indifferent. For this, and for many other reasons, I ardently wish that he may enjoy, and long enjoy, the measure of health with which he is favored.” 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. Odes were composed to his honor and glory, the report of which reached him, though he was not always "gratified with their sight." "But I have at least," says he,24" 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,

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, 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 favor, 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 wagon 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 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 to his unexpected reintroduction as cordially as he could have desired.

MY DEAR ROWLEY,

27

Weston Underwood, Feb. 21, 1788.

26

I have not, since I saw you, seen the face of any man whom I knew while you and I were neighbors in the Temple. From the Temple I went to St. Alban's, thence to Cambridge, thence to Huntingdon, thence to Olney, thence hither. At Huntingdon I formed a connection with a most

25 Dec. 19, 1787.

26 Vol. i. p. 26, 30.

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

valuable family of the name of Unwin, from which family I have never since been divided. The father of it is dead; his only son is dead; the daughter is married and gone northward; Mrs. Unwin and I live together. We dwell in a neat and comfortable abode in one of the prettiest villages in the kingdom, where, if your Hibernian engagements would permit, I should be happy to receive you. We have one family here, and only one, with whom we much associate. They are Throckmortons, descendants of Sir Nicholas of that name, young persons, but sensible, accomplished, and friendly in the highest degree. What sort of scenery lies around us I have already told you in verse; there is no need, therefore, to do it in prose. I will only add to its printed eulogium, that it affords opportunity of walking at all seasons, abounding with beautiful grass-grounds, which encompass our village on all sides to a considerable distance. These grounds are skirted by woods of great extent, belonging principally to our neighbors above mentioned. I, who love walking, and who always hated riding,28 who am fond of some society, but never had spirits that would endure a great deal, could not, as you perceive, be better situated. Within a few miles of us, both to the east and west, there are other families with whom we mix occasionally; but keeping no carriage of any sort, I cannot reach them often. Lady Hesketh (widow of Sir Thomas, whose name, at least, you remember) spends part of the year with us, during which time I have means of conveyance, which else are not at my command.

So much for my situation. Now, what am I doing? Translating Homer. Is not this, you will say, actum agere? But if you think again, you will find that it is not. At least, for my own part, I can assure you that I have never seen him translated yet, except in the Dog-Latin, which you remember to have applied to for illumination when you were a schoolboy. We are strange creatures, my little friend; every thing that we do is in reality important, though half that we do seems to be push-pin. Not much less than thirty years since, Alston and I read Homer through together. We compared Pope with his original all the way. The

25 See vol. i. p. 26.

result was a discovery, that there is hardly the thing in the world of which Pope was so entirely destitute, as a taste for Homer. After the publication of my last volume, I found myself without employment. Employment is essential to me; I have neither health nor spirits without it. After some time, the recollection of what had passed between Alston and myself in the course of this business struck me forcibly; I remembered how we had been disgusted; how often we had sought the simplicity and majesty of Homer in his English representative, and had found, instead of them, puerile conceits, extravagant metaphors, and the tinsel of modern embellishment in every possible position. Neither did I forget how often we were on the point of burning Pope, as we burnt Bertram Montfitchet 29 in your chambers. I laid a Homer before me. I translated a few lines into blank verse; the day following a few more; and proceeding thus till I had finished the first book, was convinced that I could render an acceptable service to the literary world, should I be favored with health to enable me to translate the whole. The Iliad I translated without interruption. That done, I published Proposals for a subscription, and can boast of a very good one. Soon after, I was taken ill, and was hindered near a twelvemonth. But I have now resumed the work, and have proceeded in it as far as to the end of the fifteenth Iliad, altering and amending my first copy with all the diligence I am master of. For this I will be answerable that it shall be found a close translation; in that respect, as faithful as our language, not always a match for the Greek, will give me leave to make it. For its other qualifications, I must refer myself to the judgment of the public, when it shall appear. Thus I have fulfilled my promise, and have told you not only how I am at present occupied, but how I am likely to be for some time to come. The Odyssey I have not yet touched. I need not, I am confident, use any extraordinary arts of persuasion to secure to myself

29 Some liquid has fallen upon the letter, and completely obliterated all but the initial and last syllable of this word. But the Monthly Review, for April, 1761, notices "The Life and Opinions of Bertram Montfitchet, Esq. written by himself," as an humble imitation of Tris tram Shandy.