is a namesake of yours in particular, Cox, the Statuary, who, everybody
knows, is a first-rate maker of verses. He surely is the man of all the
world for your purpose.' 'Alas, sir, I have heretofore borrowed help
from him, but he is a gentleman of so much reading that the people of
our town cannot understand him.'

"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.

[Footnote 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: