forgot. I have walked with you to Netley Abbey, and have fcrambled with you over hedges in every direction, and many other feats we have performed together, upon the field of my remembrance, and all within these few years. Should I say within this twelvemonth, I should not tranfgrefs the truth. The hours that I have spent with you were among the pleasantest of my former days, and are therefore chronicled in my mind fo deeply, as to feel no erasure.

My dear Coufin, dejection of spirits, which, I suppose, may have prevented many a man from becoming an author, made me one. I find constant employment necessary, and therefore take care to be constantly employed. Manual occupations do not engage the mind fufficiently, as I know by experience, having tried many. But compofition, efpecially of verfe, absorbs it wholly. I write, therefore, generally three hours in a morning, and in an evening I transcribe. I read alfo, but less than I write, for I must have bodily exercise, and therefore never pass a day without it."

Cowper's next letter to her, dated on the 9th of November following, is important, as it shows that Lady Hesketh had benevolently offered to increase his pecuniary resources :

My benevolent and generous Coufin, when I was once asked if I wanted any thing, and given delicately to understand that the inquirer was ready to fupply all my occafions, I thankfully and civilly, but pofitively, declined the favour. I neither fuffer, nor have fuffered, any such inconveniences as I had not much rather endure than come under obligations of that fort to a person comparatively with yourself a stranger to me. But to you I answer otherwise. I know you thoroughly, and the liberality of your difpofition, and have that confummate confidence in the fincerity of your wish to serve me, that delivers me from all awkward conftraint, and from all fear of trefpaffing by acceptance. To you, therefore, I reply, yes. Whenfoever and whatsoever, and in what manner foever you please; and add moreover, that my affection for the giver is such as will increase to me tenfold the fatisfaction that I shall have in receiving. It is necessary, however, that I should let you a little into the state of my finances, that you may not suppose them more narrowly circumscribed than they are. Since Mrs. Unwin and I have lived at Olney, we had but one purse, although during the whole of that time

till lately, her income was nearly double mine. Her revenues indeed are now in fome measure reduced, and do not much exceed my own; the worst confequence of this is, that we are forced to deny ourselves fome things which hitherto we have been better able to afford, but they are fuch things as neither life, nor the well being of life, depend upon. My own income has been better than it is, but when it was beft, it would not have enabled me to live as my connexions demanded that I fhould, had it not been combined with a better than itself, at leaft at this end of the kingdom. Of this I had full proof during three months that I spent in lodgings in Huntingdon, in which time, by the help of good management, and a clear notion of economical matters, I contrived to spend the income of a twelvemonth. Now, my beloved Coufin, you are in poffeffion of the whole case as it ftands. Strain no points to your own inconvenience or hurt, for there is no need of it, but indulge yourself in communicating (no matter what) that you can spare without miffing it, fince by fo doing you will be fure to add to the comforts of my life one of the fweetest that I can enjoy - a token and proof of your affection."

During the whole of the year 1785 Cowper was occupied upon the translation of Homer, and his letters prove that he was fully fenfible of the magnitude of the effort. His mind was indeed nearly abforbed with the subject, and whatever may be the opinion of his fuccefs, no one can doubt that he taxed his powers to the uttermoft to deserve it. The motive which induced him to undertake fo Herculean a task was, he informed Mr. Newton in December, 1785, accidental:

"For fome weeks after I had finished the Task, and fent away the last sheet corrected, I was through neceffity idle, and fuffered not a little in my spirits for being fo. One day, being in such distress of mind as was hardly fupportable, I took up the Iliad; and merely to divert attention, and with no more preconception of what I was then entering upon, than I have at this moment of what I fhall be doing this day twenty years hence, tranflated the twelve firft lines of it. The fame neceffity preffing me again, I had recourse to the fame expedient, and tranflated more. Every day bringing its occafion for employment with it, every day consequently added fomething to the work; till at laft I began to reflect thus :-The Iliad and the Odyssey together d

VOL. I.

confift of about forty thousand verfes. To tranflate these forty thousand verfes will furnish me with occupation for a confiderable time. I have already made fome progress, and I find it a most agreeable amufement. Homer, in point of purity, is a moft blameless writer; and, though he was not an enlightened man, has interfperfed many great and valuable truths throughout both his poems. In fhort, he is in all refpects a moft venerable old gentleman, by an acquaintance with whom no man can disgrace himfelf. The literati are all agreed to a man, that, although Pope has given us two pretty poems under Homer's titles, there is not to be found in them the leaft portion of Homer's fpirit, nor the leaft refemblance of his manner. I will try, therefore, whether I cannot copy him fomewhat more happily myself. I have at least the advantage of Pope's faults and failings, which, like fo many buoys upon a dangerous coaft, will ferve me to fteer by, and will make my chance for fuccefs more probable. These, and many other confiderations, but especially a mind that abhorred a vacuum as its chief bane, impelled me fo effectually to the work, that ere long I mean to publish proposals for a subscription to it, having advanced fo far as to be warranted in doing fo.

Intense occupation had not, however, the effect of totally banishing the enemy to his peace of mind. In May, 1786, when the revifal of the Iliad for the prefs employed every moment of his time, he told Mr. Newton, "Within this hour arrived three fets of your new publication,* for which we fincerely thank you. We have breakfafted fince they came, and confequently, as you may fuppofe, have neither of us yet had an opportunity to make ourfelves acquainted with the contents. I fhall be happy (and when I fay that, I mean to be understood in the fulleft and most emphatical fenfe of the word) if my frame of mind shall be such as may permit me to ftudy them. But Adam's approach to the tree of life, after he had finned, was not more effectually prohibited by the flaming fword that turned every way, than mine to its great Antetype has been now almost these thirteen years, a fhort interval of three or four days, which paffed about this time twelvemonth, alone excepted. For what reafon it is that I am thus long excluded, if I am ever again to be admitted, is known

* Meffiah.

to God only. I can fay but this: that if he is ftill my Father, this paternal severity has, toward me, been fuch as that I have reason to account it unexampled. For though others have fuffered desertion, yet few, I believe, for fo long a time, and perhaps none a desertion accompanied with such experiences. But they have this belonging to them: that as they are not fit for recital, being made up merely of infernal ingredients, so neither are they susceptible of it; for I know no language in which they could be expreffed. They are as truly things which it is not poffible for man to utter, as thofe were which Paul heard and faw in the third heaven. If the ladder of Christian experience reaches, as I suppose it does, to the very presence of God, it has nevertheless its foot in the abyfs. And if Paul stood, as no doubt he did, in that experience of his to which I have just alluded, on the topmost round of it, I have been standing, and still ftand on the lowest, in this thirteenth year that has paffed fince I defcended. In fuch a fituation of mind, encompaffed by the midnight of absolute despair, and a thousand times filled with unspeakable horror, I first commenced an author. Diftrefs drove me to it; and the impoffibility of fubfifting without some employment, still recommends it. I am not, indeed, fo perfectly hopeless as I was; but I am equally in need of an occupation, being often as much, and fometimes even more, worried than

I cannot amuse myself, as I once could, with carpenters' or with gardeners' tools, or with squirrels and guinea-pigs. At that time I was a child. But fince it has pleafed God, whatever elfe he withholds, to reftore to me a man's mind, I have put away childish things. Thus far, therefore, it is plain that I have not chosen or prescribed to myself my own way, but have been providentially led to it; perhaps I might fay, with equal propriety, compelled and fcourged into it: for certainly, could I have made my choice, or were I permitted to make it even now, those hours which I spend in poetry I would spend with God. But it is evidently his will that I should spend them as I do, because every other way of employing them he himself continues to make impoffible. If, in the course of fuch an occupation, or by inevitable confequence of it, either my former connexions are revived, or new ones occur, these things are as much a part of the difpenfation as the leading points of it themselves; the effect, as much as the cause. If his purposes in thus directing me are

gracious, he will take care to prove them fuch in the issue; and, in the mean time, will preferve me (for he is able to do that in one condition of life as in another) from all mistakes in conduc that might prove pernicious to myself, or give reasonable offence to others. I can fay it as truly as it was ever spoken,-Here I am; let him do with me as feemeth him good.”

He was vifited by Lady Hefketh at Olney, and at her sugges tion he was induced to remove to the village of Weston in November following. Few of Cowper's pieces are better known than "the Rofe," which is associated with the recollections of our earliest childhood. The authorfhip of this poem being claimed by a lady, he informed Lady Hefketh of the circumftance which produced it :

"I could pity the poor woman who has been weak enough to claim my fong. Such pilferings are fure to be detected. I wrote it, I know not how long, but I fuppofe four years ago. The Rose in question was a rose given to Lady Auften by Mrs. Unwin, and the incident that suggested the fubject occurred in the room in which you slept at the vicarage, which Lady Austen made her dining-room. Some time fince, Mr. Bull going to London I gave him a copy of it, which he undertook to convey to Nichols, the printer of the Gentleman's Magazine. He showed it to a Mrs. C., who begged to copy it, and promised to send it to the printer's by her fervant. Three or four months afterwards, and when I had concluded it was loft, I faw it in the Gentleman's Magazine, with my fignature, W. C. Poor fimpleton! She will find now perhaps that the Rose had a thorn, and that she has pricked her fingers with it."

A lady of the name of King fought a correfpondence with the poet in 1788, and at her request he was induced to give her the following amufing account of his purfuits before he became an

author:

"There was a time, but that time was before I commenced writer for the prefs, when I amufed myself in a way somewhat fimilar to yours; allowing, I mean, for the difference between mafculine and female operations. The fciffors and the needle are your chief implements; mine were the chifel and the faw. In those days you might have been in fome danger of too plentiful a return for your favours. Tables, fuch as they were, and joint-stools such as never were, might have travelled to Perton