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These verses would be alone sufficient to make every poetical reader take a lively interest in the lady they describe, but these are far from being the only tribute, which the gratitude of Cowper has paid to the endearing virtues of his female companion. More poetical memorials of her merit will be found in these volumes, and in verse so exquisite, that it may be questioned, if the most passionate love ever gave rise to poetry more tender, or more sublime.

Yet, in this place, it appears proper to apprize the reader, that it was not love, in the common acceptation of the word, which inspired these admirable eulogies. The attachment of Cowper to Mrs. Unwin, the Mary of the poet! was an attachment perhaps unparalleled. Their domestic union, though not sanctioned by the common forms of life, was supported with perfect innocence, and endeared to them both, by their having struggled together through a series of sorrow. A spectator of sensibility, who had contemplated the uncommon tenderness of their attention to the wants and infirmities of each other in the decline of life, might have said of their singular attachment.

L'Amour n'a rien de si tendre,

Ni L'Amitiè de si doux.

As a connexion so extraordinary forms a striking feature in the history of the poet, the reader will probably be anxious to investigate its origin and progress. It arose from the following little incident.

The countenance and deportment of Cowper, though they indicated his native shyness, had yet very singular powers of attraction. On his first appearance in one of the churches at Huntingdon, he engaged the notice and respect of an amiable young man, William Cawthorne Unwin, then a student at Cambridge, who having observed, after divine service, that the interesting stranger was taking a solitary turn under a row of trees, was irresistibly led to share his walk, and to solicit his acquaintance.

They were soon pleased with each other, and the intelligent youth, charmed with the acquisition of such a friend, was eager to communicate the treasure to his parents, who had long resided in Huntingdon.

Mr. Unwin, the father, had for some years been master of a free school in the town; but, as he advanced in life, he quitted that laborious situation, and settling in a large convenient house in the high-street, contented himself with a few domestic pupils, whom he instructed in classical literature.

This worthy divine, who was now far advanced in years, had been Lecturer to the two churches at Huntingdon, before he obtained, from his college at Cambridge, the living of Grimston. While he lived in expectation of this preferment, he had attached himself to a young lady of lively talents, and remarkably fond of reading. This lady, who, in the process of time, and by a series of singular events, became the friend and guardian of Cowper, was the daughter of Mr. Cawthorne, a draper, in Ely. She was mar ried to Mr. Unwin on his succeeding to the preferment that he expected from his college, and settled with him on his living of Grimston, but not liking the situation and society of that sequestered scene, she prevailed on her husband to establish himself in Huntingdon, where he was known and respected.

They had resided there many years, and with their two only children, a son and a daughter (whom I remember to have noticed at Cambridge, in the year 1763, as a youth and a damsel of countenances uncommonly pleasing) they formed a cheerful and social family, when the younger Unwin, described by Cowper as

"A friend,

Whose worth deserves the warmest lay,

That ever friendship penn'd ;"

presented to his parents the solitary stranger, on whose retirement he had benevolently intruded, and whose welfare he became more and more anxious to promote. An event highly pleasing and comfortable to Cowper soon followed this introduction; he was affectionally solicited by all the Unwins to relinquish his lonely lodging, and become a part of their family.

I am now arrived at that period in the personal history of my friend, when I am fortunately enabled to employ his own descriptive powers in recording the events and characters that particularly interested him, and in displaying the state of his mind at a remarkable season of his checkered life. I have selected the following among the earliest Letters of this affectionate writer, with which time and chance, with the kindness of his friends and relations, have afforded me the advantage of adorning this work. Those addressed to the Lady Hesketh, from Huntingdon, had not been discovered, when the commencement of this compilation was first printed. Now as her tenderness to her illustrious, though unhappy, relation has been exemplary, through every period of his changeful life, I take a pleasure in giving a new

arrangement to the series of his Letters, because it assigns to this lady her proper place of pre-eminence as an early friend of the poet.

Among his juvenile intimates, and correspon dents, he particularly regarded two gentlemen, who devoted themselves to different branches of the law, the present Lord Thurlow, and Joseph Hill, Esqr. whose name appears in the second volume of Cowper's Poems, prefixed to a few verses of exquisite beauty; a brief epistle, that seems to have more of the genuine ease, spirit, and moral gaiety of Horace, than any original epistle in the English language! From these two confidential associates of the poet, in his unclouded years, I expected materials for the display of his early genius; but in the torrent of busy and splendid life, which bore the first of them to a mighty distance from his less ambitious fellow-student of the Temple, the private letters, and verses, that arose from their youthful intimacy, have perished.

Mr. Hill has kindly favoured me with a very copious collection of Cowper's Letters to himself, through a long period of time, and although many of them are of a nature not suited to publication,

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