able posts for the Clerkship of the Journals, the duties of which were performed in private, and, greatly as it was against the grain, the Major at length consented. The place to which Cowper had been appointed was given to a Mr. Arnold, and Cowper himself received the clerkship. But now a fresh difficulty arose. Objections were raised to the Major's right of presentation, a powerful party having been formed in the Lords to thwart it in favour of an old enemy of the family, and an order was issued that the Major's nominee should be examined at the bar of the House

to his qualifications for the post. What the consequences were had better be told in the words. of Cowper himself. "Being necessarily ignorant," says he, "of the nature of that business, it became. expedient that I should visit the office daily, in order to qualify myself for the strictest scrutiny. All the horror of my fears and perplexities now returned. A thunderbolt would have been as welcome to me as this intelligence. I knew to demonstration that upon these terms the clerkship of the journals was no place for me.. To require my attendance at the bar of the House, that I might there publicly entitle myself to the office, was, in effect, to exclude me from it. In the meantime, the interest of my friend, the honour of his choice, my own reputation and circumstances, all urged me forward, all pressed me to undertake that which I saw to be impracticable. They whose spirits are formed like mine, to whom a public exhibition of themselves on any occasion is mortal poison, may have some idea of the situation; others can have none.

"My continued misery at length brought on a

nervous fever; quiet forsook me by day, peace by night; a finger raised against me was more than I could stand against. In this posture of mind I attended regularly at the office, where, instead of a soul upon the rack, the most active spirits were essentially necessary for my purpose. I expected no assistance from anybody there, all the inferior clerks being under the influence of my opponent, and accordingly I received none. The journal books were indeed thrown open to me, a thing which could not be refused, and from which, perhaps, a man in health, and with a head turned to business, might have gained all the information he wanted, but it was not so with me. I read without perception, and was so distressed that, had every clerk in the office been my friend, it could have availed me little, for I was not in a condition to receive instruction, much less to elicit it out of manuscripts without direction. Many months went over me thus employed, constant in the use of means, despairing as to the issue.

"The feelings of a man when he arrives at the place of execution are probably much like mine every time I set my foot in the office, which was every day for more than half a year together."

A letter which he wrote to his cousin Harriet (now the wife of Sir Thomas Hesketh) on the 9th of August, 1763, is of more than ordinary interest. "I have a pleasure," he says, "in writing to you at any time, but especially at the present, when my days are spent in reading the Journals, and my nights in dreaming of them, an employment not very agreeable to a head that has long been habituated to the luxury of choosing

its subject, and has been as little employed upon business as if it had grown upon the shoulders of a much wealthier gentleman. . . . Oh, my good cousin! if I was to open my heart to you, I could show you strange sights.. . I am of a very singular temper, and very unlike all the men that I have ever conversed with. Certainly I am not an absolute fool, but I have more weaknesses than the greatest of all the fools I can. recollect at present. In short, if I was as fit for the next world as I am unfit for this, and God forbid I should speak it in vanity, I would not change conditions with. any saint in Christendom."

But now came a brief respite from all the turmoil,. for when we next hear of Cowper he is spending a few weeks' furlough at Margate, in accordance with the advice of his physician and friend, the gifted Dr. William Heberden, author of the Latin work, "De Curatione Morborum." To this amiable and admirable man Cowper pays a tribute in the poem called "Retirement," the opening lines of which refer to his own.

case:

"Virtuous and faithful Heberden, whose skill
Attempts no task it cannot well fulfil,

Gives melancholy up to nature's care,
And sends the patient into purer air,"

20. At Margate.-August and September,

1763.

As at Southampton ten years previously, the changeof scene, together with other advantages, began to work an alteration in him for the better. To quote the

Memoir, "There, by the help of cheerful company, a new scene, and the intermission of my painful employment, I presently began to recover my spirits; though even here, for some time after my arrival (notwithstanding, perhaps, that the preceding day had been spent agreeably, and without any disturbing recollection of my circumstances), my first reflections, when I awoke in the morning, were horrible and full of wretchedness. I looked forward to the approaching winter, and regretted the flight of every moment which brought it nearer; like a man borne away by a rapid torrent into a stormy sea, whence he sees no possibility of returning, where he knows he cannot submit."

Many years after, when his friends Unwin and Newton at different times visited Margate, he calls up his own recollections of the place. To Unwin (July, 1779) he says: "When I was at Margate it was an excursion of pleasure to go to see Ramsgate. The pier, I remember, was accounted a most excellent piece of stone-work, and such I found it. By this time I suppose it is finished. . . . There was not at that time much to be seen in the Isle of Thanet, besides the beauty of the country and the fine prospects of the sea, which are nowhere surpassed, except in the Isle of Wight, or upon some parts of the coast of Hampshire. One sight, however, I remember engaged my curiosity, and I went to see it—a fine piece of ruins, built by the late Lord Holland at a great expense, which, the day after I saw it, tumbled down for nothing. Perhaps, therefore, it is still a ruin; and if it is, I would advise you by all means to visit it, as it must have been much improved by this fortunate accident. It is hardly pos

sible to put stones together with that air of wild and magnificent disorder which they are sure to acquire by falling of their own accord.

"I remember (the last thing I mean to remember upon this occasion) that Sam Cox, the counsel, walking by the seaside, as if absorbed in deep contemplation, was questioned about what he was musing on. He replied, 'I was wondering that such an almost infinite and unwieldy element should produce a sprat.'

In one of his walks along the strand Cowper experienced a rather unpleasant adventure at a spot where "the cliff is high and perpendicular." "At long intervals there are cart-ways, cut through the rock down to the beach, and there is no other way of access to it, or of return from it. I walked near a mile upon the water edge, without observing that the tide was rising fast upon me. When I did observe it, it was almost too late. I ran every step back again, and had much ado to save my distance."

This visit to Margate and vicinity is thus referred to in the "Lines to the Rev. Mr. Newton on his return (October, 1780). Cowper says:-.

from Ramsgate" (October, 1780).

"That ocean you have late surveyed,

Those rocks I too have seen;

But I afflicted and dismayed,

You tranquil and serene.

You from the flood-controlling steep
Saw stretched before your view,

With conscious joy, the threatening deep,
No longer such to you.

To me the waves, that ceaseless broke

Upon the dangerous coast,

Hoarsely and ominously spoke

Of all my treasure lost.