being my object, you will no longer think, if indeed | fice that she always performs for herself,) she placed you had thought it at all, that I am unnecessarily the candle on the hearth, and kneeling, addressed and over-much industrious. The original surpasses herself to her devotions; a thought struck her while every thing; it is of an immense length, is compos- thus occupied, that the candle, being short, might ed in the best language ever used upon earth, and possibly catch her clothes, she pinched it out with deserves, indeed demands, all the labor that any the tongs, and set it on the table. In a few moments translator, be he who he may, can possibly bestow the chamber was so filled with smoke, that her eyes upon it. At present, mere English readers know no watered, and it was hardly possible to see across it. more of Homer in reality, than if he had never been -Supposing that it proceeded from the chimney, translated. That consideration indeed it was, she pushed the billets backward, and while she did which mainly induced me to the undertaking; and so, casting her eye downward, perceived that her if after all, either through idleness or dotage upon dress was on fire. In fact, before she extinguished what I have already done, I leave it chargeable with the candle, the mischief that she apprehended had the same incorrectness as my predecessors, or, in- begun; and when she related the matter to me, she deed, with any other that I may be able to amend, showed me her clothes, with a hole burnt in them I had much better have amused myself otherwise. Í as large as this sheet of paper. It is not possible, am now in the nineteenth book of the Iliad, and on perhaps, that so tragical à death could occur to a the point of displaying such feats of heroism, per- person actually engaged in prayer, for her escape formed by Achilles, as make all other achievements seems almost a miracle. Her presence of mind, by trivial. I may well exclaim, Oh, for a muse of fire! which she was enabled, without calling for help, or especially, having not only a great host to cope with, waiting for it, to gather up her clothes, and plunge but a great river also; much, however, may be done them, burning as they were, in water, seems as wonwhen Homer leads the way. What would I give derful a part of the occurrence as any. The very if he were now living, and within my reach! I, of report of fire, though distant, has rendered hundreds all men living, have the best excuse for indulging torpid and incapable of self-succor; how much more such a wish, unreasonable as it may seem, for I have was such a disability to be expected, when the fire no doubt the fire of his eyes, and the smile of his had not seized a neighbor's house, or begun its delips, would put me, now and then, in possession of vastations on our own, but was actually consuming his full meaning more effectually than any com- the apparel that she wore, and seemed in possession mentator." of her person!" The close application of Cowper, to the transla- The continued gloomy state of Cowper's mind tion of Homer, was not allowed to suspend, though will be seen by the following extract from a letter it in some measure interrupted, his correspondence to his cousin, Lady Hesketh, with whom he correswith Mr. Newton. To him he still opened the state ponded, as nearly as possible, at stated and regular of his mind without the least reserve, and it will ap- intervals.-January 30, 1788, he thus writes: "It is pear, from the following extracts, that he had lost, a fortnight since I heard from you, that is to say, a in no degree, his relish for the enjoyments of reli- week longer than you have been accustomed to gion, though his mind still continued under the in- make me wait for a letter. I do not forget that you fluence of his depressive malady. "Your last letter have recommended it to me, on occasions somewhat informed us, that you were likely to be much occu- similar, to banish all anxiety, and to ascribe your pied for some time in writing on a subject that must silence only to the interruptions of company. Good be interesting to a person of your feelings-the Slave advice, my dear, but not easily taken by a man cirTrade. I was unwilling to interrupt your progress cumstanced as I am. I have learned in the school in so good a work, and have, therefore, enjoined of adversity, a school from which I have no expecmyself a longer silence than I should otherwise have tations that I shall ever be dismissed, to apprehend thought excusable, though, to say the truth, did not the worst, and have ever found it the only course in our once intimate fellowship in the things of God which I can indulge myself, without the least danrecur to my remembrance, and present me with ger of incurring a disappointment. This kind of something like a warrant for doing it, I should hardly experience, continued through many years, has have prevailed upon myself to write at all. Letters given me such an habitual bias to the gloomy side of such as mine, to a person of a character such as every thing, that I never have a moment's ease on yours, are like snow in harvest: and you will say, any subject to which I am not indifferent. How that if I will send you a letter that you can answer, then can I be easy, when I am left afloat upon a sea I shall make your part of the business easier than it of endless conjectures, of which you furnish the ocis. This I would gladly do, but though I abhor a casion? Write, I beseech you, and do not forget vacuum, as much as nature herself is said to do, yet that I am now a battered actor upon this turbulent a vacuum I am bound to feel, of all such matter as stage, that what little vigor of mind I ever had, of the may merit your perusal. I have lately been engag- self-supporting kind, I mean, has long since been ed in correspondence with a lady whom I never broken, and, that though I can bear nothing well, saw. She lives at Perton Hall, near Kimbolton, yet any thing better than a state of ignorance conand is the wife of Dr. King, who has the living. cerning your welfare. I have spent hours in the She is evidently a Christian, and a very gracious night, leaning upon my elbow, and wondering what one. I would that she had you for a correspondent, your silence can mean. I entreat you, once more, rather than me. One letter from you would do her to put an end to these speculations, which cost me more good than a ream of mine. But so it is; more animal spirits than I can spare. I love you, my and though I despair of communicating to her any cousin, and cannot suspect, either with or without thing that will be of much advantage, I must write cause, the least evil in which you may be concerned, to her this evening. Undeserving as I feel myself without being greatly troubled! O, trouble! the porto be of divine protection, I am nevertheless receiv- tion of mortals-but mine in particular-would I ing almost daily, I might indeed say hourly, proofs had never known thee, or could bid thee farewel! of it. A few days ago, Providence interfered to for ever! For, I meet thee at every turn, my pilpreserve me from the heaviest affliction that I could lows are stuffed with thee, my very roses smell of now suffer: the loss of Mrs. Unwin, and in a way, thee, and even my cousin, who would, I am sure, too, the most shocking imaginable. Having kin- cure me of all trouble if she could, is sometimes indled her fire in the room where she dresses, (an of-nocently the cause of trouble to me!" CHAPTER XIII. Pressing invitations of his friends to write a poem on the Slave Trade. Reasons for declining it. Correspondence with Mrs. King. Particular description of his feelings. Death of Sir Ashley Cowper. Description of his character. Great severity of Cowper's depression. Is again urged to write on the Slave Trade. Again declines it. Assigns particular reasons for it. His indefatigable application to Homer. Notice he took of passing events. Mr. and Mrs. Newton's visit to Weston. The pleasure it afforded Cowper. Lady Hesketh's visit. Completion of the Iliad, and commencement of the Odyssey. His unwearied application to Homer not allowed to divert his attention from religion. Occasional composition of original poetry. Readiness to listen to any alteration that might be suggested in his productions. ever, in the bonds of the same faith, hope, and love, we should have been happier in each other than it was in the power of mere natural affection to make us. But it was his blessing to be taken from a world in which he had no longer any wish to continue; and it will be mine, if, while I live in it, my time may be not altogether wasted: in order to effect that good end, I wrote what I am happy to find nas given you pleasure to read. But for that pleasure, Madam, you are indebted neither to me nor my muse; but (as you are well aware) to Him who alone can make divine truths palatable, in whatever vehicle conveyed. It is an established philosophical axiom, that nothing can communicate what it MANY of Cowper's friends were anxious to have has not in itself, but in the effects of Christian him employ his admirable powers in a poem on the communion, a very strong exception is found to abolition of slavery, and Lady Hesketh wrote him this general rule, however self-evident it may seem. several pressing invitations on the subject; to which A man, himself destitute of all spiritual consolation, he gave the following reply:-"I have now three may, by occasion, impart it to others. Thus I, it letters of yours, my dearest cousin, before me, all seems, who wrote those very poems, to amuse a written in the space of a week, and must be, indeed, mind oppressed with melancholy, and who have insensible of kindness, did I not feel yours on this myself derived from them no other benefit, (for occasion. I cannot describe to you, neither could mere success in authorship will do me no good,) you comprehend it if I could, the manner in which have nevertheless, by so doing, comforted others, my mind is sometimes impressed with melancholy at the same time that they administer to me no conon particular subjects. Your late silence was such solation. But I will proceed no farther in this strain, a subject. I heard, saw, and felt, a thousand terri- lest my prose should damp a pleasure that my verse ble things, which had no real existence, and was has happily excited. On the contrary, I will enhaunted by them night and day, till they at last ex- deavor to rejoice in your joy, and especially, betorted from me that doleful epistle, which I have cause I have myself been the instrument of consince wished had been burnt before I sent it. But veying it." the cloud has passed, and, as far as you are concerned, my heart is once more at rest. Before you gave me the hint contained in your last letters, I had once or twice, as I lay on my bed, watching the break of day, ruminated on the subject which you kindly recommended to me. Slavery, or a release from slavery, such as the poor negroes have endured, or perhaps both these topics together, appeared to me a theme so important at the present juncture, and at the same time so susceptible of practical management, that I more than once perceived myself ready to start in that cause, could I have allowed myself to desert Homer for so long a time as it would have cost me to do them justice. While I was pondering these things, the public prints informed me that Miss More was on the point of publication, having actually finished what I had not begun. The sight of her advertisement convinced me that my best course would be that to which I felt myself most inclined; to persevere, without turning aside to attend to any other call, however alluring, in the business I have in hand. It occurred to me likewise, that I have lately borne my testimony in favor of my black brethren, and that I was one of the earliest, if not the first, of those who have, in the present day, expressed their detestation of the diabolical trade in question. On all these accounts I judged it best to be silent. I shall be glad to see Hannah More's poem; she is a favorite writer with me, and has more nerve and energy, both in her thoughts and language, than half the rhymers in the kingdom." "I owe you many acknowledgments, dear Madam, for that unreserved communication both of your history and of your sentiments, with which you honored me in your last. It gives me great pleasure to learn that you are so happily circumstanced, both in respect of situation and frame of mind. With your views of religious subjects, you could not indeed, speaking properly, be pronounced unhappy in any circumstances; but to have received from above, not only that faith which reconciles the heart to affliction, but many outward comforts also, and especially that greatest of all earthly comforts, a comfortable home, is happiness indeed. May you long enjoy it! As to health or sickness, you have learned already their true value, and know well that the former is no blessing, unless it be sanctified, and that the latter is the greatest we can receive, when we are enabled to make a proper use of it. "The melancholy that I have mentioned to you, and concerning which you are so kind as to inquire, is of a kind, so far as I know, peculiar to myself. It does not at all affect the operations of my mind, on any subject to which I can attach it, whether serious or ludicrous, or whatever it may be; for which reason I am almost always employed either in reading or writing, when I am not engaged in conversation. A vacant hour is my abhorrence; because, when I am not occupied, I suffer under the whole influence of my unhappy temperament. I thank you for your recommendation of a medicine from which you have derived benefit yourself; but there is hardly any thing that I have not proved, It will be seen by the last extract made from Cow-however beneficial it may have been found to others, per's letters to Mr. Newton, that he had now commenced a correspondence with Mrs. King, and as his letters to that lady are highly interesting, we the means excepted of perpetual employment. I shall make such use of them as will be descriptive will not say that we shall never meet, because it is of the state of his mind at that period. "A letter not for a creature, who knows not what will be tofrom a lady who was once intimate with my bro-morrow, to assert any thing positively concerning ther, could not fail of being most acceptable to me. the future. Things more unlikely I have seen come I lost him just at a moment when those truths which to pass; and things which, if I had expressed myhave recommended my volumes to your approbation, were become his daily sustenance, as they had long been mine. But the will of God was done. I have sometimes thought that had his life been spared, being made brothers by a strieter tie than in my own case, utterly useless. I have, therefore, long since bid adieu to all hope from human means self on them at all, I should have said were impossible. But, being respectively circumstanced as we are, there seems no present probability of it. You speak of insuperable hinderances, and I also have hinderances that would be equally difficult to sur mount. One is, that I never ride; that I am not able to perform so long a journey on foot; and that chaises do not roll within the sphere of that economy which my circumstances oblige me to observe. If this were not of itself a sufficient excuse, when I decline so obliging an invitation as yours, I could mention yet other obstacles. But to what end? One impracticability makes as effectual a barrier as a thousand: it will be otherwise in other worlds: either we shall not bear about us a body, or it will be more easily transportable than this. The world in which we live is indeed, as you say, a foolish world, and is likely to continue such, till the Great Teacher himself shall vouchsafe to make it wiser. I am persuaded that time alone will never mend it. But there is doubtless a day appointed when there will be a more general manifestation of the beauty of holiness, than mankind have ever yet beheld. When that period shall arrive, there will be an end of profane representations, whether of heaven or hell, on the stage, of which you complain-the great realities of religion will supersede them. "You must think me a tardy correspondent, unless you have charity enough to suppose that I have met with other hinderances than those of indolence and inattention. With these I cannot charge myself, for I am never idle by choice; and inattentive to you I certainly have not been. My silence has been occasioned by a malady to which I have all my life been subject-an inflammation of the eyes. The last sudden change of weather, from excessive heat to a wintry degree of cold occasioned it, and at the same time gave me a pinch of the rheumatic kind, from both which disorders I have but just recovered. I do not suppose that our climate has been much altered since the days of our forefathers, the Picts; but certainly the human constitution, in this country, has altered very much. Inured as we are from our cradles to every vicissitude, in a climate more various than any other, and in possession of all that modern refinement has been able to contrive for our security, we are yet as subject to blights as the tenderest blossoms of spring; and we are so well admonished of every change in the atmosphere by our bodily feelings, as hardly to have any need of a weather-glass to mark them. For this we are, no doubt, indebted to the multitude of our accommodations; for it was not possible to retain the hardiness that originally belonged to our race, under the delicate management to which, for many ages, we have been accustomed. It is observable, however, that though we have by these means lost much of our pristine vigor, our days are not the fewer. We live as long as those whom, on account of the sturdiness of their frame, the poets supposed to have been the progeny of oaks. Perhaps, too, they had but little feeling, and for that reason might be imagined to be so descended; for a very robust, athletic habit, seems inconsistent with much sensibility. But sensibility is the sine qua non of real happiness. If, therefore, our lives have been shortened, and if our feelings have been rendered more exquisite, as our habit of body has become more delicate, on the whole we have no cause to complain, but are rather gainers by our degeneracy." In the beginning of June, 1788, an event occurred, which, though it had been long expected by Cowper and by all his friends, could not fail to make a deep impression upon his peculiarly sensitive mind. This was the death of his esteemed and venerable relation, Ashley Cowper, Esq., Clerk of the Parliaments, and brother to Cowper's father, the last moments of whose life his daughter, Lady Hesketh, had watched over with the tenderest solicitude. In reply to an affectionate letter from his friend Mr. Hill, apprizing him of the event, he thus writes:-"Your letter brought me the first intelligence of the event it men tions. My last from Lady Hesketh gave me reason enough to expect it; but the certainty of it was unknown to me till I learned it by your information. If gradual decline, the consequence of great age, be a sufficient preparation of the mind to encounter such a loss, our minds were certainly prepared to meet it: yet to you I need not say that no preparation can supersede the feelings of the heart on such occasions. While our friends yet live, inhabitants of the same world with ourselves, they seem still to live to us-we are sure that they often think of us; and, however improbable it may seem, it is never impossible that we may see each other once again. But the grave, like a great gulf, swallows all such expectations, and in the moment when a beloved friend sinks into it, a thousand tender recollections awaken a regret that will be felt in spite of all reasonings, and let our warnings have been what they may. My dear uncle's death awakened in me many reflections, which, for a time, sunk my spirits. À man like him would have been mourned had he doubled the age he reached. At any age his death would have been felt as a loss that no survivor could repair. And though it was not probable that, for my own part, I should ever see him more, yet the consciousness that he still lived, was a comfort to me. Let it comfort us now, that we have lost him only at a time when nature could afford him to us no longer; that as his life was blameless, so was his death without anguish, and that he is gone to heaven. I know not that human life, in its most prosperous state, can present any thing to our wishes half so desirable as such a close of it." In another letter, he again writes:-"We have indeed lost one who has not left his like in the present generation of our family; and whose equal, in all respects, no future generation of it will probably produce. I often think what a joyful interview there has been between him and some of his friends who went before him. The truth of the matter is, my dear, they are happy ones, and we shall never be entirely so ourselves till we have joined the party. Can there be any thing so worthy of our warmest wishes as to enter on an eternal, unchangeable state, in blessed fellowship and communion with those whose society we valued most, and for the best reasons, while they continued with us? A few steps more through a vain, foolish world, and this happiness will be yours. But I earnestly hope the end of thy journey is not near. For of all that live, thou art one whom I can least spare; for thou also art one who shall not leave thy equal behind thee." The state of Cowper's mind at this period will be discovered by the following extract from a letter to his friend Mr. Bull, who appears to have solicited him for some original hymns, to be used by him probably on some public occasion. "Ask possibilities, and they shall be performed; but ask not hymns from a man suffering with despair as I do. I would not sing the Lord's song were it to save my life, banished as I am, not to a strange land, but to a remoteness from his presence, in comparison to which the distance from east to west is no distance-is vicinity and cohesion. I dare not, either in prose or verse, allow myself to express a frame of mind which I am conscious does not belong to me; least of all can I venture to use the language of absolute resignation, lest, only counterfeiting, I should, for that very reason, be taken strictly at my word, and lose all my remaining comfort. Can there not be found, among the translations of Madame Guion somewhat that might serve the purpose? I should think there might. Submission to the will of Christ. my memory tells me, is a theme that pervades them all. If so, your request is performed already; and if any alteration in them should be necessary, I will with all my heart, make it. I have no objection to giving the graces of a foreigner an English dress, | affords me constant employment, besides which I but insuperable ones to all false pretences and affected exhibitions of what I do not feel." have rather, what may be called-considering the privacy in which I have long lived-a numerous correspondence: to one of my friends in particular, a near and much beloved relation, I write weekly, and sometimes twice in the week; nor are these my only excuses: the sudden changes of the weather have much affected me, and have often made me wholly incapable of writing." Several of Cowper's correspondents, at this time again strongly urged him to write a poem on the Slave Trade. The following extracts will show that he was unwilling to give a refusal, though he could by no means prevail upon himself to accede to their wishes. "Twice or thrice, before your request came, have I been solicited to write a poem The summer of 1788 was remarkably hot and on the cruel, odious, and disgusting subject of Negro dry, and to show the manner in which it affected Slavery. But besides that it would be in some sort Cowper's mind we give the following extract from treason against Homer to abandon him for any a letter to one of his correspondents:-"It has other matter, I felt myself so much hurt in my spirits pleased God to give us rain, without which, this the moment I entered on the contemplation of it, part of the country, at least, must soon have become that I have at last determined, absolutely, to have a desert. The goodness and power of God are nothing more to do with it. There are some scenes never, (I believe,) so universally acknowledged as of horror on which my imagination has dwelt not at the end of a long, drought. Man is naturally a without some complacency; but then they are such self-sufficient animal, and in all concerns that seem scenes as God, not man, produces. In earthquakes, to be within the sphere of his own ability, thinks high winds, tempestuous seas, there is a grand as little, or not at all, of the need he always has of prowell as a terrible. But when man is tempted to dis-tection and furtherance from above. But he is senturb, there is such meanness in the design and such sible that the clouds will not assemble at his bidding, cruelty in the execution, that I both hate and des- and that though they do assemble, they will not fall pise the whole operation, and feel it a degradation in showers, because he commands them. When of poetry to employ her in the description of it. I therefore the blessing descends, you shall hear, even hope, also, that the generality of my countrymen in the streets, the most irreligious and thoughtless have more generosity in their nature than to want with one voice exclaim-Thank God! Confessing the fiddle of verse to go before them in the perfor- themselves indebted to his power, and willing, at mance of an act to which they are invited by the least as far as words go, to give Him the glory. I loudest calls of humanity. I shall rejoice if your can hardly doubt, therefore, that the earth is somefriend, influenced by what you told him of my pre- times parched, and the crops endangered, in order sent engagements, shall waive his application to me that the multitude may not want a memento to for a poem on this revolting subject. I account my- whom they owe them; nor absolutely forget the self honored by his intention to solicit one, and it power on which we all depend for all things. The would give me pain to refuse him, which inevitably summer is leaving us at a rapid rate, as indeed do I shall be constrained to do. The more I have con- all the seasons, and though I have marked their sidered it, the more I have convinced myself that it flight often, I know not which is the swiftest. Man is not a promising theme for verse, at least to me. is never so deluded as when he dreams of his own General censure on the iniquity of the practice will duration. The answer of the old patriarch to Phaavail nothing. The world has been overwhelmed raoh may be adopted by every man at the close of with such remarks already, and to particularize all the longest life. Few and evil have been the days the horrors of it, were an employment for the mind, of the years of my pilgrimage.' Whether we look both of the poet and of his readers, of which they back from fifty, or from twice fifty, the past appears would necessarily soon grow weary. For my own equally a dream; and we can only be said to have part, I cannot contemplate the subject very nearly, lived, while we have been profitably employed. without a degree of abhorrence that affects my spi- Alas, then! making the necessary deductions, how rits, and sinks them below the pitch requisite for short is life! Were men in general to save themsuccess in verse. Lady Hesketh recommended it selves all the steps they take to no purpose, or to a to me some months since, and then I declined it for bad one, what numbers, who are now active and those reasons, and for others which I need not now thoughtless, would become sedentary and serious!" mention." In the latter part of July, 1788, Mr. and Mrs. Newton paid Cowper a visit at Weston; and the pleasure it afforded him, will, with the state of his mind on the occasion, be seen by the following extract from a letter addressed to Mr. Newton, after his return.—“I rejoice that you and yours reached London safe, especially when I reflect that you performed your journey on a day so fatal, as I understand, to others travelling the same road. I found those comforts in your visit which have formerly sweetened all our interviews, in part restored. I knew you, knew you for the same shepherd who was sent to lead me out of the wilderness into the pasture, where the Chief Shepherd feeds his flock, and felt my sentiments of affectionate friendship for you the same as ever. But one thing was still wanting, and that thing the crown of all. I shall find it in God's time, if it be not lost for ever. When I say this, I say it trembling: for at what time soever comfort may come, it will not come without its attendant evil: and whatever good things may occur in the interval, I have sad forebodings of the event, having learned by experience that I was born to be persecuted with peculiar fury, and assured by believing, that such as my lot has been, it will be to the end. This belief is connected in my mind with busy a man. The close attention that Cowper found it necessary to pay to his Homer, left him, at this period, but little time for any other engagement. Adverting to this, he thus writes to Mr. Newton:-" It is a comfort to me that you are so kind as to make allowance for me, in consequence of my being so The truth is, that could I write with both hands, and with both at the same time-verse with one, and prose with the other-I should not, even so, be able to despatch both my poetry and my arrears of correspondence faster than I have need. The only opportunities that I can find for conversing with distant friends are in the early hour, (and that sometimes reduced to half a one,) before breakfast. Neither am I exempt from hinderances, which, while they last, are insurmountable, especially one, by which I have been occasionally a sufferer all my life-an inflammation of the eyes; which has often disabled me from all sorts of scribbling. When I tell you that an unanswered letter troubles my conscience, in some degree, like a crime, you will think me endued with a most heroic patience, who have so long submitted to that trouble on account of yours, not answered yet. But the truth is, ⚫hat I have been much engaged. Homer, you know, an observation I have often made, and is, perhaps, founded in great part upon it-that there is a certain style of dispensations maintained by Providence, in the dealings of God with every man, which, however the incidents of his life may vary, and though he may be thrown into different situations, is never exchanged for another. The style of dispensation peculiar to myself has hitherto been that of sudden, violent, unlooked-for change. When I have thought myself falling into the abyss, I have been caught up again; when I have thought myself on the threshold of a happy eternity, I have been thrust down to hell. The rough and the smooth of such a lot, taken together, should perhaps have taught me never to despair; but through an unhappy propensity in my nature to forebode the worst, they have, on the contrary, operated as an admonition for me, never to hope. A firm persuasion that I can never durably enjoy a comfortable state of mind, but must be depressed in proportion as I have been elevated, withers my joys in the bud, and, in a manner, entombs them before they are born: for I have no expectation but of sad vicissitude, and ever believe that the last shock of all will be fatal." It might be supposed, from the gloomy state of Cowper's mind, as described by his letters, that no person could feel any real enjoyment in his society, and that his friends who visited him, did so, not so much for their own sake as for his. The fact, however, was, that all who had once been favored with his company, were particularly anxious to enjoy it again; for though he was never what might be termed brilliant in conversation, yet he was always interesting; and his amiable, polite, and unaffected manners, associated with his rich intellectual acquirements, which he had the happy talent of displaying in a manner perfectly unobtrusive, made him the charm of the social circle. His anxiety to promote the happiness of those with whom he might happen to be associated, gave to his conversation an air of cheerfulness, and sometimes even of sprightliness and vivacity, altogether different to that which generally pervaded his correspondence: and the same amiable solicitude for the welfare of others, caused him sometimes to write to his correspondents, in a style the most playful and agreeable. Of this we have an instance, in a letter to Mrs. King, written about this time.-"You express some degree of wonder that I found you out to be sedentary, at least, much a stayer within doors, without any sufficient data for my direction. Now, if I should guess your figure and stature with equal success, you will deem me not only a poet, but a conjuror. Yet, in fact, I have no pretensions of that sort. I have only formed a picture of you in my own imagination, as we ever do of a person of whom we think much, but whom we have never seen. Your height, I conceive, to be about five feet five inches, which, though it would make a short man, is yet height enough for a woman. If you insist on an inch or two more, I have no objection. You are not very fat, but somewhat inclined to be so, and unless you allow yourself a little more air and exercise, will incur some danger of exceeding your present dimensions before you die. Let me, therefore, once more recommend to you, to walk a little more, at least in your garden, and to amuse yourself with pulling up here and there a weed, for it will be an inconvenience to you to be much fatter than you are, especially when your strength will be naturally on the decline. I have given you a fair complexion, a slight tinge of the rose on your cheeks, dark brown hair, and, if the fashion would give you leave to show it, an open and well-formed forehead. To all this I add a pair of eyes not quite black, but approaching nearly to that hue, and very animated. I have not absolutely determined on the shape of your nose or the form of your mouth, but should you tell me that I have in other respects drawn a tolerable likeness, have no doubt but I can describe them too. I assure you that though I have a great desire to read Lavater, I have never seen his volumes, nor have I availed myself in the leas of any of his rules on this occasion. Ah, Madam! if with all this sensibility of yours, which exposes you to so much sorrow, and necessarily must expose you to it in a world like this, I have had the good fortune to make you smile, I have then painted you, whether with a strong resemblance, or with none at all, to very good purpose." on their visit at Weston, Cowper's friend, Mr. SaDuring the time that Mr. and Mrs. Newton were muel Rose, arrived there also. Cowper was highly pleased with this circumstance, as it served to enliven his social circle, and afforded him an opportunity to introduce his young friend to Mr. Newton, whose advice and influence might probably be of considerable advantage to him at a future period. To a person, easily diverted from his purpose, the company of friends whom he so highly esteemed, would have been thought a sufficient excuse for the suspension of every literary engagement. Cowper, however, labored indefatigably at his translation, and instead of laying it aside because of his friends' visits, he gladly availed himself of their advice and assistance. We learn from the following remarks, extracted from a letter to his cousin, written about this time, that Cowper would not allow his friend Rose to pay him an idle visit:-"My dear cousin, the Newtons are still here, and will continue with also my friend, Mr. Rose, a valuable young man, I believe, till the 15th of the month. Here is who, attracted by the effluvia of my genius, found me out in my retirement last January twelvemonth. I have not permitted him to be idle, but have made him transcribe for me the twelfth book of the Iliad. He brings me the compliments of several of the literati, with whom he is acquainted in town; and tells me that from Dr. Maclain, whom he saw lately, he learns that my book is in the hands of sixty different persons at the Hague, who are all enchanted with it; not forgetting the said Dr. Maclain himself, who tells him that he reads it every day, and is always the better for it. I desire to be thankful for this encouraging information, and am willing to ascribe it to its only legitimate cause, the blessing of God upon my feeble efforts." us, Shortly after Mr. Rose, and Mr. and Mrs. Newton, left Weston, the vacuum which the absence of their agreeable company made in Cowper's enjoyments, was supplied by the arrival of his cousin Lady Hesketh, whose cheerful conversation contributed greatly to his comfort, and who diminished much of the labor of his translation by transcribing the manuscript, so that a fair copy might be forwarded to the printers. In September, 1788, he finished the Iliad, and thus describes his feelings on the occasion, in a letter to his friend, Mr. Rose:"The day on which you shall receive this, I beg you will remember to drink one glass at least to the success of the Iliad, which I finished the day before yesterday, and yesterday began the Odyssey. It will be some time before I shall perceive myself travelling in another road; the objects around me are at present so much the same, Olympus and a council of gods meet me at my first entrance. To tell you the truth, I am weary of heroes and deities, and, with reverence be it spoken, shall be glad for variety's sake to change their company for that of Cyclops." Cowper's time was now so much employed in his translation, that he had but little opportunity for keeping up his correspondence, and the letters he |