Cowper says they were as mother and son to each other; but Mrs.
Unwin was only seven years older than he.

To label their connexion is impossible, and to try to do it would be a platitude.

In his poems Cowper calls Mrs.Unwin Mary; she seems always to have called him Mr.
Cowper.

It is evident that her son, a strictly virtuous and religious man, never had the slightest misgiving about his mother's position.
The pair had to choose a dwelling-place; they chose Olney in Buckinghamshire, on the Ouse.

The Ouse was "a slow winding river," watering low meadows, from which crept pestilential fogs.