of the pair from Weston to Mundsley, on the coast of Norfolk, where Cowper seemed to be soothed by the sound of the sea, then to Dunham Lodge, near Swaffham, and finally (in 1796) to East Dereham, where, two months after their arrival, Mrs. Unwin died.  Her partner was barely conscious of his loss.  On the morning of her death he asked the servant “whether there was life above stairs?” On being taken to see the corpse, he gazed at it for a moment, uttered one passionate cry of grief, and never spoke of Mrs. Unwin more.  He had the misfortune to survive her three years and a half, during which relatives and friends were kind, and Miss Perowne partly filled, the place of Mrs. Unwin.  Now and then, there was a gleam of reason and faint revival of literary faculty, but composition was confined to Latin verse or translation, with one memorable and almost awful exception.  The last original poem written by Cowper was The Castaway, founded on an incident in Anson’s Voyage.

  Obscurest night involved the sky,
    The Atlantic billows roared,
  When such a destined, wretch as I,
    Wash’d headlong from on board,
  Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
  His floating home for ever left.

  No braver chief could Albion boast;
    Than he with whom he went,
  Nor ever ship left Albion’s coast
    With warmer wishes sent. 
  He loved them both, but both in vain;
  Nor him beheld, nor her again.

  Not long beneath the whelming brine
    Expert to swim, he lay,
  Nor soon he felt his strength decline,
    Or courage die away;
  But waged with death a lasting strife,
  Supported by despair of life.

  He shouted; nor his friends had fail’d
    To check the vessel’s course,
  But so the furious blast prevail’d,
    That pitiless perforce
  They left their outcast mate behind,
  And scudded still before the wind.

  Some succour yet they could afford,
    And, such as storms allow,
  The cask, the coop, the floated cord,
    Delay’d not to bestow;
  But he, they knew, nor ship nor shore,
  Whate’er they gave, should visit more.

  Nor, cruel as it seem’d, could he
    Their haste himself condemn,
  Aware that flight, in such a sea,
    Alone could rescue them;
  Yet bitter felt it still to die
  Deserted, and his friends so nigh.

  He long survives, who lives an hour
    In ocean, self-upheld;
  And so long he, with unspent power,
    His destiny repelled: 
  And ever, as the minutes flew,
  Entreated help, or cried—­“Adieu!”

  At length, his transient respite past,
    His comrades, who before
  Had heard his voice in every blast,
    Could catch the sound no more: 
  For then by toil subdued, he drank
  The stifling wave, and then he sank.

  No poet wept him; but the page
    Of narrative sincere,
  That tells his name, his worth, his age,
    Is wet with Anson’s tear;
  And tears by bards or heroes shed
  Alike immortalize the dead.