In the beginning of August, the party set out on their way to Eartham, where they arrived on the evening of the third day, and where the most cordial and affectionate reception that it was possible for guests to meet with, awaited them from the owner of that elegant villa. This had a happy effect upon the spirits of Cowper, which had been in some measure depressed by the romantic moonlight scenery of the Sussex hills, over which he had just passed, and whose bold and striking outline so far surpassing any images of the kind with which the last thirty years had presented him, hurried back, his recollection to those times when he had scarcely known what trouble was.

In this delightful retreat he remained till about the middle of the following inonth, his kind host doing every thing that even the purest fraternal friendship could dictate for the comfort of the Poet and his infirm companion; who were both benefitted by his benevolent exertions, the one considerably in spirits, and the other somewhat in health. During the visit of Cowper to Eartham, a fine head of him in crayons was executed by Romney, who joined the party, as did also that ingenious novelist and pleasing poetess Charlotte Smith, the "friendly Carwardine,” of Earl's Colne Priory, and the author of "The Village Curate," soon after the arrival of the guests from Weston. Their society was also en

livened by the endearing attentions of the ami able and accomplished youth, for whose future enjoyment, after a life of professional labour, the scenery of Eartham had been, so fondly embellished by an affectionate parent, but to whom Providence allotted an early grave, in the very same year and month in which the illustrious visitor of his beloved father was consigned to the tomb. T

The literary engagements of Cowper while he resided at Eartham, are thus noticed by his faithful biographer: "The morning hours, that we could bestow upon books, were chiefly devoted to a complete revisal and correction of all the translations which my friend had finished, from the Latin and Italian poetry of Milton; and we generally amused ourselves after dinner in forming together a rapid metrical version of Andreini's Adamo. But the constant care which the delicate health of Mrs. Unwin required, rendered it impossible for us to be very assiduous in study."

The termination of their visit to Mr. Hayley being arrived, a journey of four days restored the party to the lodge at Weston; but not the Poet to a resumption of his Miltonic employment. In addition to the above-mentioned obstacle, the habit of study had so totally left him, that instead of beginning his dissertations on the Paradise Lost, as he had intended, he thus writes to

his kinsman, who had returned into Norfolk: "I proceed exactly as when you were here-a letter now and then before breakfast, and the rest of my time all holiday; if holiday it may be called, that is spent chiefly in moping and musing, and forecasting the fashion of uncertain evils.”

On the 4th of March, 1793, he says in a letter to his friend, the Reverend Walter Bagot: "While the winter lasted, I was miserable with a fever on my spirits; when the spring began to approach, I was seized with an inflammation in my eyes; and ever since I have been able to use them, have been employed in giving more last touches to Homer, who is on the point of going to the press again." At the request of his worthy Bookseller, he added explanatory Notes to his revision; in allusion to which he writes in May to his friend Rose, I breakfast every morning on seven or eight pages of the Greek commentators. For so much am I obliged to read in order to select perhaps three or four short notes for the readers of my translation." He says to Mr. Hayley, in the same month, “I rise at six every morning, and fag till near eleven, when I breakfast.-I cannot spare a moment for eating in the early part of the morning, having no other time for study." The truth is, that his grateful, affectionate spirit devoted all the rest of the day from breakfast, to the helpless state of his afflicted companion;

of whose similar attentions to his own necessi ties, he had had such abundant experience. There can be no doubt that an arrangement of this sort was highly prejudicial to the health of Cowper, and that it hastened the approach of the last calamitous attack with which this interesting sufferer was yet to be visited. For the present, however, he was supported under it; writing pleasantly thus to Mr. Hayley in October: "On Tuesday, we expect company-Mr. Rose and Lawrence the Painter. Yet once more my pa tience is to be exercised, and once more I am made to wish that my face had been moveable, to put on and take off at pleasure, so as to be portable in a band-box, and sent to the artist."

In the following month, Mr. Hayley paid his second visit to Weston, where he found the writer of this Narrative and Mr. Rose. "The latter," says the Biographer of Cowper, "came recently from the seat of Lord Spencer, in Northamptonshire, and commissioned by that accomplished nobleman to invite Cowper and his guests to Althorpe, where my friend Gibbon was to make a visit of considerable continuance. All the guests of Cowper now recommended it to him very strongly to venture on this little excursion, to a house whose master he most cordially respected, and whose library alone might be regarded as a magnet of very powerful attraction to every ele

gant scholar. I wished," continues Mr. Hayley, "to see Cowper and Gibbon personally acquainted, because I perfectly knew the real benevolence of both; for widely as they might differ on one important article, they were both able and worthy to appreciate and enjoy the extraordinary mental powers of each other. But the constitutional shyness of the Poet conspired, with the present infirm state of Mrs. Unwin, to prevent their meeting. He sent Mr. Rose and me to make his apology for declining so honourable an invitation."

In a few days from this time, the guests of Cowper left him, and before the end of the year he thus writes to his friend of Eartham: "It is a great relief to me that my Miltonic labours are suspended. I am now busied in transcribing the alterations of Homer, having finished the whole revisal. I must then write a new Preface, which done, I shall endeavour immediately to descant on "The Four Ages."

Instead, however, of recording the prosecution of this poem, as the work of the beginning of the following year, it becomes the painful duty of the author of this memoir to exhibit the truly excellent and pitiable subject of it as very differently employed, and as commencing his descent into those depths of affliction, from which his spirit was only to emerge by departing from the