toward me. Once He promised me much, and was so kind to me at the same time, that I most confidently expected the performance. Now He promises me as much, but holds me always at an immense distance, and, so far as I know, never deigns to speak to me. What conclusions can I draw from these premises, but that he who once loved now hates me, and is constantly employed in verifying the notice of 86, that is to say, in working distinctly contrary to his promises? "This is the labyrinth in which I am always bewildered, and from which I have hardly any hope of deliverance." There was no text in Scripture, he said, less calculated to comfort him, than that which promises comfort to the broken heart: "were there a text which promised it to the nether mill-stone, from such a text as that he might gather hope." Yet he described his spirits as tolerably well in the day, because he kept himself as much employed as he could; and that, together with the assistance which he had gained from despair, was his best remedy. But his hours of occupation were not now so regulated as to employ without fatiguing him. "Thou knowest, I dare say," he says to Lady Hesketh,49 "what it is to have a head weary with thinking. Mine is so fatigued by breakfast-time that, three days out of four, I am utterly incapable of sitting down to my desk again for any purpose whatever." This was not to be wondered at, seeing that he rose every morning at six, and fagged till near eleven before he breakfasted; and in consequence was by that time exhausted. "You will say," he says, ,59 "breakfast before you work, and then your work will not fatigue you." I answer, "Perhaps I might, and your counsel would probably prove beneficial; but I cannot spare a moment for eating in the early part of the morning, having no other time for study." The business which engrossed him thus, was revising his Homer for a second edition, and writing notes upon it; and his reason for despatching all that he did in the day before breakfast, was that his whole attention might be given to Mrs. Unwin from the time that she rose. Such an inmate 66 as Lady Hesketh, or such a neighbor as Lady Austen, might have been of the most important service to him now; and if Lady Hesketh had been aware how much her presence was needed, she would undoubtedly have set aside all other considerations, and have hastened to Weston. My dearest cousin," Cowper says to her,51 " you will not, you say, come to us now; and you tell us not when you will. These assignations sine die are bad things, that I can neither nor get any comfort from them. Know you not that hope is the next best thing to enjoyment? Give us then a hope, and a determinate time for that hope to fix on, and we will endeavor to be satisfied.” grasp, Lady Hesketh was aware that things were going on ill, in one respect, at Weston Lodge, though she knew not, and probably no one besides Teedon and Mrs. Unwin knew, the state of Cowper's mind. She was aware that Mrs. Unwin was no longer capable of managing their expenditure, and she had reason to believe that they were imposed upon, and their means misspent; and this she hinted to her cousin. "Unless thou tell me," he replied,52 "who they are that eat me up alive, I can say nothing about it. In fact, I am eaten up by nothing but an enormous taxation, which bas doubled the price of every thing within my memory, and which makes it impossible for a man of small means, like me, to live at all like a gentleman upon his income. "Thou canst not do better than send me the draft immediately," he says in the same letter; "for at this season of the year the money birds are full fledged, and fly at an immoderate rate: whole flocks of them disappear in a moment." Six months afterwards he says to her,53" You ought not to be surprised that I want money at the half-year's end; for where is the man who does not? But whatever you think, never suspect that my wants are occasioned by lavish and undistinguishing bounty. Nobody is less obnoxious to that imputation than I; you I am sure are not, who give to me. I know who is alluded to in your letter, under the description of a person who lives luxuriously at my cost. But you are misinformed. Unless a pint of ale at meal 51 June 1. 52 Jan. 19. 53 June 30. times be a luxury, there are no luxuries in that man's house, I assure you; and I can assure you beside, that whatever he has, he has it not by gift of mine; Mrs. Unwin and I are merely the medium through which the bounty passes, not the authors of it. But we administer it conscientiously, and as in the sight of God; and are the most scrupulous about it, because it is not ours. As to the rest, we help an old woman or two, whom the parish would starve, if we did not; and there is the sun total of all the eleemosynary profusion with which we are chargeable !" not. Teedon seems to have been the person of whom Cowper speaks, whether Lady Hesketh had him in her mind, or In one communication he tells the schoolmaster that his quarterly remittance is ready whenever it may suit him. to call for it; and in another, that they had received their annual remittance from "the secret benefactor to the indigent." His receipts from Johnson appear to have come in good time, when Mrs. Unwin had expended no small part of her little capital, and his own poor means were diminished. Writing to the faithful friend who acted as his steward in these concerns, he says, 54 Your tidings concerning the slender pittance yet to come, are, as you observe, of the melancholy cast. Not being gifted by nature with the means of acquiring much, it is well, however, that she has given me a disposition to be contented with little. I have now been so many years habituated to small matters, that I should probably find myself incommoded by greater; and may I but be enabled to shift, as I have been hitherto, unsatisfied wishes will never trouble me much. My pen has helped me somewhat; and after some years' to I begin to reap the benefit. Had I begun sooner, perhaps I should have known fewer pecuniary distresses: Or who can say: ? It is possible that I might not have succeeded so well. Fruit ripens only a short time before it rots, and man, in general, arrives not at maturity of mental powers at a much earlier period." His letters had now become short and unfrequent, not from any diminution of regard for his correspondents, nor for want of inclination to what had hitherto been with him a favorite employment, but because of his affectionate attention to Mrs. Unwin. "You will not judge me," he says to Mr. Newton,55 " by the unfrequency of my letters; nor suppose that my thoughts about you are equally unfrequent. In truth they are not. No day passes in which you are excluded from them. I am so busy that I do not expect even now to fill my paper. While I write, my poor invalid, who is still unable to amuse herself either with book or needle, sits silent at my side; which makes me, in all my letters, hasten to a conclusion. My only time for study is now before breakfast, and I lengthen it as much as I can by early rising." He regarded it as a good effect of study, that it made him an early riser, who might otherwise, he said, perhaps be as much given to dozing as his readers. But nothing could have been more injurious for him than to curtail that natural sleep which is the best of all restoratives. "I know not," he tells Mr. Newton,56 " that with respect to our health, we are either better or worse than when you saw us. Mrs. Unwin perhaps has gained a little strength, and the advancing spring, I hope, will add to it. As to myself, I am in body, soul, and spirit, semper idem. Prayer I know is made for me, and sometimes with great enlargement of heart by those who offer it; and in this circumstance consists the only evidence I can find, that God is still favorably mindful of me, and has not cast me off forever." This was in April. In the June following, he says of Mrs. Unwin,57 In her I cannot perceive any alteration for the better; and must be satisfied, I believe, as indeed I have great reason to be, if she does not alter for the worse. uses the orchard-walk daily, but always supported between two, and is still unable to employ herself as formerly. But she is cheerful, seldom in much pain, and has always strong confidence in the mercy and faithfulness of God. She "As to myself, I have always the same song to sing, Well in body, but sick in spirit; sick, nigh unto death. 55 April 25. 56 April 25. 57 June 12. Seasons return, but not to me returns God, or the sweet approach of heavenly day, I could easily set my complaint to Milton's tone, and accompany him through the whole passage, on the subject of a blindness more deplorable than his; but time fails me." "You ought," he tells Hayley,58 "to account it an instance of marvellous grace and favor that I condescend to write even to you. Sometimes I am seriously almost crazed with the multiplicity of the matters before me, and the little or no time that I have for them; and sometimes I repose myself, after the fatigue of that distraction, on the pillow of despair -a pillow which has often served me in the time of need, and is become by frequent use, if not very comfortable, at least convenient. So reposed, I laugh at the world, and say, 'Yes, you may gape and expect both Homer and Milton from me, but I'll be hanged if ever you get them.' It was his intention to bring out the second edition of his Homer as soon as possible, for a reason which, he said, any poet may guess, if he will but thrust his hand into his pocket. But he had undertaken the serious task of revising it, with the view of obviating some of the objections which had been made to it. In this he yielded to the opinion of others, in some things against his own judgment. With respect to inversions in particular, which had been said to abound in his translation, and which had been far more frequent in the first copy of his work, most of them having been expunged in deference to Fuseli's criticisms, he consented to remove more, saying, "I know that they give dignity, and am sorry to part with them; but to parody an old proverb, he who lives in the year ninety-three, must do as in the year ninety-three is done by others." So, too, with inharmonious lines, which were not more in number than he accounted indispensably necessary to a due variation of cadence, "I have, however," he says, "now, in conformity with modern taste, (over-much delicate in my mind,) given to a far greater 58 March 19. |