and towards the end of the year he was visited by his old friend Sir John Throckmorton, "much altered," wrote Cowper to his cousin, " since I saw him last, yet not so much but that I should have known him anywhere." The letter in which he makes this observation (December 8, 1798) was the last he wrote to Lady Hesketh. She had received ten letters in all from him out of Norfolk. The one which Southey was unable to recover was printed in the Universal Review for June, 1890.

Mr. Johnson, who still continued the practice of reading to him, and had exhausted a large collection of novels, now began to read to the poet his own works. Cowper listened in silence till they got to "John Gilpin," which he begged not to hear. His kinsman then proceeded to his unpublished poems, which he heard willingly, but without remark.

In Miss Perowne, Cowper had an admirable attendant, and one to whom he became so much attached that he never liked her to be away from him. In the letter of 26th July, 1798, he says: "I wrote a few days since to M. P., to tell her that as she had left me suddenly and alarmed me much by doing so, she would equally relieve me would she as suddenly return.' Johnson described her as one of those excellent beings whom Nature seems to have formed expressly for the purpose of alleviating the sufferings of the afflicted.

On Friday, the 8th March of the next year (1799), he completed the revisal of his Homer. On the 9th he commenced a preface to the new edition, which he finished next day.

Cowper being now without employment, Mr. John

son laid the fragment called "The Four Ages" before him; but after correcting a few lines and adding two or three more, he declined to proceed with it, saying that "it was too great a work for him to attempt in his present situation." That evening at supper other projects were suggested, to each of which he objected, but remarked that he might be able to put together some Latin verses he had just thought of. Accordingly, next morning he seated himself at his desk and made a commencement of his poem "Montes Glaciales," suggested by an account (which had been read to him from a newspaper while they were at Dunham) of some iceislands recently seen in the German Ocean. This was on March 11th, and a few days after, in compliance with the request of Miss Perowne, he translated it into English with the title of "On the Ice Islands." On March 20th, the day after he finished the translation, he wrote the stanzas, entitled "The Castaway," founded on an anecdote in Anson's voyages, which his memory suggested to him, though he had not seen the book for many years—a poem that is very touching to all who know Cowper's history. It is the story of a poor fellow on Anson's ship who was washed overboard in a storm. A good swimmer, he battled as he could with the waves; his friends, who heard his cries, checked the course of the ship, and threw out casks, coops, and cords, though they knew it was impossible to rescue him. At length, subdued by toil, he sank; and Cowper draws a parallel between the fate of the unhappy man and that of himself. Each perished

"But I beneath a rougher sea,

And 'whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he."

On April 11th he wrote a letter to his old friend John Newton to return thanks for a letter and a book which the latter had been kind enough to send him. Like his other letters of this period, it is very sad. In August he translated his poem, "The Castaway," into Latin verse, and between August and December, at the instigation of Johnson, he wrote a number of translations from various Latin and Greek epigrams.

In December Johnson and Cowper removed to a larger house in the town, and in his new residence the poet amused himself during the month of January in translating a few of Gay's fables into Latin verse, the one that he did first being "The Hare and Many

Friends," which he knew when he was a child. He finished the "Miser and Plutus" (" Avarus et Plutus"), and commenced "The Butterfly and Snail," of which, however, he completed only two lines. Towards the end of January Hayley requested him, by letter, to newly model the passage in his Homer, relating to the dance of Ariadne a passage that both Pope and Cowper had injured by mistaking the meaning of one word, Hayley's immediate reason for requesting the alteration being his desire to quote the passage in a work which he was just putting to press. Cowper obligingly complied. "The neat transcript of these improved verses proved the last effort of his pen.'

"

201. "What can it Signify?"—April 25,

1800.

The day Hayley received the lines Cowper was seized with dropsy in his legs. A physician, Mr. Woods, was

called in, but it was with great difficulty that the patient could be got to take the medicines prescribed. After February 22nd he could not bear even the exercise of a post-chaise, and before the end of March he was confined altogether to his chamber. Nothing could be gloomier than the state of his mind. Dr. Lubbock, of Norwich, who called upon him one day, inquired how he felt. "Feel!" replied Cowper, "I feel unutterable despair!"

Of his friends, two of the dearest, much as they wished it, were unable to visit him. Lady Hesketh was still an invalid at Clifton, and Hayley was watching over his dying son, the "dear little Tom" of eight years previously. One friend, however, was able to and did come, namely, Samuel Rose, at the departure of whom, on the 6th of April, Cowper showed evident signs of regret, though he had expressed hardly any pleasure on his arrival.

On the 19th of April it was evident that death was near, and Mr. Johnson ventured to speak of his approaching dissolution as the signal for his deliverance from the miseries of both mind and body. Cowper making fewer objections than might have been supposed, Johnson proceeded to say, " that in the world to which he was hastening, a merciful Redeemer had prepared unspeakable happiness for all His children, and therefore for him." To the first part of this sentence he listened with composure, but upon hearing the concluding words he passionately entreated that no further observations might be made on the subject. He lingered five days longer. On Thursday he sat up as usual in the evening. In the course of the night, when he was exceedingly exhausted, Miss Perowne offered

him some refreshment, which he rejected, saying, "What can it signify?" and these were the last words he was heard to utter. At five in the morning a deadly change had taken place in his features, and he remained in an insensible state from that time till about five in the afternoon, when he ceased to breathe, expiring so peacefully that none who stood at his bedside could tell the precise moment of his departure. From the time of his death till the coffin was closed, Mr. Johnson says, "the expression with which his countenance had settled was that of calmness and composure, mingled, as it were, with holy surprise." He was in the 69th year of his age.

So, with all its troubles and all its fears, passed away the spirit of the amiable Cowper. He himself was of opinion that the forms of the departed are permitted to revisit the earth, and speaking upon this subject to Newton on May 28, 1781, he had said: "The time will come, perhaps (but death will come first), when you will be able to visit them without either danger, trouble, or expense, and when the contemplation of those wellremembered scenes will awaken in you emotions of gratitude and praise, surpassing all you could possibly sustain at present. In this sense, I suppose, there is a heaven upon earth at all times, and that the disembodied spirit may find a peculiar joy arising from the contemplation of those places it was formerly conversant with, and so far, at least, be reconciled to a world it was once so weary of, as to use it in the delightful way of thankful recollection."

As may be seen from the following lines from the end of the "Task," Cowper had once hoped