My love and best wishes attend Mr. Cowper, and all that inquire after me. May God be with you to bless you, and do you good by all his dispensations; don't forget me when you are speaking to our beft Friend before his mercy feat.

"N. B. I am not married."

"Yours ever, W. CowPER.

The poftfcript was intended to contradict a rumour which was circulated, that Cowper had married Mrs. Unwin; and as fhe was not more than ten years older than himself, nothing but their exemplary characters prevented the connection from being viewed with fufpicion. All his biographers have attributed their attachment to friendship, excepting one, who states that Cowper intended to marry her; that the recurrence of his malady alone prevented it; and that he repeatedly declared, that if he ever entered a church again, it would be for the purpose of making her his wife.*

In March, 1770, Cowper loft his brother, the Reverend John Cowper, to whofe affectionate care he was much indebted during his illness at St. Albans, and whofe lofs he deeply deplored. The Poet did homage to his worth both in profe and verse, and the following lines must be familiar to his readers:

I had a Brother once :

Peace to the memory of a man of worth!

A man of letters, and of manners too!
Of manners, fweet as virtue always wears,
When gay good humour dreffes her in fmiles!
He graced a college, in which order yet
Was facred, and was honour'd, loved, and wept

By more than one, themselves confpicuous there.

Towards the end of the year, 1770, Cowper again experienced a return of his calamity, which Hayley fays produced a chasm in his correspondence of ten years; but this is not strictly correct, for though he may have fuffered to fome extent from 1770 to 1773, it was not until the last mentioned year that his complaint rendered him incapable of writing. This is evident from the state

* Memoir of Cowper, by the Rev. S. Greathead, prefixed to an edition of his Poems, 16mo. 1816.

ment of Hayley himself, as he says, that until that time, he affifted Newton in writing the Olney Hymns; and some letters from him to Mr. Hill, dated in August, 1771, and June, July, and November, 1772, have been published.* Though these letters show that he was then fuffering from a heavy depreffion of spirits, they afford no indication of infanity. The latest of them was dated on the 5th of November, 1772:

"Believe me, my dear friend, truly fenfible of your invitation, though I do not accept it. My peace of mind is of fo delicate a constitution, that the air of London will not agree with it. You have my prayers, the only return I can make you, for your many acts of ftill-continued friendship. If you should fmile, or even laugh at my conclufion, and I were near enough to fee it, I should not be angry, though I should be grieved. It is not long fince I should have laughed at such a recompenfe myself. But glory be to the name of Jesus, those days are past, and, I trust, never to return!"

Early in 1773, however, he experienced a fevere paroxyfm of defpondency, and required all the zeal and tender firmness which he found in Mrs. Unwin. That admirable woman watched over him with the skill of a physician and the endearing kindness of a mother. For three years the sufferings of the patient and the vigilance of his nurse were extraordinary; but towards the end of the year 1776 Mrs. Unwin had the happiness to find her folicitude fully repaid by his gradual recovery. With that gentleness and tact which only a woman knows how to display, she gradually drew his mind from the subject that had overwhelmed it; and until he was fufficiently restored to take pleasure in literary purfuits, he found amusement in taming fome hares. His fuccefs he has himself defcribed, and one of the group is immortalized in “The Task.” In November, 1776, Cowper resumed his correfpondence with Mr. Hill, and that letter, fimple as it is, fhows a wonderful improvement in the ftate of his mind. From that time his correspondence is marked by humour and playfulness, without any allufion to thofe folemn confiderations to which every thing had hitherto given place. Hayley paffes over the period between 1776 and 1780 in a few words, and has not given

* Private Correspondence of Cowper, edited by Dr. Johnson, 2 vols. 8vo. 1824.

any

of his letters until the latter year. The deficiency is, however, fupplied by the Collection edited by Dr. Johnson, where his correfpondence with Mr. Hill occurs. It related chiefly to literature, and contains Cowper's criticism on various books which Hill had lent him.

In January, 1778, he wrote to Mr. Hill in reference to his pecuniary affairs: "I fhall be glad if you will let me know whether I am to understand by the forrow you exprefs, that any part of my former fupplies is actually cut off, or whether they are only more tardy in coming in, than ufual. It is useful even to the rich, to know, as nearly as may be, the exact amount of their income; but how much more fo to a man of my fmall dimenfions. If the former fhould be the cafe, I fhall have lefs reason to be surprised, than I have to wonder at the continuance of them fo long. Favours are favours indeed, when laid out upon fo barren a foil, where the expense of sowing is never accompanied by the fmalleft hope of return. What pain there is in gratitude, I have often felt; but the pleasure of requiting an obligation has always been out of my reach."

In April in that year, he thus noticed the death of Sir Thomas Hesketh, the husband of his amiable coufin, who it seems bequeathed him a legacy: "Poor Sir Thomas! I knew that I had a place in his affections, and from his own information, many years ago, a place in his will; but little thought that after the lapfe of fo many years I fhould ftill retain it. His remembrance of me, after so long a season of separation, has done me much honour, and leaves me the more reason to regret his decease."

Great part of Cowper's time was, at this period, spent in reading aloud to Mrs. Unwin; but his garden, in which he took great delight, and manual occupations also amused him. Early in 1780, his friend, Mr. Newton, removed to London, where he obtained the living of St. Mary, Woolnoth.

The state of Cowper's feelings are so well described in two letters from him to Mrs. Cowper, the one dated 20th July, 1780, and the other on the 31ft of the next month, that it is impoffible to refift making fome extracts from them.

"You see me fixteen years older, at the least, than when I faw you laft; but the effects of time feem to have taken place rather on the outfide of my head than within it. What was brown has become gray, but what was foolish remains foolish

ftill. Green fruit muft rot before it ripens, if the season is fuch as to afford it nothing but cold winds and dark clouds, that interrupt every ray of funshine. My days fteal away filently, and march on (as poor mad King Lear would have made his foldiers march), as if they were shod with felt; not fo filently but that I hear them, yet were it not that I am always liftening to their flight, having no infirmity that I had not when I was much younger, I should deceive myself with an imagination that I am ftill young.

"I am fond of writing, as an amusement, but I do not always find it one. Being rather scantily furnished with subjects, that are good for any thing, and correfponding only with those, who have no relish for such as are good for nothing; I often find myself reduced to the neceffity, the disagreeable neceffity, of writing about myself. This does not mend the matter much, for though in a description of my own condition, I discover abundant materials to employ my pen upon, yet as the task is not very agreeable to me, fo I am fufficiently aware, that it is likely to prove irksome to others. A painter who fhould confine himself in the exercise of his art to the drawing of his own picture, must be a wonderful coxcomb, if he did not foon grow fick of his occupation, and be peculiarly fortunate, if he did not make others as fick as himfelf." "Your time of life is comparatively of a youthful date. You may think of Death as much as you please (you cannot think of it too much); but I hope you will live to think of it many years. "It cofts me not much difficulty to fuppofe that my friends who were already grown old, when I saw them last, are old still; but it costs me a good deal sometimes to think of those who were at that time young, as being older than they were. Not having been an eyewitnefs of the change that time has made in them, and my former idea of them not being corrected by observation, it remains the fame; my memory prefents me with this image unimpaired, and while it retains the resemblance of what they were, forgets that by this time the picture may have loft much of its likeness, through the alteration that fucceeding years have made in the original. I know not what impreffions time may have made upon your person, for while his claws (as our grannams called them) ftrike deep furrows in fome faces, he feems to sheath them with much tenderness, as if fearful of doing injury to others. But though an enemy to the perfon, he is a friend to

the mind, and you have found him fo. Though even in this respect his treatment of us depends upon what he meets with at our hands; if we ufe him well, and liften to his admonitions, he is a friend indeed, but otherwise the worst of enemies, who takes from us daily fomething that we valued, and gives us nothing better in its ftead. It is well with them, who like you can ftand a tiptoe on the mountain top of human life, look down with pleafure upon the valley they have paffed, and fometimes stretch their wings in joyful hope of a happy flight into Eternity. Yet a little while, and your hope will be accomplished."

With the exception of fugitive pieces, which he fent in his letters to his correspondents, his muse had as yet produced nothing; and though he was now in his forty-ninth year, not the slightest indications were put forth of his becoming a regular author. In October, 1779, he forwarded to Hill his verfes entitled, "The Pine Apple and the Bee," written a few weeks before that gentleman received his lines on the promotion of Lord Thurlow, on which occafion Cowper obferved:

"Your approbation of my laft Heliconian prefent encourages me to fend you another. I wrote it, indeed, on purpose for you; for my fubjects are not always fuch as I could hope would prove agreeable to you. My mind has always a melancholy caft, and is like fome pools I have feen, which, though filled with a black and putrid water, will nevertheless, in a bright day, reflect the funbeams from their surface.”

On fending Mr. Hill an enigma in July, 1780, he thus adverted to his habitual dejection: "My enigma will probably find you out, and you will find out my enigma at fome future time. I am not in a humour to transcribe it now. Indeed I wonder that a sportive thought should ever knock at the door of my intellects, and still more that it should gain admittance. It is as if harlequin fhould intrude himself into the gloomy chamber where a corpfe is depofited in ftate. His antic gefticulations would be unfeasonable at any rate, but more especially fo if they should distort the features of the mournful attendants into laughter. But the mind long wearied with the fameness of a dull, dreary profpect, will gladly fix its eyes on any thing that may make a little variety in its contemplations, though it were but a kitten playing with her tail.”

From that dejection, however, nothing so effectually raised his