A Dissenter, but a Liberal one; a man of letters and of genius, a master of fine imagination ...which, when he finds himself in the company he loves and can confide in, runs away with him into such fields of speculation as amuse and enliven every other imagination that has the happiness to be of the party. At other times he has a tender and delicate sort of melancholy in his disposition, not less agreeable in its way. No men are better qualified for companions in such a world as this than men of such a temperament. ...He can be lively without levity, and pensive without objection. Such a man is Mr. Bull. But he smokes tobacco! Nothing is perfect. Nihil est ab omni parte beatum.

Because Bull was a pipe-smoker, Cowper usually entertained him in the Summer House in the garden. Bull once left his tobacco box at Orchard Side. He received it back from Cowper the next day with verses written by the poet in praise of the supposed nymph of the river where his Orinoco tobacco grew:

So may thy votaries increase
And fumigation never cease.
May Newton with renew'd delights
Perform thine odoriferous rites
While clouds of incense half divine
Involve thy disappearing shrine,
And so may smoke-inhaling Bull
Be always filling, never full.

She is a lively agreeable woman, has seen much of the World and ...she laughs and makes laugh

This page of Providence quite new,
And now just opening to our view,
Employs our present thoughts and pains,
To guess, and spell, what it contains."

Lady Austen hinted very strongly at marriage. It seems likely that Mary Unwin became rather jealous. At any rate Cowper wrote to dissuade Lady Austen. However, she didn't give up and on her return to Clifton Reynes in 1782 renewed the acquaintance. In October 1783 she set up home in the vicarage which she had arranged to rent. She influenced Cowper to write "John Gilpin" and "The Task". During 1784, however, Cowper became increasingly resentful of Lady Austen's demands on his time, complaining that he could not write any more. Lady Austen took herself off to Bath in May 1784, possibly hoping that, by her absence, she would force Cowper's hand. However, it was a gamble that she lost. By July 1784 the friendship was broken off possibly after Lady Austen wrote to Cowper promising to devote her life and fortune to him. She returned to Clifton Reynes, residing there from 1785 -1790. In 1790 she returned to London and six years later she married a French count and poet and ended her days in France.