writes to them: "I shall expect to hear from you soon whether Mrs. Unwin pitches upon Olney or Emberton. I hope it will be the former; but if the latter, you will not be far from us, and I shall try to see her, if the weather or roads should confine her from being constantly amongst us." This letter seems to have decided them, for at their request Mr. Newton engaged the house in the market-place at Olney called "Orchard Side," the one now called " Cowper's House," and arranged that until it should be ready for their reception they should take up their abode with him.

Cowper, Mrs. Unwin, and Miss Unwin removed to Olney on September 14, 1767.

42. Cooper or Cowper?

In previous chapters several references have been made to the Rev. Abraham Maddock, and Cowper being at this time not infrequently in the company of that gentleman, the present seems a convenient place to deal with that vexed question, the pronunciation of the poet's name. Mr. Maddock's first reference to the poet is dated November 16, 1766, and commences as follows:-"This day Mr. Madan came and brought Mr. Cooper (notice the spelling)—of Huntingdon, a relation of his, with him." The second reference is August 27, 1768" Mr. Newton came with Mr. Cowper-(notice the altered spelling)—and preached my lecture from Rom. vi. 14." In the third reference to the poet, March 29, 1769, Mr. Maddock commences" Mr. Newton and Mr. Cowper came from Olney...." And in the fourth reference, May 22,

1770, the name is also spelt Cowper. Thus we see that in the first entry Mr. Maddock spelt the name. Cooper, but in subsequent entries, when he came to be more intimate with the poet, he spelt the name correctly. In the first instance he doubtless spelt it as he heard it pronounced. It is a noteworthy fact, too, that the Rev. John Newton did exactly the same thing. In his early letters to the poet at Huntingdon Mr. Newton spelt the word Cooper; later on it is always Cowper. May we not assume that Newton, like Maddock, was at first misled by the pronunciation?

That not only Cowper pronounced his name Cooper, but that the public in time gone by pronounced it so too, is evidenced by the answer given in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1806 to Cowper's riddle which commenced, "I am just two and two." The answer

began :

"A riddle by Cowper

Made me swear like a trooper."

Again, in a copy of Cowper's poems in the possession of the Rev. J. Tarver, of Filgrave (near Olney), is a slip of paper with the rubbing of a seal showing three hoops, and the following note in manuscript by the Rev. Josiah Bull:-"The above seal was from one of the following letters. By a singular accident the two noble families of Shaftesbury and Cowper changed their arms-the Shaftesbury family having three cows and Cowper family three hoops. This fact was once mentioned by the poet to his friend the Rev. W. Bull, from whom I heard it, and it is a curious circumstance that in pronouncing his own name Mr. Cowper always adhered to the arms and not to the spelling, calling himself Cooper and not Cowper.-J. P. B(ull)."

BOOK II.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE INSEPARABLE FRIENDS, OR, FROM COWPER'S ARRIVAL IN OLNEY TO THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRD DE

RANGEMENT.

(Oct., 1767-Jan., 1773)

43. Olney in the Time of Cowper.

T

HE town of Olney, in which Cowper had now settled, and which, owing to his connection

with it, was to get to itself no little fame, consisted, and still consists, of one long, broad street, widening southward into a spacious triangular marketplace, on the south side of which stands the large redbricked house with stone dressings, sometimes called Orchard Side, which was to be for nineteen years the poet's home. The most conspicuous object in the town is the church with its tall steeple, and the most noticeable feature of the surrounding country is the River Ouse, that winds tortuously through the level meadows. The villages of Emberton, Weston Underwood, Clifton, and Lavendon lie respectively south, west, east, and north, at distances of a mile and a mile and a half; all of them more or less associated with