travail, that ever-fresh ballad of John Gilpin's Ride; it was popular from the first; and when -some two years later-it was publicly recited by Henderson-a famous Falstaffian actor of that epoch, it ran like wild-fire through the journals of the day, while the shops along Fleet Street showed in their windows a great jolly picture of Gilpin and his intractable nag cantering past the Bell at Edmonton.

The shy poet, however, did not go to London to reap any honors which might have accrued; he stayed at Olney, working at a new Task, toward the conception and accomplishment of which he was led by the witty sallies and engaging devices of the new favoriteLady Austen. This piquant woman, with her charming vivacities, her alluring airs, her dazzling chat, had wrapped the quiet, melancholy poet all around with a witchery to which he was unused and which tempted him to his best powers of song. He was proud of his fresh successes, and grateful to that new and fascinating member of their little household who had provoked and prompted them. What should disturb this cheery party of three-save the everlasting unfitness of the odd number? Perhaps the thought of this came first through some tender reproachful look of good Mrs.

Unwin; perhaps the poet, stirred to some new wrestle with his withered heart, found out its emptiness; perhaps the gay, enchanting newcomer grew weary of the song she had provoked-or weary of a welcome that stayed so calm. At any rate she took wing;1 there was a little flurry of correspondence to mark the parting, which, I dare say, both may have wished should be forgotten.

Meanwhile the new, and much-loved poem which had grown out of this intimacy did worthily, and very largely, extend Cowper's fame. Miss Hannah More was enchanted by it; "such an original and philosophic thinker," she says: "such genuine Christianity, and such a divine simplicity!" Even Corsica Boswell calls him "a genius;" and Lord Thurlow (whose favors to the poet never went beyond words) says of his old chum, "If there is a good man on earth, it is William Cowper!"

But the waves of applause break only with a low dolorous murmur upon the threshold of that Olney home. A cruel sense of his own undeservings weighs upon his spirits; he can

'Lady Austen married some years later a French gentleman, M. de Tardif, and died in Paris in 1802. She may be counted almost joint-author (with Cowper) of The Task.

not ask a blessing at his meals, for who would listen? he cannot pray, for it would be mockery; and he consoles himself with the poor satisfaction of not being a mocker. He discusses village and public affairs with his barber, Wilson (who had conscientiously refused to dress Lady Austen's hair upon a Sunday). Alluding to American affairs, in that crisis when a treaty of peace was discussed at Versailles (1783) between France and America, he speaks of the "thirteen pitiful colonies which the king of England chose to keep and the king of France to obtain-if he could." A little later, at the same crisis, he says:

"I may be prejudiced against these [Americans], but I do not think them equal to the task of establishing an empire. You will suppose me a politician; but, in truth, I am nothing less. These are the thoughts that occur to me while I read the newspaper; and when I have laid it down, I feel myself more interested in the success of my 'early cucumbers' than in any part of this important subject."1

HIS LATER LIFE

It was only in the latter part of his career that the poet made the acquaintance of William 1 P. 325, Life, etc., by Thomas Wright, London, 1892.

Hayley,1 his future biographer, who had been drawn toward Cowper by the charms of his verse and who came to visit him: this friend, through his wide familiarity with the outer world, had suborned bishops and clergy and public men to write to this melancholy exile of Olney and cheer him with their praises-all which praises fell like hail upon Cowper's window pane. And there had been a little trip devised, to divert that weakened and fatigued mind, down to Eartham in Sussex, where his friend Hayley has a beautiful place, and where he brings the artist Romney, to paint the wellknown portrait; but there is no long stay away from the old covert on the flats of Buckinghamshire; indeed this covert had taken new life within a few years by the advent of a cousin, the Lady Hesketh, the widowed sister of his old lost Theodora; she had come with her carriage and trappings, and taken a fine house, and sought to revive pleasantly all the mundane influences of Lady Austen.

From Olney there had come about in those times—at the wise suggestion of Lady Hesketh-a move over to the near village of Weston, which thereafter became the poet's home. 1William Hayley, b. 1745; d. 1820. Life of Cowper, 1803.

[On an April day many years ago-moved by an old New England cleaving to the poems and the poet-I strolled down from Newport Pagnell-to which place I had taken coach from Northampton-following all the windings of the sluggish Ouse, to Weston; stopping at the "Cowper's Oak" inn, I found next door his old home-its front overgrown with roses -and strolled into his old garden; and thence, by a door the gardener unlocked, into the "Wilderness;" the usher regaling me with stories of the crazy poet whom he had seen in his boyhood, and who loved the birds, and who wore a white tasselled night-cap as he wandered in the garden alleys at noon.]

It was at Weston, I think, that the translation of Homer was-if not undertaken-most

largely wrought upon. The regular occupation involved counted largely in the dispersion of those despondent mists that were gathering round him. He brought scholarly tastes and a quick conscience to the work; a boy would be helped more to the thieving of the proper English by Cowper's Homer, than by Pope's; but there was not "gallop" enough in his nature for a live rendering; and he was too far in-shore for the rhythmic beat of the multitudinous waves and too far from the "hollow" ships.