COWPERS COUNTRY. 397 



The former of these mates " cuts," the other lends a 

 hand to heave the lyre overboard, hen-coop ways, that 

 we may float ashore, never doubting of his company 

 even there. I think, if my project prosper, of a small 

 shop stuffed with second-hand books " Bought or ex- 

 changed." Such my El Dorado ! The hope makes me 

 happy ; even that is something/ 



A few extracts may be taken from the letters sent 

 to Mrs Miller during the English tour, but as he made 

 large use of those letters in preparing the First Im- 

 pressions, we must glean, sparingly. 



' Olney, 9th September, 1845. 



' Here 1 am in a quiet old inn kept by a quiet old 

 man who remembers Squire Cowper and Mrs Unwin ; 

 and in the early part of the day I walked the walk 

 described by the Squire in the Task with an old woman 

 of 71 for my guide, for whose schooling Mrs Unwin had 

 paid. She knew the Lady Hesketh, too, and, when a 

 little thing, used to get coppers from her. A kindly 

 lady was the Lady Hesketh, there are no such ladies 

 now-a-days, that is, at Weston Underwood, I sup- 

 pose. She used to put coppers into her little silk bag 

 every time she went out, in order to make the children 

 whom she met happy. She and Mrs Unwin, too, were 

 remarkably good to the poor. I walked with the old 

 woman, much entertained with her gossip, through the 

 stately colonnade of limes whose " obsolete prolixity of 

 shade " the poet has celebrated, and which is in sober 

 truth a very notable thing, on to the " alcove," and 

 from thence to the " rustic bridge," and then on 

 through the field with the chasm in the centre of it, into 

 which the sheep of the fable proposed throwing them- 

 selves, to "Yardley Oak." Then returning by another 



