From Weston to Eartham was a three days’ journey, an enterprise not undertaken without much trepidation and earnest prayer.  It was safely accomplished, however, the enthusiastic Mr. Rose walking to meet his poet and philosopher on the way.  Hayley had tried to get Thurlow to meet Cowper.  A sojourn in a country house with the tremendous Thurlow, the only talker for whom Johnson condescended to prepare himself, would have been rather an overpowering pleasure; and perhaps, after all, it was as well that Hayley could only get Cowper’s disciple, Hurdis, afterwards professor of poetry at Oxford, and Charlotte Smith.

At Eartham, Cowper’s portrait was painted by Romney.

  Romney, expert infallibly to trace
  On chart or canvas not the form alone
  And semblance, but, however faintly shown
  The mind’s impression too on every face,
  With strokes that time ought never to erase,
  Thou hast so pencilled mine that though I own
  The subject worthless, I have never known
  The artist shining with superior grace;
  But this I mark, that symptoms none of woe
  In thy incomparable work appear: 
  Well:  I am satisfied it should be so
  Since on maturer thought the cause is clear;
  For in my looks what sorrow could’st thou see
  When I was Hayley’s guest and sat to thee.

Southey observes that it was likely enough there would be no melancholy in the portrait, but that Hayley and Romney fell into a singular error in mistaking for “the light of genius” what Leigh Hunt calls “a fire fiercer than that either of intellect or fancy, gleaming from the raised and protruded eye.”

Hayley evidently did his utmost to make his guest happy.  They spent the hours in literary chat, and compared notes about Milton.  The first days were days of enjoyment.  But soon the recluse began to long for his nook at Weston.  Even the extensiveness of the view at Eartham made his mind ache, and increased his melancholy.  To Weston the pair returned; the paralytic, of course, none the better for her journey.  Her mind as well as her body was now rapidly giving way.  We quote as biography that which is too well known to be quoted as poetry.

  TO MARY.

  The twentieth year is well nigh past. 
  Since first our sky was overcast:—­
  Ah, would that this might be the last! 
    My Mary!

  Thy spirits have a fainter flow,
  I see thee daily weaker grow:—­
  ’Twas my distress that brought thee low,
    My Mary!

  Thy needles, once a shining store,
  For my sake restless heretofore,
  Now rust disused, and shine no more,
    My Mary!

  For though thou gladly wouldst fulfil
  The same kind office for me still,
  Thy sight now seconds not thy will,
    My Mary!

  But well thou play’dst the housewife’s part,
  And all thy threads with magic art,
  Have wound themselves about this heart,
    My Mary!