THE

LIFE

O F

COW PER.

PART THE SECOND.

Ανηρ ήδιστος αοιδων.

A New æra opens in the history of the Poet from an incident

that gave fresh ardour and vivacity to his fertile imagination.--In September, 1781, he happened to form an acquaintance with a lady highly accomplished herself, and singularly happy in animating and directing the fancy of her poetical friends. The World will perfectly agree with me in this eulogy, when I add, that to this lady we are primarily indebted for the Poem of the Task, for the Ballad of John Gilpin, and for the Translation of Homer. But in my lively sense of her merit, I am almost forgetting my immediate duty, as the Biographer of the Poet, to introduce her circumstantially to the acquaintance of my Reader.

A lady, whose name was Jones, was one of the few neighbours admitted in the residence of the retired Poet. She was the wife of a Clergyman, who resided at the village of Clifton, within a mile

of Olney. Her sister, the widow of Sir Robert Austen, Baronet, came to pass some time with her in the Autumn of 1781; and] as the two ladies chanced to call at a shop in Olney, opposite to the house of Mrs. Unwin, Cowper observed them from his window.Although naturally shy, and now rendered more so by his very long illness, he was so struck with the appearance of the stranger, that on hearing she was sister to Mrs. Jones, he requested Mrs. Unwin to invite them to tea. So strong was his reluctance to admit the company of strangers, that after he had occasioned this invitation, he was for a long time unwilling to join the little party; but having forced himself at last to engage in conversation with Lady Austen, he was so reanimated by her uncommon colloquial talents, . that he attended the ladies on their return to Clifton, and from that time continued to cultivate the regard of his new acquaintance with such assiduous attention, that she soon received from him the familiar and endearing title of Sister Ann.

The great and happy influence, which an incident, that seems at first sight so trivial, produced very rapidly on the imagination of Cowper, will best appear from the following Epistle, which, soon after Lady Austen's return to London for the winter, the Poet addressed to her, on the 17th of December, 1781.

Dear Anna-Between friend and friend,

Prose answers every common end;

Serves, in a plain, and homely way,
T'express th' occurrence of the day;
Our health, the weather, and the news;
What walks we take, what books we chuse;
And all the floating thoughts, we find
Upon the surface of the mind.

But when a Poet takes the pen,
Far more alive than other men,
He feels a gentle tingling come
Down to his finger and his thumb,
Deriv'd from nature's noblest part,
The centre of a glowing heart!
And this is what the world, who knows
No flights, above the pitch of prose,
His more sublime vagaries slighting,
Denominates an itch for writing.
No wonder I, who scribble rhyme,
To catch the triflers of the time,

And tell them truths divine, and clear,

Which couch'd in prose, they will not hear;

Who labour hard to allure, and draw

The loiterers I never saw,

Should feel that itching, and that tingling,
With all my purpose intermingling,

To your intrinsic merit true,

When call'd to address myself to you.

Mysterious

Mysterious are his ways, whose power
Brings forth that unexpected hour,
When minds that never met before,
Shall meet, unite, and part no more :
It is th' allotment of the skies,
The Hand of the Supremely Wise,
That guides, and governs our affections,
And plans, and orders our connexions;
Directs us in our distant road,

And marks the bounds of our abode.
Thus we were settled when you found us,
Peasants and children all around us,
Not dreaming of so dear a friend,
Deep in the abyss of Silver-End.*
Thus Martha, even against her will,
Perch'd on the top of yonder hill;
And you, though you must needs prefer
The fairer scenes of sweet Sancerre,†
Are come from distant Loire, to chuse
A cottage on the Banks of Ouse.
This page of Providence, quite new,
And now just opening to our view,
Employs our present thoughts and pains,
To guess, and spell, what it contains:

But

* An obscure part of Olney, adjoining to the residence of Cowper, which

faced the market-place.

+ Lady Auften's residence in France.

But day by day, and year by year,
Will make the dark ænigma clear ;
And furnish us perhaps at last,
Like other scenes already past,
With proof, that we, and our affairs
Are part of a Jehovah's cares:
For God unfolds, by slow degrees,
The purport of his deep decrees;

Sheds every

hour a clearer light

In aid of our defective sight;

And spreads at length, before the soul,
A beautiful, and perfect whole,
Which busy man's inventive brain
Toils to anticipate in vain.

Say Anna, had you never known
The beauties of a Rose full blown,
Could you, tho' luminous your eye,
By looking on the bud, descry,

Or

guess, with a prophetic power,
The future splendor of the flower ?
Just so th' Omnipotent who turns
The system of a world's concerns,
From mere minutiæ can educe
Events of most important use;
And bid a dawning sky display
The blaze of a meridian day.

The works of man tend, one and all,

As needs they must, from great to small;

And