indeed it appears that Mr. Unwin had expressed a wish to his wife that Cowper should remain in her house. The authority for this statement is the Rev. Josiah Bull, who, in his John Newton, an Autobiography and a Narrative, says that he takes it from the sketch of the poet's life which Newton began and left unfinished. At any rate, the widow and the poet remained together, and it is now known that the somewhat strange position they occupied in the eyes of the world, causing some gossip at the time and some surprise since, was to have been brought to an end by a marriage which was on the point of taking place when Cowper's second attack of insanity occurred. Mr. Bull says that his grandfather, William Bull, the poet's friend, had it from Mrs. Unwin herself that she and Cowper were at that time on the point of being married, and adds that Newton had mentioned the engagement in his unfinished memoir, and said it was well known to their friends. This alone would satisfy most people that Southey had been in some way strangely misled when he allowed himself to deny the engagement and say he was "enabled to assert" that nothing of the kind was either known or suspected by Newton. But I am in a position to give more conclusive proof. The Rev. Samuel Greatheed was a neighbour and friend of the poet, and, after his death, preached a funeral sermon, which was published, and dedicated to Lady Hesketh. He was, therefore, in a position to know the facts, and, in an unpublished letter addressed to John Johnson, the poet's cousin, in whose house he died, he says, referring to Johnson's life of Cowper, "Your account of his life was greatly wanted, and appears to be very well executed. I only wished, for the advantage of Cowper's moral character, that it had mentioned his matrimonial engagement to Mrs. Unwin: but this, I suppose, you were not at liberty to insert. This evidence is final, as it shows that among those who were nearest to Cowper there was no doubt whatever as to the fact, but only as to the propriety of mentioning it. It seems to have been withheld deliberately, even details pointing to it being struck out. For instance, in the letter to Newton of December 1, 1789, Cowper used the words, "If you have not heard from myself, you have heard from my better self, Mrs. Unwin." The words in italics were omitted when Johnson published the letter in the Private Correspondence, and they are printed here for the first time. The object of the concealment appears to have been to spare the feelings of Theodora Cowper, who, as Lady * Greatheed, who is often alluded to in Cowper's letters (e.g., June 4, 1785), mentions the intended marriage in his Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Cowper, Esq., 1814, adding (p. 30) that "the time for accomplishing their union was fixed" when the attack of 1773 occurred. He declares that "Cowper repeatedly said that if he ever again entered a Church it would, in the first place, be to marry Mrs. Unwin." This is, of course, conclusive as to Greatheed's own belief: the importance of the letter to Johnson lies in its proving that this belief, or rather knowledge, was shared by all Cowper's friends. Hesketh knew, had not only never forgotten her love of the poet, but had thought of him as feeling much more than a cousin's affection for her to the end. Of this I have come across a curious proof. A year after Cowper's death, on July 6, 1801, Hayley, writing to John Johnson, sends him a copy of "a very interesting mysterious poem, supposed by the tender Theodora to be written by our beloved Bard, and intended for her private intelligence as addressed to herself." The verses appeared in the St. James' Chronicle, "addressed to a friend and relation," in June 1793. I give them here as a curiosity, though Hayley was probably right in deciding they were not the work of Cowper. "O Thou who bad'st the Muse forget her fear, When rude at first the untutored numbers fell; Nor wounds impressed by sorrow weaken love; "O could I reach the sweet Horatian strain, In whose free verse Mæcenas still shall live, And time still urge the never-flagging wing. Nor was his friend to him what thou art still to me.” Theodora Cowper's heart was greater than her critical judgment. Still, the closing lines are, as Hayley says, much in Cowper's manner, and the improbability of the piece being his lies not so much in the style as in the fact of there being no evidence in his letters to Lady Hesketh that he ever thought of Theodora, or dreamed she thought of him, at this time. Anyhow, it is touching to think of her sending her anonymous gifts through Lady Hesketh to the unforgotten lover of her youth, and fancying she read his anonymous reply when she took up her St. James' Chronicle! But it is obvious that, so long as she lived, Lady Hesketh, and those whom Lady Hesketh had influenced, would wish to spare her the knowledge that Cowper had even contemplated marriage with another woman. But to return to the year 1767. A few months after Mr. Unwin died, Cowper and his widow left Huntingdon, and settled at Olney in Buckinghamshire, taking the house in which they were to live for more than twenty years. It has lately been bought by Mr. Collingridge, who has generously presented it to the town, to be maintained as it is in memory of its having been the home of Cowper. The attraction which took them there was the curate of the parish, who inhabited the vicarage in the absence of the vicar. In no profession, I suppose, are there so few men with an adventurous or eccentric past as among the clergy of the Church of England; and the Rev. John Newton, who, from being captain of a slave-ship, had become one of the leading Evangelical clergy, would have been a remarkable man anywhere. Cowper and Mrs. Unwin only made his acquaintance after Mr. Unwin's death, but the friendship grew so rapidly that they chose their house largely because its garden communicated with that of the vicarage. In the next few years they were rarely many hours apart. Mr. Newton, with the best intentions and the worst result, induced Cowper to take a public part in his prayer-meetings, to visit among his parishioners and discuss their religious experiences, and to write hymns. For some years this highly charged atmosphere was the only one the poet had any opportunity, or indeed desire, of breathing. Mrs. Unwin's son and daughter had married and removed; Cowper's brother had died, and with his other relations the receipt of his allowance became almost his only link. He had sold his books on leaving the St. Alban's asylum. The result was the inevitable one in such a case as his. With a society limited to two persons one of whom was extremely busy, and with all his interests and occupations confined to one subject, he was thrown back upon himself in fatal introspection, the old sad delusions returned, as some of the hymns are there to show, and, by January, 1773, he was once more definitely insane. He insisted on remaining in Mr. Newton's house, where Mrs. Unwin, nobly scorning evil tongues, and disregarding Cowper's fancy that she hated him, was his constant attendant by day and by night. He was a prey to the most awful despair, and again attempted suicide. In May, 1774, the change at last came, and he went back to his own house. He amused himself with gardening and with the hares he has made famous; but the central delusion remained fixed, and was fatal to more social and intellectual occupations. It was not till November, 1776, that he resumed communication with the most faithful of his old friends, Joseph Hill, with whom he had once read Tasso, and who now helped him back to his literary tastes, so that six months later we find him reading Gray, and calling him "the only poet since Shakespeare entitled to the character of sublime -a very curious statement in view of the intimate knowledge of Milton shown everywhere in his poetry. Mr. Newton would have had him write some more hymns, but his delusions about his spiritual condition made |