restraint, and freedom from emotionalism and gush. But behind their chronicle of trifles, their small fancies, their little vanities, one is aware of an intensely loving and lovable personality. Cowper's poem, _To Mary_, written to Mrs. Unwin in the days of her feebleness, is, to my mind, made commonplace by the odious reiteration of "my Mary!" at the end of every verse. Leave the "my Marys" out, however, and see how beautiful, as well as moving, a poem it becomes. Cowper was at one time on the point of marrying Mrs. Unwin, when an attack of madness prevented him. Later on Lady Austen apparently wished to marry him. He had an extraordinary gift for commanding the affections of those of both sexes who knew him. His friendship with the poet Hayley, then a rocket fallen to earth, towards the close of his life, reveals the lovableness of both men. [2] _Letters of William Cowper_. Chosen and edited by J.G. Frazer. Two vols. Eversley Series. Macmillan. 12s. net. If we love Cowper, then, it is not only because of his little world, but because of his greatness of soul that stands in contrast to it. He is like one of those tiny pools among the rocks, left behind by the deep waters of ocean and reflecting the blue height of the sky. His most trivial actions acquire a pathos from what we know of the _De Profundis_ that is behind them. When we read of the Olney household--"our snug parlour, one lady knitting, the other netting, and the gentleman winding worsted"--we feel that this marionette-show has some second and immortal significance. On another day, "one of the ladies has been playing a harpsichord, while I, with the other, have been playing at battledore and shuttlecock." It is a game of cherubs, though of cherubs slightly unfeathered as a result of belonging to the pious English upper-middle classes. The poet, inclined to be fat, whose chief occupation in winter is "to walk ten times in a day from the fireside to his cucumber frame and back again," is busy enough on a heavenly errand. With his pet hares, his goldfinches, his dog, his carpentry, his greenhouse--"Is not our greenhouse a cabinet of perfumes?"--his clergymen, his ladies, and his tasks, he is not only constantly amusing himself, but carrying on a secret battle, with all the terrors of Hell. He is, indeed, a pilgrim who struggles out of one slough of despond only to fall waist-deep into another. This strange creature who passed so much of his time writing such things as _Verses written at Bath on Finding the Heel of a Shoe, Ode to Apollo on an Ink-glass almost dried in the Sun, Lines sent with Two Cockscombs to Miss Green_, and _On the Death of Mrs. Throckmorton's Bullfinch_, stumbled along under a load of woe and repentance as terrible as any of the sorrows that we read of in the great tragedies. The last of his original poems, _The Castaway_, is an image of his utter hopelessness. As he lay dying in 1880 he was asked how he felt.