An

sible woman, polite without ceremony, and sufficiently wellbred to make others happy in her company. I here feel no restraint, and none is wished to be inspired. The 'noiseless tenor' of our lives would much please and gratify you. account of one day will furnish you with a tolerably accurate idea of the manner in which all our time is passed. We rise at whatever hour we choose; breakfast at half after nine, take about an hour to satisfy the sentiment, not the appetite,-for we talk 'good Heavens, how we talk!' and enjoy ourselves most wonderfully. Then we separate, and dispose of ourselves as our different inclinations point. Mr. Cowper to Homer. Mr. R. to transcribing what is already translated. Lady Hesketh to work, and to books alternately; and Mrs. Unwin, who in every thing but her face, is like a kind angel sent from heaven to guard the health of our poet, is busy in domestic concerns. At one, our labours finished, the poet and I walk for two hours. I then drink most plentiful draughts of instruction which flow from his lips, instruction so sweet, and goodness so exquisite, that one loves it for its flavour. At three we return and dress, and the succeeding hour brings dinner upon the table, and collects again the smiling countenances of the family to partake of the neat and elegant meal. Conversation continues till tea-time, when an entertaining volume engrosses our thoughts till the last meal is announced. Conversation again, and then rest before twelve, to enable us to rise again to the same round of innocent, virtuous pleasure. Can you wonder that I should feel melancholy at the thought of leaving such a family; or rather, will you not be surprised at my resolution to depart from this quiet scene on Thursday next?"

At that time Cowper was as happy as he appeared to be. His health was better than it had been for many years. "Long time," he says, "I had a stomach that would digest nothing, and now nothing disagrees with it; an amendment for which, I am, under God, indebted to the daily use of soluble tartar, which I have never omitted these two years 52 " Telling Rose, after his departure, that they were all in good health, and cheerful, he added, "this I say, knowing you will be glad to hear it, for you have seen the time when this could not be

52 To Mr. Smith, Dec. 20, 1780.

said of all your friends at Weston 53" The society of this young friend had been very agreeable to him. "I have taken," said he, "since you went away, many of the walks which we have taken together; and none of them, I believe, without thoughts of you. I have, though not a good memory in general, yet a good local memory, and can recollect by the help of a tree or stile, what you said on that particular spot. For this reason I purpose, when the summer is come, to walk with. a book in my pocket; what I read at my fireside I forget, but what I read under a hedge, or at the side of a pond, that pond and that hedge will always bring to my remembrance; and this is a sort of memoria technica, which I would recommend to you if I did not know that you have no occasion for it54."

The health of one of the party received a shock, when during a frost, Mrs. Unwin slipt on the gravel walk, fell, and was so severely bruised below the hip, that she was for some time completely crippled; indeed she never recovered her former strength. At first, however, there was amendment enough to keep them in constant hope; and Cowper's spirits continued cheerful after Lady Hesketh returned in January to town. His constant employment materially contributed to this; "I am the busiest man," said he to his cousin, "that ever lived sequestered as I do; and am never idle. My days accordingly roll away with a most tremendous rapidity 555

Happily there was nothing irksome in any of the business to which he was called. His correspondence,.. except only when upon writing to Mr. Newton, and to him alone, the consciousness of his malady arose in his mind,.. was purely pleasureable. He had his own affliction, and that was of the the heaviest kind; but from the ordinary cares and sorrows of life no man was ever more completely exempted. All his connexions were prosperous. Mr. Unwin was the only friend whose longer life must have appeared desirable, of whom death bereaved him. From the time when in the prime of manhood he was rendered helpless, he was provided for by others; that Providence which feeds the ravens raised up one person after another to minister unto him. Mrs. Unwin was to him as a mother; Lady Hesketh as a sister; and when he lost in Unwin one who had been to him as a brother, young men, as has already been seen in the instance of Rose, sup55 Jan. 31.

53 Nov. 30.

5 Jan. 19, 1789.

plied that loss with almost filial affection. Sad as his story is, it is not altogether mournful: he had never to complain of injustice, nor of injuries, nor even of neglect. Man had no part in bringing on his calamity; and to that very calamity which made him "leave the herd" like " a stricken deer," it was owing that the genius which has consecrated his name, which has made him the most popular poet of his age, and secures that popularity from fading away, was developed in retirement; it would have been blighted had he continued in the course for which he was trained up. He would not have found the way to fame, unless he had missed the way to fortune. He might have been happier in his generation; but he could never have been so useful; with that generation his memory would have passed away, and he would have slept with his fathers, instead of living with those who are the glory of their country and the benefactors of their kind.

The interruptions which took him sometimes from his regular and favourite occupation, were neither unwelcome nor unseasonable, occasional change being as salutary for the mind as for the body. It was suggested to him by his cousin that he might further a good cause by composing a poem upon the slave trade, which, by the unparalleled exertions of Clarkson, and the zeal and eloquence of Wilberforce, had been brought before the public so as to make a deep and permanent impression. But though it was a subject whereon he had more than once ruminated as he lay in bed, watching the break of day; and though it appeared to him so important at that juncture, and so susceptible of poetical management, that he felt inclined to start in that career, he said, could he have allowed himself to desert Homer long enough, yet upon seeing a poem by Hannah More, he dropped the half-formed inclination. Hannah More was a favourite writer with him: "she had more nerve and energy," he said, "both in her thoughts and language than half the he-rhymers in the kingdom." And he was the more willing to forego the subject, considering that he had already borne his testimony in favour of his black brethren, and had been one of the earliest," he said, "if not the first, of those who had, in that day, expressed their detestation of that diabolical traffic 56."

He had been asked to write songs upon the subject, as the 56 Feb. 16, 1788.

It

surest way of reaching the public ear. And though at first he felt not at all allured to the undertaking, as thinking that it offered only images of horror by no means suited to that style of composition, yet after "turning the matter in his mind as many ways as he could," he produced five". "If you hear ballads sung in the streets on the hardships of the negroes in the islands," he says to Rose 58, "they are probably mine. must be an honour to any man to have given a stroke to that chain, however feeble.' There was only one of them with which he was himself satisfied: though "I have heard them," he says, "all well spoken of. But there are very few things of my own composition that I can endure to read when they have been written a month, though at first they seem to be all perfection 59." There was another cause for his disliking these ballads; "Slavery," said he, "and especially negro slavery, because the cruelest, is an odious and disgusting subject. Twice or thrice I have been assailed with entreaties to write a poem on that theme. But beside that it would be in some sort treason against Homer to abandon him for any other matter, I felt myself so much hurt in my spirits the moment I entered on the contemplation of it, that I have at last determined absolutely to have nothing more to do with it. There are some scenes of horror on which my imagination can dwell, not without some complacence: but then they are such scenes as God, not man, produces. In earthquakes, high winds, tempestuous seas, there is the grand as well as the terrible. But when man is active to disturb, there is such meanness in the design, and such cruelty in the execution, that I both hate and despise the whole operation, and feel it a degradation of

57"Three," he says to General Cowper, "and that which appears to myself the best of those three I have sent you. Of the other two, one is serious, in a strain of thought perhaps rather too serious, and I could not help it. The other, of which the slave-trader is himself the subject, is somewhat ludicrous."

The Morning Dream is what he sent to the General; and he afterwards wrote two others, which are likewise printed among his poems. The one of which he said that perhaps it was rather too serious, has not (I believe) appeared. The other that he mentioned will be found in the Supplementary Notes to the present volume. I am obliged for it to Mr. Joseph Fletcher, jun. who has in his possession the original in Cowper's writing, given by him to his friend Mr. Bull, and by Mr. Bull as a relic to Mr. Fletcher's father. 58 March 29, 1788. 59 To Lady Hesketh, June 27, 1788.

60 To Mr. Bagot, June 17.

poetry to employ her in the description of it. I hope also, that the generality of my countrymen have more generosity in their nature than to want the fiddle of verse to go before them in the performance of an act to which they are invited by the loudest calls of humanity."

Some years back, between the publication of his first and second volumes, he had been asked to contribute to a journal, the title of which does not appear. The application seems to have been made through Mr. Newton, to whom he replied, "From the little I have seen, and the much I have heard, of the manager of the Review you mention, I cannot feel even the smallest push of a desire to serve him in the capacity of a poet. Indeed, I dislike him so much, that, had I a drawerfull of pieces fit for his purpose, I hardly think I should contribute to his collection. It is possible, too, that I may live to be once more a publisher myself, in which case I should be glad to find myself in possession of any such original pieces as might decently make their appearance in a volume of my own. At present, however, I have nothing that would be of use to him."

66

There was another journal at that time, called the Theological Miscellany, with which he was better pleased, and in which Mr. Newton was concerned. For this he was disposed to translate a book of Caraccioli's upon Self Acquaintance,.. a chapter for each monthly number. If Mr. Newton thought such a contribution would be welcome, a labour of that sort,' he said, "would suit him better, in his then state of mind, than original composition on religious subjects." Upon farther consideration however though he retained his liking for the book, he perceived that it was not sufficiently consonant with the principles upon which the journal was established and conducted. From that time he seems never to have thought of contributing to any periodical work, except occasionally to the Gentleman's Magazine, till Johnson requested his assistance in the Analytical Review, then recently established. The original scheme of that review, as projected by Mr. Thomas Christie, (a person equally remarkable for his attainments and his abilities,) was, that the contributors should affix their names to their respective articles; but upon farther consideration, this part of the plan was abandoned, as being liable to objections.