CHAPTER XVIII.

"JOHNNY OF NORFOLK;" OR, FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF MR. JOHN JOHNSON TO THE COMPLETION OF HOMER.

I

(January 22, 1790-September 8, 1790.)

153. Catharina.—January, 1790.

N his letter to Mrs. King of January 18, 1790,

Cowper refers to his piece called "Catharina,"

written apparently in the autumn of the preceding year. Miss Stapleton, the heroine of the verses, had been on a visit to the Throckmortons, and about this time was engaged to George Courtenay, Esq., Mr. Throckmorton's brother. The opening verses are very pretty :

"She came-she is gone-we have met

And meet perhaps never again;

The sun of that moment is set,
And seems to have risen in vain.
Catharina has fled like a dream-
(So vanishes pleasure, alas !)
But has left a regret and esteem,
That will not so suddenly pass.

The last ev'ning ramble we made,
Catharina, Maria, and I,

Our progress was often delay'd
By the nightingale warbling nigh.

We paus'd under many a tree,

And much she was charm'd with a tone,
Less sweet to Maria and me,

Who so lately had witness'd her own."

Maria, of course, was Mrs. John Throckmorton. The poet then goes on to mention Catharina's preference for the country, trusts that in the country she may therefore pass her days, and that the particular part in which she may pass them may be Weston. In other words, he cherished the hope, and ventured on the prophecy, that Miss Stapleton would ere long be Mrs. George Throckmorton; and there was every probability that the prophecy would be fulfilled, for his new friend came to Weston again and again. "The Hall has been full of company," he writes to Johnson (October 31, 1791), "ever since you went, and at present my Catharina is there singing and playing like an angel."

154. "Johnny of Norfolk."

For twenty-seven years Cowper had held no intercourse with his maternal relations-those with whom he had in his childhood spent so many happy days. Of what had become of them he knew nothing, and they, on their part, until he became famous, had altogether lost knowledge of him. The poet's uncle, Roger Donne, it will be remembered, had four daughters and one son-to wit, Elizabeth (who married

Mr. Thomas Hewitt, of Mattishall), Catharine (who married Mr. John Johnson, of Ludham), Castres (Vicar of Ludham), Harriet (Mrs. Balls), and Anne (married to Thomas Bodham, of Mattishall). I am careful to be thus definite for two reasons. Firstly, because the names of these persons will occur again and again in the following pages, and secondly, because previous biographers have been very much at sea on the subject—have got the whole thing into a tanglewhich they need not have done had they looked at the back of the poet's picture by Abbot, where may be seen the family tree.

Mr. John Johnson, the son of Catharine, henceforth and for ever" Johnny of Norfolk," determined to seek the poet out, and one day in January, 1790, he proceeded to Weston, where, having made himself known, he was received by his kinsman with every demonstration of affection. Mr. Johnson was a student of Caius College, Cambridge, a subscalarian, or man that sleeps under the stairs—a name given to those students whose rooms were in that situation. Like many other young men, he fancied he had the gift of writing poetry, and he brought with him a manuscript poem, entitled "The Tale of the Lute," the scenes of which were laid at Audley End, and which he produced as coming from Lord Howard, with his lordship's request that Cowper would revise it. Cowper having read the poem, praised here and censured there; but next day, when they walked in Kilwick Wood, it came out that, although Lord Howard was acquainted with the poem, and had advised its being brought to Cowper, the actual writer was Johnson himself. Mr. Johnson was after

wards sorry, as he told Cowper, that he had had recourse to artifice; but the poet comforted him by saying: "Give yourself no trouble on the subject of the politic device you saw good to recur to, when you presented me with your manuscript; it was an innocent deception, at least it could harm nobody save yourself; an effect which it did not fail to produce; and, since the punishment followed it so closely, by me at least, it may very well be forgiven. You ask, how I can tell that you are not addicted to practices of the deceptive kind? And certainly, if the little time that I have had to study you were alone to be considered, the question would not be unreasonable; but in general a man who reaches my years finds

"That long experience does attain

To something like prophetic strain."

I am very much of Lavater's opinion, and persuaded that faces are as legible as books, only with these circumstances to recommend them to our perusal, that they are read in much less time, and are much less likely to deceive us. Yours gave me a favourable impression of you the moment I beheld it, and, though I shall not tell you in particular what I saw in it, for reasons mentioned in my last, I will add, that I have observed in you nothing since that has not confirmed the opinion I then formed in your favour. In fact, I cannot recollect that my skill in physiognomy has ever deceived me, and I should add more on this subject had I room."

Henceforward Cowper loved his young kinsman "as a son," and always regarded the day on which he

arrived as "albo notandus lapillo." In one of his letters he describes him as "a sweet lad, but as shy as a bird. It costs him always two or three days to open his mouth before a stranger; but when he does, he is sure to please by the innocent cheerfulness of his conversation."

Mr. Johnson, who was studying with a view to holy orders, and who was at the same time blessed with very high spirits, inquired of Cowper, when he came to know him more, whether he (Mr. Johnson) ought not to cultivate a graver demeanour; to which the poet replied: "Yours, my dear Johnny, are vagaries that I shall never see practised by any other, and, whether you slap your ankle, or reel as if you were fuddled, or dance in the path before me, all is characteristic of yourself, and therefore to me delightful. I have hinted to you indeed sometimes, that you should be cautious of indulging antic habits and singularities of all sorts, and young men in general have need enough of such admonition. But yours are a sort of fairy habits, such as might belong to Puck or Robin Goodfellow, and therefore, good as the advice is, I should be half sorry should you take it. This allowance at least I give you. Continue to take your walks, if walks they may be called, exactly in their present fashion, till you have taken orders! Then indeed, forasmuch as a skipping, curvetting, bounding divine might be a spectacle not

'It was the custom of the ancient Thracians every evening, before they slept, to throw into an urn a white pebble, if the day passed agreeably; but if not, a black one. By counting the pebbles they could form some idea of the amount of happiness or unhappiness of their lives.