Hayley, were watching together over this dejected sufferer, that a letter from Lord Spencer arrived at Weston, to announce the intended grant of a pension from his Majesty to Cowper, of 300l. per annum, rendered payable to his friend Mr. Rose, as the trustee of Cowper. This intelligence produced in the friends of the poet very lively emotions of delight, yet blended with pain almost as powerful; for it was painful, in no trifling degree, to reflect that these desirable smiles of good fortune could not impart even a faint glimmering of joy to the dejected poet.

From the time when Hayley left his unhappy friend at Weston, in the spring of the year 1794, he remained there under the tender vigilance of Lady Hesketh, till the latter end of July, 1795: a long season of the darkest depression! in which the best medical advice, and the influence of time, appeared equally unable to lighten that afflictive burthen which pressed incessantly on his spirits.

It was under these circumstances that my revered brother-in-law, with a generous disinterestedness and affection that must ever endear him to the admirers of Cowper, determined, with Lady Hesketh's concurrence, to remove the poet and his afflicted companion into Norfolk. In adopting this plan, he did not contemplate more than a year's absence from Weston: but what was intended to be only temporary, proved in the sequel to be a final removal.

Few events could have been more painful to Cowper than a separation from his beloved Weston. Every object was familiar to his eye, and had long engaged the affections of his heart. Its beautiful scenery had been traced with all the minuteness of description and the glow of poetic fancy. The slowwinding Ouse, "bashful, yet impatient to be seen," was henceforth to glide "in its sinuous course" unperceived. The spacious meads, the lengthened colonnade, the proud alcove, and the sound of the sweet village-bellsthese memorials of past happy days were to be seen and heard no more. All have felt the pang excited by the separation or loss of friends; but who has not also experienced that even trees have tongues, and that every object in nature knows how to plead its empire over the heart?

What Cowper's sensations were on this occasion, may be collected from the following little incident.

On the morning of his departure from Weston, he wrote the following lines in pencil on the back of the shutter in his bed

room.

"Farewell, dear scenes, forever closed to me! Oh! for what sorrows must I now exchange you!"

These lines have been carefully preserved |

1795, Cowper and Mrs. Unwin removed, under the care and guidance of Mr. Johnson, from Weston to North-Tuddenham, in Norfolk, by a journey of three days, passing through Cambridge without stopping there. In the evening of the first day they rested at the village of Eaton, near St. Neot's. Cowper walked with his young kinsman in the churchyard by moonlight, and spoke with much composure on the subject of Thomson's Seasons, and the circumstances under which they were probably written. This conversation was almost his last glimmering of cheerfulness.

At North-Tuddenham the travellers were accommodated with a commodious, untenanted parsonage-house, by the kindness of the Rev. Leonard Shelford. Here they resided till the nineteenth of August. It was the considerate intention of Mr. Johnson not to remove them immediately to his own house, in the town of East-Dereham, lest the situation in a market-place should be distressing to the tender spirits of Cowper.

In their new temporary residence they were received by Miss Johnson and Miss Perowne, whose gentle and sympathizing spirit peculiarly qualified them to discharge so delicate an office, and to alleviate the sufferings of the dejected poet.

Severe as his depressive malady appeared at this period, he was still able to bear considerable exercise, and, before he left Tuddenham, he walked with Mr. Johnson to the neighboring village of Mattishall, on a visit to his cousin, Mrs. Bodham. On surveying his own portrait by Abbot, in the house of that lady, he clasped his hands in a paroxysm of pain, and uttered a vehement wish, that his present sensations might be such as they were when that picture was painted.

In August 1795, Mr. Johnson conducted his two invalids to Mundsley, a village on the Norfolk coast, in the hope that a situation by the sea-side might prove salutary and amusing to Cowper. They continued to reside there till October, but without any apparent benefit to the health of the interesting sufferer.

from me can no otherwise be welcome than as a curiosity. To you, sir, I address this: urged to it by extreme penury of employ ment, and the desire I feel to learn something of what is doing, and has been done, at We ton (my beloved Weston!) since I left it.

"The coldness of these blasts, even in the hottest days, has been such, that, added to the irritation of the salt-spray, with which they are always charged, they have occasioned me an inflammation in the eye-lids, which threatened a few days since to confine me entirely, but by absenting myself as much as possible from the beach, and guarding my face with an umbrella, that inconvenience is in some degree abated. My chamber com mands a very near view of the ocean, and the ships at high water approach the coast so closely, that a man furnished with better eyes than mine might, I doubt not, discern the sailors from the window. No situation, at least when the weather is clear and bright, can be pleasanter; which you will easy credit, when I add, that it imparts something a little resembling pleasure even to me.Gratify me with news of Weston! If Mr. Gregson and your neighbors the Courtenays are there, mention me to them in such terins as you see good. 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, forgeting that I am not at home. Pardon this intrusion!

"Mrs. Unwin continues much as usual. "Mundsley, Sept. 5, 1795."

Mr. Buchanan endeavored, with great tenderness and ingenuity, to allure his dejected friend to prolong a correspondence, that seemed to promise some little alleviation to his melancholy; but this distressing malady baffled all the various expedients that could be devised to counteract its overwhelming influence.

Much hope was entertained from air and exercise, with frequent change of scene.-In September, Mr. Johnson conducted his kins man (to the promotion of whose recovery he devoted his most unwearied efforts) to take a survey of Dunham-Lodge, a seat at that time vacant; it is situated on high ground, in a park, about four miles from Swart ham. Cowper spoke of it as a house rather too

He begins with a poetical quotation:

"To interpose a little ease,

Let my frail thoughts dally with false surmise!"

"I will not forget, for a moment, that to whomsoever I may address myself, a letter

willing to inhabit-a remark which induced Mr. Johnson, at a subsequent period, to be come the tenant of this mansion, as a scene more eligible for Cowper than the town of Dereham. This town they also surveyed in their excursion; and, after passing a night there, returned to Mundsley, which they

quitted for the season on the seventh of October.

They removed immediately to Dereham; but left it in the course of a month for Dunham-Lodge, which now became their settled residence.

The spirits of Cowper were not sufficiently revived to allow him to resume either his pen or his books; but the kindness of his young kin-man continued to furnish him with inexhaustible amusement, by reading to him almost incessantly; and, although he was not led to converse on what he heard, yet it failed not to rivet his attention, and so to prevent his afflicted mind from preying on itself.

In April, 1796, Mrs. Unwin, whose infirmities continued to engage the tender attention of Cowper, even in his darkest periods of depression, received a visit from her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Powley. On their departure, Mr. Johnson assumed the office which Mrs. Powley had tenderly performed for her venerable parent, and regularly read a chapter in the Bible every morning to Mrs. Unwin before she rose. It was the invariable custom of Cowper to visit his poor old friend the moment he had finished his breakfast, and to remain in her apartment while the chapter was read.

In June, the pressure of his melancholy appeared in some degree alleviated, for, on Mr. Johnson's receiving the edition of Pope's Homer, published by Wakefield, Cowper eagerly seized the book, and began to read the notes to himself with visible interest. They awakened his attention to his own version of Homer. In August, he deliberately engaged in a revisal of the whole, and for some time produced almost sixty new lines

a day.

This mental occupation animated all his intimate friends with a most lively hope of his progressive recovery. But autumn repressed the hope that summer had excited.

In September the family removed from Dunham-Lodge to try again the influence of the sea-side, in their favorite village of Mundsley.

Cowper walked frequently by the sea, but no apparent benefit arose, no mild relief from the incessant pressure of melancholy. He had relinquished his Homer again, and could not yet be induced to resume it.

Towards the end of October, this interesting party retired from the coast to the house of Mr. Johnson, in Dereham—a house now chosen for their winter residence, as DunhamLodge appeared to them too dreary.

The long and exemplary life of Mrs. Unwin was drawing towards a close-the powers of nature were gradually exhausted, and on the seventeenth of December she ended troubled existence, d stinguished by a sub

Her

lime spirit of piety and friendship, that shone through long periods of calamity, and continued to glimmer through the distressful twilight of her declining faculties. death was calm and tranquil. Cowper saw her about half an hour before the moment of expiration, which passed without a struggle or a groan, as the clock was striking one in the afternoon.

On the morning of that day, he said to the servant who opened the window of his chamber," Sally, is there life above stairs?" A striking proof of his bestowing incessant attention on the sufferings of his aged friend, although he had long appeared almost totally absorbed in his own.

In the dusk of the evening he attended Mr. Johnson to survey the corpse; and after looking at it a very few moments he started suddenly away, with a vehement but unfinished sentence of passionate sorrow. He spoke of her no more.

She was buried by torch-light, on the twenty-third of December, in the north aisle of Dereham church; and two of her friends, impressed with a just and deep sense of her extraordinary merit, have raised a marble tablet to her memory with the following inscription:

IN MEMORY OF MARY,

WIDOW OF THE REV. MORLEY UNWIN,

AND

MOTHER OF THE REV. WILLIAM CAWTHORN UNWIN, BORN AT ELY, 1724.

BURIED IN THIS CHURCH 1796.

Trusting in God, with all her heart and mind
This woman prov'd magnanimously kind;
Endur'd affliction's desolating hail,
And watch'd a poet thro' misfortune's vale.
Her spotless dust, angelic guards, defend !
It is the dust of Unwin, Cowper's friend!
That single title in itself is fame,
For all who read his verse revere her name.

It might have been anticipated that the death of Mrs. Unwin, in Cowper's enfeebled state, would have proved too severe a shock to his agitated nerves. But it is mercifully ordained that, while declining years incapacitate us for trials, they, at the same time, weaken the sensibility to suffering, and thereby render us less accessible to the influence of sorrow. It may be regarded as an instance of providential mercy to this afflicted poet, that his aged friend, whose life he had so long considered as essential to his own, was taken from him at a time when the pressure of his malady, a perpetual low fever, both of body and mind, had, in a great degree, diminished the native energy of his faculties and affections.

Owing to these causes, Cowper was so far