Owing to the spray borne by the sea breezes, Cowper, whose eyes had always been weak, was now troubled with inflammation in the eyelids—an inconvenience which he caused to be abated by walking" in lanes and under hedges" in preference to the beach, and when he did walk on the beach by using an umbrella. One of these walks was that which he, Mr. Johnson, and Samuel took (probably in September) to the small seaside village of Happisburgh, or, as it is also called, Hazeborough. There is no roadway running parallel with the sea between Mundesley and Happisburgh, as is the case nearly always on other coasts, and as the road winds about so much, the two places were at least eight miles apart. On the way are the villages of Paston and Bacton, the former noted on account of its ancient hall and its picturesque church. Even at the present day Happisburgh has a name for its desolateness. "In its neighbourhood," says Mr. Walter Rye, "can be noticed, perhaps better than anywhere else, the effects of the heavy east winds, which always seem to be blowing on to the land-the hedgerow trees being bent inward and twisted into fantastic shapes, as though frozen while almost to the ground by a heavy gale. Nothing but maple and ash seems to recover itself and grow straight again." "That day," says Cowper, "was indeed a day spent in walking. I was much averse to the journey, both on account of the distance and the uncertainty of what I should find there. But Mr. But Mr. Johnson insisted; we set out accordingly, and I was almost ready to sink with fatigue long before we reached the place of our destination." The only inn being full of being blown company, the travellers borrowed a lodging elsewhere. After dinner Mr. Johnson and Samuel visited the Lighthouse, but Cowper was too tired to accompany them, though he was not uninterested in the account of what they saw. He winds up the letter describing this journey with a sentence that shows he still retained his old partiality for a certain article of food: "I have seen no fish since I came here, except a dead sprat upon the sands, and one piece of cod, from Norwich, too stale to be eaten." Believing constant change to be of all things the most beneficial for his invalids, Mr. Johnson now proposed that they should make a journey to look at Dunham Lodge, a vacant house situated in a park, on high ground about four miles from Swaffham. The route taken was the roundabout one of fifty miles, viâ Cromer, Holt, and Fakenham: Cromer, situated in what its admirers have since delighted to call Poppyland; Holt, whose wiseacres long ago are said to have pounded an owl, whereby they earned for their town a notoriety equalled only by that of the far-famed Gotham, and for their descendants the cognomen of "Holt knowing ones"; Fakenham, with its well-known ghost. Had he been in a happy mood, we could scarcely fancy Cowper passing through such localities without discovering the wherewithal to furnish a droll letter or a charming fragment of verse; but his sportive days had long been over. With Dunham Lodge, though it was too spacious, Cowper had no particular fault to find, in consequence whereof Mr. Johnson determined to treat for it. One night they spent at Mr. Johnson's residence in the market-place at the neighbouring town of East Dereham, and then they returned to Mundesley by a different route, "the health, if not the spirits, of Cowper having benefited by the journey, though Mrs. Unwin's infirmities continued the same." On the 26th of September Cowper wrote another letter to Lady Hesketh, in which he regrets that he ever left Weston. "There indeed," he says, "I lived a life of infinite despair, and such is my life in Norfolk. Such, indeed, it would be in any given spot upon the face of the globe; but to have passed the little time that remained to me there was the desire of my heart. My heart's desire has been always frustrated in everything that it ever settled on, and by means that have made my disappointments inevitable. . . . I remain the forlorn and miserable being I was when I wrote last." 198. Dunham Lodge.-October, 1795– A few days later (October 7th) the invalids removed to Dunham Lodge. By this time Cowper's sufferings had told heavily on his constitution. His countenance had got extremely thin, and had assumed a yellowish hue. Owing to the weakness of his eyes, which could not endure the cold winter winds, he was much confined to the house; and as he would neither write nor read at any time, his state would have been in the extremest degree deplorable but for the presence of Mr. Johnson, whose attention to his afflicted kinsman had now become unintermittent. Though he would not read, Cowper was willing to be read to, and, curious to say, works of fiction interested him most. In his youth he had been delighted with the novels of Richardson, on one of which, “Sir Charles Grandison,” he had written an ode, and now, in the dark days at Dunham, he took pleasure in renewing his acquaintance with them. There was, however, no real improvement in him; oft during the reading he lost every other sentence through the inevitable wanderings of his mind; and when left to himself the supernatural voices that he seemed to hear gave him fresh distress. In fulfilment of "a word heard in better days" twenty-six years previously, he considered his doom close at hand. "All my themes of misery," he says, “may be summed in one word. He who made me regrets that He ever did. Many years have passed since I learned this terrible truth from Himself." It was the old, old story. Every hour he expected to be summoned to the "Pit of Roaring," and he cared for life only because that hour was thereby delayed. Finding that he was impressed with the reality of these voices, Mr. Johnson, with doubtful wisdom, introduced a tube into the poet's chamber, near the bed's head, and employed a person with whose voice Cowper was quainted to speak words of comfort through it. The artifice was never discovered, but neither did it effect any good. Cowper never cared to be left long by those about him, and Sunday, when Mr. Johnson was away at his ministerial duties, was the most wretched day of the week. At eveningtide it was his practice to listen frequently on the steps of the hall door for the barking of dogs at a farmhouse some two miles distant-a sound that generally announced the approach of his kinsman. In June occurred the most hopeful sign that his friends had yet witnessed. Gilbert Wakefield's edition of Pope's Homer had just been published. Johnson mentioned in Cowper's hearing that in some places Wakefield had drawn comparisons between Pope's translation and that of Cowper; and not only so, but laid the volumes of Wakefield in a place where he thought the poet would see them. To Johnson's delight Cowper presently referred to the books, sought out the comparisons in question, and made some corrections in his own version in consequence. Offering all the encouragement in his power, Johnson had the gratification in August of perceiving that Cowper had deliberately engaged in a revisal of the whole of his translation. For some time nearly sixty new lines were written every day. The poet was even so enthusiastic over it as to remark that he had never known till then how Homer ought to be translated. All this was reported to Hayley, who heard the news with delight, but who was unable to comply with Johnson's request that he should visit Norfolk. In September Johnson took his invalids for a second time to Mundesley, but, as the event proved, it was a mistake, for the poet having been disturbed, immediately discontinued his employment; and from the sea air and exercise he derived no apparent benefit. Towards the end of October the party left Mundesley for Johnson's |