win, and himself. Nevertheless, after his removal to
Weston, he again went mad, and once more attempted self-destruction.
His malady was constitutional, and it settled down upon him as his
years increased, and his strength failed. He was now sixty. The Olney
physicians, instead of husbanding his vital power, had wasted it away
_secundum artem_ by purging, bleeding, and emetics. He had overworked
himself on his fatal translation of Homer, under the burden of which he
moved, as he says himself, like an ass over-laden with sand-bags. He
had been getting up to work at six, and not breakfasting till eleven.
And now the life from which his had for so many years been fed, itself
began to fail. Mrs. Unwin was stricken with paralysis; the stroke was
slight, but of its nature there was no doubt. Her days of bodily life
were numbered; of mental life there remained to her a still shorter
span. Her excellent son, William Unwin, had died of a fever soon after
the removal of the pair to Weston. He had been engaged in the work of
his profession as a clergyman, and we do not hear of his being often at
Olney. But he was in constant correspondence with Cowper, in whose
heart as well as in that of Mrs. Unwin his death must have left a great
void, and his support was withdrawn just at the moment when it was
about to become most necessary.

Happily just at this juncture a new and a good friend appeared. Hayley
was a mediocre poet, who had for a time obtained distinction above his
merits. Afterwards his star had declined, but having an excellent
heart, he had not been in the least soured by the downfall of his
reputation. He was addicted to a pompous rotundity of style, perhaps
he was rather absurd; but he was thoroughly good-natured, very anxious
to make himself useful, and devoted to Cowper, to whom, as a poet, he
looked up with an admiration unalloyed by any other feeling. Both of
them, as it happened, were engaged on Milton, and an attempt had been
made to set them by the ears; but Hayley took advantage of it to
introduce himself to Cowper with an effusion of the warmest esteem. He
was at Weston when Mrs. Unwin was attacked with paralysis, and
displayed his resource by trying to cure her with an electric-machine.
At Eartham, on the coast of Sussex, he had, by an expenditure beyond
his means, made for himself a little paradise, where it was his delight
to gather a distinguished circle. To this place he gave the pair a
press