"When poor Bob White," he says, "brought in the news of Boscawen's success off the coast of Portugal, how did I leap for joy! When Hawke demolished Conflans, I was still more transported.

But nothing could express my rapture when Wolfe made the conquest of Quebec." The "Delia" to whom Cowper wrote verses was his cousin Theodora, with whom he had an unfortunate love affair.

Her father, Ashley Cowper, forbade their marriage, nominally on the ground of consanguinity, really, as Southey thinks, because he saw Cowper's unfitness for business and inability to maintain a wife.

Cowper felt the disappointment deeply at the time, as well he might do if Theodora resembled her sister, Lady Hesketh.

Theodora remained unmarried, and, as we shall see, did not forget her lover.