Cowper's House, at Olney.

OLNEY is a market-town in Buckinghamshire, near the borders of Northamptonshire, and, according to the last census, contained a population of 2,339 inhabitants. The town owes its chief or sole celebrity to its having been the residence of the poet Cowper, and the place where he wrote several of his admirable poems. His house, of which we give a fine view, from a drawing by Mr. Storer, was a large, brick building at the corner of the market-place; here he had a printing-press, with which he sometimes amused himself; behind the house was a good garden, in which was a summer-house, "not bigger than a sedan-chair," he says, in one of his letters; adding, yet "here I write all that I write in summer time, whether to my friends or to the public. It is secure from all noise, and a refuge from all intrusion." Cowper's situation here appears to have been as comfortable as that of a person of his frame of mind could be any where; and, indeed, we find him thus recording his happiness in the third book of the "Task :"—

"Had I the choice of sublunary good,
What could I wish that I possess not here?
Health, leisure, means t' improve it, friendship,
peace;
No loose or wanton, though a wandering muse,
And constant occupation without care."

Cowper's House, at Olney.

* Had I the choice of sublunary good,
What could I wish that I possess not here?
Health, leisure, means to improve it, friendship,
Peace;
No loose or wanton, though a wandering muse,
And constant occupation without care."

B1974.12.886 ba-obj-24433 -0002

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Yale Center for British Art, 2017