died when I completed my sixth year, yet I remember her well, and am an ocular witness of the great fidelity of the copy. I remember, too, a multitude of the maternal tendernesses which I received from her, and which have endeared her memory to me beyond expression. 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 draw 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, both 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. Add to all this, I deal much in poetry, as did our venerable ancestor, the Dean of St. Paul's, and I think I shall have proved myself a Donne at all points. The truth is that, whatever I am, I love you all."

To Lady Hesketh he says: "I am delighted with Mrs. Bodham's kindness in giving me the only picture of my mother that is to be found, I suppose, in all the world. I had rather possess it than the richest jewel in the British crown, for I loved her with an affection that her death, fifty-two years since, has not in the least abated. I remember her too, young as I was when she died, well enough to know that it is a very exact resemblance of her, and as such it is to me invaluable.

Everybody loved her, and, with an amiable character so impressed upon all her features, everybody was sure to do so."

Mrs. Bodham, in her letter, invited the poet to Norfolk. "Alas!" says he (writing to Johnson), “she might as well invite the house in which I dwell; for, all other considerations and impediments apart, how is it possible that a translator of Homer should lumber to such a distance! But, though I cannot comply with her kind invitation, I have made myself the best amends in my power, by inviting her and all the family of Donnes to Weston. Perhaps we could not accommodate them all at once, but in succession we could, and can at any time find room for five, three of them being females, and one a married one. You are a mathematician; tell me, then, how five persons can be lodged in three beds (two males and three females), and I shall have good hope that you will proceed a proceed a senior optime?"

He replied to Mrs. Bodham's letter as follows: "My dearest Cousin,-What shall I say in answer to your affectionate invitation ? I must say this, I cannot come now, nor soon, and I wish with all my heart I could. But I will tell you what may be done, perhaps, and it will answer to us just as well: you and Mr. Bodham can come to Weston, can you not? The summer is at hand, there are roads and wheels to bring you, and you are neither of you translating Homer. I am crazed that I cannot ask you altogether for want of house-room, but for Mr. Bodham and yourself we have good room, and equally good for any third in the shape of a Donne, whet er named Hewitt, Bodham, Balls, or

Mrs.

Johnson, or by whatever name distinguished. Hewitt has particular claims upon me; she was my playfellow at Berkhamstead, and has a share in my warmest affections. Pray tell her so! Neither do I at all forget my cousin Harriet. She and I have been many a time merry at Catfield, and have made the parsonage ring with laughter; give my love to her. Assure yourself, my dearest cousin, that I shall receive you as if you were my sister, and Mrs. Unwin is, for my sake, prepared to do the same. When she has seen you she will love you for your own."

By March 12th he had finished the Poem, which was written "not without tears," yet which, he tells Mrs. King, he had more pleasure in writing than any that he ever wrote, one excepted. "That one," he says, "was addressed to a lady who had supplied to me the place of my own mother-my own invaluable mother-these sixand-twenty years," referring, of course, to the sonnet

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

"Some sons may be said to have had many fathers, but a plurality of mothers is not common." At the end of March the poem was sent to Lady Hesketh, who passed it on to the General; upon hearing which Cowper remarked: "I am glad that thou hast sent the General those verses on my mother's picture. They will amuse him-only I hope that he will not miss my mother-in-law, and think that she ought to have made a third.

On such an occasion it was not possible to mention her with any propriety."

So the poet reckoned that he had in all three mothers—namely, his actual mother, his step-mother,

and Mrs. Unwin. The General's approbation of his verses gave him pleasure, and he observed: "Should he offer me my father's picture, I shall gladly accept it."

157. Cowper is "delivered of two or three other Brats."-March, 1790.

In writing to Mrs. King on March 12th (1790), Cowper requested her to destroy a piece of poetry he had sent her, entitled "To Lady Hesketh on her Furnishing for me our House at Weston," promising to make her amends by sending her a new edition of it when time should serve, delivered from the passages he disliked in the first, and in other respects amended. Whether or not Mrs. King complied with the request we cannot say, but certain it is that somehow or other the first version as well as the second has been preserved. The poet goes on to say: "I have likewise, since I sent you the last packet, been delivered of two or three other brats, and, as the year proceeds, shall probably add to the number. All that come shall be basketed in time, and conveyed to your door."

What particular "brats" Cowper in this letter referred to, we do not know, but he wrote in this year the following small pieces

(1) "Inscription for a Stone erected at the Sowing of a Grove of Oaks at Chillington, the seat of T. Gifford, Esq." Mr. Thomas Gifford was the father of Mrs. Throckmorton.

(2) "To Mrs. Throckmorton, on her Beautiful Transcript of Horace's Ode,' Ad Librum Suum.'" It is dated February, 1790 (see

(3) The lines "To Mrs. King, on her Kind Present," &c. August 14th.

(4) "Stanzas on the late Indecent Liberties taken with the Remains of the great Milton, anno 1790." August, 1790.

(5) "In Memory of the late John Thornton, Esq." November, 1790.

On January 3rd Cowper describes himself as "still thrumming Homer's lyre," and on May 2nd he is "still at the old sport"-namely, working at his last revisal-" Homer all the morning, and Homer all the evening." "Thus," says he, "have I been held in constant employment, I know not exactly how many, but I believe these six years, an interval of eight months excepted. It is now become so familiar to me to take Homer from my shelf at a certain hour, that I shall no doubt continue to take him from my shelf at the same time, even after I have ceased to want him. That period is not far distant. I am now giving the last touches to a work which, had I foreseen the difficulty of it, I should never have meddled with; but which, having at length nearly finished it to my mind, I shall discontinue with regret.'

Cowper's afternoons were devoted to walking. But even when abroad his favourite Homer was never entirely out of his mind, and he wrote, he tells Mrs. King, “many and many a passage" with one foot on a mole-hill, with his hat crown upward on his knee, and paper on hat.

At the beginning of June Cowper had tidings of the marriage of his friend Rose, the consequence being, of course, a letter of congratulation, in which he takes occasion to ask a riddle or enigma, the making of which pestilent little things, as we have several times