his kinsman, who had returned into Norfolk: "I proceed exactly as when you were here-a letter now and then before breakfast, and the rest of my time all holiday; if holiday it may be called, that is spent chiefly in moping and musing, and forecasting the fashion of uncertain cvils.”

On the 4th of March, 1793, he says in a letter to his friend, the Reverend Walter Bagot: "While the winter lasted, I was miserable with a fever on my spirits; when the spring began to approach, I was seized with an inflammation in my eyes; and ever since I have been able to use them, have been employed in giving more last touches to Homer, who is on the point of going to the press again." At the request of his worthy Bookseller, he added explanatory Notes to his revision; in allusion to which he writes in May to his friend Rose, "I breakfast every morning on seven or eight pages of the Greek commentators. For so much am I obliged to read in order to select perhaps three or four short notes for the readers of my translation." He says to Mr. Hayley, in the same month, "I rise at six every morning, and fag till near eleven, when I breakfast.-I cannot spare a moment for eating in the early part of the morning, having no other time for study." The truth is, that his grateful, affectionate spirit devoted all the rest of the day from breakfast, to the helpless state of his afflicted companion;

of whose 'similar attentions to his own necessities, he had had such abundant experience. There can be no doubt that an arrangement of this sort was highly prejudicial to the health of Cowper, and that it hastened the approach of the last calamitous attack with which this interesting sufferer was yet to be visited. For the present, however, he was supported under it; writing pleasantly thus to Mr. Hayley in October: "On Tuesday, we expect company-Mr. Rose and Lawrence the Painter. Yet once more my pa tience is to be exercised, and once more I am made to wish that my face had been moveable, to put on and take off at pleasure, so as to be portable in a band-box, and sent to the artist."

In the following month, Mr. Hayley paid his second visit to Weston, where he found the writer of this Narrative and Mr. Rose. "The latter,'

says the Biographer of Cowper, "came recently from the seat of Lord Spencer, in Northamptonshire, and commissioned by that accomplished nobleman to invite Cowper and his guests to Althorpe, where my friend Gibbon was to make a visit of considerable continuance. All the guests of Cowper now recommended it to him very strongly to venture on this little excursion, to a house whose master he most cordially respected, and whose library alone might be regarded as a magnet of very powerful attraction to every ele

gant scholar. I wished," continues Mr. Hayley, "to see Cowper and Gibbon personally acquainted, because I perfectly knew the real benevolence of both; for widely as they might differ on one important article, they were both able and worthy to appreciate and enjoy the extraordinary mental powers of each other. But the constitutional shyness of the Poet conspired, with the present infirm state of Mrs. Unwin, to prevent their meeting. He sent Mr. Rose and me to make his apology for declining so honourable an invitation."

In a few days from this time, the guests of Cowper left him, and before the end of the year he thus writes to his friend of Eartham: "It is a great relief to me that my Miltonic labours are suspended. I am now busied in transcribing the alterations of Homer, having finished the whole revisal. I must then write a new Preface, which done, I shall endeavour immediately to descant on "The Four Ages."

Instead, however, of recording the prosecution of this poem, as the work of the beginning of the following year, it becomes the painful duty of the author of this memoir to exhibit the truly excellent and pitiable subject of it as very dif. ferently employed, and as commencing his descent into those depths of affliction, from which his spirit was only to emerge by departing from the

earth. Writing to Mr. Rose in January 1794, he says, "I have just ability enough to transcribe, which is all that I can do at present: God knows. that I write at this moment under the pressure of sadness not to be described." It was a happy circumstance that Lady Hesketh had arrived at Weston, a few weeks previous to this calamitous attack, the increasing infirmities of Cowper's aged companion, Mrs. Unwin, having reduced her to a state of second childhood. Towards the end of February, the care of attending to his afflicted relative was for a short time engaged in by the writer of these pages, who had scarcely returned to his professional duties, when, in consequence of an affectionate summons from Cowper's valuable neighbour and highly respected friend, the Reverend Mr. Greatheed of Newport Pagnel, Mr. Hayley repaired to the Lodge. During the continuance of his visit, which was extended to several weeks, all expedients were resorted to, which the most tender ingenuity could devise, to promote the object which had given rise to it. But though the efforts of this cordial and tried friend to restore the Poet to any measure of cheerfulness, were altogether ineffectual, yet, as a reward for his humanity, it pleased God to refresh his benevolent spirit, at this time, by the success of a plan for the benefit of Cowper, the idea of which had originated with himself. The

d

circumstance alluded to is thus related by the Biographer of the Poet:-" It was on the 23d of April 1794, in one of those melancholy mornings, when his compassionate friend Lady Hesketh and myself were watching together over this dejected sufferer, that a letter from Lord Spencer arrived at Weston, to announce the intended grant of such a pension from his Majesty to Cowper, as would ensure an honourable competence for the residue of his life. This intelligence produced in the friends of the Poet very lively emotions of delight, yet blended with pain almost as powerful; for it was painful in no trifling degree, to reflect, that these desirable smiles of good fortune could not impart even a faint glimmering of joy to the dejected invalid.

"His friends, however, had the animating hope, that a day would arrive when they might see him receive with a cheerful and joyous gratitude, this royal recompence for merit universally acknowledged. They knew that when he recovered his suspended faculties, he must be particularly pleased, to find himself chiefly indebted for his good fortune to the active benevolence of that nobleman, who, though not personally acquainted with Cowper, stood, of all his noble friends, the highest in his esteem."-" He was unhappily disabled," continues his Biographer, "from feeling the favour he received, but an an