in spite of me! for, though I do not often commit them to paper, they are never absent from my mind.”

In September following he observes :

"I have been lately more dejected and more distressed than usual; more haraffed by dreams in the night, and more deeply poisoned by them in the following day. I know not what is portended by an alteration for the worse, after eleven years of mifery; but firmly believe that it is not defigned as the introduction of a change for the better. I now see a long winter before me, and am to get through it as I can. I know the ground before I tread upon it. It is hollow; it is agitated; it suffers shocks in every direction; it is like the foil of Calabria-all whirlpool and undulation. But I must reel through it; at least, if I be not swallowed up by the way."

In this ftrain does he frequently advert to himself; but in the early part of 1783, Lady Auften ftrove to allure him from his reflections by calling his poetic talents again into action, and urged him to try his powers in blank verse. After repeated folicitations, he promised, if she would suggest a subject, he would comply with her request. Oh," the replied, "you can never be in want of a subject, you can write upon any write upon this fofa." Such was the origin of "The Sofa." As soon as it was completed he commenced the other pieces which form "The Tafk," and he was occupied upon the contents of that volume until September, 1784, when it was sent to prefs. His next piece was the Tirocinium, of which he gave the following account in a letter, in November, 1784:

"The Task, as you know, is gone to the press: fince it went I have been employed in writing another poem, which I am now transcribing, and which, in a short time, I defign shall follow. It is intituled, Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools: the bufiness and purpose of it are, to cenfure the want of discipline, and the fcandalous inattention to morals, that obtain in them, especially in the largest; and to recommend private tuition as a mode of education preferable on all accounts; to call upon fathers to become tutors of their own fons, where that is practicable; to take home a domeftic tutor where it is not; and if neither can be done, to place them under the care of such a man as he to whom I am writing; fome rural parfon, whose attention is limited to a few."

It has been well observed, that the year 1784 was an eventful one in Cowper's life, not only from his having completed "The Tafk," and commenced the tranflation of Homer, but from his lofing the fociety of Lady Auften. The cause of the interruption to their friendship is gloffed over with Mr. Hayley's usual skill, nor have either of the other biographers of the poet explained the circumftance. There can be no doubt that Mrs. Unwin became jealous of the influence which that lady possessed over him, and he was reduced to the alternative of facrificing his intimacy with one of them. To his credit he did not permit the fascinating qualities of her ladyship to outweigh the claims of fervices and friendship, but wrote a farewell letter to her, explaining the painful circumftances which obliged him to renounce her fociety. Hayley says, Lady Auften confirmed him in his opinion, that a more admirable letter could not have been written, but admirable as it was, it wounded her feelings fo much as to induce her to destroy it. From that moment they met no more; and as the materials have been suppressed, which would elucidate the hiftory of this unfortunate affair, no fpeculations on the subject will be hazarded. "The Tafk" appeared in 1785, and its author presented a copy to the Lord Chancellor Thurlow, and another perfonage, with both of whom he was intimate in early life. Neither of them acknowledged the gift, and the circumftance excited the Poet's resentment to fuch a degree, that he alluded to it with fome bitterness in a future production.

In February, 1784, he described himself in a manner which applies to many other literary perfons: "The morning is my writing time, and in the morning I have no fpirits. So much the worse for my correfpondents. Sleep, that refreshes my body, seems to cripple me in every other refpect. As the evening approaches I grow more alert, and when I am retiring to bed, am more fit for mental occupation than at any other time. So it fares with us whom they call nervous. By a strange inversion of the animal economy, we are ready to fleep when we have most need to be awake, and go to bed juft when we might fit up to some purpose. The watch is regularly wound up, it goes in the night when it is not wanted, and in the day stands ftill."

Cowper's reverence for the memory of his mother has been already adverted to, but it is so pleasingly shown in a letter of condolence to Mr. Hill on the death of that gentleman's parent

in November, 1784, that it would be improper to omit it: "To condole with you on the death of a mother aged eighty-feven would be abfurd; rather, therefore, as is reasonable, I congratulate you on the almost fingular felicity of having enjoyed the company of fo amiable and so near a relation fo long. Your lot and mine, in this respect, have been very different, as indeed in almost every other. Your mother lived to see you rise, at least to see you comfortably established in the world. Mine dying when I was fix years old, did not live to see me fink in it. You may remember with pleasure, while you live, a blessing vouchfafed to you so long, and I while I live must regret a comfort of which I was deprived fo early. I can truly fay, that not a week paffes (perhaps I might with equal veracity say a day) in which I do not think of her. Such was the impreffion her tenderness made upon me, though the opportunity she had for showing it was fo fhort. But the ways of God are equal; and when I reflect on the pangs she would have fuffered had she been a witness of all mine, I see more cause to rejoice than to mourn that she was hidden in the grave fo foon.".

Perhaps the following explanation of the notice of Bishop Bagot ought to form a note to the Poem on Public Schools: it places Cowper's love of justice in a strong light, and it would be unjust to him to pass it over:

"I intended in my last to have given you my reasons for the compliment that I paid Bishop Bagot, left, knowing that I have no personal connection with him, you should suspect me of having done it rather too much at a venture. In the first place, then, I wished the world to know that I have no objection to a bishop, quià bishop. In the fecond place, the brothers were all five my schoolfellows, and very amiable and valuable boys they were. Thirdly, Lewis, the bishop, had been rudely and coarsely treated in the Monthly Review, on account of a sermon which appeared to me, when I read their extract from it, to deserve the highest commendations, as exhibiting explicit proof of both his good fenfe and his unfeigned piety. For these causes, me thereunto moving, I felt myself happy in an opportunity to do public honour to a worthy man, who had been publicly traduced."

There is much playful farcafm upon the manner in which perfons in an elevated ftation fometimes treat their inferiors in a letter which he wrote to Mr. Unwin in March, 1785: "I was

pleased too, to see my opinion of his Lordship's nonchalance upon a fubject that you had fo much at heart, completely verified. I do not know that the eye of a nobleman was ever diffected. I cannot help fuppofing, however, that were that organ, as it exists in the head of fuch a perfonage, to be accurately examined, it would be found to differ materially in its conftruction from the eye of a commoner; fo very different is the view that men in an elevated and in an humble station have of the same object. What appears great, sublime, beautiful, and important to you and to me, when submitted to my Lord, or his Grace, and submitted too with the utmost humility, is either too minute to be visible at all, or, if feen, feems trivial and of no account."

In tracing Cowper's career from his letters, a painful duty is continually forced upon his biographer of noticing the occafional prefence of that calamity which lay like an incubus upon his fpirits. To have introduced all the allufions to the fubject which occur in his correfpondence would have needleffly wounded the reader's feelings, but the existence of that malady forms part of the Poet's history, and its occurrence, force, and duration, must necessarily be sometimes adverted to. It would be curious, were it poffible, to examine the verses which were composed when the Icloud was darkest with those which were written when he was free from the obfcuration. In May, 1785, he fays, in a letter to Mr. Newton,

"I am fenfible of the tenderness and affectionate kindness with which you recollect our past intercourse, and express your hopes of my future restoration. I too, within the last eight months, have had my hopes, though they have been of short duration, cut off, like the foam upon the waters. Some previous adjustments, indeed, are neceffary, before a lafting expectation of comfort can have place in me. There are those perfuafions in my mind which either entirely forbid the entrance of hope, or, if it enter, immediately eject it. They are incompatible with any such inmate, and must be turned out themselves before fo defirable a guest can poffibly have fecure poffeffion. This you say will be done. It may be, but it is not done yet; nor has a fingle step in the course of God's dealings with me been taken towards it. If I mend, no creature ever mended so slowly that recovered at last. I am like a flug or fnail that has fallen into a deep well: flug as he is, he performs his descent with an alacrity

fo faft.

proportioned to his weight: but he does not crawl up again quite Mine was a rapid plunge; but my return to daylight, if I am indeed returning, is leisurely enough."

A description of the place in which the greater part of the works of a favourite author were compofed is interesting:

"I write in a nook that I call my Boudoir. It is a fummerhouse not much bigger than a fedan-chair, the door of which opens into the garden, that is now crowded with pinks, roses, and honey-fuckles, and the window into my neighbour's orchard. It formerly served an apothecary, now dead, as a smoking-room; and under my feet is a trap-door, which once covered a hole in the ground where he kept his bottles. At prefent, however, it is dedicated to fublimer ufes. Having lined it with garden-mats, and furnished it with a table and two chairs, here I write all that I write in fummer time, whether to my friends or to the public. It is fecure from all noife, and a refuge from all intrufion; for intruders fometimes trouble me in the winter evenings at Olney. But (thanks to my Boudoir !) I can now hide myself from them. A poet's retreat is facred. They acknowledge the truth of that propofition, and never presume to violate it."

To the appearance of the second volume of his Poems, Cowper was indebted for a renewal of his friendship with his cousin Lady Hesketh. After her marriage she lived fome time abroad, which, with other circumstances, interrupted their intercourse for many years, but the perufal of "The Tafk" recalled him to her memory, and she wrote him a very kind letter. In his reply, written in October, 1785, after expreffing the delight which her communication had occafioned him, he said,

"I can truly boast of an affection for you, that neither years, nor interrupted intercourse, have at all abated. I need only recollect how much I valued you once, and with how much cause, immediately to feel a revival of the fame value; if that can be faid to revive, which at the most has only been dormant for want of employment, but I flander it when I say that it has flept. A thousand times have I recollected a thousand scenes, in which our two felves have formed the whole of the drama, with the greatest pleasure; at times, too, when I had no reason to suppose that I should ever hear from you again. I have laughed with you at the Arabian Nights Entertainment, which afforded us, as you well know, a fund of merriment that deserves never to be