"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.
[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 the well-known lines:
"While thirteen moons saw smoothly run
The Nen's barge-laden wave,
All these, life's rambling journey done,
Have found their home, the grave."
Another verse which has attained fame runs thus:
"Like crowded forest trees we stand,
And some are mark'd to fall;
The axe will smite at God's command,
And soon will smite us all."
And thus does Cowper, in his temporary rôle, point the moral:
"And O! that humble as my lot,
And scorned as is my strain,
These truths, though known, too much forgot,
I may not teach in vain.
"So prays your clerk with all his heart,
And, ere he quits his pen,
Begs you for once to take his part,
And answer all--Amen."