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to himself, to have nothing selfish or sordid about him. But the heart is a nest of serpents, and will be such while it continues to beat. If God cover the mouth of that nest with his hand, they are hush and snug; but if he withdraw his hand the whole family lift up their heads and hiss, and are as active and venomous as ever. This I always professed to believe from the time that I had embraced the truth, but I never knew it as I know it now. To what end I have been made to know it as I do, whether for the benefit of others or for my own, or for both, or for neither, will appear hereafter."

While Cowper looked upon his publication with so much indifference, his friends regarded it with very opposite feelings. Its rapid and extensive circulation, not only delighted those who were intimately associated with him, and had been witnesses to the acute anguish of his mind, during his depressive malady, but it also gratified several of his former associates and correspondents, and induced them to renew their communications with the poet. Among these was Lady Hesketh, who was so charmed with productions of his pen, that on her return from abroad, where she had spent several years with her husband, she renewed her correspondence with Cowper, and as she was now a widow and was handsomely provided for, she generously offered to render him any assistance he might want. Cowper's reply to an affectionate letter she wrote him, shows the warmth of his affection towards those whom he loved. He thus writes:-"My dear Cousin, It is no new thing for you to give pleasure. But I will venture to say that you do not often give more than you gave me this morning. When I came down to breakfast and found on the table, a letter franked by my uncle, and when opening that frank, I found that it contained a letter from you, I said within myself, This is just as it should be. We are all grown young again, and the days that I thought I should see no more, are actually returned. You perceive, therefore, that you judged well when you conjectured that a line from you would not be disagreeable to me. It could not be otherwise than as in fact it has proved, a most agreeable surprise. For I can truly boast of an affection for you that neither years nor intercepted intercourse have at all abated. I need only recollect how much I valued you once, and with how much cause, immediately to feel a revival of the same value; if that can be said to revive, which at the most has only been dormant for want of employment. But I slander it when I say that it has slept. A thousand times have I recollected a thousand scenes, in which our two selves have formed the whole of the drama,

with the greatest pleasure at times too, when I had no reason to suppose that I should ever hear from you again. The hours that I have spent with you, were among the pleasantest of my former days, and are therefore chronicled in my mind so deeply as to fear no erasure. You say that you have often heard of me; that puzzleş me. I cannot imagine from what quarter; but it is no matter. I must tell you however, my dear cousin, that your information has been a little defective. That I am happy in my situation is true; I live, and have lived these twenty years, with Mrs. Unwin, to whose affectionate care of me, during the far greater part of that time, it is, under Divine Providence owing that I live at all. But I do not account myself happy in having been for thirteen of those years in a state of mind that has made all that care and attention necessary. An attention and a care, that have injured her health, and which, had she not been uncommonly supported, must have brought her to the grave. But I will pass to another subject; it would be cruel to particularize only to give pain, neither should I by any means give a sable hue to the first letter of a correspondence so unexpectedly renewed. I must, however, tell you, my dear cousin, that de jection of spirits, which I suppose, may have prevented many a man from becoming an author has made me one. I find constant employment necessary, and therefore take care to be constantly employed. Manual occupations do not engage the mind sufficiently, as I know by experience, having tried many. But composition, especially of verse, absorbs it wholly. I write therefore generally three hours in the morning, and in the evening I transcribe. I read also, but less than I write, for I must have bodily exercise, and therefore never pass a day without it.

"I do not seek new friends, not being altogether sure that I should find them, but have unspeakable pleasure in being beloved by an old one. I hope that our correspondence has now suffered its last interruption, and that we shall go down together to the grave, chattering and chirping as happily as such a scene as this will permit. I am happy that my poems have pleased you. My volume has afforded me no such pleasure at any time, either while I was writing it, or since its publication, as I have derived from yours and my uncle's favourable opinion respecting it. I make certain allowances for partiality, and for that peculiar quickness of taste, with which you both relish what you like, and after all drawbacks upon those accounts, duly made, find myself rich in the measure of your approbation, that still remains. But above all

I honour John Gilpin, since it was he who first encouraged you to write. I made him on purpose to laugh at, and he served his purpose well; but I am now indebted to him for a more valuable acquisition than all the laughter in the world amounts to, the recovery of my intercourse with you, which is to me inestimable. I am glad that I always loved you as I did. It releases me from any occasion to suspect that my present affection for you is indebted for its existence to any selfish considerations. No, I am sure I love you disinterestedly, and for your own sake, because I never thought of you with any other sensations, than those of the truest affection, even while I was under the persuasion, that I should never hear from you again. But with my present feelings superadded to those that I always had for you, I find it no easy matter to do justice to my sensations. I perceive myself in a state of mind, similar to that of the traveller described in Pope's Messiah, who, as he passes through a sandy desert, starts at the sudden and unexpected sound of a water-fall.Your very generous offer of assistance has placed me in a situation new to me, and in which I feel myself somewhat puzIzled how to behave. When I was once asked if I wanted anything, and given delicately to understand that the inquirer was ready to supply all my occasions, I thankfully and civilly, but positively declined the favour. I neither suffer nor have suffered such inconveniences, as I had not much rather endure, than come under an obligation to a person, who is almost a stranger to me. But to you I answer otherwise. I know you thoroughly, and the liberality of your disposition, and have that consummate confidence in the sincerity of your wish to serve me, that delivers me from all awkward constraint, and from all fear of trespassing by acceptance. To you therefore I reply, yes. Whensoever and whatsoever, and in what manner soever, you please, and add moreover, that my affection for the giver is such as will increase to me tenfold the satisfaction I shall have in receiving. You must not, however, strain any points to your own inconvenience or hurt; there is no need of it; but indulge yourself in communicating (no matter what) that you can spare without missing it, since by so doing you will be sure to add to the comforts of my life, one of the sweetest that I can enjoy -a token and a proof of your affection. At the same time that I would not grieve you by putting a check upon your bounty, I would be as careful not to abuse it, as if I were a miser, and the question were, not about your money but my

own.

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The happiest consequences resulted from the renewal of Cowper's correspondence with this accomplished and excellent lady. After an interchange of some of the most interesting letters that were ever written, she proposed at length to pay the sequestered poet a visit at Olney, and made arrangements accordingly. The following extracts from Cowper's letters to her on this occasion will be read with pleasure, as a faithful record of the delight he anticipated from this interview:-"I have been impatient to tell you, that I am impatient to see you again. Mrs. Unwin partakes with me in all my feelings. Let me assure you, that your kindness in promising us a visit, has charmed us both. I shall see you again, I shall hear your voice. We shall take walks together. I will show you my prospects-the hovel, the alcove, the Ouse, and its banks, everything that I have described. I anticipate the pleasure of those days not very far distant, and feel a part of it this moment. My dear, I will not let you come till the end of May or the beginning of June, because before that time my green-house will not be ready to receive us, and it is the only pleasant room belonging to us. When the plants go out, we go in. I line it with nets, and spread the floor with mats; and there you shall sit, with a bed of mignonette at your side, and a hedge of honeysuckles, roses, and jasmine; and I will make you a bouquet of myrtle every day. We now talk of nobody but you-what we will do with you when we get you, where you shall walk, where you shall sleep, in short everything that bears the remotest relation to your well-being at Olney occupies all our talking time, which is all that I do not spend at Troy. Mrs. Unwin has already secured for you an apartment, or rather two, just such as we could wish. The house in which you will find them is within thirty yards of our own, and opposite to it. The whole affair is thus commodiously adjusted; and now I have nothing to do but to wish for June; and June, my cousin, was never so wished for since June was made. I shall have a thousand things to hear, and a thousand to say, and they will all rush into my mind together, till it will be so crowded with things impatient to be said, that for some time I shall say nothing. But no matter-sooner or later they will all come out. After so long a separation, a separation, which of late seemed so likely to last for life, we shall meet each other as alive from the dead; and, for my own part, I can truly say, that I have not a friend in the other world whose resurrection would give me greater pleasure."

"If you will not quote Solomon, my dearest cousin, I will.

He says, and as beautifully as truly, 'Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life!' I feel how much reason he had on his side when he made this observation, and am myself really sick of your delay. Well, the middle of June will not always be a thousand years off; and when it comes, I shall hear you, and see you too, and shall not care a single farthing if you do not touch a pen for a month. From this very morning, 15th May, 1786, Î begin to date the last month of our long separation; and confidently, and most comfortably hope, that before the fifteenth of June shall present itself, we shall have seen each other. Is it not so? and will it not be one of the most extraordinary eras of my extraordinary life? A year ago we neither corresponded, nor expected to meet in this world. But this world is a scene of marvellous events, many of them more marvellous than fiction itself would dare to hazard; (blessed be God!) they are not all of the distressing kind. Now and then, in the course of an existence, whose hue is for the most part sable, a day turns up that makes amends for many sighs, and many subjects of complaint. Such a day shall I account the day of your arrival at Olney. Wherefore is it (canst thou tell me) that, together with all these delightful sensations, to which the sight of a long absent dear friend gives birth, there is a mixture of something painful, flutterings and tumults, and I know not what accompaniments of our pleasure, that are in fact perfectly foreign from the occasion? Such I feel when I think of our meeting, and such, I suppose, feel you; and the nearer the crisis approaches, the more I am sensible of them. I know beforehand that they will increase with every turn of the wheels that shall convey you to Olney; and when we actually meet, the pleasure, and this unaccountable pain together, will be as much as I shall be able to support. I am utterly at a loss for the cause, and can only resolve it into that appointment, by which it has been foreordained that all human delights shall be qualified and mingled with their contraries. But a fig for them all! Let us resolve to combat with, and to conquer them. They are dreams; they are illusions of the judgment. Some enemy that hates the happiness of human kind, and is ever industrious to dash, if he cannot destroy it, works them in us, and they being so perfectly unreasonable as they are, is a proof of it. Nothing that is such can be the work of a good agent. This I know too by experience, that, like all other illusions, they exist only by force of imagination, are indebted for their prevalence to the absence of their object, and in a few mo

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