Mrs. Unwin was buried by torchlight in the north aisle of Dereham Church, where a marble tablet was placed to her memory.
After this event there was little improvement, though some fluctuations, in Cowper’s state. His friends, Lady Spencer, Sir John Throckmorton, and others, came to visit him, but he showed no pleasure in seeing them. He occasionally wrote short verses, especially Latin, suggested to him by Johnson, made revisions and corrections, and a longer poem, embodying the most gloomy thoughts, ‘The Castaway,’ from an incident in one of Anson’s voyages, the last and saddest of his works.
‘For misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another’s case.’
The end was drawing near. Lady Hesketh was too unwell to go to him; Hayley was in attendance on his dying son; Mr. Rose went to bid him farewell, and Cowper, who had evinced no pleasure at his arrival, mourned his departure.
Johnson thought it now incumbent on him to prepare his friend’s mind for the impending danger, to which Cowper listened patiently. But when his kinsman thought to soothe him by speaking of the blessed change from earthly sorrow to the joys of heaven, the unhappy listener broke forth into wild entreaties that he would desist from such topics.
On the 25th of April 1800, William Cowper expired, so quietly that not one of the five persons who stood at his bedside was aware of the exact moment. ‘From that time till he was hidden from our sight,’ says his faithful and untiring watcher, Johnson, ‘his countenance was that of calmness and composure, mingled, as it were, with a holy surprise,’—words of deepest pathos, indissolubly connected with the poet’s memory. They inspired Charles Tennyson Turner, our Laureate’s worthy brother, with one of his most beautiful sonnets,—‘On Cowper’s Death-smile’—
‘That orphan smile, born since our mourner died,
A lovely prelude of immortal peace.’
Cowper lies buried in the church at Dereham, where his cousin Harriet placed a monument to his memory.