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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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jAmwell , a village near Ware , which lias been celebrated in " a Descriptive Poem , ' In blank verse , by the Muse of Scott . In that village Mr . R . has passed a great part of his leisure hours at the house of one of his intimate friends . Jan . 15 , at Clifton , in an advanced age LADY HESKETH , widow of Sir
Thomas H . Bart . Of the particulars of this lady ' s history we have no information , except as her name frequently occurs in the life and interesting letters of Cowper , her first cousin , with whom
she became intimate during her juvenile years . The amusements of those years lived in his remembrance , when they had long- departed . In a letter to Lady H . after a very playful account of their youthful frolics , he adds , " The hours I have spent with you were among the pleasantest of my former days , and are therefore chronicled in my mind so deeply as to fear no erasure . " In another letter , almost the last which he
wrote to this lady , or was in circumstances to write to any one , he says , * ' Though nature designed you only for my cousin , you have had a sister ' s place in my affections ever since I knew you . " JLady H . was married before 1763 , "when Cowper * s correspondence with her commences . She visited him during his first "derangement while he resided
in the temple , " the only time , he says , 44 in which he ever saw her without pleasure . * ' On his recovery he renewed their correspondence from Huntingdon , which , after a few months was unaccountably discontinued for a period of twenty years . Mr . Hay ley informs his readers that Lady H . spent several of
those years abroad with Sir Thomas , a Worthy man , with many peculiarities , according to a letter of Cowper ' s . She afterwards became a widow , and passed through much affliction . There was probably some other cause of this extraordinary alienation ; but Mr . Hay icy , in his biography of Cowper , does not lalways write to convey information .
JL , ady H \ s . attentions to her cousin revived in 1785 , upon meeting with John Gilpin . The bard thus agreeably refers to this circumstance- " Above all 1 honour John Gilpin , since it was he who first encouraged you to write . . I
made him on purpose to laugh at , and he has served his purpose well ; but I am now in debt to him for a more valuable acquisition than all the laughter in the world amounts , to , the recovery of my
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intercourse with you , ' which is to me iri - estimable . " The gratification which Cowper received from the revival of their correspondence , and an expected interview with his cotisin , at Olney , cannot be described so well as in his own words . " This is just as it should be . We are all grown young again , and the days that I thought I should sec
no more are actually returned . I need only recollect how much I valued you once , and with how much cause , immediately to feel a revival of the same value , if that can be said to ievive , which at the most has only been dormant for want of employment . But I slander it when I say it has slept . A thousand times have I recollected a thousand
scenes , in which our two selves have formed the whole of the drama , with the greatest pleasure ; at times , too , when I had no reason to suppose that I should ever hear from you again , I hope that now our correspondence has received its last interruption , and that we shall go down together to the grave chatting and chirping as merrily as such a seene ^ of things as this will permit . "
" Lady H . visited Cowper at Olney in 1786 , and passed several months in that village . She , had zealously promoted the subscription to his Homer , and also proposed to aid the pecuniary resources © f the poet from her own purse , a proposal which was made and accepted with a frankness highly creditable to
both the parties . Thus was Cowper assisted to make a very agreeable change in his situation , as he describes it to a friend . " Lady Hesketh is our good angel , by whose aid we are enabled to pass into a better air , and a more walkable country . She stoops to Olney , lifts us from our swamp , and sets us down on .
the elevated grounds of Wes ton-Underwood . " Here in 1795 , Lady H . attended her cousin for some months , during his ditressing derangement , justifying Mr . Hay ley ' s remark that " her tenderness-to her illustrious though unhappy relation , was exemplary through every period of his changeful life . "
Lady H . appears by the manner in which Cowper addresses her , to have possessed a . devote tuna of mind , though there are no traces of her opinions and feelings being tSiose so fondly called evangelical Her correspondent himself when writing to her , indulges views of religion which must be appoved by every seiious Christian , allowing for his
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101 Obituary—Lady Hesketh *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1807, page 104, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2377/page/48/
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