a civil message in return, and soon afterwards they met. After a few minutes' awkwardness they were all as friendly as ever. Before long she had taken up her residence in the vicarage at Olney. And now began the most sunny period in Cowper's life. His letters are full of fun and frolic, and comparatively free from melancholy. The trio were constantly together, engaged in quiet amusements, "Lady Austen playing on the harpsichord," as he says in one letter, "Mrs. Unwin and himself playing battledore and shuttlecock, and the little dog under the chair howling to admiration." "In the morning," says another letter, "I walk with one or other of the ladies, and in the afternoon wind thread. Thus did Hercules, and thus probably did Samson, and thus do I."

When low spirits overtook him, Lady Austen's sprightliness was generally able to exorcise them. One afternoon when he was in this condition, she told him the story of John Gilpin. He lay awake half the night convulsed with laughter, and by the next morning had turned it into a ballad. It was sent to Unwin, who sent it on to the Public Advertiser, where it appeared anonymously. It attracted no special notice, until three years afterwards it came under the eye of Richard Sharp —“Conversation Sharp" as he was commonly known to the literary society of the period. He showed it to Henderson, a first-class actor of the time, who was then giving public readings at Freemasons' Hall. He read "John Gilpin," and electrified the audience, Mrs. Siddons among them. The ballad was reprinted again and again, and the famous horseman was seen in all the printshops. Some other smaller pieces were owing to Lady Austen, being written for her to sing. But they were trifles indeed compared with the poem which placed him in the first place among the authors of his time, namely, "THE TASK."

Lady Austen had often begged him to try his hand at blank verse. "I will," he answered one day, "if you will give me a subject." "Oh, you can write upon any subject," said she: "write upon this Sofa." And so he began; hence the great poem, and hence its title. It was begun in the summer of 1783, and completed in about twelve months. But before it was finished another breach had taken place between him and Lady Austen, and this time it was final. Of this separation we have notices from two hands-very slight, it is true, but pointing to a definite conclusion. The first is Cowper's. In a letter to Unwin, dated July 12, :784, after discussing other topics, he writes:

"You are going to Bristol. A lady, not long since our near neighbour, is probably there; she was there very lately. If you should chance to fall into her company, remember, if you please, that we found the connexion on some accounts an inconvenient one; that we do not wish to renew it; and conduct yourself accordingly. A character with which we spend all our time should be made on purpose for us; too much or too little of any ingredient spoils all. In the instance in question, the dissimilitude was too great not to be felt continually, and conse

quently made our intercourse unpleasant. We have reason, however, to believe that she has given up all thoughts of a return to Olney."

And eighteen months after, he writes to Lady Hesketh as follows:

"There came a lady into this country, by name and title Lady Austen, the widow of the late Sir Robert Austen. At first she lived with her sister, about a mile from Olney; but in a few weeks took lodgings at the vicarage here. Between the vicarage and the back of our house are interposed our garden, an orchard, and the garden belonging to the vicarage. She had lived much in France, was very sensible, and had infinite vivacity. She took a great liking to us, and

we to her. She had been used to a great deal of company, and we fearing that she would find such a transition into silent retirement irksome, contrived to give her our agreeable company often. Becoming continually more and more intimate, a practice obtained at length of our dining with each other alternately every day, Sundays excepted. In order to facilitate our communication, we made doors in the two garden walls abovesaid, by which means we considerably shortened the way from one house to the other, and could meet when we pleased without entering the town at all; a measure the rather expedient, because the town is abominably dirty, and she kept no carriage. 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. Thus, as I told you, my dear, the cause of the many interruptions that I mentioned was removed, and now, except the Bull that I spoke of [Mr. Bull], we seldom have any company at all. After all that I have said upon this matter, you will not completely understand me, perhaps, unless I account for the remainder of the day. I will add, therefore, that having paid my morning visit, I walked; returning from my walk, I dressed: we then met and dined, and parted not till between ten and eleven at night."

This is Cowper's account of the fracas. The other is by Hayley, and shall be given at full length.

"The year 1784 was a memorable period in the life of the poet, not only as it witnessed the completion of one extensive performance, and the commencement of

another (his translation of Homer), but as it terminated his intercourse with that highly pleasing and valuable friend, whose alacrity of attention and advice had induced him to engage in both.

“Delightful and advantageous as his friendship with Lady Austen had proved, he now began to feel that it grew impossible to preserve that triple cord, which his own pure heart had led him to suppose not speedily to be broken. Mrs. Unwin, though by no means destitute of mental accomplishments, was eclipsed by the brilliancy of the Poet's new friend, and naturally became uneasy under the apprehension of being so; for to a woman of sensibility, what evil can be more afflicting than the fear of losing all mental influence over a man of genius and virtue, whom she has been long accustomed to inspirit and to guide?

66

Cowper perceived the painful necessity of sacrificing a great portion of his present gratifications. He felt that he must relinquish that ancient friend, whom he regarded as a venerable parent; or the new associate, whom he idolised as a sister, of a heart and mind peculiarly congenial to his own. His gratitude for past services of unexampled magnitude and weight would not allow him to hesitate; with a resolution and delicacy, that do the highest honour to his feelings, he wrote a farewell letter to Lady Austen, explaining and lamenting the circumstances that forced him to renounce the society of a friend, whose enchanting talents and kindness had proved so agreeably instrumental to the revival of his spirits, and to the exercise of his fancy.

"In those very interesting conferences with which I was honoured by Lady Austen, I was irresistibly led to express an anxious desire for the sight of a letter written by Cowper in a situation that must have called forth all the finest powers of his eloquence as a monitor and a friend. The lady confirmed me in my opinion, that a more admirable letter could not be written; and had it existed at that time, I am persuaded, from her noble frankness and zeal for the honour of the departed poet, she would have given me a copy; but she ingenuously confessed that in a moment of natural mortification she burnt this very tender, yet resolute letter. I mention the circumstance, because a literary correspondent, whom I have great reason to esteem, has recently expressed to me a wish (which may perhaps be general) that I could introduce into this compilation the letter in question. Had it been confided to my care, I am persuaded I should have thought it very proper for publication, as it displayed both the tenderness and the magnanimity of Cowper; nor could I have deemed it a want of delicacy towards the memory of Lady Austen to exhibit a proof that, animated by the warmest admiration of the great poet, whose fancy she could so successfully call forth, she was willing to devote her life and fortune to his service and protection. The sentiment is to be regarded as honourable to the lady; it is still more honourable to the Poet, that with such feelings, as rendered him perfectly sensible of all Lady Austen's fascinating powers, he could return her tenderness with innocent gallantry, and yet resolutely preclude himself from her society, when

he could no longer enjoy it without appearing deficient in gratitude towards the compassionate and generous guardian of his sequestered life. No person can justly blame Mrs. Unwin for feeling apprehensive that Cowper's intimacy with a lady of such extraordinary talents might lead him into perplexities, of which he was by no means aware. This remark was suggested by a few elegant and tender verses, addressed by the Poet to Lady Austen, and shown to me by that lady.

"Those who were acquainted with the unsuspecting innocence and sportive gaiety of Cowper, would readily allow, if they had seen the verses to which I allude, that they are such as he might have addressed to a real sister; but a lady only called by that endearing name may be easily pardoned, if she was induced by them to hope that they might possibly be a prelude to a still dearer alliance. To me they appeared expressive of that peculiarity in his character, a gay and tender gallantry, perfectly distinct from amorous attachment. If the lady, who was the subject of the verses, had given them to me with a permission to print them, I should have thought the Poet himself might have approved of their appearance, accompanied with such a commentary."

The endeavours to make everything pleasant all round are very characteristic of Hayley, and in this case ludicrous. He softens here and subdues there, and, where this is impossible, makes omissions which leave the matter almost unintelligible. But the substance of the whole apparently is that Lady Austen was in love with Cowper, and believed him to be so with her; that Mrs. Unwin was jealous, and that Cowper thereupon broke off the connexion. Then was Lady Austen's belief right, or had she misunderstood him? That she would gladly have married him is unquestionable, and I cannot doubt that a tender feeling towards her was growing up in his mind also, but that, as he looked back on the past and upon Mrs. Unwin's kindness and tenderness (although his intended marriage with her was probably quite abandoned by this time), he felt that it would be ungrateful on his part to forsake her for another. That he should write of Lady Austen, as we have seen, with something like asperity, is easily intelligible, especially when we remember that his letters were only intended for the sight of William Unwin.

The "elegant and tender verses" of which Hayley speaks are printed for the first time in the present volume; and one is constrained to say that a woman who was not an actual sister could only put one interpretation upon them. And if they were not intended to bear this interpretation, they seem to me to be a thoughtless sporting with a woman's peace.

The loss of Lady Austen's friendship was a serious one for him.* He had need of such friends. Melancholy was increasing upon him again, and this breach seems to have deepened it greatly. When I was writing 'The Task,'" he said afterwards, "I was often supremely unhappy." And in a letter writen at the time *Lady Austen afterwards married a Frenchman, M. de Tardiff. She died in 1802, whilst Hayley's first volume was going through the press.

he said, "The grinners at John Gilpin' little think what its writer sometimes suffers. How I hated myself last night for having written it!"

It is grievous to read the quiet matter-of-fact way in which he puts aside all attempts at consolation. "Your arguments [against his belief in his final perdition] are quite reasonable," he says quietly to Newton, "but the event will prove them false." And in the same way he treated Mrs. Unwin's reasonings. Sometimes he would make her no answer, at others would sharply tell her she was wrong. "It was no use reasoning in this case," he said; "reasoning might say one thing, but fact said another." And all this while his letters are expressed as vigorously and strongly as ever, his humour and clearness of thinking are as unclouded. His madness has such method in it that his destruction is clear before his eyes; he contemplates it ab extra as if he were looking at the ruin of a building, or a falling tree. "You will think me mad," he says, in one most gloomy letter; "but I am not mad, most noble Festus, I am only in despair."

Meanwhile he had made fresh acquaintances, not without influence on his life. Bull we have already mentioned. Before "The Task" was begun he had given Cowper the Poems of Madame Guyon, that he might amuse himself in his sad hours with translating them. He did it in a month, copying them into a "Lilliputian book,” as he called it, and then gave the little volume to his friend. Bull some time after suggested that he should publish them, and he consented, but the idea was not carried out during his lifetime.

Another acquaintance, made about the time of the separation from Lady Austen, was with the Throckmortons. They lived at Weston Underwood, a village about two miles from Olney. Cowper had always been allowed a key of their park, but no intercourse had taken place with the family, who were Roman Catholics. The possessor dying in 1782, a younger brother came to live at Weston,* and Cowper sent his card and asked for a continuance of the favour, which was readily granted. The Throckmortons had been grossly affronted on account of their religion by some of their neighbours, and were naturally shy of seeking acquaintance. However, in May 1784, they invited Cowper and Mrs. Unwin to see an attempt to send up a balloon from Weston. † The gentle, refined poet found himself the object of his host's special attention, and acquaintance soon ripened into intimacy. From this time the Throckmortons appear among his correspondents---he addresses them as "Mr. and Mrs. Frog "--and several of his smaller poems relate to incidents connected with them. We have seen how Cowper, on the publication of his first volume, concealed his intention from his friend Unwin. He acted in the same way with Newton on the publication of his second. Though in constant correspondence with him he

*

John Throckmorton; he was the son of Sir Robert, who was 84 years old, living in Oxfordshire. The old baronet lived till 1791, and Cowper's friend then succeeded to the title.

+ Balloons were all the rage just then. Montgolfier made his in 1783. The first aeronaut in England, Lunardi, ascended from Moorfields, September 15, 1784.