He soon became acquainted with a family, bearing the name of Unwin, consisting of a clergyman, his wife and daughter, and one son, an undergraduate of Cambridge. Struck by Cowper’s appearance, the latter threw himself into the stranger’s way; and a feeling of mutual regard and esteem led to Cowper’s establishing himself as a permanent inmate in Mr. Unwin’s family in November, 1765. After the lapse of nearly two years in tranquil happiness, the sudden death of Mr. Unwin led to the family’s departure from Huntingdon to Olney in Buckinghamshire, in October, 1767. But the foundation had been laid of a friendship which no misfortune or change of circumstance could destroy; and Cowper and Mrs. Unwin united their slender incomes, and continued to dwell under the same roof. The first six years of their abode at Olney were spent in domestic quiet and retirement almost unbroken, except by the society of Mr. Newton, an eminent and exemplary divine, who was then curate on the living. The well-known collection called the “Olney Hymns” were composed by Cowper and Newton, for the most part, during this period. But in 1773 Cowper’s mental disease returned in the dreadful shape of religious despondency. He conceived himself to be set apart for eternal misery: yet amid the deep gloom produced by the loss of that spiritual happiness which he had enjoyed since his recovery from his first illness, he was so entirely submissive that he was accustomed to say, “If holding up my finger would save me from endless torments, I would not do it against the will of God;” and in accordance with the belief that his own fate was sealed, he ceased to pray, and absented himself entirely from divine worship. The depth of his dejection was gradually cheered by the affectionate, watchful, and judicious care of his guardian friend, Mrs. Unwin. One of the first signs of improvement was a desire to tame some leverets. He was soon supplied with three, which have obtained celebrity in prose and verse, such as no other hares have enjoyed before or since. He tried at different times gardening, drawing, and a variety of trifling manual occupations, as methods of diverting his thoughts from his own miseries. “Many arts I have exercised with this view,” he says in a letter to Mrs. King, “for which nature never designed me, though among them were some in which I arrived at considerable proficiency, by mere dint of the most heroic perseverance. There is not a squire in all this country who can boast of having made better squirrel houses, hutches for rabbits, or bird-cages, than myself; and in the article of cabbage-nets I had no superior. But gardening was, of all employments, that in which I succeeded best, though even in this I did not suddenly attain perfection.” (Oct. 11, 1788.) At last he devoted himself to writing, “a whim,” he says elsewhere, “that has served me longest and best, and will probably be my latest.” His first volume of poems, containing “Table Talk,” &c.