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that the ladies at court are delighted with my poems. Much good may they do them; may they become as wise as the writer wishes them, and they will then be much happier than he! I know there is, in the greater part of the poems which make up the volume, that wisdom which cometh from above, because it was from above that I received it. May they receive it too! for whether they drink it out of the cistern, or whether it falls upon them immediately from the clouds, as it did on me, it is all one. It is the water of life, which whosoever drinketh shall thirst no more. As to the famous horseman above mentioned, he and his feats are an inexhaustible source of amusement. At least we find them so: and seldom meet without refreshing ourselves with the recollection of them. You are perfectly at liberty to do with them as you please, and when printed send me a copy."

Lady Austin's intercourse with Mrs. Unwin and Cowper continued, uninterrupted, till near the close of 1784; and during all this time, by her sprightly, judicious, and captivating conversation, she was often the means of rousing him from his melancholy depression. To console him, she would often exert her musical talents on the harpsichord; and at her request, he composed, among others, the following beautiful song, suited to airs she was accustomed to play:

"No longer I follow a sound,
No longer a dream I pursue;
O, happiness! not to be found,
Unattainable treasure, adieu!

I have sought thee in splendour and dress,
In the regions of pleasure and taste;

I have sought thee, and seemed to possess,
But have proved thee a vision at last.

An humble ambition and hope
The voice of true wisdom inspires;
'Tis sufficient, if peace be the scope
And the summit of all our desires.

Peace may be the lot of the mind
That seeks it in meekness and love;
But rapture and bliss are confined
To the glorified spirits above!"

During the winter of 1783-4, Cowper spent the evenings in reading to these ladies, taking the liberty himself, and

affording the same to them, of making remarks on what came under their notice. On these interesting occasions, Lady Austin displayed her enchanting, and almost magical powers, with singular effect. The conversation happened one evening to turn on blank verse, of which she had always expressed herself to be passionately fond. Persuaded that

Cowper was able to produce, in this measure, a poem, that would eclipse anything he had hitherto written, she urged him to try his powers in that species of composition. He had hitherto written only in rhyme, and he felt considerable reluctance to make the attempt. After repeated solicitations, however, he promised her, if she would furnish the subject, he would comply with her request. "Oh!" she replied, "you can never be in want of a subject, you can write upon anything; write upon this sofa." The poet obeyed her command, and the world is thus indebted to this lady for The Task, a poem of matchless beauty and excellence, embracing almost every variety of style, and every description of subject, combining elegance and ease, with sublimity and grandeur, adapted to impress the heart with sentiments of the most exalted piety, and to make its readers happy in the sent life, while it excites in them earnest and longing desires after the felicity and glory of heaven.

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In composing this exquisite poem, however, it ought to be observed that Cowper had a higher object in view than merely to please Lady Austin. His great aim was to be useful; and, indeed, this was his leading motive in all his productions, as is evident from the following extract from a letter to Mr. Unwin: "In some passages of the enclosed poem, which I send for your inspection, you will observe me very satirical, especially in my second book. Writing on such subjects I could not be otherwise. I can write nothing without aiming, at least, at usefulness. It were beneath my years to do it, and still more dishonourable to my religion. I know that a reformation of such abuses, as I have censured is not be expected from the efforts of a poet; but to contemplate the world, its follies, its vices, its indifference to duty, and its strenuous attachment to what is evil, and not to reprehend it, were to approve it. From this charge at least I shall be clear, for I have neither, tacitly, nor expressly, flattered either its characters or its customs. My principal purpose has been, to allure the reader by character, by scenery, by imagery, and such poetical embellishments, to the reading of what may profit him. Subordinately to this, to combat that predilection in favour of a metropolis, that beggars

and exhausts the country, by evacuating it of all its principal inhabitants; and collaterally, and as far as is consistent with this double intention, to have a stroke at vice, vanity, and folly wherever I find them. What there is of a religious cast, in the volume, I have thrown towards the end of it, for two reasons; first, that I might not revolt the reader at his entrance; and, secondly, that my best impressions might be made last. Were I to write as many volumes as Lopez de Vega, or Voltaire, not one of them would be without this tincture. If the world like it not, so much the worse for them. I make all the concessions I can that I may please them, but I will not do this at the expense of my conscience. My descriptions are all from nature, not one of them secondhanded. My delineations of the heart are from my own experience; not one of them borrowed from books, or in the least degree conjectural."

The close of the year 1784, witnessed the completion of this extensive performance, and the commencement of another of greater magnitude, though of a different description, and less adapted for general usefulness, the translation of Homer; undertaken at the united request of Mrs. Unwin and Lady Austin. This was a remarkable period in Cowper's life, Circumstances arose, altogether unforeseen by him, and over which he had no control, which led to the removal of Lady Austin from Olney. He had so often been benefited by her company, had in so many instances been cheered by her vivacity when suffering under the influence of his depressive malady, and had received such repeated proofs of affability and kindness, that he could not entertain the thought of parting with her without considerable disquietude. Immediately, however, on perceiving that separation became requisite for the maintenance of his own peace, as well as to ensure the tranquillity of his faithful and long-tried inmate, Mrs. Unwin, he wisely and firmly, took such steps as were necessary to promote it, though it was at the expense of much mental anguish.

Some of Cowper's biographers have, unjustly, and without the slightest foundation, attempted to cast considerable odium upon the character of Mrs. Unwin, for her conduct in this affair, as if all the blame of Cowper's separation from Lady Austin were to be laid at her door. One has even gone so far as to state, that her mind was of such a sombre hue, that it rather tended to foster, than to dissipate, Cowper's melancholy. An assertion utterly incapable of proof, and which, were the poet living, he would be the first to

deny. The fact is, that Cowper never felt any other attachment to either of these ladies than that of pure friendship, and much as he valued the society of Lady Austin, when he found it necessary, for his own peace, to choose which he should please to retain, he could not hesitate for a moment to prefer the individual who had watched over him with so much tenderness, and probably to the injury of her own health. The whole of his conduct in this affair, and indeed, the manner in which he has everywhere spoken of his faithful inmate, proves this indubitably.

Aware of the benefit he had received from Lady Austin's company, many of his friends were apprehensive that her removal would be attended with consequences seriously injurious to the poet. Deep, however, as was the impression which it made upon his mind, he bore it with much more fortitude than could have been expected, as will be seen by the manner in which he adverted to it in a letter to Mr. Hill:“We have, as you say, lost a lively and sensible neighbour in Lady Austin, but we have been so long accustomed to a state of retirement, within one degree of solitude, and being naturally lovers of still life, we can relapse into our former duality without being unhappy in the change. To me, indeed, a third individual is not necessary, while I can have the faithful companion I have had these twenty years."

It might be imagined, from the production of Cowper's pen at this period, that he was entirely recovered from his depressive malady; such, however, was far from the case. His letters to his correspondents prove, that whatever gaiety and vivacity there was in his writings, there was nothing in his own state of mind that bore any resemblance to such emotions; but that, on the contrary, his fits of melancholy were frequent, and often painfully acute. To his friend, Mr. Newton, he thus feelingly discloses his peculiarly painful sensations:-"My heart resembles not the heart of a Christian, mourning and yet rejoicing, pierced with thorns, yet wreathed about with roses; I have the thorn without the rose. My brier is a wintry one, the flowers are withered, but the thorn remains. My days are spent in vanity, and it is impossible for me to spend them otherwise. No man upon earth is more sensible of the unprofitableness of such a life as mine than I am, or groans more heavily under the burden; but this too is vanity: my groans will not bring the remedy, because there is no remedy for me. I have been lately more dejected and more depressed than usual; more harassed by dreams in the night, and more deeply poisoned

by them in the following day. I know not what is portended by an alteration for the worse after eleven years of misery; but firmly believe, that it is not designed as the introduction of a change for the better. You know not what I suffered while you were here, nor was there any need you should. Your friendship for me would have made you in some degree a partaker of my woes, and your share in them would have been increased by your inability to help me. Perhaps, indeed, they took a keener edge, from the consideration of your presence. The friend of my heart, the person with whom I had formerly taken sweet counsel, no longer useful to me as a minister, no longer pleasant to me as a Christian, was a spectacle which must necessarily add the bitterness of mortification to the sadness of despair. I now see a long winter before me, and am to get through it as I can; I know the ground before I tread upon it. It is hollow; it is agitated; it suffers shocks in every direction; it is like the soil of Calabria-all whirlpool and undulation; but I must reel through it, at least if I be not swallowed up by the way. I have taken leave of the old year, and parted with it just when you did, but with very different sentiments and feelings upon the occasion. I looked back upon all the passages and occurrences of it as a traveller looks back upon a wilderness, through which he has passed with weariness and sorrow of heart, reaping no other fruit of his labour than the poor consolation, that, dreary as the desert was, he left it all behind him. The traveller would find even this comfort considerably lessened, if, as soon as he passed one wilderness, he had to traverse another of equal length, and equally desolate. In this particular his experience and mine would exactly tally. I should rejoice indeed that the old year is over and gone, if I had not every reason to expect a new one similar to it. Even the new year is already old in my account. I am not, indeed, sufficiently second-sighted, to be able to boast, by anticipation, an acquaintance with the events of it yet unborn, but rest assured that, be they what they may, not one of them comes a messenger of good to me. If even death itself should be of the number, he is no friend of mine; it is an alleviation of the woes, even of an unenlightened man, that he can wish for death, and indulge a hope, at least, that in death he shall find deliverance. But, loaded as my life is with despair, I have no such comfort as would result from a probability of better things to come were it once ended. I am far more unhappy than the traveller I have just referred to; pass through whatever difficulties, dangers, or afflictions,

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