"my beloved cousin, for I am determined that, whatsoever king shall reign, you shall be Vicar of Olney."

Cowper's spirits had for months risen amazingly, owing in great measure to the renewal of his intercourse with his cousin, but the pleasure of looking forward to her arrival did him even more good, and, to use his own expression, "Mr. Blue-devil" had taken his departure. He buoyed himself up, moreover, with the hope that the primal cause of his dejection would some day be removed.

The poet thus describes the house that had been bespoken for his cousin :

"It is a smart stone building, well sashed, by much too good for the living, but just what I would wish for you. It has, as you justly concluded from my premises, a garden, but rather calculated for use than ornament. It is square, and well walled, but has neither arbour nor alcove, nor other shade, except the shadow of the house. But we have two gardens, which are yours. Between your mansion and ours is interposed nothing but an orchard, into which a door, opening out of our garden, affords us the easiest communication imaginable, will save the round about by the town, and make both houses one. Your chamber-windows look over the river, and over the meadows, to a village called Emberton, and command the whole length of a long bridge, described by a certain poet, together with a view of the road at a distance."

There was nothing to do now but calmly wait till June. But the coming event monopolized almost all his thoughts, and tinged both his conversation and letters. He tells Newton (April 1st):

"It has pleased God that I should, like Joseph, be put into a well, and, because there are no Midianites in the way to deliver me, therefore my friends are coming down into the well to see me."

By the end of May he had begun to get impatient, and he told his cousin how he longed to show her his summer-house.

I

"I long to show you my workshop, and to see you sitting on the opposite side of my table. table. We shall be as close packed as two wax figures in an old-fashioned picture-frame. I am writing in it now. It is the place in which I fabricate all my verse in summer time. rose an hour sooner than usual this morning that I might finish my sheet before breakfast, for I must write this day to the General. The grass under my windows is all bespangled with dew-drops, and the birds are singing in the apple-trees, among the blossoms. Never poet had a more commodious oratory in which to invoke his muse."

Fearful lest, having arrived as far as Newport, Lady Hesketh, who brought her own horses and carriage, might take the wrong turn, Cowper resolved to draft into her service his gardener, Kitchener, whom for brevity he called Kitch.

"He is sober, and as trusty as the day. He has a smart blue coat, that, when I had worn it some years, I gave him, and he has now worn it some years himself. I shall set him on horseback, and order him to the 'Swan' at Newport, there to wait your arrival, and if you should not stop at that place, as perhaps you may not, immediately to throw himself into your suite, and to officiate as your guide. . . . The first man, therefore,

As

Cowper was now fty-four years of age. Cn. November & 1-ig, a few days before his birthday, he had giver his cousin some account of his appearance. for me," he says, "I a very smart youth of my years; I am not indeed grown grey so mact as I am grows baid. No matter; there was more hair in the world than ever had the honour to belong to me. Accordingy, having found fast enough to curl a little at my ears, and to intermix with a little of my own that still bangs behind, I appear, if you see me in an afternoon, to have a very decent head-dress, not easily distinguished from my natural growth which being worn with a small bag, and a black ribbon about my neck, continues to me the charms of my youth, even on the verge of age.” And he puts as a postscript: "That the view I give you of myself may be complete, I add the two following items: That I am in debt to nobody, and that I grow fat."

According to Hayley, who became acquainted with him a few years later, Cowper was of a middle stature, rather strong than delicate in the form of his limbs; the colour of his hair was of a light brown, that of his eyes a bluish grey, and his complexion was ruddy.

Being often wrapped in thought-though, unfor

tunately, the thoughts that engaged him were often dark and despairing ones-Cowper, like some other men of letters, was occasionally inattentive to the ordinary concerns of life. He tells us (March 19 1784) that his silence and his absence of mind made him "sometimes as entertaining as if he had wit. They furnish an occasion for friendly and goodnatured raillery; they raise a laugh, and I partake of it."

There is a passage in one of Cowper's letters written about this time (May 15, 1786), that brings out a feature in his character that we do not usually give him credit for. He says:

"I am not ashamed to confess that, having commenced an author, I am most abundantly desirous to succeed as such. I have (what perhaps you little suspect me of) in my nature an infinite share of ambition. But with it I have, at the same time, as you well know, an equal share of diffidence: To this combination of opposite qualities it has been owing that, till lately, I stole through life without undertaking anything, yet always wishing to distinguish myself. At last I ventured, ventured too in the only path that, at so late a period, was yet open to me; and am determined, if God have not determined otherwise, to work my way, through the obscurity that has been so long my portion, into notice."

As a companion to the foregoing account of Cowper, we have an excellent picture of Mrs. Unwin about the same time. Writing to her sister Theodora, shortly after her arrival in Olney, Lady Hesketh says (June, 1786):

"She is very far from grave; on the contrary, she is cheerful and gay, and laughs de bon caur upon the smallest provocation. Amidst all the little Puritanical words, which fall from her de temps en temps, she seems to have by nature a great fund of gaiety-great, indeed, must it have been, not to have been totally overcome by the close confinement in which she has lived, and the anxiety she must have undergone for one whom she certainly loves as well as one human being can love another. I will not say she idolizes him, because that she would think wrong, but she certainly seems to possess the truest regard and affection for this excellent creature, and, as I before said, has, in the most literal sense of those words, no will, or shadow of inclination, but what is his. My account of Mrs. Unwin may seem, perhaps, to you, on comparing my letters, contradictory; but when you consider that I began to write at the moment, and at the first moment that I saw her, you will not wonder. Her character develops itself by degrees; and though I might lead you to suppose her grave and melancholy, she is not so by any means. When she speaks upon grave subjects she does express herself with a Puritanical tone, and in Puritanical expressions, but on all other subjects she seems to have a great disposition to cheerfulness and mirth; and, indeed, had she not, she could not have gone through all she has. I must say, too, that she seems to be very well read in the English poets, as appears by several little quotations which she makes from time to time, and has a true taste for what is excellent in that way. There is something truly affectionate and sincere in her manner. No one can