THEIR AUTHORS AND ORIGIN. 205
translation. This was begun in 1784, and occupied him, in its first production and subsequent revision, till the end of his days.
His second volume of poetry appeared in 1785, and his transla tion of Homer in 1791. In 1792 he published a translation of let ters written in Latin by Mr. Vanleer, a minister in the Dutch co lony at the Cape. The work is entitled " The Power of Grace Illustrated," and consists of an account of the writer s conver sion from scepticism to Christianity. Other publishing plans he had thought of, but the failure of Mrs. Unwin s health increased his depression of mind, and prevented him frcm carrying out his projects. His cousin, Lady Hesketh, endeavoured to cheer and console him when Mrs. Unwin s state of health rendered her unequal to her former work of companionship and consolation. She also afforded him valuable pecuniary assistance, and, in 1795, a royal pension of 300 per annum was granted to him.
At this time, a relative, Mr. Johnson, having a living in Nor folk, induced Mrs. Unwin and Cowper to remove thither, where they resided, first at North Tuddenham, and then at Mundesley, on the coast. Mrs. Unwin died in 1796. The grateful poet continued to the last unceasing in his attentions to the faithful companion to whom he had at one time hoped to be united in marriage. Cowper s uncertain mental condition prevented this union, but the honourable friendship continued to the end. From the blow of separation he never recovered, though he was able afterwards to give some attention to the revision of his " Homer ; " but after becoming surrounded again by the dark cloud of despondency that had so often encompassed him, he died of dropsy, April, 1800, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.
His poems were received coldly at first, partly from the un inviting form in which they at that time appeared ; partly perhaps from their unpretending style, which carefully avoids the obscu rity often mistaken for profundity; and partly because of the high tone of their religious character, which made them unpala table to some. But they have now risen to their just place in the public estimation. They have a melancholy interest as the
�� �
