Page:The poetical works of William Cowper (IA poeticalworksof00cowp).pdf/76

lxviii notes were irksome to him; oftentimes he would sit down and be unable to write anything, and it became clear, after long effort, that the engagement must be given up.

For not only was his spirit becoming darkened again, but another great sorrow was impending over him. Mrs. Unwin, who had never recovered a fall on some ice in the winter of 1788-9, was seized with paralysis in December 1791. She recovered slowly as the spring came on, but the effect upon Cowper's spirits could not but be severe.

He had taken the fancy that he heard voices speaking to him on waking in the morning. Sometimes he understood them, but more often they were unintelligible. A schoolmaster at Olney, Samuel Teedon (whether knave or fool may be doubtful), whose uncouth compliments and heavy-witted opinions Cowper had often quizzed, undertook to interpret these voices. Mrs. Unwin at first appears to have humoured his fancy, but as her disease grew upon her, she too fell in with the insanity, and now nothing was done until the voices had spoken, and Teedon had interpreted. The balderdash was all written down, and volumes were filled with it, No one but themselves were made acquainted with these miserable proceedings. Sir John Throckmorton too, on succeeding to the baronetcy, left the neighbourhood for his late father's residence in Oxfordshire, and this must have been a great loss at such a trying time, though his successor afterwards proved equally kind to them. He was Sir John's younger brother, George, but had taken the name of Courtenay.

The Milton engagement brought Cowper one pleasure before it came to an end. It was the cause of his friendship with Hayley. The latter had been engaged by Boydell to write a life for a sumptuous edition of Milton, and the public were thus led to believe that Hayley and Cowper were engaged as rivals. Hayley was much distressed, and wrote to Cowper, hitherto a stranger to him, to assure him that he had no idea that the latter was so engaged, and pointing out that their two works would be so different in character that they would not clash. He added the warmest expressions of respect and admiration, and enclosed also a sonnet to him. Cowper responded in a like spirit; the correspondence thus begun was carried on with energy, and in May 1791 Hayley visited him at Weston. But before he had been there long Mrs. Unwin had a second and more severe attack of paralysis. Hayley's kindness and usefulness under this trial endeared him to Cowper for life; and on Mrs. Unwin's partial recovery, the two recluses, in the following July, returned his visit at his residence at Eartham in Sussex. Cowper might well call such a journey a "tremendous exploit" for them, considering what their life for twenty years had been.

No one reads Hayley's plays or poems now, but he was an amiable and remark- able man. His domestic life was unhappy and irregular, and some of his writings