conversation, deals with him more gently, and still indulges him in the possession of those privileges which alone make life desirable. May he long continue to possess them! I acquiesce entirely in the justness of your reasoning on this subject, and must needs confess that were I your father, I should with great reluctance resign you to the demands of any cousin in the world. I shall be happy to see you, my dear, yet once again, but not till I can enjoy that happiness without the violation of any proprieties on your part, not till he can spare you. Give my love to him, and tell him that I am not so much younger than he is now, as I was when I saw him last. As years proceed, the difference between the elder and the younger is gradually reduced to nothing. But you will come, and in the meantime the rich and the poor rejoice in the expectation of you; to whom may be added a third sort, ourselves for instance, who are of neither of these descriptions 21."

he

The middle of November was fixed for her coming. "Now, that there is something like a time appointed," says, "I feel myself a little more at my ease. Days and weeks slide imperceptibly away; November is at hand, and the half of it, as you observe, will soon be over. Then, no impediment intervening, we shall meet once more, a happiness of which I so lately despaired. My uncle, who so kindly spared you before, will, I doubt not, spare you again. He knows that a little frisk in country air will be serviceable to you; and even to my welfare, which is not a little concerned in the matter, I am persuaded he is not indifferent. For this, and 21 Sept. 20, 1787.

for many other reasons, I ardently wish that he may enjoy, and long enjoy, the measure of health with which he is favoured 22."

The promise was then for a month, which he said would be short indeed unless she could contrive to lengthen it. But the middle of November came, and with it another postponement. He replied: "My dearest cousin, we are therefore not to meet before Christmas; there is a combination of King, Lords, and Commons, against it, and we must submit. I do it with an ill grace, but in a corner, and nobody, not even yourself, shall know with how much reluctance. In consideration of the necessity there is, that should you come on this side Christmas, you must return immediately after the holidays, on account of those three limbs of the legislature coming together again, I am so far well content that your journey hither should be postponed till your continuance here shall be less liable to interruption; and I console myself, in the mean time, with frequent recollections of that passage in your letter, in which you speak of frequent visits to Weston. This is a comfort on which I have only one drawback; and it is the reflection that I make without being able to help it, on the state and nature of my constant experience, which has taught me that what I hope for with most pleasure, is the very thing in which I am most likely to meet with a disappointment. But sufficient to the past is the evil thereof; let futurity speak for itself 23 !”

Meantime he began to feel the pleasures, and some of the inconveniences, of being an eminent author. 23 Nov. 17.

22 Oct. 27.

Odes were composed to his honour and glory, the report of which reached him, though he was not always" gratified with their sight." "But I have at least," says he, "been tickled with some douceurs of a very flattering nature by the post. A lady unknown addresses the 'best of men ;' an unknown gentleman has read my inimitable poems,' and invites me to his seat in Hampshire; another incognito gives me hopes of a memorial in his garden; and a Welsh attorney sends me his verses to revise, and obligingly asks

6

Say shall my little bark attendant sail,

Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale!

If you find me a little vain, hereafter, my friend, you must excuse it, in consideration of these powerful incentives, especially the latter; for surely the poet who can charm an attorney, especially a Welsh one, must be at least an Orpheus, if not something greater." With or without cause, and with or without consideration, strangers bestowed upon him some of that leisure of which they presumed he had as much to dispose of as themselves, till (in his own words,) he began "to perceive, that if a man will be an author, he must live neither to himself nor to his friends, so much as to others, whom he never saw nor shall see."

But the most amusing proof both of his celebrity and his good nature, is thus related to Lady Hesketh, "On Monday morning last, Sam brought me word that there was a man in the kitchen who desired to

speak with me. I ordered him in. A plain, decent, 24 To Mr. Bagot, Jan. 3, 1787.

elderly figure made its appearance, and being desired to sit, spoke as follows: Sir, I am clerk of the parish of All Saints in Northampton; brother of Mr. Cox the upholsterer. It is customary for the person in my office to annex to a bill of mortality, which he publishes at Christmas, a copy of verses. You will do me a great favour, sir, if you would furnish me with one.' To this I replied, Mr. Cox, you have several men of genius in your town, why have you not applied to some of them? There is a namesake of yours in particular, Cox, the statuary, who, every body knows, is a first-rate maker of verses. He surely is the man of all the world for your purpose.'-' Alas! sir, I have heretofore borrowed help from him, but he is a gentleman of so much reading that the people of our town cannot understand him.' I confess to you, my dear, I felt all the force of the compliment implied in this speech, and was almost ready to answer, perhaps, my good friend, they may find me unintelligible too for the same reason. But on asking him whether he had walked over to Weston on purpose to implore the assistance of my muse, and on his replying in the affirmative, I felt my mortified vanity a little consoled, and pitying the poor man's distress, which appeared to be considerable, promised to supply him. The waggon has accordingly gone this day to Northampton loaded in part with my effusions in the mortuary style. A fig for poets who write epitaphs upon individuals! I have written one that serves two hundred persons."

Seven successive years did Cowper, in his excellent good nature, supply the clerk of All Saints in Northampton, with his Mortuary verses.

But the most pleasing consequence of his celebrity was, that it occasioned the renewal of old friendships. “When I lived in the Temple," he says to his cousin 25, "I was rather intimate with a son of the late Admiral Rowley, and a younger brother of the present admiral. Since I wrote to you last, I received a letter from him in a very friendly and affectionate style. It accompanied half a dozen books which I had lent him five and twenty years ago, and which he apologized for having kept so long, telling me that they had been sent to him at Dublin by mistake, for at Dublin it seems he now resides. Reading my poems, he felt, he said, his friendship for me revived, and wrote accordingly." That Mr. Rowley had always entertained a just opinion of Cowper's talents, and cherished an affectionate remembrance of him, appears by his having preserved the two earliest 26 of his letters which as yet have been discovered. And Cowper, who knew Rowley to be " one of the most benevolent and friendly creatures in the world," replied "7 to his unexpected reintroduction as cordially as he could have desired. MY DEAR ROWLEY, Weston Underwood, Feb. 21, 1788.

27

I have not, since I saw you, seen the face of any man whom I knew while you and I were neighbours in the Temple. From the Temple I went to St. Albans, thence to Cambridge, thence to Huntingdon, thence to Olney, thence hither. At Huntingdon I formed a connexion with a most valuable family of the 25 Dec. 19, 1787. 26 Vol. i. p. 35. 41.

27 Some of the letters to Mr. Rowley are wanting in the collection with which I have been entrusted, and among them is the first after the renewal of their correspondence.