Early in the ensuing spring, Lady Hesketh was compelled to return to town. Mrs. Unwin had not then wholly recovered her strength; she was, however, so far convalescent, as to resume the management of her domestic concerns, and to pay the same kind attention to the poet's comfort as had distinguished all her former conduct towards him. The greater part of the year 1789, Cowper was incessantly engaged, principally in translating Homer; but occasionally, and indeed frequently, in composing original poems for the gratification of his friends, or in the more difficult employment of revising the productions of less gifted poets. The few letters he wrote at this time abound with apologies for his seeming negligence, and with descriptions of the manner in which he employed his time. To one of his correspondents he thus writes: "I know that you are too reasonable a man to expect anything like punctuality of correspondence from a translator of Homer, especially from one who is a doer also of many other things at the same time; for I labour hard, not only to acquire a little fame for myself, but to win it for others, men of whom I know nothing, not even their names, who send me their poetry, that by translating it out of prose into verse, I may make it more like poetry than it was. I begin 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. I feel myself in no small degree unworthy of the kind solicitude which you express concerning me and my welfare, after a silence so much longer than you had reason to expect. I should indeed account myself inexcusable, had I not to allege in my defence, perpetual engagements of such a kind as could by no means be dispensed with. Had Homer alone been in question, Homer should have made room for you; but I have had other work in hand at the same time, equally pressing and more laborious. Let it suffice to say, that I have not wilfully neglected you for a moment, and that you have never been out of my thoughts a day together. Having heard all this, you will feel yourself disposed not only to pardon my long silence, but to pity me for the causes of it. You may, if you please, believe likewise, for it is true, that I have a faculty of remembering my friends even when I do not write to them, and of loving them not one jot the less, though I leave them to starve for want of a letter from me."

In a letter to Mr. Newton, 16th August, 1789, Cowper thus describes the situation in which he was then placed, and the state of his mind at the time: "Mrs. Newton and

you are both kind and just in believing that I do not love you the less when I am long silent; perhaps a friend of mine who wishes to be always in my thoughts, is never so effectually possessed of the accomplishment of that wish, as when I have been long his debtor; for then I think of him, not only every day, but day and night; and indeed all day long. But I confess at the same time that my thoughts of you will be more pleasant to myself, when I shall have exonerated my conscience by giving you the letter, so long your due. Therefore, here it comes,-little worth your having, but payment such as it is, that you have a right to expect, and that is essential to my own tranquillity. That the Iliad and the Odyssey should have proved the occasion of my suspending my correspondence with you, is a proof how little we see the consequences of what we publish. Homer, I dare say, hardly at all suspected, that at the fag end of time, two personages would appear, one ycleped, Sir Newton, and the other Sir Cowper, who loving each other heartily, would nevertheless suffer the pains of an interrupted intercourse,his poems the cause. So, however, it has happened; and though it would not, I suppose, extort from the old bard a single sigh, if he knew it, yet to me it suggests the serious reflection above mentioned. An author by profession had need narrowly to watch his pen, lest a line should escape it, which by possibility may do mischief, when he has been long dead and buried. What we have done when we have written a book, will never be known till the day of judgment: then the account will be liquidated, and all the good that it has occasioned, and all the evil, will witness, either for or against us. I am now in the last book of the Odyssey, yet have still I suppose, half a year's work before me. curate revisal of two such voluminous poems can hardly cost me less. I rejoice, however, that the goal is in prospect; for though it has cost me years to run this race, it is only now that I begin to have a glimpse of its termination. That I shall never receive any proportionable pecuniary recompense for my long labours, is pretty certain; and as to any fame that I may possibly gain by it, that is a commodity that daily sinks in value, in measure as the consummation of all things approaches. In the day when the lion shall dandle the kid, and a little child shall lead them, the world will have lost all relish for the fabulous legends of antiquity, and Homer and his translator may budge off the stage together."

The ac

Some months afterwards, to the same correspondent Cowper thus writes: "On this fine first of December, under an

unclouded sky, and in a room full of sunshine, I address myself to the payment of a debt, long in arrear, but never forgotton by me, however I may have seemed to forget it. I will not waste time in apologies; I have but one, and that one will suggest itself unmentioned. I will only add that you are the first to whom I write, of several to whom I have not written many months, who all have claims upon me; and who, I flatter myself, are all grumbling at my silence. In your case, perhaps I have been less anxious than in the case of some others; because, if you have not heard from myself, you have heard from Mrs. Unwin. From her you have learned that I live, that I am as well as usual, and that I translate Homer: three short items, but in which is comprised the whole detail of my present history. Thus I fared when you were here; thus I have fared ever since you were here; and thus, if it please God, I shall continue to fare for some time longer for, though the work is done, it is not finished; a riddle which you, who are a brother of the press, will solve easily. I have been the less anxious on your behalf, because I have had frequent opportunities to hear from you; and have always heard that you are in good health, and happy. Of Mrs. Newton too, I have heard more favourable accounts of late, which has given us both the sincerest pleasure. Mrs. Unwin's case is, at present, my only subject of uneasiness, that is not immediately personal, and properly my own. She has almost constant head-aches; almost a constant pain in her side, which nobody understands; and her lameness, within the last half year, is very little amended. But her spirits are good, because supported by comforts which depend not on the state of the body; and I do not know that with all her pain, her appearance is at all altered, since we had the happiness to see you here, unless indeed it be altered a little for the better. I have thus given you as circumstantial an account of ourselves as I could: the most interesting matter, I verily believe, with which I could have filled my paper, unless I could have made spiritual mercies to myself the subject. In my next perhaps I shall find time to bestow a few lines on what is doing in France, and in the Austrian Netherlands; though, to say the truth, I am much better qualified to write an essay on the seige of Troy, than to descant on any of these modern revolutions. I question if, in either of the countries just mentioned, full of bustle and tumult as they are, there be a single character, whom Homer, were he living, would deign to make his hero. The populace

are the heroes now, and the stuff of which gentlemen heroes are made, seems to be all expended."

The year 1790, found Cowper still indefatigably engaged in preparing his translation for the press. In a letter to Mrs. King, 4th January, he thus writes: "Your long silence has occasioned me a thousand anxious thoughts about you. So long it has been, that whether I now write to a Mrs. King at present on earth, or already in heaven, I know not. I have friends whose silence troubles me less, though I have known them longer; because, if I hear not from themselves, I yet hear from others, that they are still living, and likely to live. But if your letters cease to bring me news of your welfare, from whom can I gain the desirable intelligence? The birds of the air will not bring it, and third, person there is none between us by whom it might be conveyed. Nothing is plain to me in this subject, but that either you are dead, or very much indisposed, or which would perhaps affect me with as deep a concern, though of a different kind, very much offended. The latter of those suppositions I think the least probable, conscious as I am of an habitual desire to offend nobody, especially a lady, and a lady too who has laid me under so many obligations. But all the three solutions above mentioned are very uncomfortable; and if you live, and can send me one that will cause me less pain than either of them, I conjure you by the charity and benevolence which I know influence you on all occasions, to communicate it without delay. It is possible, notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, that you are not become perfectly indifferent to me, and to what concerns me. I will therefore add a word or two on the subject which once interested you, and which is, for that reason, worthy to be mentioned, though truly for no other. I am well, and have been so (uneasiness on your part excepted) both in mind and body ever since I wrote to you last. I have still the same employment; Homer in the morning, and Homer in the evening, as constant as the day goes round. In the spring I hope to send the Iliad and the Odyssey to the press. So much for me and my occupations."

It would scarcely be supposed that a person performing such an Herculean task as that of translating Homer, would have troubled himself to compose, or even to revise, a volume of hymns for children. The following extract, however, will show that, anxious as Cowper was to finish his Homer, he could nevertheless, allow his attention to be, in a great mea sure, diverted from it, at least for a time, when he thought he could employ his talents usefully. "I have long been silent,

but you have had the charity, I hope, and believe, not to ascribe my silence to a wrong cause. The truth is, I have

been too busy to write to any body, having been obliged to give my early mornings to the revisal and correction of a little volume of hymns for children, written, by I know not whom; this task I finished yesterday, and while it was in hand, wrote only to my cousin, and to her rarely. From her, however, I knew that you would hear of my well being, which made me less anxious about my debts to you than I could have been otherwise. The winter has been mild; but our winters are in general such, that when a friend leaves us in the beginning of that season, I always feel in my heart a perhaps, importing that we may possibly have met for the last time, and that the robins may whistle on the grave of one of us before the return of summer. Though I have been employed as described above, I am still thrumming Homer's lyre; that is to say, I am still employed in my last revisal; and to give you some idea of the intenseness of my toils, I will inform you that it cost me all the morning yesterday, and all the evening, to translate a single simile to my mind. The transitions from one member of the subject to another, though easy and natural in the Greek, turn out often so intolerably awkward in an English version, that almost endless labour, and no little address, are requisite to give them grace and elegance. The under parts of the poem, (those, I mean, which are merely narrative,) I find the most difficult. These can only be supported by the diction, and on these, for that reason, I have bestowed the most abundant labour. Fine similes, and fine speeches, are more likely to take care of themselves; but the exact process of slaying a sheep and dressing it, is not so easy in our language, and in our measure to dignify. But I shall have the comfort, as I before said, to reflect, that whatever may be hereafter laid to my charge, the sin of idleness will not,—justly, at least it never will. In the mean time, I must be allowed to say, that not to fall short of the original in everything, is impossible. I thank you for your German clavis, which has been of considerable use to me; I am indebted to it for a right understanding of the manner in which Achilles prepared pork, mutton, and goats' flesh, for the entertainment of his friends, on the night when they came deputed by Agamemnon to negotiate a reconciliation. A passage of which nobody in the world is perfectly master, myself only, and Schaulfelbergerus excepted, nor ever was, except when Greek was a living language."