ground were represented three hares. Above were the words, "The peasant's nest," and below, "Puss, Tiney, and Bess." There likewise came a pocket-book, "the completest that I ever saw," and a watch-chain, "the most brilliant." The desk had arrived on the 7th of December, and the snuff-box, &c., on the 24th of January, on which day twelve years previously Cowper had plunged into a melancholy that made him almost an infant. Of his desk he over and over again speaks in raptures. "My desk, the most elegant, the completest, the most commodious desk in the world, and of all the desks that are or ever shall be, the desk that I love the most. . . . How pleasant it is to write upon such a green bank!"

And again (to Lady Hesketh): "My desk is always pleasant, but never so pleasant as when I am writing to you. If I am not obliged to you for the thing itself, at least I am for your having decided the matter against me, and resolving that it should come spite of all my objections. Before it arrived Mrs. Unwin had spied out for it a place that exactly suits it. A certain fly-table in the corner of the room, which I had overlooked, affords it a convenient stand when it is not wanted, and it is easily transferred to a larger when it is." The fly-table here referred to is now in the possession of Mrs. Welton, of Olney, and the desk is among the treasures of Canon Cowper Johnson, Rector of Northwold.

In all probability Cowper's kind friend Anonymous was none other than his cousin and first love, Theodora, Lady Hesketh's sister. That it was not, as Cowper at first supposed, his uncle Ashley is certain, for the

poet received money from Anonymous after Ashley's death. (See to Hesketh, July 11, 1788.)

That Lady Hesketh knew who Cowper's secret friend was may be gathered from his letter of December 19, 1787: "By the post of yesterday," he says to Lady Hesketh, "I received a letter from Anonymous, giving me advice of the kind present which I have just particularized, in which letter allusion is made to a certain piece by me composed, entitled, I believe, the 'Drop of Ink.' The only copy I ever gave of that piece I gave to yourself. Is it possible, therefore, that between you and Anonymous there may be some communication?"

Having discovered that Lady Hesketh and Anonymous were acquainted with each other, Cowper henceforth, whenever he received any presents from his unknown friend, wrote and thanked Lady Hesketh for them, constituting her, to use his own expression, << my Thanks-receiver-general." Lady Hesketh, be it mentioned, had assured Cowper that she herself was not Anonymous."

118. At the End of the Iliad.—January, 1786.

Up till now Cowper had apprized no one of the work he was engaged upon except Mrs. Unwin and her son, but on November 9, 1785, he breaks the news to Lady Hesketh: "It is a secret, a great secret," he says, that she must not whisper even to her cat. "I am making a new translation of Homer, and am on the point of finishing the twenty-first book

of Iliad." He writes to Unwin on October 22 (1785): "I am now in the twentieth book of Homer, and shall assuredly proceed, because the further I go the more I find myself justified in the undertaking; and in due time, if I live, shall assuredly publish. In the whole I shall have composed about forty thousand verses, about which forty thousand verses I shall have taken great pains, on no occasion suffering a slovenly line to escape me. I leave you to guess, therefore, whether, such a labour once achieved, I shall not determine to turn it to some account, and to gain myself profit if I can, if not at least some credit for my reward."

In a letter to the Gentleman's Magazine (August, 1785) Cowper had criticized Pope's translation, and showed how greatly Homer had suffered "in the English representation that we have of him. Some. times his sense is suppressed, sometimes other sense is obtruded upon him; rhyme gives the word, a miserable transformation ensues; instead of Homer in the graceful habit of his age and nation, we have Homer in a strait-waistcoat." Upon many occasions," says Cowper, "Pope has given an interpretation of whole passages utterly beside their meaning." The letter was signed "Alethes."

Cowper thus defends his plan of publishing by subscription: "A subscription," he says (January 10, 1786), "is surely on every account the most eligible mode of publication. When I shall have emptied the purses of my friends and of their friends into my own, I am still free to levy contributions upon the world at large, and I shall then have a fund to defray the expenses of a new edition."

As on former occasions, Joseph Johnson was to be the publisher. "He wishes me," the poet tells Unwin (December 31, 1785), " to be a gainer by my laboursin his own words, 'to put something handsome into my pocket,' and recommends two large quartos for the whole. He would not, he says, by any means advise an extravagant price, and has fixed it at three guineas, the half, as usual, to be paid at the time of subscribing, the remainder on delivery. Five hundred names, he adds, at this price will put above a thousand pounds into my purse.

In order to obtain plenty of subscribers Cowper 'gulped and swallowed," and wrote again to Thurlow and Colman. He was uncertain even whether or not to try Martin Madan, whom he had attacked in Anti-Thelyphthora," but eventually decided not to. In respect to the two first, "I now," says Cowper, "bring them both to a fair test. They can both serve me most materially if so disposed." The result was that Colman wrote in reply "the most affectionate letter imaginable," and the name of Thurlow was ultimately placed on the subscription list.

In January (1786), having got to the end of the Iliad, Cowper now decided to translate the Odyssey also, and not only so, but to give notice of the same to the public. He says (February 18, 1786): "My reason for giving notice of an Odyssey as well as an Iliad was this: I feared that the public, being left to doubt whether I should ever translate the former, would be unwilling to treat with me for the latter, which they would be apt to consider as an odd volume, and unworthy to stand upon their shelves alone. It

is hardly probable, however, that I should begin the Odyssey for some months to come, being now closely engaged in the revisal of my translation of the Iliad, which I compare as I go most minutely with the original. One of the great defects of Pope's translation is that it is licentious. To publish, therefore, a translation now that should be at all chargeable with the same fault, that were not indeed as close and as faithful as possible, would be only actum agere, and had therefore better be left undone. Whatever be said of mine when it shall appear, it shall never be said that it is not faithful."

Though Cowper had reached the end of the Iliad, however, he had by no means finished it. “I told you," he says to Bagot, on May 20, 1786, "that I had almost finished the translation of the Iliad, and I verily thought so. But I was never more mistaken. By the time when I had reached the end of the poem the first book of my version was a twelvemonth old. When I came to consider it after having laid it by so long it did not satisfy me. I set myself to mend it, and I did so; but still it appeared to me improvable, and that nothing would so effectually secure that point as to give the whole book a new translation. With the exception of a very few lines I have so done, and was never in my life so convinced of the soundness of Horace's advice, to publish nothing in haste, so much advantage have I derived from doing that twice which I thought I had accomplished notably at once."