stion concerning her funeral, nor ever mentioned her name. "Towards the summer of 1797 his bodily health appeared to improve, but not to such a degree as to restore any comfortable activity to his mind. In June he wrote to me a brief letter, but such as too forcibly expressed the cruelty of his distemper. "The process of digestion never passed regularly in his frame dur ing the years that he resided in Norfolk. Medicine appeared to have little or no influence on his complaint, and his aversion at the sight of it was extreme. "From asses' milk, of which he began a course on the 21st of June in this year, he gained a considerable acquisition of bodily strength, and was enabled to bear an airing in an open carriage before breakfast with Mr. Johnson. "A depression of spirits, which suspended the studies of a writer so eminently endeared to the public, was considered, by men of piety and learning, as a national misfortune; and several individuals of this description, though personally unknown to Cowper, wrote to him in the benevolent liope that expressions of friendly praise, from persons who could be influenced only by the most laudable motives in bestowing it, might re-animate the dejected spirit of a poet not sufficiently conscious of the public ser vice that his writings had rendered to his country, and of that universal esteem which they had so de servedly secured to their author. "I cannot think myself authorised to mention the names of all who did honour to Cowper, and to themselves, on this occasion; but I trust the bishop of Landaff will forgive me, if my sentiments of personal regard towards him induce me to take an affectionate liberty with his name, and to gratify myself by recording in these pages a very pleasing example of his liberal attention to the interests of humanity. "He endeavoured evangelically to cheer and invigorate the mind of Cowper; but the depression of that disordered mind was the effect ' of bodily disorder so obstinate, that it received not the slightest relief from what, in a season of corporeal health, would have afforded the most animated gratification to this interesting invalide. "The pressure of his malady had now made him utterly deaf to the most honourable praise. "He had long discontinued the revisal of his Homer ; but, by the entreaty of his young kinsman, he was persuaded to resume it in September 1797, and he persevered in it, oppressed as he was by indispo sition, till March 1799. On Friday evening, the 8th of that month, he completed his revisal of the Odyssey, and the next morning wrote part of a new preface. "To watch over the disordered health of afflicted genius, and to lead a powerful but oppressed spirit, by gentle encouragement, to exert itself in salutary occupation, is an office that requires a very rare union of tenderness, intelligence, and fortitude. To contemplate and minister to a great mind in a state that borders on mental desolation, is like surveying, in the midst of a desert, the tottering ruins of palaces and temples, where the faculties of the spectator are almost absorbed in wonder and regret, and where every step is taken with awful apprehension. "It seemed as if Providence had: expressly formed the young kins man of Cowper to prove exactly such such a guardian to his declining years, as the peculiar exigences of his situation required. I never saw the human being that could, I think, have sustained the delicate and arduous office in which the inexhaustible virtues of Mr. Johnson persevered to the last, through a period so long, with an equal portion of unvaried tenderness and unshaken fidelity. A man who wanted sensibility would have renounced the duty; and a man endowed with a particle too much of that valuable, though perilous, quality, must have felt his own health utterly undermined by an excess of sympathy with the sufferings perpetually in his sight. Mr. Johnson has completely discharged perhaps the most trying of human duties; and I trust he will forgive me for this public declaration, that, in his mode of discharging it, he has merited the most cordial esteem from all who love the memory of Cowper. Even a stranger may consider it as a striking proof of his tender dexterity in soothing and guiding the afflicted poet, that he was able to engage him steadily to pursue and finish the revisal and correction of his Homer, during a long period of bodily and mental sufferings, when his troubled mind recoiled from all intercourse with his most intimate friends, and laboured under a morbid abhorrence of all cheerful exertion. "But, in deploring the calamity of my friend, and describing the merit of his affectionate attendant, I must not forget that it is still in cumbent on me, as a faithful biographer, to notice a few circumstances in the dark and distressful years that Cowper had yet to linger upon earth. In the summer of 1798, Mr. Johnson was induced to vary his plan of remaining for some months in the marine village of Mundsley, and thought it more eligible for the invalide to make frequent visits from Dereham to the coast, passing a week at a time by the sea-side. "Cowper, in his poem on Retirement, seems to inform us what his own sentiments were in a season of health, concerning the regimen most proper for the disease of melancholy: "Virtuous and faithful Heberden, whose skill Attempts no task it cannot well fulfil, • Gives melancholy up to nature's care, And sends the patient into purer air.' "The frequent change of place, and the magnificence of marine scenery, produced at times a little relief to his depressive sensations. On the 7th of June 1798, he surveyed the light-house at Happisburg; and expressed some pleasure several ships at a distance. Yet on beholding, through a telescope, in his usual walk with Mr. Johnson by the sea-side, he exemplified but too forcibly his own affecting description of melancholy silence: "That silent tongue Could give advice, could censure, or commend, 'Or charm the sorrows of a drooping friend: 'Renounc'd alike its office and its sport, Its brisker and its graver strains fall short; 'Both fail beneath a fever's secret sway, And like a summer-brook are past away.' lady, for whom he had long entertained affectionate respect, the dowager lady Spencer-and it was rather remarkable, that, on the very morning she called upon him, he happened to have begun his revisal of the Odyssey, which he had originally inscribed to her. Such an incident in a happier season would have produced a very enlivening effect on his spirits; but, in his present state, it had not even the power to lead him into any free conversation with his amiable visitor. "The only amusement that he appeared to admit without reluctance, was the reading of Mr. Johnson; who, indefatigable in the supply of such amusement, had exhausted an immense collection of novels, and at this period began reading to the poet his own works. To these he listened also in silence, and heard all his poems recited in order, till the reader arrived at the History of John Gilpin, which he begged not to hear. Mr. Johnson Mr. Johnson proceeded to his manuscript poems: to these he willingly listened, but made not a single remark on any. In October 1798 the pressure of his melancholy seemed to be mitigated in some little degree, for he exerted himself so far as to write, without solicitation, to lady Hesketh; and I insert passages of this letter, because, gloomy as it is, it describes in a most interesting manner, the sudden attack of his malady, and tends to confirm an opinion that his mental disorder arose from a scorbutic habit, which, when his perspiration was obstructed, occasioned an unsearch able obstruction in the finer parts of his frame. Such a cause would produce, I apprehend, an effect exactly like what my suffering friend describes in this affecting letter. "Dear Cousin, "You describe delightful • scenes; but you describe them to one who, if he even saw them, could receive no delight from them: who has a faint recollection, and so faint as to be like an almost forgotten dream, that once he was susceptible of pleasure from such causes. The country that you have had in prospect has been always famed for its beauties; but the wretch 'who can derive no gratification 'from a view of nature, even under 'the disadvantage of her most or• dinary dress, will have no eyes to 'admire her in any. "In one day, in one minute I 'should rather have said, she became an universal blank to me; and though from a different cult to remove as blindness itself." cause, yet with an effect as diffi"Mundsley, October 13, 1798.' เ "On his return from Mundsley to Dereham in an evening, towards the end of October, Cowper, with miss Perowne and Mr. Johnson, was overturned in a post-chaise. He discovered no terror on the occasion, and escaped without injury from the accident. "In December he received a visit from his highly esteemed friend, sir John Throckmorton; but his malady was at that time so oppressive, that it rendered him almost insensible to the kind solicitude of friendship. "He still continued to exercise the powers of his astonishing mind: upon his finishing the revisal of his Homer in March 1799, Mr. Johnson endeavoured in the gentlest manner to lead him into new literary occupation. "For this purpose, on the 11th of March, he laid before him the paper paper containing the commencement of his poem on The Four Ages. Cowper altered a few lines; he also added a few, but soon observed to his kind attendant, that it was too great a work for him to attempt in his present situation. "At supper Mr. Johnson suggested to him several literary projects, that he might execute more easily. He replied, that he had just thought of six Latin verses, and if he could compose any thing, it must be in pursuing that composition. "The next morning he wrote the six verses he had mentioned, and added a few more, entitling the poem Montes glaciales. "It proved a versification of a circumstance recorded in a newspaper, which had been read to him a few weeks before, without his appearing to notice it. This poem he translated into English verse, on the nineteenth of March, to oblige miss Perowne. Both the original and the translation shall appear in the Appendix. "THE CAST-AWAY. Nor ever ship left Albion's coast With warmer wishes sent. He lov'd them both-but both in vain, Nor him beheld, nor her again. Or courage die away; He shouted: nor his friends had fail'd They left their out-cast mate behind, And, such as storms allow, Alone could rescue them: On the twentieth of March he wrote the stanzas entitled The Cast-away;' founded on an anec dote in Anson's voyage, which his memory suggested to him, al-He long survives who lives an hour though he had not looked into the book for many years. "As this poem is the last original production from the pen of Cowper, I shall introduce it here; persuaded that it will be read with an interest proportioned to the extraordinary pathos of the subject, and the still more extraordinary powers of the poet, whose lyre could sound so forcibly, unsilenced by the gloom of the darkest distemper, that was conducting him, by slow gradations, to the shadow of death And so long he, with unspent pow'r, Could catch the sound no more. Of narrative sincere, That tells his name, his worth, his age, Is wet with Anson's tear. 'I therefore I therefore purpose not, or dream, But misery still delights to trace "In August he translated this poem into Latin verse. In October he went with miss Perówne, and Mr. Johnson, to survey a larger house in Dereham, which he preferred to their present residence, and in which the family were settled in the following December, Though his corporeal strength was now evidently declining, the tender persuasion of Mr. Johnson induced him to amuse his mind with frequent composition. Between August and December he wrote all the translations from various Latin and Greek epigrams. "In his new residence he amused himself with translating a few fables of Gay into Latin verse. The fable which he used to recite as a child, The Hare with many Friends,' was one of his latest thirty-first of January I received from him his improved version of the lines in question, written in a firm and delicate hand. "The sight of such writing from my long-silent friend, inspired me with a lively, but too sanguine hope, that I might see him once more restored. "Alas! at this period a complication of new maladies began to threaten his inestimable life; and the neat transcript of his improved verses on the curious monument of ancient sculpture, so gracefully described by Homer, verses which I surveyed as a delightful omen of future letters from a correspondent so inexpressibly dear to proved the last effort of his pen. to me, "Onthe very day that this endear ing mark of his kindness reached me, a dropsical appearance in his legs induced Mr. Johnson to have recourse to fresh medical assist ance. The beloved invalide was with great difficulty persuaded to take the remedies prescribed, and to try the exercise of a post-chaise, an exercise which he could not bear beyond the 22d of February. "In March, when his decline became more and more striking, he was visited by Mr. Rose. He hardly expressed any pleasure on the arrival of a friend whom he had so long and so tenderly regarded; yet he showed evident signs of regret on his departure, the sixth of April. "The long calamitousillness, and impending death, of a darling child, precluded me from sharing with Mr. Rose the painful gratification of seeing, once more, the man whose genius and virtues we had once contemplated together with mutual veneration and delight; whose ap proaching dissolution we felt, not only as an irreparable loss to our selves, |