divine service. He would have no "talking, or sleeping, or gazing, or
leaning, or half-kneeling, or any undutiful behaviour in them."
Moreover, "everyone, man and child, should answer aloud both Amen and
all other answers which are on the clerk's and people's part to answer,
which answers also are to be done not in a huddling or slubbering
fashion, gaping, or scratching the head, or spitting even in the midst
of their answer, but gently and pausably, thinking what they say, so
that while they answer 'As it was in the beginning, etc.,' they meditate
as they speak, that God hath ever had his people that have glorified
Him as well as now, and that He shall have so for ever. And the like in
other answers."

Cowper's kindliness of heart is abundantly evinced by his treatment of a
parish clerk, one John Cox, the official of the parish of All Saints,
Northampton. The poet was living in the little Buckinghamshire village
of Weston Underwood, having left Olney when mouldering walls and a
tottering house warned him to depart. He was recovering from his dread
malady, and beginning to feel the pleasures and inconveniences of
authorship and fame. The most amusing proof of his celebrity and his
good nature is thus related to Lady Hesketh:

"On Monday morning last, Sam brought me word that there was a man in the
kitchen who desired to speak with me. I ordered him in. A plain, decent,
elderly figure made its appearance, and being desired to sit spoke as
follows: 'Sir, I am clerk of the parish of All Saints in Northampton,
brother of Mr. Cox the upholsterer. It is customary for the person in my
office to annex to a bill of mortality, which he publishes at Christmas,
a copy of verses. You will do me a great favour, sir, if you will
furnish me with one.' To this I replied: 'Mr. Cox, you have several men
of genius in your town, why have you not applied to some of them? There