urbanity of his manners. With him he continued a considerable time, a prey to settled melancholy; this, though partly occasioned by the above circumstance, was greatly increased by awful apprehensions of eternal vengeance; apprehensions which had long oppressed his mind, but from which, at length, he was mercifully relieved; and, to use the language of holy writ, “He was brought to experience his interest in that everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure." In the summer of 1765, he quitted St. Albans, and retired to private lodgings in the town of Huntingdon, where he became acquainted with the family of the Rev. Mr. Unwin. This was the most important intimacy, from its result, that Cowper ever formed, though it was acquired in the most fortuitous way. On his first visit to one of the churches in Huntingdon, he engaged the notice of William Cawthorne Unwin, son of the abovementioned divine, who, observing somewhat peculiarly interesting in his countenance and manner, on the conclusion of the service, followed him to a lonely walk, and introduced himself to his acquaintance. The friendship of the Unwins was a source of the most refined pleasure to the solitary poet, who, in a short time, left his lodgings and became an inmate of their house, where he experienced every attention friendship could devise, or the purest affection confer; and, if any man ever enjoyed felicity unalloyed in a world of sad vicissitude, Cowper certainly did in the company of his new friends. But short is the duration of all sublunary bliss. The hemisphere of their enjoyment was suddenly overcast by the accidental death of the elder Mr. Unwin, whose existence was terminated by a fall from his horse, before Cowper had enjoyed his acquaintance two years. Shortly after the death of Mr. Unwin, his widow and Cowper removed, through the invitation of the Rev. Mr. Newton, to Olney, in Buckinghamshire, of which parish Mr. Newton was then curate; and, as the views of the poet and the clergyman, on religious subjects, were exactly coincident, a mutual attachment arose, and they jointly produced a volume, entitled OLNEY HYMNS; an undertaking eminently adapted to the genius of Cowper, as may appear by the following extract, in which the most beautiful imagery and the most devout effusions of piety are happily combined: |