"spic and span." On one occasion, having sent him a couple of "spic and span new pieces," she observes that Mr. Higgins's" drawing is framed and glazed, and the execution of it is much admired by all who have seen it." Lady Hesketh, who had also been the recipient of Mr. Higgins's favours, on one occasion (June, 1791), presented the young artist with a "perfectly elegant waistcoat. "It is a miserable return for his beautiful drawings," she observes to Cowper, "but he must consider it as the widow's mite. Pray tell him his performances are approved by everybody People regret that he is born to affluence, since it threatens to deprive the world of such a genius." It is owing to the pencil of Mr. Higgins that we possess pictures of Weston Hall. Just before its demolition in 1828 he made drawings of each of its four sides. In Turvey Abbey, to which Mr. Higgins removed on the death of his uncle Charles in 1793, may still be seen two relics of Cowper-namely, the poet's silver shoe-buckles, and the chest of drawers in which "The Retired Cat" ensconced herself. Mr. Higgins likewise preserved several anecdotes of the poet, which the late Dean Burgeon (brother of the present Mrs. Higgins, of Turvey Abbey) has encrusted in his "Lives of Twelve Good Men." The great charm of the social gatherings at Weston Hall was the table-talk, to which, of course, Cowper was ever the chief contributor. "We dined yesterday at the Hall" (he writes to Lady Hesketh) "and spent our four or five hours there very agreeably, as we always do, except when the company is too large for conversation." To quote Dean Burgeon: "It was

To

'The dinner-hour of those days was three o'clock.

not so much what Cowper said, as the way he said it— his manner of relating an ordinary incident-which charmed his auditory, or convulsed them with merriment. Moreover, they knew that something delightful was coming before it came. His eye would suddenly kindle, and all his face become lighted up with the fun of the story, before he opened his lips to speak. At ast he began to relate some ludicrous incident-which although you had yourself witnessed it, you had failed to recognize as mirthful. A bull had frightened him, and caused him to clear a hedge with undue precipitancy. His shorts' became seriously lacerated; and the consternation with which their modest occupant had effected his retreat home-holding his garments together in order that his calamity might escape detection-was made extravagantly diverting."

This may have been the animal that forms the subject of one of Cowper's minor poems, "On a mischievous bull, which the owner of him sold at the author's instance." After expressing a trifle of pity for the creature whose fate it is to be exiled from the pleasant fields of Weston, the poet suddenly remembers that his late foe was conspicuously wanting in appreciation for nature, and breaks forth :

"But thou canst taste no calm delight;

Thy pleasure is to show

Thy magnanimity in fight,

Thy prowess, therefore, go!

"I care not whether east or north,

So I no more may find thee;

The angry muse thus sings thee forth,

And claps the gate behind thee."

Of another creature that spoilt the pleasure of his

walks Cowper himself makes mention in a letter to "Mrs. Frog." After telling her that the rabbit that infested the Wilderness and devoured her carnations had been shot, he says: "I myself have been in some danger of being devoured in like manner by a great dog -viz., Pearson's. But I wrote him a letter on Friday (I mean a letter to Pearson, not to the dog, which I mention to prevent mistakes) informing him that, unless he tied up his great mastiff in the daytime, I would send him a worse thing, commonly called and known by the name of an attorney. When I go forth to ramble in the fields I do not sally (like Don Quixote) with a purpose of encountering monsters, if any such can be found; but am a peaceable, poor gentleman, and a poet, who mean nobody any harm, the fox-hunters and the two universities of this land excepted."

To have recourse again to Dean Burgeon: "Once in the grey of the evening, whilst adjusting his shoebuckle on the step of a stile, the village post-woman advanced towards him, and on reaching the stile, little dreaming who was behind it and what he was about, inadvertently planted the sole of her foot on the back of the poet's head. He, as little dreaming who was overhead, tossing up suddenly, seemed to himself to have caused the astonished female to make a kind of rotatory somersault in the air. The fun of such described adventures of course depended in part on your knowledge of the persons and of the localities discoursed of; but, above all, it resulted from the playful humour-call it rather wit-which was at all times prepared to construct out of the slenderest materials an amusing incident. So ready and so graceful, in fact, was the poet's fancy that

he knew how to make an amusing story out of nothing."

In Turvey Abbey is preserved a chair furnished with three wheels that had formerly belonged to the Throckmortons. In connection with it Mr. Higgins "used to describe the poet's comical distress at finding himself on a certain occasion (like his own John Gilpin ') taking a longer journey than he intended. A merry party of young people, having first set open the doors of every passage-room in Weston Hall, persuaded Cowper to seat himself comfortably in the aforesaid chair; and then, paying no manner of attention to his urgent entreaties that they would stop, whirled him in triumph and in laughter up and down the whole length of the mansion."

The beautiful and well-known epitaphs, by Cowper, to the mother and father of Mr. John Higgins are in Weston Church.

131. Mr. Churchey and Samuel Rose.

Towards the end of 1786 a letter was received from a Mr. William Churchey, attorney-at-law, of Hay, Breconshire, who sent some verses with the request that Cowper would revise them, and who wanted advice whether to publish or not, inquiring

"Say shall my little bark attendant sail,

Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale?"

In reply, Cowper congratulated him on the possession of a poetical talent with which he might always amuse himself when fatigued with the weightier matters of

the law; and, as to publication, recommended it to him by all means, as the principal incentive to exertion. "Publication," he said, "is necessary to give an edge to the poetical turn, and what we produce in the closet is never a vigorous birth if we intend that it should die there." But though Cowper answered this letter with courtesy and kindness, he hoped the Welshman would trouble him no more-a wish that was not fulfilled, for the attorney several times after crossed Cowper's path. But this letter was not the only inconvenience or embarrassment that resulted from the poet's fame. Odes were composed to his honour, though he was not always gratified with the sight of them. But he was at least "tickled with some douceurs of a very flattering nature by post." A lady unknown addressed him as the "best of men ; an unknown gentleman, who had read his inimitable poems, invited him to his seat in Hampshire, and another incognito gave him hopes of a memorial in his garden. All these attentions, Cowper pretended, could have only one result. "If you find me a little vain hereafter," he tells Bagot, "you must excuse it, in consideration of these powerful incentives, especially the latter; for surely the poet who can charm an attorney, especially a Welsh one, must be at least an Orpheus, if not something greater."

On January 18, 1787, Cowper received his first visit from a young man, who afterwards became a very close friend, one who was to take the place of Unwin. in his affections. When Lady Austen departed there had appeared Mr. Throckmorton, and what he lost in Unwin he was now to find in Rose.