for about a year.  He had now no income beyond a small sum inherited from his f., and no aims in life; but friends supplemented his means sufficiently to enable him to lead with a quiet mind the life of retirement which he had resolved to follow.  He went to Huntingdon, and there made the acquaintance of the Unwins, with whom he went to live as a boarder.  The acquaintance soon ripened into a close friendship, and on the death, from an accident (1767), of Mr. U., C. accompanied his widow (the “Mary” of his poems) to Olney, where the Rev. John Newton (q.v.) was curate.  N. and C. became intimate friends, and collaborated in producing the well-known Olney Hymns, of which 67 were composed by C. He became engaged to Mary Unwin, but a fresh attack of his mental malady in 1773 prevented their marriage.  On his recovery he took to gardening, and amused himself by keeping pets, including the hares “Tiny” and “Puss,” and the spaniel “Beau,” immortalised in his works.  The chief means, however, which he adopted for keeping his mind occupied and free from distressing ideas was the cultivation of his poetic gift.  At the suggestion of Mrs. U., he wrote The Progress of Error; Truth, Table Talk, Expostulation, Hope, Charity, Conversation, and Retirement were added, and the whole were pub. in one vol. in 1782.  Though not received with acclamation, its signal merits of freshness, simplicity, graceful humour, and the pure idiomatic English in which it was written gradually obtained recognition, and the fame of the poet-recluse began to spread.  His health had now become considerably re-established, and he enjoyed an unwonted measure of cheerfulness, which was fostered by the friendship of Lady Austin, who had become his neighbour.  From her he received the story of John Gilpin, which he forthwith turned into his immortal ballad.  Hers also was the suggestion that he should write a poem in blank verse, which gave its origin to his most famous poem, The Task.  Before it was pub., however, the intimacy had, apparently owing to some little feminine jealousies, been broken off. The Task was pub. in 1785, and met with immediate and distinguished success.  Although not formally or professedly, it was, in fact, the beginning of an uprising against the classical school of poetry, and the founding of a new school in which nature was the teacher.  As Dr. Stopford Brooke points out, “Cowper is the first of the poets who loves Nature entirely for her own sake,” and in him “the idea of Mankind as a whole is fully formed.”  About this time he resumed his friendship with his cousin, Lady Hesketh, and, encouraged by her, he began his translation of Homer, which appeared in 1791.  Before this he had removed with Mrs. U. to the village of Weston Underwood.  His health had again given way; and in 1791 Mrs. U. became paralytic, and the object of his assiduous and affectionate care.  A settled gloom with occasional