ad
malady, and beginning to feel the pleasures and inconveniences of
authorship and fame. The most amusing proof of his celebrity and his
good nature is thus related to Lady Hesketh:

"On Monday morning last, Sam brought me word that there was a man in the
kitchen who desired to speak with me. I ordered him in. A plain, decent,
elderly figure made its appearance, and being desired to sit spoke as
follows: 'Sir, I am clerk of the parish of All Saints in Northampton,
brother of Mr. Cox the upholsterer. It is customary for the person in my
office to annex to a bill of mortality, which he publishes at Christmas,
a copy of verses. You will do me a great favour, sir, if you will
furnish me with one.' To this I replied: 'Mr. Cox, you have several men
of genius in your town, why have you not applied to some of them? There
is a namesake of yours in particular, Cox, the Statuary, who, everybody
knows, is a first-rate maker of verses. He surely is the man of all the
world for your purpose.' 'Alas, sir, I have heretofore borrowed help
from him, but he is a gentleman of so much reading that the people of
our town cannot understand him.'

"I confess to you, my dear, I felt all the force of the compliment
implied in this speech, and was almost ready to answer, Perhaps, my
good friend, they may find me unintelligible too for the same reason.
But on asking him whether he had walked over to Weston on purpose to
implore the assistance of my muse, and on his replying in the
affirmative, I felt my mortified vanity a little consoled, and pitying
the poor man's distress, which appeared to be considerable, promised to
supply him. The waggon has accordingly gone this day to Northampton
loaded in part with my effusions in the mortuary style. A fig for poets
who write epitaphs upon individuals! I have written _one_ that serves
_two hundred_ persons."

Seven successive years did Cowper, in his excellent good nature, supply
John Cox, the clerk of All Saints in Northampton, with his mortuary
verses[42], and when Cox died, he bestowed a like kindness on his
successor, Samuel Wright.

[Footnote 42: Southey's _Works of Cowper_, ii. p. 283.]

These stanzas are published in the complete editions of Cowper's poems,
and need not be quoted here. They begin with a quotation from some Latin
author--Horace, or Virgil, or Cicero--these quotations being obligingly
translated for the benefit of the worthy townsfolk. The first of these
stanzas begins with th