know that you will rejoice with me in the change that we have made, and for which I am altogether indebted to Lady Hesketh:"-and to the third, thus, in concluding a letter to that lady, “So fare-` well, my friend Unwin! The first man for whom I conceived a friendship after my removal from St. Alban's, and for whom I cannot but still feel a friendship, though I shall see thee with these eyes no more."

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Early in January 1787, he was attacked with a nervous fever, which obliged him to discontinue his poetical efforts till the October following. few days after the commencement of this indisposition, he received a visit from a stranger, which he thus notices in a letter to Lady Hesketh: "A young gentleman called here yesterday, who came six miles out of his way to see me. He was on a journey to London from Glasgow, having just left. the University there. He came, I suppose, partly to satisfy his own curiosity, but chiefly, as it seemed, to bring me the thanks of some of the Scotch Professors for my two volumes. His name is Rose, an Englishman. Your spirits being good, you will derive more pleasure from this incident than I can at present, therefore I send it." This interesting and accomplished character was afterwards of singular use to Cowper, during a friendship which originated in the above visit, and which was terminated only by the death of the Poet.

As an early instance of this utility, and that with reference to the paramount wants of the mind, he introduced his new acquaintance to the poetry of Burns, with which he was so much pleased as to read it twice, It was succeeded in the office of relieving his depressed spirits by the Latin Argenis of Barclay; The Travels of Savary into Egypt; Memoirs du Baron de Tott; Fenn's Original Letters; The Letters of Frederick of Bohemia; Memoirs d'Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Guise; and The Letters of his young relative, Spencer Madan, to Priestley. In allusion to this interval of cessation from the labours of the pen, he says in a letter to Mr. Rose, "When I cannot walk, I read, and read perhaps more than is good for me. But I cannot be idle. The only mercy that I show myself in this respect is, that I read nothing that requires much closeness of application." Conversing, however, with men and things, through the medium of books, was not his only resource in this season of illness. He had an infinitely better medicine of this kind, in the society of his valuable friends at the Hall, and the many pleasing acquaintances to which their hospitality introduced him. Indeed the kindness of Sir John and Lady Throckmorton, always a cordial to the spirits of Cowper from the time he knew them, was especially such under his present circumstances. As a proof of its happy influence on the

mind of the Poet, he was enabled in the autumn to resume his translation of Homer, which, with the renewal of his admirable letters to several friends, and the production of his first mortuary verses for the clerk of Northampton, comprised all his literary performances to the conclusion of the year.

In 1788, his venerable uncle, Ashley Cowper, Esq. the father of Lady Hesketh, died at the age of eighty-seven; an event which he pathetically alludes to in several of the letters of this period, and the ill effect of which on his spirits was happily prevented by the successive visits at the lodge of the Reverend Matthew Powley and his amiable partner, the daughter of Mrs. Unwin; his old friends the Newtons, Mr. Rose, and Lady Hesketh.

The re-appearance at the Lodge of the two last-mentioned visitors, is recorded in his letters of 1789, which was also devoted to Homer and the Muse.

In January 1790, the writer of this sketch, who had hitherto enjoyed no personal intercourse with his relative, but for whom, ten years after, was reserved the melancholy office of closing his eyes, introduced himself to the poet as the grandson of his mother's brother, the Reverend Roger Donne, late rector of Catfield, in Norfolk. His total ignorance of what had befallen that branch

of his family, during the twenty-seven years of his retirement from the world, would of itself have secured his attention to a visitor so circumstanced, even if his heart had been a stranger to the hospitable virtues. But as no human bosom was ever more under the influence of those blessed qualities than Cowper's, the reception which his kinsman met with was peculiarly pleasing. The consequence was a repetition of his visit in the same. year, and indeed the passing of the chief of his academical recesses at the Lodge, and his clerical leisure afterwards, till, by the appointment. of Providence, he transplanted this interesting man with his enfeebled companion into Norfolk, as will appear in the sequel of these pages.

Perceiving that his new and valuable acquaintance dwelt with great pleasure on the memory of his mother, the kinsman of Cowper, on his return home, was especially careful to dispatch to him her. picture, as a present from his cousin, Mrs. Bodham. To the arrival of this portrait, an original in oils,. by Heins, he thus adverts in a letter to that lady, dated February 27, 1790: "The world could not have furnished you with a present so acceptable to me, as the picture which you have so kindly sent. me. I received it the night before last, and viewed it with a trepidation of nerves and spirits somewhat akin to what I should have felt had the dear original presented herself to my embraces. I kissed,

it, and hung it where it is the last object that I see at night, and of course the first on which I open my eyes in the morning." The receipt of this picture gave rise to the Monody so justly a favourite with the public, when it appeared in the later editions of his poems.

On the 25th of August in this year, he completed his translation of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer into blank verse, which he had begun on the 21st of November, 1784. During eight months of this time he was hindered by indisposition, so that he was occupied in the work, on the whole, five years and one month. On the 8th of Sep

tember, the writer of this narrative had the gratification to convey it to St. Paul's Church-yard, with a view to its consignment to the press; during its continuance in which, the Translator gave the work a second revisal. The Iliad was dedicated to his young noble relative, Earl Cowper; and the Odyssey to the illustrious lady of whom he thus writes to his kinsman of Norfolk, on the 26th of November, 1790: "We had a visit on Monday from one of the first women in the world; in point of character, I mean, and accomplishments, the Dowager Lady Spencer. I may receive, perhaps, some honours hereafter, should my translation speed according to my wishes and the pains I have taken with it; but shall never receive any that I shall esteem so highly. She is