Cowper had lent him twenty-five years before. A Mrs. King also, wife of a friend of his brother, introduced herself on the strength of that, and was kindly received. Last, not least, Thurlow, whom Lady Hesketh had found means to reach, interested himself in the subscription to his Homer (August 1788), and they exchanged some letters on the relative merits of rhyme and blank verse. noticeable that Cowper, who wrote the first letter, begins “My Lord,” and Thurlow with "Dear Cowper." But Cowper sticks to his original form of address. It is Whilst engaged busily on Homer, he was constantly throwing off small pieces, as relaxations. Amongst them were the poems on the slave trade,* which Lady Hesketh asked him to write. He also composed a few review articles. The poem on the Queen's visit to London (p. 370) was written at Lady Hesketh's request, she probably hoping that he would succeed Warton as Poet Laureate. But when the latter died in the following year Cowper begged her not to think of it. should never," he said, "write anything more worth reading if he were appointed." So the honour was not asked for, and Pye + was appointed. "He The Homer was published in the summer of 1791. His illness and long-continued intervals of incapacity for work had occasioned the delay. Johnson took all expenses, and paid him £1,000, the copyright remaining Cowper's. It was pub Pp. 363-365. I cannot resist the temptation of laying a specimen of his productions before the reader : "AN ODE ON HER MAJESTY'S BIRTHDAY. "Britannia hail the blessed day, Ye smiling seasons sing the same, Ye songsters of the ærial tribe, AIR. "The heavens to ease a monarch's care, As claim no wonder from mankind, The But he lished in two volumes, quarto, at three guineas. I do not feel competent to criticize it. It seems to me dreary and dull, but not more so than other translations of Homer. He was qualified by his scholarship, which Pope was not. translation, therefore, is probably as accurate as any translation can be. had no sympathy for the wars and battles. Arthur Clough's commentary on it is, after all, the most exhaustive-"Where is the man who has ever read it?" His undertaking it at all seems to me one of the misfortunes arising from the breach with Lady Austen. She might have suggested something better than the wasting of five years in such profitless labour. What next? For both he and his friends had learned that continual occupation was necessary to his well-being. Lady Hesketh was for another long poem, and proposed to him "The Mediterranean" as a subject. He replied, truly, that he did not know history enough, and that, moreover, it seemed a subject not for one poem, but for twenty. A neighbouring clergyman, Mr. Buchanan, proposed “The Four Ages of Man." He liked the idea extremely, and began upon it. He began also "Yardley Oak," keeping it apparently as a secret with which to surprise his friends when it was finished. But Johnson invited him to undertake an edition of Milton, as a match for Boydell's Shakespeare, Cowper to write notes and translate the Latin and Italian poems, and Fuseli to do the illustrations. He undertook this, and did the work of translation with great pleasure, as well as success. But the RECITATIVO. "Britons, with heart-felt joy, with decent mirth, AIR. See envy's self is fain to own Those virtues which adorn the throne ; While home-bred faction droops her head, See liberty and justice spread Their happy influence around, The land where plenteous stores abound, Of wealth and grain, where arts and science To every nation bid defiance. RECITATIVO. "Fly hence, ye gloomy cares, For you here's no employ ; Here sweetest ease appears, CHORUS. "While George and Charlotte rule the land, Their names our seas and coasts defend, And drive our foes afar; Each season, and each year, shall roll Their fame and power from pole to pole.' notes were irksome to him; oftentimes he would sit down and be unable to write anything, and it became clear, after long effort, that the engagement must be given up. For not only was his spirit becoming darkened again, but another great sorrow was impending over him. Mrs. Unwin, who had never recovered a fall on some ice in the winter of 1788-9, was seized with paralysis in December 1791. She recovered slowly as the spring came on, but the effect upon Cowper's spirits could not but be severe. He had taken the fancy that he heard voices speaking to him on waking in the morning. Sometimes he understood them, but more often they were unintelligible. A schoolmaster at Olney, Samuel Teedon (whether knave or fool may be doubtful), whose uncouth compliments and heavy-witted opinions Cowper had often quizzed, undertook to interpret these voices. Mrs. Unwin at first appears to have humoured his fancy, but as her disease grew upon her, she too fell in with the insanity, and now nothing was done until the voices had spoken, and Teedon had interpreted. The balderdash was all written down, and volumes were filled with it. No one but themselves were made acquainted with these miserable proceedings. Sir John Throckmorton too, on succeeding to the baronetcy, left the neighbourhood for his late father's residence in Oxfordshire, and this must have been a great loss at such a trying time, though his successor afterwards proved equally kind to them. He was Sir John's younger brother, George, but had taken the name of Courtenay. * The Milton engagement brought Cowper one pleasure before it came to an end. It was the cause of his friendship with Hayley. The latter had been engaged by Boydell to write a life for a sumptuous edition of Milton, and the public were thus led to believe that Hayley and Cowper were engaged as rivals. Hayley was much distressed, and wrote to Cowper, hitherto a stranger to him, to assure him that he had no idea that the latter was so engaged, and pointing out that their two works would be so different in character that they would not clash. He added the warmest expressions of respect and admiration, and enclosed also a sonnet to him. Cowper responded in a like spirit; the correspondence thus begun was carried on with energy, and in May 1791 Hayley visited him at Weston. But before he had been there long Mrs. Unwin had a second and more severe attack of paralysis. Hayley's kindness and usefulness under this trial endeared him to Cowper for life; and on Mrs. Unwin's partial recovery, the two recluses, in the following July, returned his visit at his residence at Eartham in Sussex. Cowper might well call such a journey a "tremendous exploit" for them, considering what their life for twenty years had been. No one reads Hayley's plays or poems now, but he was an amiable and remarkable man. His domestic life was unhappy and irregular, and some of his writings *He had, on previous visits to his brother, been one of the most ardent transcribers of Homer, and his wife had been dubbed "my lady of the ink-bottle." are prurient, but he was most unselfish and generous towards his friends; his reading was extensive, and his critical power considerable. Gibbon visited Eartham, and called it a little paradise, but declared that its owner's mind was even more elegant than it. Thurlow, Flaxman, Warton, all loved and admired him, and Miss Seward poured forth admiring verses upon him. to us. Cowper, who had hardly ever seen a hill in his life, was of course delighted with the South Downs, the wide landscape, the sea, and the Isle of Wight. He could not write, however; all was so strange to him. "I am like the man in the fable," he said, "who could leap nowhere but at Rhodes." He gave some help to Hayley in translating “Adam," an Italian dramatic poem, a wretchedly poor work, not worth reprinting. Poor Charlotte Smith was staying there, writing "The Old Manor House." She was wonderfully rapid, and used each evening to read to them what she had written in the day. On this occasion, too, Romney, who was Hayley's dearest friend, took the portrait by which Cowper is so well known The portrait by Abbot had been taken just before starting for Eartham. Six weeks were spent here-happy weeks; but Cowper began to pine for quiet Weston again. Repose and seclusion had always suited him best; he felt them indispensable to him now. Mrs. Unwin's continued infirmities, and the declining season of the year, concurred in making him anxious to be gone, and they returned to Weston in September. How he wrote to Teedon day after day, and week after week, we pause not to relate; it is most distressing to read the letters. Newton never exercised a greater power over him than this man, who received all his confidences, prescribed to him what prayers to use, and how long a time to spend in them, and prognosticated his future. Cowper paid him from time to time much more money than he could afford, even while, sound in all respects but one, he was making hearty fun of his absurdity and vanity. Mrs. Unwin, too, got worse; and he who had been the object of her care so long now became her tender and attentive nurse. The poor woman became so irritable and exacting that his health, comfort, and peace of mind were sacrificed to her fancies. She sat silent, looking into the fire, unable to work or to read; under such circumstances he had little heart to write. His state became more wretched and dark than ever. Small doses of James' powders, or a small quantity of laudanum taken at night, were the best remedies that he had found, he says. "I seem to myself," he wrote to Newton,* "to be scrambling always in the dark, among rocks and precipices, without a guide, but with an enemy ever at my heels, prepared to push me headlong. Thus I have spent twenty years, but thus I shall not spend twenty years Long ere that period arrives, the grand question concerning everlasting weal or woe will be decided." Lady Hesketh might have wrought him good, perhaps, but she had fallen out of health, and was ordered to Bath. Besides, she more. *Nov. II, 1792. knew nothing of the Teedon delusion, and was quite abroad in her thoughts of the doings at Weston. The schoolmaster's promises of relief within a specified period failed, and, as a matter of course, Cowper, who had trusted to them implicitly, came to the conclusion that God had finally forsaken him and cast him off. But what is so especially touching in the history of this sad period is that he fought so hard against his insanity. His letters to his friends are still playful and witty, and a great number of his smaller poems belong to this year. He worked at Milton as long as it was possible, and he studied the old commentaries on Homer, with a view of improving his second edition when it should be called for. There are passages in his letters which lead one to believe that if he had only had a fair chance his mind might have recovered itself. But what chance was there, with Teedon on one side and poor Mrs. Unwin on the other? In one of his letters he says that while he is writing it, she is sitting in her corner, sometimes bursting into a laugh at nothing, sometimes talking nonsense, to which no one thinks of paying attention. And yet this was, for months, the only "conversation" that he had; and she would not even let him read, except aloud to her. The only way by which he could gain any leisure was to rise at six, begin work at once, and breakfast at eleven; and this he did in winter as well as in summer. In the autumn of 1793 Lord Spencer invited him to Althorpe to meet Gibbon, who was making a long stay there, and he was much tempted to go. But the state of his spirits, as well as Mrs. Unwin's infirm condition, unhappily compelled him to d cline the invitation. Towards the end of the year 1793, just after he had dropped the Miltonic engagement, Lady Hesketh came to Weston. Hayley had been there a few weeks before; but in April 1794 received a message from her entreating him to come again, for that the unhappy patient had become much worse. He came at once. It was evidently a terrible sight to them; Hayley's unaffected description is most pathetic. The poor sufferer would hardly eat anything, and refused all medicine, walking backwards and forwards incessantly in his bedroom, believing from hour to hour that the devil was coming to carry him away. At Thurlow's request, Dr. Willis, whose success in the king's insanity had made his name renowned, came to Weston, but found the case past his skill. A letter came from Lord Spencer, announcing that the king granted Mr. Cowper a pension of £300 a year, but he was not in a condition to receive the announcement. Whilst he was worn out with fatigue, anguish, and fasting, Mrs. Unwin would insist on his dragging her round the garden. She persisted too in keeping the management of the household, and the reckless extravagance below stairs amazed and horrified Lady Hesketh, who, however, bravely struggled on for more than a year, vainly hoping to relieve him. She then wrote to his cousin Johnson, who had been recently ordained, urging the necessity of removal, and he came and succeeded in persuading Cowper to consent to it. It was spoken of as temporary, otherwise the consent would never have been given; but when it came to the last Cowper |