invited at his own desire; his better mind at last prevailed; and the shyest persons are perhaps the most unreserved when they meet with those with whom they feel themselves in sympathy. "Having forced himself," says Hayley, "to engage in conversation with Lady Austen, he was so reanimated by her colloquial talents that he attended the ladies on their return to Clifton, and from that time continued to cultivate the regard of his new acquaintance with such assiduous attention, that she soon received from him the familiar and endearing title of Sister Ann." It was not long before an arrangement grew out of this new friendship, which was thus communicated to Mr. Newton. "Lady Austen, very desirous of retirement, especially of a retirement near her sister, an admirer of Mr. Scott as a preacher, and of your two humble servants now in the green-house, as the most agreeable creatures in the world, is at present determined to settle here. That part of our great building which is at present occupied by Dick Coleman, his wife, child, and a thousand rats, is the corner of the world she chooses, above all others, as the place of her future residence. Next spring twelve-month she begins to repair and beautify, and the following winter (by which time the lease of her house in town will determine) she intends to take possession. The plan of fitting up that wing of the house which was held in joint occupance by Dick Coleman and the rats, was subsequently found to be impracticable, but an arrangement was made at the vicarage, and preparations were made for her entering upon this abode in autumn.

In 1782 Cowper's first volume of Poems was published. There were but few persons to whom he presented it; Thurlow was one, and he looked for a letter from him in reply with more anxiety than he expected the opinion of periodical critics, or of the public. Cowper sent his volume to Colman also, one of the few surviving members of their Club. Thornton was dead; he died at the age of forty-four, having been married only four years, and leaving a widow and three children. But neither Thurlow nor Colman ever thanked him for his book; and their silence was an incivility as well as an unkindness, which Cowper's nature was too sensitive to bear, without giving some vent to his wounded feelings. At first he had made those excuses for them, which a man readily devises when he fears to find a friend in fault; but when month after month had passed away, and it could no longer be doubted that he was neglected by both, he poured forth some indignant verses, which he sent to his friend Unwin, laying him under no other injunction concerning them, except that they were not for the press. The latter half only was published by Hayley, but as there is now no reason for suppressing the former, it is printed in the present edition: see p. 443. It is, however, copyright, and the exclusive property of the present publisher. In the mean time, month after month elapsed; his friends praised his poems to him, and reported

the praise of others, but there came no tidings of the sale of the work.

Never was any poet more indebted to his female friends than Cowper. Had it not been for Mrs. Unwin, he would probably never have appeared in his own person as an author; had it not been for Lady Austen, he would never have been a popular one. The most fortunate incident in his literary life was that which introduced him to this lady. She had now disposed of the lease of her house in London, and had taken up her abode in the vicarage. The door which Mr. Newton had opened from his garden into his friend's again became in use; "and so captivating," says Hayley, "was her society both to Cowper and to Mrs. Unwin, that these intimate neighbours might be almost said to make one family, as it became their custom to dine always together, alternately in the houses of the two ladies." For a while Lady Austen's conversation had as happy an effect upon the melancholy spirit of Cowper as the harp of David upon Saul. Whenever the cloud seemed to be coming over him, her sprightly powers were exerted to dispel it. One afternoon, when he appeared more than usually depressed, she told him the story of John Gilpin, which had been told to her in her childhood, and which, in her relation, tickled his fancy as much as it has that of thousands and tens of thousands since, in his. The next morning he said to her that he had been kept awake during the greater part of the night by thinking of the story and laughing at it, and that he had turned it into a ballad. The ballad was sent to Mr. Unwin, who said, in reply, that it had made him laugh tears. "As to the famous horseman," Cowper replied," he and his feats are an inexhaustible source of merriment. At least we find him so; and seldom meet without refreshing ourselves with the recollection of them. You are perfectly at liberty to deal with them as you please. Auctore tantum anonymo, imprimantur; and when printed, send me a copy." It was sent accordingly to the Public Advertiser. Gilpin did not immediately become glorious, and Cowper, satisfied with amusing himself and his friend, little anticipated what a race of popularity the famous horseman was to run.

Lady Austen has the honour also of having suggested at this time to Cowper the subject of that work which made him the most popular poet of his age, and raised him to a rank in English poetry from which no revolution of taste can detrude him. She had often urged him to try his powers in blank verse: at last he promised to comply with her request, if she would give him a subject. "Oh," she replied, "you can never be in want of a subject; you can write upon any ;write upon this sofa!" The answer was made with a woman's readiness, and the capabilities of such a theme were apprehended by Cowper with a poet's quickness of perception. The Task was begun early in the summer of 1783.

But the enjoyment which Cowper derived from his present society was ere long disturbed, and both Lady Austen and Mrs. Unwin appear to have been wronged by the causes assigned for its disturbance. Lady Austen has been represented as having entertained a hope of marrying Cowper, and Mrs. Unwin as so jealous on that account, that he found it necessary, in consideration of his earlier friend, to break off all connexion with the latter one. That there had ever been an engagement of marriage between Cowper and Mrs. Unwin, has been contradicted. If any such engagement had been formed, there were no prudential considerations (as has been alleged) to prevent it. They lived together upon their joint incomes, and marriage would have made no difference in their expenditure. Mrs. Unwin was forty-three at the time of her husband's death; hers was a maternal friendship for one who stood in need of maternal care, and as such Cowper regarded it. She was now threescore, and as little likely to be jealous of being supplanted in his affections, as Lady Austen was to form the design of marrying a man in Cowper's peculiar circumstances, which circumstances she was well acquainted with. Cowper afterwards, in a letter to Lady Hesketh, gives an account of the termination of this memorable friendship. He says, "On her first settlement in our neighbourhood, I made it my own particular business, (for at that time I was not employed in writing, having published my first volume, and not begun my second,) to pay my devoirs to her ladyship every morning at eleven. Customs very soon become laws. I began the Task: for she was the lady who gave me the Sofa for a subject. Being once engaged in the work, I began to feel the inconvenience of my morning attendance. We had seldom breakfasted ourselves till ten; and the intervening hour was all the time that I could find in the whole day for writing; and occasionally it would happen that the half of that hour was all that I could secure for the purpose. But there was no remedy. Long usage had made that which at first was optional, a point of good manners, and consequently of necessity, and I was forced to neglect the Task, to attend upon the Muse who had inspired the subject. But she had ill health, and before I had quite finished the work was obliged to repair to Bristol." She never afterwards returned to Olney.

Before Cowper began the Task, Mr. Bull, a Dissenting minister at Newport who had been introduced to him by Mr. Newton, put into his hands Madame Guyon's poetical works, and requested him to translate a few of them, "partly," he says, "to amuse a solitary hour, partly to keep in exercise the genius of this incomparable man.' A month's leisure was devoted to them, and they were presented to Mr. Bull to make what use of them he pleased. This friend some time afterwards suggested that they should be printed. Cowper

undertook to revise them for this purpose, but various circumstances prevented him from ever carrying the intention into effect.

It was one of the felicitous incidents of Cowper's life, that the loss of Lady Austen's society was in some degree immediately supplied by a new acquaintance, which in no long time improved into familiarity, and then ripened into friendship. The Throckmortons had a mansion at Weston. Hitherto Cowper had had no intercourse with the family during the many years that he had resided at Olney; but he had been favoured with a key of their pleasure-grounds: and when a new possessor, whom he remembered a boy, came, on the death of an elder brother, to reside there with his wife, he sent a complimentary card and requested a continuance of the privilege he had enjoyed by the favour of his mother, that lady, on the change of possessors, going to finish her days at Bath. The request was readily granted, and nothing more passed between them for about two years, Mr. Throckmorton in the mean time made no advances, till an opportunity offered, in which it might have appeared discourteous not to notice him. Balloons were then the wonder of the day; all the country was invited to see one ascend from Weston, and a special invitation came to Cowper and Mrs. Unwin. This led to an intercourse, which proceeded farther than Cowper anticipated. He soon found himself a favourite visiter at Weston Hall, and for that reason was a frequent one. In the easy intercourse of growing intimacy, Mr. and Mrs. Throckmorton became Mr. and Mrs. Frog, and by that inevitable name have obtained a more lasting remembrance in Cowper's letters than could have been conferred on them by a ducal title.

The Task meantime was finished,.. that monument which, though not loftier than the pyramids, will more surely perpetuate its author's name, than those eldest of human works have handed down the history of their founders. It was transcribed in the autumn of 1784. While it was in the press, John Gilpin was gaining a wide reputation for its then unknown author. This lively story, in its newspaper form, came into the hands of Mr. Richard Sharp, well known afterwards for his conversational talents, and recently by a volume of Essays and Poems. Mr. Sharp was intimately acquainted with Henderson, the great actor of those days, and the only one who has resembled Garrick in versatility of power. Henderson was at that time delivering public recitations at Freemason's Hall: "It was my lucky chance," says Mr. Sharp, "to make him acquainted with John Gilpin, and to propose his reading it." Yet, to be honest, I must own that I did not anticipate the prodigious effect of that story, when the public attention was directed to it. One who was present at one of these recitations says, that when John Gilpin was delivered, "the whole audience chuckled; and Mrs. Siddons, who sate

next to me, lifted her unequalled dramatic hands, and clapped as heartily as she herself used to be applauded in the same manner." But the effect was not confined to the overflowing audiences at Freemason's Hall. The ballad, which had then become the town talk, was reprinted from the newspaper, wherein it had lain three years dormant. Gilpin, passing at full stretch by the Bell at Edmonton, was to be seen in all print-shops. One printseller sold six thousand. What had succeeded so well in London was repeated with inferior ability, but with equal success, on provincial stages, and the ballad became in the highest degree popular before the author's name was known.

When the Task at length appeared, Cowper allowed himself" to be a little pleased with an opportunity of showing to Thurlow and Colman that he resented their treatment, and sent the book to neither." But they were no common men; on his part at least it had been no common friendship, and it may evidently be seen that, while resenting even angrily their neglect, he loved them both. Before Cowper could know how the public received his Task, he had the satisfaction of finding that it had passed the more formidable ordeal of his neighbours, and that he was "allowed to be a genius at Olney." Public opinion however was pronounced upon it so speedily, that it became popular before the reviews gave their concurrent sentence in its favour. And before Cowper was apprized of its reception, it had the happy effect of renewing his correspondence with his relations. He received a letter from his dearest cousin, Lady Hesketh, who subsequently inquired into the state of his income, apprehending that it must needs be a straitened one, and offered him such assistance as she was able to afford. In his reply, after giving an account of his narrowed circumstances, he added, "I am in debt to nobody, and I grow fat." The happiest stage of Cowper's life commenced when the intercourse with this beloved cousin was thus renewed. He compared himself, in the effect produced upon him, to the traveller described in Pope's Messiah, who, as he passes through a sandy desert, starts at the sudden and unexpected sound of a waterfall. And the same volume which was the occasion of restoring to him this blessing, at once placed him at the head of the poets of his age.

When he was composing his first volume, Cowper reckoned it among his principal advantages that he had read no English poetry for many years. When, however, he commenced author, he perceived the necessity of reading: "He that would write," said he, "should read, not that he may retail the observations of other men, but that, being thus refreshed and replenished, he may find himself in a condition to make and to produce his own.

The success of the Task was as immediate as it was complete. Except the Rosciad, there had probably been no