p. xxxix) must be allowed as conclusive. 'Mr. Bull, in his Memorials of Newton, declares that again and again he had heard his father say, that they were about to be married when Cowper's malady returned in 1773; and that Bull knew this from Mrs. Unwin herself.' And then he adds the following extract from Newton's hitherto unpublished Diary: 'They were congenial spirits, united in the faith and hope of the gospel; and their intimate and growing friendship led them, in the course of four or five years, to an engagement of marriage, which was well known to me, and to most of their and my friends, and was to have taken place in a few months, but was prevented by the terrible malady which seized him about that time.' It is true that Mrs. Unwin was at this time forty-eight years of age, and Cowper only forty-one; yet it would probably have conduced to the comfort of both, if this union could have been effected. But what had now occurred was thought sufficient to render any revival of the question impossible.

As Cowper slowly regained his mental powers, he began to divert himself not only with his favourite pursuit of gardening, but with carpentering and landscape-painting, and more particularly with keeping pet animals. In 1774 his three hares, Puss, Tiney, and Bess, were given to him; and he furnished an account of their treatment to the Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1784. Lady Hesketh has enumerated no fewer than twenty domesticated animals which he had about him at one time. He amused himself also with the continuation of that delightful series of letters to his friends, which had been begun in the week of his arrival at Huntingdon; but which had flagged, and in the case of Lady Hesketh had ceased entirely, soon after his settlement at Olney.

The next change in the Poet's life was occasioned by Mr. Newton's migration to London. He was presented by Mr. John Thornton, in September, 1779, to the united Rectories of St. Mary Woolnoth and St. Mary Woolchurch Haw; and he quitted Olney early in January, 1780. Before he did so, his forethought for his friend's comfort suggested

his introduction to the Rev. William Bull, a congregational minister at Newport Pagnell, five miles from Olney. He was 'a Dissenter, but a liberal one: a man of letters and of genius, and master of a fine imagination.' The two were drawn towards each other by a mutual attraction; dined together once a fortnight; and became fast friends.

And now began a period of literary activity which proved a most wholesome recreation to Cowper. He took delight in throwing off poems on various subjects of public or private interest. I have never,' he writes, 'found an amusement among the many I have been obliged to have recourse to, that so well answered the purpose for which I used it. The quieting and composing effect of it was such, and so totally absorbed have I sometimes been in my rhyming occupation, that neither the past nor the present (those themes which to me are so fruitful in regret at other times) had any longer a share in my contemplation.' The clear sight of love was keen to perceive the benefit which the convalescent derived from this occupation; and Mrs. Unwin urged him to the composition of a long poem worthy of his powers. He asked for a subject, and she gave him 'The Progress of Error.' The Poet addressed himself to the work in December, 1780; and in three months produced not only the poem bearing that name, but also 'Truth,'' Table Talk,' and 'Expostulation.' Mr. Newton's kind offices availed to secure their acceptance by Johnson, a publisher in St. Paul's Churchyard; and the poems were sent to him in April, 1781. Johnson suggested an addition to the volume: whereupon Cowper wrote 'Hope' and 'Charity'; and to these he soon added 'Conversation' and 'Retirement.' A few minor pieces were included, and the volume was published about the 1st of March, 1782. By the author's request Mr. Newton wrote a preface to it; and his name was to have appeared on the title-page as editor. This preface, dated Feb. 18, 1782, was first prefixed to the fifth edition, 1790; as the publisher feared that its distinctively Evangelical tone would injure the sale of the book.

But ere the publication of this volume, a sunbeam had

glanced across the path of Cowper's social life, which for a while lit up his whole existence with a brightness such as had never before illumined it. In the summer of 1781 he formed the acquaintance of Lady Austen,—' a lively, agreeable woman, who had seen much of the world, and accounted it a great simpleton, as it is; one who laughed and made laugh, and could keep up a conversation without seeming to labour at it.' She was the widow of Sir Robert Austen, seventh Baronet of Bexley in Kent; to whom she was married when very young, and with whom she had lived entirely in France, till his death in 1772. When Cowper met her, she was on a visit to her sister, the wife of the Rev. J. Jones of Clifton Reynes, one mile from Olney. She took tea there, and was as much captivated by the person and genius of the Poet, as he was fascinated by her gay and sympathetic manner.

Those were the days of picnics and parties of pleasure: and before Lady Austen returned to London in October, she had become 'Sister Anna,' and Cowper her 'Brother William'; and a correspondence on these terms was arranged between them. But in the ensuing February a disagreement arose. Lady Austen appears to have found in Cowper less reciprocity of sentiment than she expected; and the latter wrote thus to Unwin, '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 her to remind her that we were mortal, to recommend it to her not to think more highly of us than the subject would warrant.' 'This letter,' he continues, 'gave mortal offence. It received indeed an answer, but such a one as I could by no means reply to: and there ended -for it is impossible that it should be renewed—a friendship that bid fair to be lasting.' The lady however viewed the matter in a different light. In less than a fortnight, Cowper received a present of three pair of ruffles from her; and the least he could do was to send his thanks by Mr. Jones, and transmit a copy of his Poems to Lady Austen. Shortly afterwards she repeated her visit to Clifton; when she threw

herself with tears into Mrs. Unwin's arms, and soon put the whole party at their ease. In a few weeks she took lodgings in the vicarage, with the design of fixing her abode at Olney; and the occupants of the two dwellings became so closely united as to form almost one household. 'A practice obtained at length of dining with each other alternately every day, Sundays excepted;' and beyond this, Cowper 'paid his devoirs to her ladyship every morning at eleven.' The trio formed a most harmonious and cheerful party, both at home and in their walks into the country. Cowper wrote poems for Lady Austen to sing to her harpsichord: among others, that on the Loss of the Royal George' (Sept. 1782). One evening in October, perceiving her friend to be in more than usually low spirits, she sought to enliven him by reciting the story of John Gilpin, as one which had been told her in her childhood.' After all had retired to rest, peals of laughter were heard to issue from the Poet's chamber, so continuous and hysterical as to alarm Mrs. Unwin for his reason. The next morning he presented the ladies with 'The Diverting History of John Gilpin,' which he had spent the night in turning into verse.

“

The ballad was sent to Unwin, who got it printed in the 'Public Advertiser' of Nov. 14, 1782; the author's consent to this being guarded with one proviso,—auctore tantum anonуто. The story could not fail to become popular. Writing to Unwin, May 8, 1784 (eighteen months after its first appearance), Cowper tells him that the publisher had at first objected to his design of adding it at the tail' of his new volume of poems, on the ground of its being 'now too trite'; inasmuch as it had been hacknied in every magazine, in every newspaper, and in every street.' A fresh impulse was given to the popularity of 'John Gilpin,' when (in 1785) Mr. Richard Sharp, known as 'Conversation Sharp,' suggested to John Henderson the Actor, that he should include it in his series of Lenten recitations in Freemason's Hall. From that time the verses became 'familiar in men's mouths as household words.'

It is not only for 'John Gilpin' that the world has to thank Lady Austen. But for her, we should have had no ‘Task'; and Cowper would not have been selected for this Series, as the representative poet of his age. The volume of 1782,

though containing much that perhaps no man but Cowper could have written, did not possess the elements of popularity, either in its subjects or the manner of their treatment. If we compare the later poems of the series with 'The Progress of Error,' we shall indeed observe a marked improvement, both in the smoothness of the versification (which is very conspicuous in 'Retirement ') and in the more poetical handling of the theme. 'Expostulation' is a magnificent burst of impassioned feeling, and may be said in some parts of it to soar into sublimity. Yet, as Miss Seward has remarked, 'No reader could have expected the diamonds of Cowper, who had only seen the Scotch pebbles which he offered for sale at the beginning of his career.' Nevertheless the book had attracted some favourable notice. Although the Critical Review found in it nothing more than 'decent mediocrity,' and pronounced it to be 'little better than a dull sermon in very indifferent verse,' the London and Gentleman's Magazines, and the Monthly Review, 'the critical Rhadamanthus ' of the day, had bestowed on it decided, though not enthusiastic praise. Mr. John Thornton had sent a copy of it to Benjamin Franklin, then American Ambassador in Paris; and his 'plaudit' was very gratifying to the author. This appreciation of his work by a stranger made him the more sensitive to the neglect of his old friends, Colman and Thurlow, neither of whom had the civility to acknowledge the presentation-copies which he sent to them. He vented his indignation with natural resentment in 'The Valediction,' written in Nov. 1783. In this year Mr. Bull sent Cowper the poems of Madame de la Mothe Guion; and these, which he thought 'the only French verse he ever read that he found agreeable,' he translated in a month. Lady Austen pressed him to write a new original poem in blank verse, which Milton had taught her to love. When he replied that she