"1

ordered mind, which the shock produced by the paralytic attack of Mrs. Unwin was rapidly impressing on his countenance." Cowper, as the following lines from a sonnet show, thought the picture an excellent one, and did not notice, though all his friends did, the "symptoms of woe" in it.

"TO GEORGE ROMNEY, ESQ.,

'On his picture of me in crayons, drawn at Eartham, in the sixty-first year of my age, and in the months of August and September 1792.

On chart or canvas, not the form alone

And semblance, but, however faintly shown,

The mind's impression too on every face,

With strokes that time ought never to erase;

Thou hast so pencilled mine, that though I own
The subject worthless, I have never known
The artist shining with superior grace."

In Lawrence's portrait, as in Romney's, the poet is represented in the cap which he was accustomed to wear in a morning, presented to him by Lady Hesketh, the same immortalised in his lines entitled "Gratitude :

"This cap, that so stately appears,

With ribbon-bound tassel on high,
Which seems by the crest that it rears
Ambitious of brushing the sky;

This cap to my cousin I owe,

She gave it, and gave me beside,
Wreathed into an elegant bow,

The ribbon with which it is tied."

After their return to Weston in September Mrs. Unwin's health rapidly declined, and she at length sank into a state of second childishness. The worse she became, however, the brighter burned Cowper's affection for her; and it was in the autumn of 1793, whilst she was in this pitiable state, that he wrote those affecting stanzas "To Mary" of which the following are three of the most beautiful :

1 Grimshawe.

The beautiful sonnet commencing, "Mary! I want a lyre with other strings," was written in the preceding May.

The anxiety occasioned to Cowper by Mrs. Unwin's illness now began to tell upon him; his gloom and melancholy came on again, and once more he sank into a state bordering on imbecility, from which he never fully recovered. A change of scene was thought to be desirable, and accordingly in July 1795 his affectionate kinsman Johnson conveyed the invalids into Norfolk.

Cowper's life at Olney appears, with the exception of the periods of derangement, to have been on the whole a happy one. When, however, the proposal was made that he should remove to Weston, the thought of the great happiness he was to enjoy in the more comfortable house, Weston Lodge, and in being so near the Throckmortons and their beautiful grounds, caused him to depreciate "Orchard Side," and to forget the happy days he had spent there.

The halcyon time he had so counted on, however, was of but short duration; his malady increased as he advanced in years; and instead of long periods of happiness interspersed with short ones of melancholy and madness, as at Olney, he gradually sank into an almost unintermittent state of gloom.

His manner towards children, and the light in which they regarded him, may be considered, perhaps, as matters of but little consequence, but they show that the Cowper of Weston was a very different person from the Cowper of Olney.

Calling to mind his allusion to "infants clamorous, whether pleased or pained," and other expressions in his works as little complimentary to the juvenile world, we might naturally suppose that he had little sympathy with their troubles or pleasures. But in reality it was the reverse of this at Olney; for, as many old persons have testified, he ever had a kind word for the children he came in contact with, and not infrequently, especially at Fair time, made them trifling presents. "Nanny Stowe," one of the last persons in Olney who remembered the poet, and who died, we believe, some thirty years ago, was proud of telling how, one Cherry Fair (June 29), when she was a child, he gave her money to go into a sway-boat which had been planted just opposite his house, and how they waved hands to each other, he at his parlour window, and she going up and down in the sway-boat.

At Weston he was spoken of very differently. When Dr. Eccles went there as priest in 1826, he was often told by the people that in their childhood, whenever they saw the poet, who, poor sufferer, though he took no notice of them, would not have hurt a hair of their heads, they ran frightened to the protection of their mothers, and were doubly alarmed if he happened to be in his dressing-gown and cap; for by this time his eccentricities and frequent attempts at suicide were bruited in every cottage in the parish.

IV. NORFOLK, 1795-1800 (ABOut Five Years).

Dr. Johnson and his invalids first proceeded to the village of North Tuddenham, near East Dereham, where they were accommodated with an untenanted parsonage house, in which they were received by Mr. Johnson's sister and her friend Miss Perowne.

In August the invalids were taken to the village of Mundesley, on the Norfolk coast, so as to have the benefit of the sea air, and here they resided until October. From Mundesley Cowper wrote once more to his friend, Mr. Buchanan of Weston, his chief motive being "the desire I feel to learn something of what is doing and has been done at Weston (my beloved

Weston!) since I left it." Gratify me with news from Weston ! If Mr. Gregson 1 and your neighbours the Courtenays are there, mention me to them in such terms as you see good." Cowper seems on his departure from Weston to have handed over his pets to Mr. Buchanan's mercy, for he writes-"Tell me if my poor birds are living? I never see the herbs I used to give them without a recollection of them, and sometimes am ready to gather them, forgetting that I am not at home." When Dr. Johnson and his invalids had explored all the walks in the neighbourhood of Mundesley, they made a journey by way of Cromer, Holt, and Fakenham to look at Dunham Lodge, a house to which they removed in October.

The few years spent in Norfolk were sad in the extreme.

It was told Dr. Currie by the Rev. Dr. Johnson that "Cowper firmly believed that good and evil spirits haunted his couch every night, and that the influence of the latter generally prevailed. For the last five years of his life a perpetual gloom hung over him-he was never observed to smile. I asked Johnny (Dr. Johnson) whether he suspected the people about him of bad intentions, and he said that he very often did. 'For instance,' observed he, 'he said there were two Johnnies; one the real man, the other an evil spirit in his shape; and when he came out of his room in the morning, he used to look me full in the face inquiringly, and turn off with a look of benevolence or anguish, as he thought me a man or a devil!""

In the summer of 1796 the invalids were at Mundesley again, and finally in October of that year they removed to East Dereham.

Mrs. Unwin died on December 17, 1796, at the age of seventy-two. Cowper never afterwards mentioned her name.

On December 20, 1799, he wrote his last original piece, those pathetic and despondent lines entitled "The Castaway," and he died on the 25th of April 1800, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. He was buried on the 2nd of May in St. Edmund's Chapel, in the church of East Dereham, where a monument was erected to his memory with an inscription from

1 Dr. Gregson, the priest at Weston.

E

EAST DEREHAM CHURCH, NORFOLK, BURIAL-PLACE OF COWPER,