to be found in it, notwithstanding all that Longinus has insinuated to the contrary. His comparison of the Iliad and Odyssey to the meridian

and to the declining sun is pretty, but, I am persuaded, not just. The prettiness of it seduced him; he was otherwise too judicious a reader of Homer to have made it. I can find in the latter no symptoms of impaired ability, none of the effects of age.'

Before Mr. Johnson had been many times a guest at Weston, his "mathematico-poetical head" was scarcely less intimately acquainted with the contents of the Odyssey than was the poetical but by no means mathematical head of his kinsman.

155. January and the Moon.-February, 1790.

Among the figments of Cowper's imagination one was the belief that he was affected by the moon, and not only so, but that all human beings more or less suffered from its influences. So great was the effect of this belief upon his spirits that he looked forward to the period of every full moon with more or less. apprehension. Lady Hesketh told a friend that Cowper was "always low at that time, and quite different to what he is at any other; yet with his wit pierces even the gloom which this planet occasions; for as we returned last night in the coach from an airing, and after he had talked much of the causes and effects of this wonderful planet, he at last, after fixing his eyes. steadfastly upon it, said laughingly

"I'll instant write a most severe lampoon,

Of which the subject shall be yonder moon."

He told Lady Hesketh that if she had any crabs (sour

tempered persons) amongst her acquaintances, he was sure that if she attended to them she would find them always much more peevish and ill-tempered at the new and full moon than at any other time; for he was sure it influenced the temper as well as the brain, when either was at all disordered. Though Cowper's spirits were low at such times, the full moon had "no effect upon his temper, which appears equally sweet at all times."

Another bugbear to him was, as we have previously intimated, the month of January. This was the month in which both his great derangements had commenced. "Twice," he writes (February 5, 1790), "has that month returned upon me, accompanied by such horrors as I have no reason to suppose ever made part of the experience of any other man. I accordingly look forward to it, and meet it with a dread not to be imagined. I number the nights as they pass, and in the morning bless myself that another night is gone, and no harm has happened. This may argue, perhaps, some imbecility of mind, and no small degree of it; but it is natural, I believe, and so natural as to be necessary and unavoidable. I know that God is not governed by secondary causes in any of His operations, and that, on the contrary, they are all so many agents in His hand, which strike only when He bids them. I know consequently that one month is as dangerous to me as another, and that, in the middle of summer, at noon-day, and in the clear sunshine, I am in reality, unless guarded by Him, as much exposed as when fast asleep at midnight, and in mid-winter. But we are not always the wiser for our knowledge, and I can no more avail myself of mine, than if it were in

the head of another man, and not in my own. I have heard of bodily aches and ails, that have been particularly troublesome when the season returned in which the hurt that occasioned them was received. The mind, I believe (with my own, however, I am sure it is so), is liable to similar periodical affection. But February is come, my terror is passed, and some shades of the gloom that attended his presence have passed with him. I look forward with a little cheerfulness to the buds and the leaves that will soon appear, and say to myself, till they turn yellow I will make myself easy. The year will go round, and January will approach. I shall tremble again, and I know it; but in the meantime I will be as comfortable as I can." Easterly winds and disturbed sleep also had very great influence on him, and interfered seriously with his writing.

156. Cowper's Three Mothers, and the Lines on the Receipt of his Mother's Picture out of Norfolk.-Spring, 1790.

The beautiful sonnet to Mrs. Unwin, which com

mences

"Mary! I want a lyre with other strings,"

was apparently written early in 1790. It was the spring of 1790, too, that saw produced that other exquisite piece, "The Lines on the Receipt of My Mother's Picture out of Norfolk." At the very mention of this unequalled masterpiece the heart warms with emotion.

What poem in the world has so passionate, so spontaneous an opening

"Oh that those lips had language!"

But criticism on the finest thing that Cowper produced, and the most touching elegy in the English tongue, is quite unnecessary. The tears that have dimmed the eyes of the thousands who have read it, testify sufficiently to its worth. Had Cowper written nothing else his name would have lived for ever. The picture that gave origin to the poem was a miniature painted in oils by Heines, sent to the poet as a present by his cousin Anne (Rose), wife of the Rev. ThomasBodham, Rector of Mattishall. This picture, which is now in the possession of the Rev. Charles E. Donne, Vicar of Faversham, Kent, was exhibited in the “ Third National Portrait Loan (Supplementary) Collection at South Kensington in 1868." It is described in the catalogue thus: "Anne Donne, Mrs. Cowper [the poet's mother], to waist, miniature size; full face; low blue dress-on canvas, 6 x 5 in."

In acknowledging the receipt of the gift, the poet says (February 27, 1790): "The world could not have furnished you with a present so acceptable to me as the picture which you have so kindly sent me. 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. She