red Fleet Street to the beauties of
nature; while with the sentimental misery of the writer, he could have
had no sympathy whatever. Of the incompleteness of Johnson's view of
character there could be no better instance than the charming weakness
of Cowper. Thurlow and Colman did not even acknowledge their copies,
and were lashed for their breach of friendship with rather more vigour
than the Moral Satires display, in _The Valedictory_, which unluckily
survived for posthumous publication, when the culprits had made their
peace.

Cowper certainly misread himself if he believed that ambition, even
literary ambition, was a large element in his character. But having
published, he felt a keen interest in the success of his publication.
Yet he took its failure and the adverse criticism very calmly. With
all his sensitiveness, from irritable and suspicious egotism, such as
is the most common cause of moral madness, he was singularly free. In
this respect his philosophy served him well.

It may safely be said that the Moral Satires would have sunk into
oblivion if they had not been buoyed up by _The Task_.

CHAPTER V.

THE TASK.

Mrs. Unwin's influence produced the Moral Satires. _The Task_ was born
of a more potent inspiration. One day Mrs. Jones, the wife of a
neighbouring clergyman, came into Olney to shop, and with her came her
sister, Lady Austen, the widow of a Baronet, a woman of the world, who
had lived much in France, gay, sparkling and vivacious, but at the same
time full of feeling even to overflowing. The apparition acted like
magic on the recluse. He desired Mrs. Unwin to ask the two ladies to
stay to tea, then shrank from joining the party which he had himself
invited, ended by joining it, and, his shyness giving way with a rush,
engaged in animated conversation with Lady Austen, and walked with her
part of the way home. On her an equally great effect appears to have
been produced. A warm friendship at once sprang up, and before long
Lady Austen had verses addressed to her as Sister Anne. Her ladyship,
on her part, was smitten with a great love of retirement, and at the
same time with great admiration for Mr. Scott, the curate of Olney, as
a preacher, and she resolved to fit up for herself "that part of our
great building which is at present occupied by Dick Coleman, his wife
and child, and a thousand rats." That a woman of fashion, accustomed to
French salons, should choose such an abode,