most interesting subjects, releases me, however, from the disagreeable suspicion that I am addressing myself to you as the friend whom I loved and valued so highly in my better days, while in fact you are not that friend, but a stranger. I can now write to you without seeming to act a part, and without having any need to charge myself with dissimulation; a charge from which, in that state of mind and under such an uncomfortable persuasion, I knew not how to exculpate myself, and which, as you will easily conceive, not seldom made my correspondence with you a burthen. Still, indeed, it wants, and is likely to want, that best ingredient which can alone make it truly pleasant either to myself or you—that spirituality which once enlivened all our intercourse. You will tell me, no doubt, that the knowledge I have gained is an earnest of more and more valuable information, and that the dispersion of the clouds, in part, promises, in due time, their complete dispersion. I should be happy to believe it; but the power to do so is at present far from me. Never was the mind of man benighted to the degree that mine has been."

133. A Day at Chicheley.

One Monday in November of 1787, " Mrs. Throck carried" Cowper and Mrs. Unwin in her chaise to Chicheley, and Cowper spent his morning there so agreeably that it caused him very sensible regret that there were five miles of a dirty country interposed between him and the Chesters. "Now," said the poet

to Mrs. Chester, "I shall write boldly to your brother Walter, and will do it immediately. I have passed the gulf that parted us, and he will be glad to hear it."

"It seemed," he wrote to Lady Hesketh, "as if all the world was there to meet us, though in fact there was not above half of it, their own family, which is very numerous, excepted. The Bishop of Norwich was there, that is to say, the little Doctor Lewis Bagot, and his lady. She is handsome, and he in all respects what a bishop should be. Besides these, Mrs. Praed was there, and her sister, Miss Backwell. There might be many others, but if there were I overlooked them. 'Foresaid little Bishop and I had much talk about many things, but most about Homer. I have not room to particularize, and will therefore sum up the whole with observing, that both with respect to our ideas of the original, of Pope's translation, and of the sort of translation that is wanted, we were perfectly at an agreement. As to the house, it is handsome, so is the pleasure ground, and so are all the gardens, which are not less, I believe, than four in number. With respect to the family themselves, they are all amiable, and our visit was a very agreeable one."

Chicheley Hall, a handsome country house of red brick with stone dressings, was erected in 1715 by Sir John Chester, near the site of a former mansion, built by Anthony Cave (whose effigy in brass and large monumental altar-tomb may be seen in Chicheley Church) about 1550. One of the rooms on the second floor is wainscoted with oak panelling of a date antecedent to the rest of the house, and over the fireplace is a beam, on which is the following inscrip

tion :-" Cave ne Deum offendas, cave ne proximum lodas, cave ne tua negligentia familiam deseras, 1550." This wainscot doubtless formed part of Anthony Cave's mansion, and the date 1550 is probably that of its completion.

Among the treasures of Chicheley Hall is a manuscript entitled "The King's Answer to the Divines' Prayer concerning Religion "-probably an original composition of Charles I.

134.

The Mortuary Verses.-November,

1787.

On November 27 (1787) Cowper gives us the origin of his series of mortuary verses.

"On Monday morning last Sam brought me word that there was a man in the kitchen who desired to speak with me. I ordered him in. A plain, decent, elderly figure made its appearance, and, being desired to sit, spoke as follows: Sir, I am clerk of the parish of All Saints, in Northampton; brother of Mr. Cox, the upholsterer. It is customary for the person in my office to annex to a bill of mortality, which he publishes at Christmas, a copy of verses. You will do me a great favour, sir, if you would furnish me with one.' To this I replied, 'Mr. Cox, you have several men of genius in your town, why have you not applied to some of them? There is a namesake of yours in particular, Cox the statuary, who, everybody knows, is a first-rate maker of verses. He surely is the man

of all the world for your purpose.'

'Alas! sir, I have