judgment on it was kind, and that he even did something to temper the wind of adverse criticism to the shorn lamb.  Yet parts of it were likely to incur his displeasure as a Tory, as a Churchman, and as one who greatly preferred Fleet Street to the beauties of nature; while with the sentimental misery of the writer, he could have had no sympathy whatever.  Of the incompleteness of Johnson’s view of character there could be no better instance than the charming weakness of Cowper.  Thurlow and Colman did not even acknowledge their copies, and were lashed for their breach of friendship with rather more vigour than the Moral Satires display, in The Valedictory, which unluckily survived for posthumous publication, when the culprits had made their peace.

Cowper certainly misread himself if he believed that ambition, even literary ambition, was a large element in his character.  But having published, he felt a keen interest in the success of his publication.  Yet he took its failure and the adverse criticism very calmly.  With all his sensitiveness, from irritable and suspicious egotism, such as is the most common cause of moral madness, he was singularly free.  In this respect his philosophy served him well.

It may safely be said that the Moral Satires would have sunk into oblivion if they had not been buoyed up by The Task.

CHAPTER V.

THE TASK.

Mrs. Unwin’s influence produced the Moral Satires. The Task was born of a more potent inspiration.  One day Mrs. Jones, the wife of a neighbouring clergyman, came into Olney to shop, and with her came her sister, Lady Austen, the widow of a Baronet, a woman of the world, who had lived much in France, gay, sparkling and vivacious, but at the same time full of feeling even to overflowing.  The apparition acted like magic on the recluse.  He desired Mrs. Unwin to ask the two ladies to stay to tea, then shrank from joining the party which he had himself invited, ended by joining it, and, his shyness giving way with a rush, engaged in animated conversation with Lady Austen, and walked with her part of the way home.  On her an equally great effect appears to have been produced.  A warm friendship at once sprang up, and before long Lady Austen had verses addressed to her as Sister Anne.  Her ladyship, on her part, was smitten with a great love of retirement, and at the same time with great admiration for Mr. Scott, the curate of Olney, as a preacher, and she resolved to fit up for herself “that part of our great building which is at present occupied by Dick Coleman, his wife and child, and a thousand rats.”  That a woman of fashion, accustomed to French salons, should choose such an abode, with a pair of Puritans for her only society, seems to show that one of the Puritans at least must have possessed great powers of attraction.  Better quarters were found for her in the Vicarage; and the private way between the gardens, which apparently had been closed since Newton’s departure, was opened again.