LADY AUSTEN.

143

CHAPTER XVI.

Lady Austen-John Gilpin-Madame Guion-The Colubriad-Cowper's exquisite humour.

A SHORT time before the publication of this volume, the same Divine providence that had prepared for Cowper such a resting-place and home in the family of the Unwin's, brought to their acquaintance a new friend, whose lively wit, and influence over the mind of the poet, were to prove the occasion of the greatest production of his genius. This was Lady Austen, the widow of Sir Robert Austen, and sister of the wife of one of Cowper's neighbours, a clergyman at Clifton, about a mile from Olney. The conversational powers of this lady were great, and Cowper was pleased and delighted for a season with her acquaintance and friendship. He described her to his friend Mr Unwin, as a woman of fine taste and discernment, with many features of character to admire, but one in particular, on account of the rarity of it, to engage your attention and esteem. She has a degree of gratitude in her composition, so quick a sense of obligation, as is hardly to be found in any rank of life, and, if report say true, is scarce indeed in the superior. Discover but a wish to please her, and she never forgets it; not only thanks you, but the tears

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will start into her eyes at the recollection of the smallest service. With these fine feelings, she has the most harmless vivacity you can imagine." Lady Austen, for about two years, occupied as her residence the parsonage which Newton had vacated, the garden of which adjoined that of Cowper, with a door opened by Newton between them. During those two years the two families were on terms of intercourse so uninterrupted and intimate, that they almost made one household, and for a season were accustomed to dine alternately in each other's house. "Lady Austen and we," said Cowper, in one of his letters to Mr Unwin, "pass our days alternately at each others château. In the morning I walk with one or other of the ladies, and in the afternoon wind thread. Thus did Hercules, and thus probably did Samson, and thus do I; and were both these heroes living, I should not fear to challenge them to a trial of skill in that business, or doubt to beat them both. As to killing lions, and other amusements of that kind, with which they were so delighted, I should be their humble servant, and beg to be excused."

How animating and happy was the influence exerted by Lady Austen, and this agreeable change and excitement in their manner of life at Olney, upon the mind and spirits of Cowper may be judged from that exquisitely beautiful poem addressed to her in a letter during her absence for the first winter, in London. It has a meaning, judged by the result, even deeper than any anticipation in the mind of the writer; for indeed by that friendship Divine providence was arranging the causes and occasions of the most precious and inestimable effort of Cowper's genius. In

this little epistle itself are some of the finest lines Cowper

ever wrote.

power

"Mysterious are His
ways, whose
Brings forth that unexpected hour
When minds that never met before
Shall meet, unite, and part no more.
It is the allotment of the skies,
The hand of the Supremely Wise,
That guides and governs our affections,
And plans and orders our connexions;
Directs us in our distant road,

And marks the bounds of our abode.
Thus we were settled when you found us,
Peasants and children all around us,

Not dreaming of so dear a friend,

Deep in the abyss of Silver End.

*

This

page of Providence quite new,
And now just opening to our view,
Employs our present thoughts and pains
To guess and spell what it contains:
But day by day, and year by year,
Will make the dark enigma clear,
And furnish us perhaps at last,
Like other scenes already past,
With proof that we and our affairs
Are part of a Jehovah's cares;
For God unfolds, by slow degrees,
The purport of His deep decrees,
Sheds every hour a clearer light
In aid of our defective sight,

And spreads at length before the soul
A beautiful and perfect whole,
Which busy man's inventive brain
Toils to anticipate in vain.

"Say, Auna, had you never known
The beauties of a rose full blown,
Could you, though luminous your eye,
By looking on the bud, descry,
Or guess, with a prophetic power,
The future splendour of the flower?
Just so the Omnipotent, who turns
The system of a world's concerns,

From mere minutiæ can educe
Events of most important use,
And bid a dawning sky display
The blaze of a meridian day.

The works of man tend one and all,
As needs they must, from great to small,

And vanity absorbs at length

The monuments of human strength.
But who can tell how vast the plan
Which this day's incident began?

Too small, perhaps, the slight occasion
For our dim-sighted observation,

It pass'd unnoticed, as the bird

That cleaves the yielding air unheard,

And yet may prove, when understood,
A harbinger of endless good."

The friendship of Lady Austen was a cordial influence provided for him at a period when the cloud of dejection upon his mind seemed to be gathering unusual blackness. His interesting and absorbing occupation with his first poetical volume was ended by its publication; and as yet nothing had come to supply its place. Some of the criticisms upon that volume had a depressing effect upon his spirits for a season, and would even have led him, he somewhere intimates, to renounce poetry altogether, had it not been for the friendly and encouraging admiration of his volume expressed by Dr Franklin. Cowper told his friend Unwin that "he felt, on after consideration, rather ashamed of having been at all dejected by the censure of the critical reviewers, who certainly could not read without prejudice a book replete with opinions and doctrines to which they could not subscribe." Southey remarked, in regard to the same unfavourable review, that "without prejudice on the score of opinions, and without individual ill-will, or the envious disposition which not unfrequently produces the

same effect, a dull critic or a pert one is generally ready enough to condemn what he wants heart to feel, or understanding to appreciate. This reviewal of Cowper's first volume is one of those defunct criticisms which deserves to be disinterred and gibbeted for the sake of example."

Among the expedients devised by Lady Austen to please and animate the mind of Cowper, when the alarming tendency to deep dejection was again becoming manifest, and occupation and amusement were requisite, was the happy gift of a small portable printing-press, on which he could strike off his own compositions. At the same time one of his dearest friends and correspondents, the Rev. Mr Bull, of Newport Pagnell, a dissenting minister of deep piety and varied learning and abilities, put the poetry of Madame Guion into his hands, and engaged him in the pleasant and beneficial labour of translating many of her pieces into English verse. In the letter to his friend Unwin, giving an account of this employment, he related in his exquisitely sportive way an encounter which he had witnessed between a kitten and a viper, which he also threw into the shape of verse in that amusing piece of humour entitled the "Colubriad." Some of the most beautiful songs were also composed by the poet, for Lady Austen to set them to appropriate music, and play them upon the harpsichord. One of these songs was the ballad on the "Loss of the Royal George," with Admiral Kempenfelt and her whole crowded crew of eight hundred men. This was one of Cowper's most favourite compositions: "Toll for the brave." He translated it into Latin.

At the same time, or very near it, on the occasion of a story related by Lady Austen, he composed the humorous