The change of scene had the desired effect. Seated one beautiful morning on an eminence overlooking an arm of the sea, he felt suddenly the weight of all his misery taken off. "My heart," he says, "became light and joyful in a moment; I could have wept with transport had I been alone." After having been in the lowest depths, he now rose to the greatest heights, and entered into the enjoyment of life with his whole thoroughness. Every charming spot in the neighbourhood had for him a new beauty. When in the company of his cousin Harriet in particular he was all animation and jollity. He used to wander with her in the fields at Freemantle and Bevis Mount. He would read with her and laugh with her till their "sides ached," at anything or nothing. As can be seen, his affection for this cousin, whose name and his will for ever be connected, was even at this period very strong. Some years later, in the third letter of his that has been preserved, he said to her, "So much as I love you, I wonder how the deuce it has happened I was never in love with you."

Part of his time was spent at Lymington, and once at least he crossed the border into Dorsetshire, in order to make the acquaintance of Weymouth and other pleasant spots in the county. In reference to Lymington he tells Newton (July 28, 1784), "I know that place well, having spent six weeks there above twenty years ago. The town is neat, and the country delightful. You walk well, and will consequently find a part of the coast called Hall Cliff within the reach of your ten toes. It was a favourite walk of mine; to the best of my remembrance, about three miles distance from Lymington. There you may stand upon the beach

and contemplate the Needle-rock; at least you might have done so twenty years ago, but since that time I think it is fallen from its base and is drowned, and is no longer a visible object of contemplation."

To Samuel Rose, who in August, 1793, was visiting in this neighbourhood, the poet says, "I rejoice that you have had so pleasant an excursion, and have beheld so many beautiful scenes. Except the delightful Upway I have seen them all. I have lived much at Southampton, have slept and caught a sore throat at Lyndhurst, and have swum in the Bay of Weymouth.”

II. The Nonsense Club.

At Southampton, after his recovery, Cowper was all gratitude to the Almighty for so graciously accepting his prayers; but the very first thing he did on returning to London was to take those prayers, which had been so carefully composed, so fervently repeated, so signally answered-and throw them on the fire. And what is more, he again gave himself up to a life of carelessness. Not that he made no professions of Christianity. On the contrary, when in the company of deists, and he heard the gospel blasphemed, he never failed to assert the truth of it with much vehemence of disputation, going once so far into a controversy of this kind as to assert that he would gladly submit to have his right hand cut off so that he might be enabled to live according to the gospel.

In respect to the study of the law he took no more pains than previously. As Southey says, "It is pro

bable that he had as little intention as inclination to pursue it, resting in indolent reliance upon his patrimonial means, and in the likely expectation that some official appointment would be found for him in good time."

He was called to the bar on June 14, 1754.

It is now time that we should say something of the company into which, during much of the Temple period, Cowper was thrown-that we should deal with that famous coterie, the Nonsense Club, which consisted of seven Westminster men, all of them clever and witty, who met frequently for literary conversation, and dined together every Thursday. The members, besides Cowper, were Bonnell Thornton, Colman, Lloyd, Joseph Hill, Bensley, and (according to Dr. Memes) De Grey; and I shall now give a very brief account of each, first observing that Thurlow, friend as he was of Cowper, does not seem at any time to have belonged to the club.

BONNELL THORNTON, the son of an apothecary in Maiden Lane, London, was intended by his father for the medical profession. His first attempts as an author appeared in The Student, or Oxford and Cambridge Monthly Miscellany, a periodical printed at Oxford, of which Kit Smart was the principal conductor.

Thornton's next venture was a periodical work entitled, Have at ye all, or the Drury Lane Journal, in rivalry, it is said, of Fielding's Covent Garden Journal, and in January, 1754, he and Colman began the Connoisseur; the two friends, like their predecessors in literature, Beaumont and Fletcher, working together in such a way that it is impossible to allocate