Task, suggested also by Lady Austen, and far the best and most popular of his longer poems, had been completed; it was published in 1785, and with it, was printed John Gilpin. Cowper was therefore known to be its author; and those who had been amused with the ballad, now read the Task, and inquired for his previous volume, and Cowper became, at once, the most popular poet of the day.

In November, 1784, immediately after the completion of the Task, Cowper began the translation of Homer. He had now found by experience that regular employment was essential to his well-being;-employment too, of a really intellectual nature, such as would call into activity, without too much exciting, the best powers of his mind. "A long and perplexing thought," he said, "buzzed about in his brain, till it seemed to be breaking all the fibres of it." "Plaything-avocations" wearied him; while such as engaged him much, and attached him closely, were rather serviceable than otherwise.

The unfaithfulness of Pope's translation of Homer had long been universally acknowledged by scholars, and Cowper, who was well qualified for the task, after translating one book, as he says, for want of employment, "became convinced that he could render an acceptable service to the literary world by translating the whole." The undertaking thus commenced, he availed himself of the Gentleman's Magazine to produce on the public, an impression favorable to his design, and issued proposals to publish by subscription. His Poems had been given away, and when published, he had been careless of popular favor in respect to them. But fame, coming, as it did, unexpectedly, was not the less welcome to him; and he was now, not only anxious to sustain it, by the success of his present undertaking, but also to secure a profitable result to himself. "Five hundred names," he writes, "at three guineas, will put about a thousand pounds in my purse; and 1

am doing my best to obtain them." And again, to Lady Hesketh, "I am not ashamed to confess that having commenced author, I am most abundantly desirous to succeed as such. I have (what perhaps you little suspect me of) in my nature, an infinite share of ambition. But with it, I have at the same time, as you well know, an equal share of diffidence. To this combination of opposite qualities, it has been owing, that till lately, I stole through life without undertaking anything, yet always wishing to distinguish myself."

During this and the following year, Cowper advanced steadily with his translation, receiving much attention and encouragement from his friends. Through the kindness of Lady Hesketh, and his neighbor, Sir John Throckmorton, he and Mrs. Unwin were enabled to remove to the Lodge, at Weston-Underwood, about a mile from Olney, which was far more commodious and healthful, than their habitation at Olney,

Lady Hesketh's occasional visits, at this time, were also a source of much enjoyment to him, and his grateful and affectionate heart was strongly moved and interested by the singular kindness manifested for him by an anonymous correspondent. "Hours and hours and hours," he writes Lady Hesketh, in reference to this subject, "have I spent in endeavors, altogether fruitless, to trace the writer of the letter that I send, by a minute examination of the character, and never did it strike me, till this moment, that your father wrote it." This suspicion, Lady Hesketh, who was apparently in the secret, did not confirm. The letter in question was, evidently, from some one minutely acquainted with the circumstances of Cowper's early life; and after many expressions of kindness and encouragement, the writer concludes by presenting him with an annuity of fifty pounds. After receiving another letter from the same source, Cowper writes,

"Anonymous is come again. May God bless him, whoever he may be ;" and he adds, in a postscript, "I kept my letter unsealed to the last moment, that I might give you an account of the expected parcel. It is, at all points, worthy of the letter-writer. Snuff-box, purse, notes― Bess, Puss, Tiney-all safe. Again may God bless him!” On the snuff-box, was a view of the "Peasant's Nest," as described in the Task, with the figures of three hares in the foreground. And for these womanly presents," as Southey calls them, he appoints Lady Hesketh his "receiver general of thanks ;" as "it is very pleasant, my dear cousin," he says, "to receive presents, so delicately conveyed, but it is also very painful to have nobody to thank for them." "Alas, the love of woman!" Southey conjectures that Anonymous was no other than Theodora, the object of Cowper's early love, whom he had not seen for five-and-twenty years.

In one of those sincere, affectionate, and inimitably graceful letters, written, about this time, to his favorite cousin, Lady Hesketh, which have secured to Cowper the title of "the best of English letter-writers," he gives the following retrospect of his state of mind :

"You do not ask me, my dear, for an explanation of what I could mean by anguish of mind. Because you do not ask, and because your reason for not asking consists of a delicacy and tenderness peculiar to yourself; for that very cause I will tell you. A wish suppressed is more irresistible than many wishes plainly uttered. Know then, that in the year 1773, the same scene that was acted at St. Alban's, opened upon me again at Olney, only covered by a still deeper shade of melancholy; and ordained to be of much longer duration. I was suddenly reduced from my wonted rate of understanding, to an almost childish imbecility. I did not, indeed, lose my senses, but I lost the

wer to exercise them. I could return a rational answer,

even to a difficult question; but a question was necessary, or I never spoke. I believed that every body hated me, and that Mrs. Unwin hated me worst of all, was convinced that all my food was poisoned, together with ten thousand megrims of the same stamp. I would not be more circumstantial than is necessary. Dr. Cotton was consulted. He recommended particular vigilance lest I should attempt my life,—a caution for which there was the greatest occasion. At the same time that I was convinced of Mrs. Unwin's aversion to me, I could endure no other companion. The whole management of me consequently devolved upon her, and a terrible task she had. She performed it, however, with a cheerfulness hardly ever equalled on such an occasion; and I have often heard her say, that if she ever praised God in her life, it was when she found that she was to have all the labor. Methinks I hear you ask,—your affection for me, will, I know, make you wish to do so,-"Is your malady removed?" I reply, in a great measure, but not quite. Occasionally I am much distressed, but that distress becomes continually less frequent, and, I think, less violent. I find writing, and especially poetry my best remedy. Perhaps had I understood music, I had never written verse, but had lived on fiddlestrings instead. I have been emerging gradually from this pit. As soon as I became capable of action, I commenced carpenter, made cupboards, boxes and stools. I grew weary of this in about a twelvemonth, and addressed myself to the making of bird-cages. To this employment succeeded that of gardening, which I intermingled with that of drawing; but finding that the latter occupation injured my eyes, I renounced it, and commenced poet. I have given you, my dear, a little history in short hand. I know it will touch your feelings; but do not let it interest them too much."

According to Cowper's narrative of his first attack, h

believed that his disease was entirely the work of the Enemy, and that his recovery was supernatural. Mr. Newton and Mrs. Unwin were of the same opinion, and many months elapsed, as we have seen, after the commencement of the second attack,-much the most violent and protracted,-before they could bring themselves to seek earthly remedies. But Mr. Newton was now away, and Mrs. Unwin, says Southey, "was governed by her natural good sense ;" and the rational view of his condition which Cowper took at the time of writing this letter, was such as to induce the reasonable hope of his perfect restoration. Of the religious impulses by which he had been actuated, while at Olney, he thus speaks: "Good is intended, but harm is done too often, by the zeal with which I was at that time animated."

But despair of salvation never wholly left him after his second attack; and this feeling discovers itself, more or less strongly, in all his letters to Mr. Newton.

From a sincere, but mistaken zeal for Cowper's spiritual welfare, Mr. Newton seems to have interfered at this time rather unwarrantably in his domestic affairs. He objected to their removal to Weston; and because Cowper and Mrs. Unwin had occasionally visited the Throckmortons and other neighbouring gentry, accused them of deviating into forbidden paths, and seeking worldly amusement and society. In reply to one of his letters of censure, Cowper says: "You say well that there was a time when I was happy at Olney, and I am as happy now as I expect to be anywhere without the presence of God." And again: "Be assured, that notwithstanding all rumors to the contrary, we are exactly what we were when you saw us last ;-I miserable on account of God's departure from me, which I believe to be final; and she seeking his return to me in the path of duty, and by continual prayer." This was his constant and abiding impression;-and so constant was