Page:The poetical works of William Cowper (IA poeticalworksof00cowp).pdf/50

xlii take. But this belief I cannot now hold. It became as clear to me as any demonstration could make it, that the Calvinistic doctrine and religious excitements threw an already trembling mind off its balance, and aggravated a malady which but for them might probably have been cured.

In 1776 he recommenced correspondence, as well as reading, and his letters are even playful. He had written none since 1772. One of the first was to Hill, thanking him for a present of fish. He also took to sketching, and drew "mountains, valleys, woods, streams, ducks, and dabchicks." But this employment hurt his eyes. He formed a plan of taking three or four boys into his house as pupils, but none offered. Several friends, Hill especially, lent him books, on which he sent back criticisms. In one letter he asks especially for a work on the microscope, and Vincent Bourne's Poems. But his letters as yet were few.

In September 1779 Mr. Newton, who was disappointed and out of heart at his ill-success with the people of Olney, was presented by Thornton to the living of St. Mary Woolnoth, and left Olney at the end of the year. His last act before doing so was the publication of the Olney Hymns, by which Cowper was first introduced to the world. His departure naturally made great changes in Cowper's habits and doings, the chief being that he had much time thrown on his hands. In order to fill up the gap in his small circle of acquaintance, Newton, on leaving, introduced him to the Rev. W. Bull, an Independent minister residing at Newport-Pagnell, five miles from Olney. This choice was a happy one, and they became fast friends. Cowper had a knack of giving all his friends nicknames, and Mr. Bull become "Carissime Taurorum." But the distance between their homes, and Bull's hard work, prevented them from being much together, and Cowper was thrown on his own resources. He worked at his garden with more energy than ever, built frames for pine plants, and glazed the kitchen windows. Of his last achievement he gives a very humorous account in one of his letters. He revived his law studies a little, and gave advice gratis in a few cases. But, happily for English literature, he began to betake himself regularly to poetical composition. It is noticeable that "Nose v. Eyes," as well as the lines "On the Burning of Lord Mansfield's Library," were written now. Speaking of the first of these,—"Happy is the man," says he, "who knows just so much law as to make himself a little merry now and then with the solemnity of judicial proceedings." Bat in a letter to Newton a few days later, he uses a ghastly similitude about this jocularity. He compares himself to harlequin dancing round a corpse.

His prophecy concerning Thurlow had been fulfilled in June 1778, when the latter succeeded Earl Bathurst as Lord Chancellor of England. Cowper's friends hoped that this would bring some preferment to him, and William Unwin, now