a walk. I had liked to have called on you yesterday morning to tell you that I had become your near neighbour. I live at Mr. Socket's.' I answered, without

looking at him, as dryly as possible, 'Are you come to stay any time in the country?' He believed he was. Which way,' I replied, are you going? to Olney? 'Yes.' 'I am going to Mr. Throckmorton's garden, and I wish you good day, sir.' I was in fact going to Olney myself, but this rencontre gave me such a violent twist another way that I found it impossible to recover that direction, and accordingly there we parted. All this I related at the Hall the next time we dined there, describing also my apprehensions and distress lest, whether I would or not, I should be obliged to have intercourse with a man to me so perfectly disagreeable. A good deal of laugh and merriment ensued, and there for that time it ended. The following Sunday, in the evening, I received a note to this purport: Mr. Canniford's compliments,' &c. Understanding that

my friends at the Hall were to dine with me the next day, he took the liberty to invite himself to eat a bit of mutton with me, being sure that I should be happy to introduce him. Having read this note, I threw it to Mrs. Unwin. There,' said I, 'take that and read it; then tell me if it be not an effort of impudence the most extraordinary you ever heard of.' I expected some such push from the man; I knew he was equal to it. She read it, and we were both of a mind. I sat down to my desk, and with a good deal of emotion gave it just such an answer as it would have deserved had it been genuine. But having heard by accident in the morning that he spells his name with a C, and observing

in the note that it was spelt with a K, a suspicion struck me that it was a fiction. I looked at it more attentively and perceived that it was directed by Mrs. Throck. The inside I found afterwards was written by her brother George. This served us with another laugh on the subject, and I have hardly seen, and never spoken to, Mr. Canniford since."

We have mentioned that Mr. Throckmorton allowed Cowper the run of his library, and gave him the key of his garden, but these were by no means the only privileges accorded. Cowper names one other in his letter of September 20, 1787: "Know also that when we found ourselves disposed to stew or to pot, we have an abundant supply of pigeons for those purposes from our neighbour's dove-cote, Mrs. Throck having given us the use of it at discretion."

Early in 1788 an accident occurred to Mrs. Unwin that might have proved serious. Says Cowper on the 21st of January :-" Providence interposed to preserve me from the heaviest affliction that I can now suffer, or I had lately lost Mrs. Unwin, and in a way the most shocking imaginable. Having kindled her fire in the room where she dresses (an office that she always performs for herself), she placed the candle on the hearth, and, kneeling, addressed herself to her devotions. A thought struck her, while thus occupied, that the candle being short might possibly catch her clothes. She pinched it out with the tongs, and set it on the table. In a few minutes the chamber was so filled with smoke, that her eyes watered, and it was hardly possible to see across it. Supposing that it proceeded from the chimney, she pushed the. billets backward, and,

while she did so, casting her eye downward, perceived that her dress was on fire. In fact before she extinguished the candle the mischief that she apprehended was begun; and when she related the matter to me she showed me her clothes with a hole burnt in them as large as this sheet of paper. It is not possible, perhaps, that so tragical a death should overtake a person actually engaged in prayer, for her escape seems almost a miracle. Her presence of mind, by which she was enabled, without calling for help or waiting for it, to gather up her clothes and plunge them, burning as they were, in water, seems as wonderful a part of the occurrence as any."

137. The Drolleries of Cowper's Letters.

Cowper was often brimming with fun. Several of his letters are from beginning to end splendid specimens of sustained humour, and indeed in almost every letter, except when he was in his darkest moods, there are small drolleries of one kind or another.

One amusing habit of his was dropping into Hudibrastic rhyme in all sorts of unexpected places. For example, he commences one letter with

"A noble theme demands a noble verse,
In such I thank you for your fine oysters."

One of his letters to Newton is from

"Your humble me,

W. C."

Another to the same gentleman winds up

"I nothing add but this-that still I am

Your most affectionate and humble

with

William."

The letter to Unwin of June 12, 1782, ends with

"We send you a cheese,

In hopes it will please :
If so, your mother

Will send you another."

The various commissions that Cowper charged his friends with are put just as oddly. To Unwin, March 21, 1784, he says :-"Your mother wishes you to buy for her ten yards and a half of yard-wide Irish, from two shillings to two shillings and sixpence per yard; and my head will be equally obliged to you for a hat, of which I enclose a string that gives you the circumference. The depth of the crown must be four inches and one-eighth. Let it not be a round slouch, which I abhor, but a smart, well-cocked, fashionable affair. A fashionable hat likewise for your mother; a black one if they are worn, otherwise chip."

He writes on December 19, 1781 :

"Mrs. Unwin sends her love, and will be much obliged to Mrs. Newton if she will order her down a loaf of sugar, from nine pence to ten pence the pound, for the use of my sweet self at breakfast."

He says on March 14, 1782, to Newton :

"We return you many thanks, in the first place for a pot of scallops excellently pickled, and in the second for the snuff-box. We admired it, even when we sup

posed the price of it two guineas; guess, then, with what raptures we contemplated it when we found that it cost but one. It was genteel before, but then it became a perfect model of elegance, and worthy to be the desire of all noses."

To Lady Hesketh, December 10, 1787, he says:—

"I thank you for the snip of cloth, commonly called a pattern. At present I have two coats, and but one back. If at any time, hereafter, I should find myself possessed of fewer coats, or more backs, it will be of

use to me."

He tells that lady on July 11, 1791: “Our affectionate hearts all lay themselves at your pettitoes; " and the letter to her of September 9, 1787, winds up with"I have a perpetual din in my head, and, though I am not deaf, hear nothing aright, neither my own voice nor that of others. I am under a tub, from which tub accept my best love."