Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

with his most intimate friends, but his tender solicitude to hear some tidings of his favourite Weston induced him, in September, to write a letter to Mr. Buchanan. It shows the severity of his depression, but proves also that transient gleams of pleasure could occasionally break through the brooding darkness of melancholy.

He begins with a poetical quotation:

"To interpose a little ease,

Let my frail thoughts dally with false surmise!"

"I will forget, for a moment, that to whomsoever I may address myself, a letter from me can no otherwise be welcome than as a curiosity. To you, sir, I address this; urged to it by extreme penury of employment, and the desire I feel to learn something of what is doing, and has been done, at Weston, (my beloved Weston!) since I left it.

"The coldness of these blasts, even in the hottest days, has been such, that, added to the irritation of the salt-spray, with which they are always charged, they have occasioned me an inflammation in the eye-lids, which threatened a few days since to confine me entirely, but, by absenting myself as much as possible from the beach, and guarding my face with an umbrella, that inconvenience is in some degree abated. My chamber commands a very near view of the ocean, and the ships at high water approach the coast so closely, that a man furnished with better eyes than mine might, I doubt not, discern the sailors from the window. No situation, at least when the weather is clear and bright, can be

pleasanter; which you will easily credit, when I add, that it imparts something a little resembling pleasure even to me.-Gratify me with news of Weston! If Mr. Gregson, and your neighbours the Courtenays are there, mention me to them in such terms as you see good. Tell me if my poor birds are living! I never see the herbs I used to give them, without a recollection of them, and sometimes am ready to gather them, forgetting that I am not at home. Pardon this intrusion !

[ocr errors]

"Mrs. Unwin continues much as usual.

Mundsley, Sept. 5, 1795."

Mr. Buchanan endeavoured, with great tenderness and ingenuity, to allure his dejected friend to prolong a correspondence, that seemed to promise some little alleviation to his melancholy; but this distressing malady baffled all the various expedients that could be devised to counteract its overwhelming influence.

Much hope was entertained from air and exercise, with a frequent change of scene.-In September, Mr. Johnson conducted his kinsman (to the promotion of whose recovery he devoted his most unwearied efforts) to take a survey of Dunham-Lodge, a seat at that time vacant; it is situated on high ground, in a park, about four miles from Swaffham. Cowper spoke of it as a house rather too spacious for him, yet such as he was not unwilling to inhabit -a remark which induced Mr. Johnson, at a subsequent period, to become the tenant of this mansion,

as a scene more eligible for Cowper than the town of Dereham.—This town they also surveyed in their excursion; and, after passing a night there, returned to Mundsley, which they quitted for the season on the seventh of October.

They removed immediately to Dereham; but left it in the course of a month for Dunham-Lodge, which now became their settled residence.

The spirits of Cowper were not sufficiently revived to allow him to resume either his pen or his books; but the kindness of his young kinsman continued to furnish him with inexhaustible amusement, by reading to him almost incessantly; and, although he was not led to converse on what he heard, yet it failed not to rivet his attention, and so to prevent his afflicted mind from preying on itself.

In April, 1796, Mrs. Unwin, whose infirmities continued to engage the tender attention of Cowper, even in his darkest periods of depression, received a visit from her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Powley. On their departure, Mr. Johnson assumed the office which Mrs. Powley had tenderly performed for her venerable parent, and regularly read a chapter in the Bible every morning to Mrs. Unwin before she rose. It was the invariable custom of Cowper to visit his poor old friend the moment he had finished his breakfast, and to remain in her apartment while the chapter was read.

In June, the pressure of his melancholy appeared in some degree alleviated, for, on Mr. Johnson's re

ceiving the edition of Pope's Homer, published by Wakefield, Cowper eagerly seized the book, and began to read the notes to himself with visible interest. They awakened his attention to his own version of Homer. In August he deliberately engaged in a revisal of the whole, and for some time produced almost sixty new lines a day.

This mental occupation animated all his intimate friends with a most lively hope of his progressive recovery. But autumn repressed the hope that summer had excited.

In September the family removed from DunhamLodge to try again the influence of the sea-side, in their favourite village of Mundsley.

Cowper walked frequently by the sea; but no apparent benefit arose, no mild relief from the incessant pressure of melancholy. He had relinquished his Homer again, and could not yet be induced to resume it.

Towards the end of October, this interesting party retired from the coast to the house of Mr. Johnson, in Dereham- -a house now chosen for their winter residence, as Dunham-Lodge appeared to them too dreary.

The long and exemplary life of Mrs. Unwin was drawing towards a close :-the powers of nature were gradually exhausted, and on the seventeenth of December she ended a troubled existence, distinguished by a sublime spirit of piety and friendship, that shone through long periods of calamity, and continued to glimmer through the distressful twilight of her declining faculties. Her death was calm

and tranquil. Cowper saw her about half an hour before the moment of expiration, which passed without a struggle or a groan, as the clock was striking one in the afternoon.

[ocr errors]

On the morning of that day, he said to the servant who opened the window of his chamber, Sally, is there life above stairs ?" A striking proof of his bestowing incessant attention on the sufferings of his aged friend, although he had long appeared almost totally absorbed in his own.

In the dusk of the evening he attended Mr. Johnson to survey the corpse; and after looking at it a few moments he started suddenly away, with a vehement but unfinished sentence of passionate sorrow. He spoke of her no more.

She was buried by torch-light, on the twentythird of December, in the north aisle of Dereham church; and two of her friends, impressed with a just and deep sense of her extraordinary merit, have raised a marble tablet to her memory with the following inscription:

IN MEMORY OF MARY,

WIDOW OF THE REV. MORLEY UNWIN,

AND

MOTHER OF THE REV. WILLIAM CAWTHORN UNWIN,

BORN AT ELY, 1724,

BURIED IN THIS CHURCH, 1796.

Trusting in God, with all her heart and mind,
This woman prov'd magnanimously kind;

VOL. V.

R

« AnteriorContinuar »