of a friendship which produced such consequences in our literature; for if Cowper had never known Lady Austen, it may well be doubted whether he would ever have attained that popularity and that fame which he will hold as long as English shall continue to be the language of a civilized people. The friendship which promised so fairly had nearly been nipt in the bud.

A few weeks after the date of his poetical epistle to Lady Austen, Cowper wrote thus to Mr. Unwin": "I have a piece of secret history to communicate which I would have imparted sooner, but that I thought it possible there might be no occasion to mention it at all. When persons for whom I have felt a friendship disappoint and mortify me by their conduct, or act unjustly towards me, though I no longer esteem them friends, I still feel that tenderness for their character, that I would conceal the blemish if I could. But in making known the following anecdote to you, I run no risk of a publication, assured that when I have once enjoined you secrecy, you will observe it. My letters have already apprized you of that close and intimate connexion that took place between the lady you visited in Queen Anne Street and us. Nothing could be more promising, though sudden in the commencement. She treated us with as much unreservedness of communication, as if we had been born in the same house, and educated together. At her departure she herself proposed a correspondence, and because writing does not agree with your mother, proposed a correspondence with me. This sort of intercourse had not been long maintained, before I discovered, by some slight intimation of it, that she had conceived displeasure at something I had written, though I cannot now recollect it. Conscious of none but the most upright and inoffensive intentions, I yet apologized for the passage in question, and the flaw was healed again. Our correspondence, after this, proceeded smoothly for a considerable time; but at length having had repeated occasion to observe that she expressed a sort of romantic idea of our merits, and built such expectations of felicity upon our friendship, as we were sure that nothing human could possibly answer, I wrote to remind her that we were mortal, to recommend it to her not to think more highly of us than the subject would warrant; and intimating, that 49 Feb. 9, 1782.

when we embellish a creature with colours taken from our own fancy, and, so adorned, admire and praise it beyond its real merits, we make it an idol, and have nothing to expect in the end but that it will deceive our hopes, and that we shall derive nothing from it but a painful conviction of our error. Your mother heard me read the letter; she read it herself, and honoured it with her warm approbation. But it gave mortal offence. It received, indeed, an answer, but such a one as I could by no means reply to: and thus ended (for it is impossible it should ever be renewed) a friendship that bade fair to be lasting, being formed with a woman whose seeming stability of temper, whose knowledge of the world, and great experience of its folly, but above all, whose sense of religion and seriousness of mind (for with all that gaiety she is a great thinker), induced us both, in spite of that cautious reserve that marks our character, to trust her, to love and value her, and to open our hearts for her reception. It may be necessary to add, that by her own desire I wrote to her under the assumed relation of a brother, and she to me as a sister-ceu fumus in auras... We have recovered from the concern we suffered on account of the fracas above-mentioned, though for some days it made us unhappy. Not knowing but that she might possibly become sensible in a few days that she had acted hastily and unreasonably, and renew the correspondence herself, I could not in justice apprize you of this quarrel sooner; but some weeks having passed without any proposals of accommodation, I am now persuaded that none are intended, and in justice to you, am obliged to caution you against a repetition of your visit."

Cowper, however, soon had to communicate that the advances of which he despaired had been made. "Having (he says) unfolded to you an account of the fracas between us and Lady Austen, it is necessary that you should be made acquainted with every event that bears any relation to that incident. The day before yesterday she sent us by her brotherin-law, Mr. Jones, three pair of worked ruffles, with advice that I should soon receive a fourth. I knew they were begun before we quarrelled. I begged Mr. Jones to tell her, when he wrote next, how much I thought myself obliged; and gave him to understand that I should make her a very inadequate, though the only return in my power, by laying my volume at

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her feet this likewise she had previous reason given her to expect. Thus stands the affair at present. Whether any thing in the shape of a reconciliation is to take place hereafter, I know not; but this I know, that when an amicable freedom of intercourse, and that unreserved confidence which belongs only to true friendship has been once unrooted, plant it again with what care you may, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to make it grow. The fear of giving offence to a temper too apt to take it, is unfavourable to that comfort we propose to ourselves even in our ordinary connexions, but absolutely incompatible with the pleasures of real friendship. She is to spend the summer in our neighbourhood. Lady and Miss are to be of the party; the former a dissipated woman of fashion, and the latter a haughty beauty. Retirement is our passion and our delight. It is in still life alone we look for that measure of happiness we can rationally expect below. What have we to do, therefore, with characters like these? Shall we go to the dancing-school again? Shall we cast off the simplicity of our plain and artless demeanour, to learn, and not in a youthful day neither, the manners of those whose manners at the best are their only recommendation, and yet can in reality recommend them to none but people like themselves? This would be folly which nothing but necessity could excuse, and in our case no such necessity can possibly obtain. We will not go into the world, and if the world would come to us, we must give it the French answer, Monsieur et Madame ne sont pas visibles 50"

But it depended upon the lady whether or not this intercourse should be renewed; and this was felt at Olney. "We are far," says Cowper, "from wishing a renewal of the connexion we have lately talked about. We did, indeed, find it in a certain way an agreeable one, while that lady continued in the country; yet not altogether compatible with our favourite plan; with that silent retirement in which we have spent so many years, and in which we wish to spend what are yet before us. She is exceedingly sensible, has great quickness of parts and an uncommon fluency of expression; but her vivacity was sometimes too much for us; occasionally, perhaps, it might refresh and revive us, but it more frequently exhausted us, neither your mother nor I being in that respect at all a match 50 February 24.

for her. But after all, it does not entirely depend upon us whether our former intimacy shall take place again or not; or rather, whether we shall attempt to cultivate it, or give it over, as we are most inclined to do, in despair. I suspect a little, by her sending the ruffles, and by the terms in which she spoke of us to you, that some overtures on her part are to be looked for. Should this happen, however we may wish to be reserved, we must not be rude; but I can answer for us both, that we shall enter into the connexion again with great reluctance, not hoping for any better fruit of it than it has already produced. If you thought she fell short of the description I gave of her, I still think, however, that it was not a partial one, and that it did not make too favourable a representation of her character. You must have seen her to disadvantage; a consciousness of a quarrel so recent, and in which she had expressed herself with a warmth that she knew must have affronted and shocked us both, must unavoidably have produced its effect upon her behaviour, which though it could not be awkward, must have been in some degree unnatural; her attention being necessarily pretty much engrossed by a recollection of what had passed between us. I would by no means have hazarded you into her company, if I had not been sure that she would treat you with politeness, and almost persuaded that she would soon see the unreasonableness of her conduct, and make a suitable apology 51.'

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51 99

The reconciliation, as might now be expected", easily took 51 March 7, 1782. 52 To this occasion the extract must be referred, which Hayley has printed from an undated letter to Mr. Unwin, wherein Cowper says, "We are reconciled. She (Lady Austen) seized the first opportunity to embrace your mother with tears of the tenderest affection. We were all a little awkward at first, but now are as easy as ever." Hayley says, immediately before he introduces the passage, "In the whole course of this work I have endeavoured to recollect, on every doubtful occasion, the feelings of Cowper and made it a rule to reject whatever my perfect intimacy with those feelings could lead me to suppose the spirit of the departed poet might wish me to lay aside as unfit for publication. I consider an editor as guilty of the basest injury to the dead, who admits into the posthumous volumes of an author whom he professes to love and admire, any composition which his own conscience informs him that author if he could speak from the tomb, would direct him to suppress. On this principle I have declined to print some letters, which entered more than I think the public ought to enter into the history of a trifling feminine discord, that disturbed the perfect harmony of the happy trio at Olney when Lady Austen and Mrs. Unwin were the united inspirers of the poet."

The rule which Hayley prescribed to himself is what every biographer,

place, and the parties were soon as happy in each other's society as before. Lady Austen's fashionable friends occasioned no embarrassment; they seemed to have preferred some more fashionable place for summering in, for they are not again spoken of. The plan of fitting up that wing of the house which was held in joint occupance by Dick Coleman and the rats, was found impracticable, but an arrangement was made at the vicarage, and preparations were made for her entering upon this abode in the autumn.

During the short interruption of their friendship, Cowper happily had his mind much occupied with the business of the press. The task of correcting he was never weary of, being of opinion "that the secret of almost all good writing, especially in verse, is to touch and retouch; though some writers boast of negligence, and others would be ashamed to show their foul copies 53- "A lapidary," he says, "I suppose accounts it a laborious part of his business to rub away the roughness of the stone; but it is my amusement; and if, after all the polishing I can give it, it discovers some little lustre, I think myself well rewarded for my pains 54 " It was only upon his poems that Cowper bestowed this labour. His letters were written as easily as they appear to have been; they would not otherwise have been inimitable. It is certain that he made no "foul copies" of them; they are in a clear, beautiful, running hand, and it is rarely that an erasure occurs in them, or the slightest alteration of phrase.

Mr. Newton suggested that a copy of the forthcoming volume should be sent to Dr. Johnson, and Cowper perfectly acquiesced in the propriety, "though I well know," said he, "that one of his pointed sarcasms, if he should happen to be circumstanced as he was, ought to observe; but I think it was, in this instance, applicable only while Lady Austen was living, if he alludes to the foresaid interruption of their friendship at this time; and that when he spoke of "a trifling feminine discord," the words imply something more discreditable to two such women than the affair itself can be deemed. Lady Austen was evidently one of those persons who are too sensitive for their own happiness; and it may be collected from Cowper's account, that in warning her against expecting and exacting too much from those she loved, he fell into a strain so unlike that of his conversation and of his former letters, that she was surprized at it: and the same cause which seems to have suspended Lady Hesketh's correspondence with a kinsman whom she loved so dearly, provoked from her a hasty and perhaps a tart reply. 53 To Mr. Unwin, July 2, 1780. 54 Aug. 9, 1780.