Page:The poetical works of William Cowper (IA poeticalworksof00cowp).pdf/45

Rh The latter formed so high an opinion of him that he made him an allowance of £200 a year, mainly with the view of enabling him to keep open house, and so to influence the more people for good.

The labours of Newton (who lived till 1807) are of course no part of our subject, except so far as they illustrate Cowper's life. To the latter we therefore now pass on.

The house in which he now took up his residence is in the market-place at Olney. It was called Orchard Side. The vicarage, in which Newton lived, was close by, and he said afterwards that for twelve years he and Cowper were hardly ever twelve hours apart. "The first six," he adds, "were spent in admiring and trying to imitate him; during the second six I walked with him in the shadow of death."

Olney lies on the Ouse at the northern extremity of Buckinghamshire. It is not an attractive town, and the staple occupations of its inhabitants, and whole neighbourhood, lacemaking and strawplaiting, were, and still are, very prejudicial to health, wealth, and godliness. The vicar, Moses Browne, was an absentee through debt, and there were no gentry. Cowper was commonly known there as "Sir Cowper." Newton fell in with the popular appellation, and calls him so often in his letters. Cowper says, later, in one of his letters, "We have

One parson, one poet, one bellman, one crier, And the poor poet is the only squire."

To minister among the poor here was a task requiring great energy and courage, arduous and, as far as this world is concerned, thankless. Newton, who had wonderful bodily strength and nerve, enjoyed it thoroughly, but certainly it was not suitable labour for the nervous, sensitive invalid, who now under Newton's guidance undertook it. He visited indefatigably, and read and prayed with the sick. Newton had started prayer-meetings at an uninhabited house in the town belonging to Lord Dartmouth,—the "Great House" it was called,—and the heat and excitement of these may be judged by any one who reads Newton's account. We need not say what a contrast such devotions were to the daily prayers in Huntingdon Church, and few will doubt that the change was not for the better to Cowper. But who would not tremble for the result when we add to this that he himself was called to take part in, sometimes to lead, the extempore prayers—he who had said of himself, when called on to qualify for his clerkship, "that doing anything in public was mortal poison" to him! Mr. Bull quotes the saying of some one who was there, that he never heard praying that equalled Mr. Cowper's." But it was at a terrible cost. Nor was this all. He lost his regular exercise. He had been accustomed to a quiet evening walk, but "now," he says to Lady Hesketh, "we have sermon or lecture every evening, which lasts till supper-time."