The poet tells Hayley on December 8th: "It is a great relief to me that my Miltonic labours are suspended. I am now busy in transcribing the alterations of Homer, having finished the whole revisal. I must then write a new Preface, which done I shall endeavour immediately to descant on The Four Ages.""

These Miltonic labours, it may as well at once be said, were not only suspended, but never resumed. It will be remembered that he commenced the series of his translations about the middle of September, 1791. In February, 1792, he had completed all his Latin pieces, and shortly after he finished the Italian. While at Eartham in August he revised all his translations. His commentary is restricted to the first three books of the "Paradise Lost."

In this unfinished state the work was published by Hayley in the year 1808, for the benefit of the second son of Mr. Rose, the godchild of Cowper. Some designs in outline were furnished by Flaxman.

The gloom in which Cowper so often found himself began now rapidly to deepen.

Two letters which he wrote to Teedon, and which, though without date, apparently belong to this month, contain the darkest forebodings. Though for two nights, owing to doses of laudanum, he had obtained more sleep, he says, yet "neither of those nights has passed without some threatenings of that which I fear more than any other thing, the loss of my faithful, long-tried, and only intimate. From whom they come I know not, nor is the time precisely mentioned; but it is always spoken of as near approaching. Mrs.

Unwin has slept her usual time, about five hours, and is this morning as well as usual. As for me, I waked with this line from Comus :

"The wonted roar is up amid the woods ; '

consequently I expect to hear it soon."

In the next letter he speaks of being "plunged in deeps, unvisited by any soul but mine." He is never cheerful because he can never hope, and "to look forward to another year seems madness."

"Mrs. Unwin," he continues, "is as well as when I wrote last, but, like myself dejected-dejected both on my account and on her own. Unable to amuse herself either with work or reading, she looks forward to a new day with despondence, weary of it before it begins, and longing for the return of night.

"Thus it is with us both. If I endeavour to pray, I get my answer in a double portion of misery. My petitions, therefore, are reduced to three words, and those not very often repeated-God have mercy!'"

But the gloom of this dark period was now to be a little brightened by the presence of Lady Hesketh.

During Cowper's residence at Weston she had generally paid him an annual winter visit, "knowing that to be the season when his nerves and spirits are usually most oppressed." At the end of '92, however, she was ill herself at Bath, so was prevented from attending him as usual. Not having seen his cousin for two years, Cowper looked forward to her visit now (November, 1793) with even more interest, if that were possible, than formerly. She arrived about the middle of the month-but only to discover that her

cousin's condition was truly deplorable. She says: "I found this dear soul the absolute nurse of this poor lady, Mrs. Unwin, who cannot move out of her chair without help, nor walk across the room unless supported by two people; added to this, her voice is almost wholly unintelligible, and as their house was repairing all the summer, he was reduced, poor soul! for many months to have no conversation but hers! His situation was terrible indeed; and the more so as he was deprived, by means of this poor lady, of all his wonted exercises, both mental and bodily, as she did not choose he should leave her for a moment, or ever use a pen or a book except when he read to her, which is an employment that always I know fatigues and hurts him, and which, therefore, my arrival relieved him from."

As on former occasions, the presence of Lady Hesketh went far towards brightening things up, and Cowper's letter of the 8th of December, in which he thanks Rose for a box of books, contains

some gleams of cheerfulness. "We have read,” says Cowper, "that is to say, my cousin has, who reads to us in an evening the history of Jonathan Wild, and found it highly entertaining. The satire on great men is witty, and I believe perfectly just. We have no censure to pass on it, unless that we think the character of Mrs. Heartfree not well sustained, not quite delicate in the latter part of it, and that the constant effect of her charms upon every man who sees her has a sameness in it that is tiresome, and betrays either much carelessness, or idleness, or lack of invention."

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE BREAKDOWN.

January, 1794-July, 1795

192. Still and Silent as Death.-
January, 1794.

Ο

N December 17th Cowper wrote a letter to
Hayley criticising some lines of Homer as

translated by Thurlow, Hayley, and himself; and on January 5 (1794) he wrote a second letter dealing with the same subject. These letters were followed by such a silence as filled Hayley with the severest apprehensions, and the accounts which he received from Lady Hesketh, who, out of pity for the helpless state and infirmities of Mrs. Unwin, continued to stay at Weston, tended to increase his anxiety. Cowper indeed, had again been seized with his old and terrible complaint, and even the presence of his cousin was powerless to remove it. As on former occasions, it began in the dreaded month of January. A few facts concerning his state at this time were gleaned by Sir J. Mackintosh, who visited Olney seven years subsequently. One of Cowper's illusions was that it was his duty to inflict upon himself severe penance for his sins. Six days he sat "still and silent as death," and "took no