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." "Mr. Teedon," says he, writing to Mr. Unwin "has just left us. He has read my book, and as if fearful that I had overlooked some of them myself, has pointed out to me all its beauties. I do assure you the man has a very acute discernment, and a taste that I have no fault to find with. I hope that you are of the same opinion"." Mr. Bacon's letters, and one from Mr. Barham, he mentioned as being very flattering; "such," said he, "as might make a lean poet plump, and an humble poet proud; but being myself neither lean nor humble, I know of no other effect they had than that they pleased me; and I communicate the intelligence to you not without an assured hope that you will be pleased also." Thanking the same friend a little while afterwards for some facetious engravings of John Gilpin, he says, "a serious poem is like a swan, it flies heavily, and never far; but a jest has the wings of a swallow that never tire, and that carry it into every nook and corner. I am perfectly a stranger, however, to the reception that my volume meets with, and I believe in respect of my nonchalance upon that subject, if authors could but copy so fair an example, am a most exemplary character. I must tell you nevertheless, that although the laurels that I gain at Olney will never minister much to my pride, I have acquired some. The Reverend Mr. Scott is my admirer, and thinks my second volume superior to my first. It ought to be so.

If we

do not improve by practice, then nothing can mend us; and a man has no more cause to be mortified at being told that he has excelled himself, than the elephant had, whose praise it was that he was the greatest elephant in the world, himself excepted 22. Public opinion however was pronounced upon this volume so speedily that it became popular before the reviews gave their concurrent sentence in its favour. And before Cow per was apprized of its reception it had the happy effect of renewing his correspondence with his relations. It has been said that they neglected him for many years till the Task came out, and that they were then glad to take him up again. Glad to resume the intercourse undoubtedly they were, and proud also, as well they might be. But the neglect had not been ex21 July 27, 1785. 22 Aug. 27, 1785.

clusively on their side;.. it was reciprocal, easily accountable on both sides; and when accounted for, it is easily to be excused.

In a letter to Mr. Unwin, written at this time, Cowper says, "I have had more comfort, far more comfort, in the connexions that I have formed within the last twenty years, than in the more numerous ones that I had before. Memorandum, the latter are almost all Unwins, or Unwinisms."

24

In this same letter it was that he said he was "covetous, if ever man was, of living in the remembrance of absentees whom he highly valued and esteemed." It has been seen that he endeavoured, and without success, to recall himself to Thurlow's remembrance and to Colman's; but it does not appear that he made any similar advances towards his relations, dearly as he loved his uncle Ashley, highly as he respected his cousin the General, and much as he was beholden to both. On either part there seems to have existed an uncomfortable feeling. Cowper, though his annual allowance from them had been regularly received, believed at this time that the general had withdrawn his part of it; and he remembered that the last letters from his uncle were in a tone of gentle reproof and prudential admonishment to which he had not thought proper to defer. He supposed that they could regard him only as an unfortunate kinsman, who having disappointed the fair hopes and expectations of his family, had become a burthen upon them, an object of their compassion, but no longer of their love. They, no doubt on their part, inferred from the strain of his latest communications, and from his conduct, that his malady had only assumed a milder form, and that one effect of it had been to alienate him from all those whom he looked upon as unregenerate. That he did not send them his first volume must have strengthened them in this opinion; and if they looked into it (as they were likely to do) under an impression of this kind, they would perceive there much that tended to confirm it, and might therefore disregard other parts in which his original and happy character appeared through the cloud. That character manifested itself fully in his second publication; and it was not because Cowper was becoming famous, but because he seemed to have become himself again, that the intercourse between him and his relations was now reopened by the dearest of them, Lady Hesketh. 23 Aug. 27. 24 See p. 125.

They who remembered Lady Hesketh in her prime, spoke of her as a "brilliant beauty, who attracted all eyes on her at Ranelagh 25." No portrait of her has, as yet, been discovered; and it is even more to be regretted that her correspondence with her sister, which might have thrown much light upon some of the most interesting parts of Cowper's history, has not been preserved, and that her letters to Cowper himself have shared the same fate. I cannot but repeat here that, though there is often cause to censure the want of discretion and of delicacy with which posthumous papers have been published, there is more reason to condemn the rashness, or the carelessness and the folly with which they have been destroyed. They whose researches have been among such documents know how imperfect the information is that can be gathered from a one-sided correspondence. Even with regard to individual character it sometimes happens that more may be learnt from the way in which those who are well acquainted with an eminent person wrote to him, than from any thing which transpires in his own letters.

In the best sense of the words, however, no woman can be better known than Lady Hesketh. She had looked upon her cousin almost as a brother, in childhood and in youth, and many years of absence and intermitted intercourse had in no degree diminished her regard for him. On both sides the latent feeling needed only a touch to call it forth. She had now been seven years a widow; and during the first years of her widowhood, after her return to England, she had been much engaged "with a variety of mournful duties." The last letter 26 that she had received from him was in a strain of that melancholy pietism which casts a gloom over every thing, and which seems at once to chill the intellect and wither the affections. But now she saw that he could once more indulge a playful temper, and sport upon light subjects as he had been wont to do in former days; and after reading John Gilpin her heart told her that a letter from the cousin with whom he used "to giggle and make giggle" would be received and answered with as much warmth and sincerity as it was written with.

How perfectly this expectation was answered, will be seen in his reply.

25 Letter from Sir Egerton Brydges.

26 P. 130.

MY DEAR COUSIN,

TO LADY HESKETH.

Oct. 12, 1785.

you

It is no new thing with you to give pleasure; but I will venture to say, that you do not often give more than you gave me this morning. When I came down to breakfast, and found upon the table a letter franked by my uncle, and when opening that frank I found that it contained a letter from you, I said within myself" This is just as it should be. We are all grown young again, and the days that I thought I should see no more are actually returned." You perceive, therefore, that you judged well when you conjectured, that a line from you would not be disagreeable to me. It could not be otherwise than, as in fact it proved, a most agreeable surprise, for 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 once, and with how much cause, immediately to feel a revival of the same value: if that can be said to revive, which at the most has only been dormant for want of employment, but I slander it when I say that it has slept. A thousand times have I recollected a thousand scenes, in which our two selves 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 forgot. I have walked with you to Netley Abbey, and have scrambled 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 transgress 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 so deeply, as to feel no erasure. Neither do I forget my poor friend, Sir Thomas. I should remember him, indeed, at any rate, on account of his personal kindness to myself; but the last testimony that he gave of his regard for you endears him to me still more. With his uncommon understanding (for with many peculiarities he had more sense than any of his acquaintance), and with his generous sensibilities, it was hardly possible that he should not distinguish you as he has done. As it was the last, so it was the best proof

that he could give, of a judgment that never deceived him, when he would allow himself leisure to consult it.

I

You say that you have often heard of me: that puzzles me. I cannot imagine from what quarter, but it is no matter. must tell you, however, my cousin, that your information has been a little defective. That I am happy in my situation is true; I live, and have lived these twenty years, with Mrs. Unwin, to whose affectionate care of me, during the far greater part of that time, it is, under Providence, owing that I live at all. But I do not account myself happy in having been for thirteen of those years in a state of mind that has made all that care and attention necessary; an attention, and a care, that have injured her health, and which, had she not been uncommonly supported, must have brought her to the grave. will pass to another subject; it would be cruel to particularize only to give pain, neither would I by any means give a sable hue to the first letter of a correspondence so unexpectedly re

newed.

But I

I am delighted with what you tell me of my uncle's good health. To enjoy any measure of cheerfulness at so late a day is much; but to have that late day enlivened with the vivacity of youth, is much more, and in these postdiluvian times a rarity indeed. Happy, for the most part, are parents who have daughters. Daughters are not apt to outlive their natural affections, which a son has generally survived, even before his boyish years are expired. I rejoice particularly in my uncle's felicity, who has three female descendants from his little person, who leave him nothing to wish for upon that head.

My dear cousin, 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 sufficiently, as I know by experience, having tried many. But composition, especially of verse, absorbs it wholly. I write, therefore, generally, three hours in a morning, and in an evening I transcribe. I read also, but less than I write, for I must have bodily exercise, and therefore never pass a day without it.

You ask me where I have been this summer. I answer at Ol

ney. Should you ask me where I spent the last seventeen summers, I should still answer, at Olney. Ay, and the winters also;