serted, and was flogged. In his rage at had some resemblance to those of his the subsequent hardships he endured, he newly-made friend, but he had gone far formed the design of murdering the cap- deeper into vice. There was hardly a tain, and would have executed his inten- mood of mind connected with religion tion but that he could not bear that the with which he was not familiar from his lady whom he afterwards married should own experience. The warmth of affection think ill of him. The general reckless- which attemptered his masculine nature ness, indeed, of his early life was as signal rendered him a counselor as gentle as he as the piety of the remainder. He was a was discriminating. His conversation scoffer of the Bible, a frightful blasphemer, was singularly racy, and abounded in apt and an abandoned profligate. He had and lively illustrations. The closest intiseen and suffered much, and both in good macy at once ensued between two such and in evil had displayed a resolute will. congenial spirits, equals in love, in piety, By the force of a powerful understanding in worth; and if the one was possessed and an inflexible purpose, he became, of the finer genius, the other had the adduring his voyages, a proficient in Latin, vantage of a more vigorous character, learnt the rudiments of mathematics and and a greater capacity for the affairs of French, and later, when on land, acquired life. They made it a rule to spend four a fair knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, and days in the week together, and were Syriac. He received no instruction what- rarely seven successive waking hours ever after he was ten years old, and the apart." Mr. Newton numbered the alliresult of his self-education was to give ance among his "principal blessings." It him a firm grasp of his knowledge and an was a blessing in which his parishioners unusual independence of thought. Des shared. He considered Cowper "a sort perate as he had been in wickedness, de- of curate," from his constant attendance fying both God and man, a feminine upon the sick and afflicted. The laytenderness lurked in his nature. "He pastor, we are told, was affable in his concould live," says his biographer, Mr. Ce-versation with them, sympathized in their cil, "no longer than he could love." On distresses, advised them in their difficultone of his voyages, when a letter from ies, and animated them by his prayers. Mrs. Newton miscarried, and he imagined Absorbed in his round of religious duties, that she was probably dead, he lost his he was averse to all other employments. appetite and rest, and in three weeks' time "You will ascribe," he wrote to Hill, in he was brought to the brink of the grave. May, 1768, "my dryness and conciseness With an adamantine frame which had re- in the epistolary way to almost a total sisted hardships that few of the strongest disuse of my pen. My youth and my men could have withstood, and with a scribbling vein have gone together, and marvelous energy of disposition which unless they had been better employed, it had once spurned all control, he had was fit they should." He said shortly nearly died of a broken heart from the afterwards that "he had that within him mere apprehension that his wife was no which hindered him wretchedly in all he He had arrived at his ultimate ought to do, and that he was prone to convictions on religion by a gradual pro- trifle and allow time to run to waste;" cess, and had passed through various but this is a self-reproach which would be stages of wickedness, temptation, conflict, uttered by most persons who exact of and amendment. Though his principles themselves a rigorous account. and conduct had long been fixed, he was Since his removal from Huntingdon, not ordained till he was close upon thirty- distance interposed to prevent frequent nine, when he was appointed to the cu- intercourse with his brother, and their racy of Olney. He found that Cowper weekly dwindled down to annual visits. had read his Bible to so much purpose, In the middle of February, 1770, Cowper that he needed no instruction in doctrine. was summoned to Cambridge by the fatal What he wanted was a companion, of illness of this sole remaining relic of his kindred sentiments and equal understand-home. "We have lost the best classic ing, with whom to interchange ideas. The entire world, perhaps, could not have supplied a person more fitted for the purpose than Mr. Newton. The transitions of feeling through which he had passed more. and most liberal thinker in our University," wrote Dr. Bennet, Bishop of Cloyne, to Dr. Parr, when he announced the death of John Cowper. "He sat so long at his studies, that the posture gave rise to an abscess in his liver, and he fell a victim to | three weeks, as he was praying one afterlearning." So said John Cowper himself noon to himself in bed, he suddenly burst when he was dying. "I have labored into tears, and with a loud cry exclaimed: day and night to perfect myself in things "Oh! forsake me not!" He afterwards of no profit; I have sacrificed my health stated that he had reflected much upon to these pursuits, and am suffering the Christianity during his illness, that the consequences of my misspent labor. I subject remained obscure to him, and wanted to be highly applauded, and was that he sent forth the cry at the moment flattered up to the hight of my wishes; when the light was darted into his soul. now I must learn a new lesson." He He threw his arms round the neck of his had been, in his own language, "blameless brother, and leaning his head upon him, in his outward conduct, and trusted in said: "If I live, you and I shall be more himself that he was righteous." He could like one another than we have been. not yield to the belief that he stood in But whether I live or not, all is well. need of a Redeemer, and had long desired God has visited me with this sickness to to be a deist. After the transformation teach me what I was too proud to learn which had taken place in Cowper at St. in health." At another time he added: Alban's, he endeavored to impress his "I see the rock upon which I once split, convictions upon his brother, who first and I see the rock of my salvation. I discussed the question, and then, to avoid have learned that in a moment which I disputes, listened to argument and ex- could not have learned by reading books hortation in silence. His attention, how- in many years. How plain do texts apever, was roused. He bought the best pear to which, after consulting all the writers on controverted points, studied commentators, I could hardly affix a them with diligence, and compared them meaning! There is but one key to the with Scripture. Blinded, he says, by New Testament, there is but one interprejudice, he continued not to perceive preter." The key he had discovered was the doctrine of redemption, yet wished to that "Jesus Christ was delivered for our embrace it, and was even persuaded that offenses, and rose again for our justificahe should some day be a convert. Upon tion." He wondered, as well he might, the whole, his antipathy gained upon his that a fact so plain should have been ininclination; for at the period of his ill- visible to him before. His self-abasement ness, he was on the verge of closing with was henceforth great. "That I ever had the Deism which appeared so attractive, a being," he said, "can not be too soon and which did not, like the Gospel, inter- forgot." He had charge of a parish fere with his self-esteem. Cowper, on his about seven miles from Cambridge, and arrival, found him ignorant that his illness thought much of the people there. was mortal, and quite unconcerned about "Thou hast intrusted many souls unto religion. There was one seeming excep-me," he exclaimed in one of his prayers, tion to his ordinary indifference. "When" and I have not been able to teach them, I talked to him," says the poet, "of the Lord's dealings with myself, he would press my hand, and look kindly at me, and seemed to love me the better for it." But this did not arise from any partiality for doctrines which he heard heedlessly at other times. The action clearly proceeded from generous sympathy with the griefs and joys of the speaker. As warm hearts are easily kindled into gratitude, the remark, "that, though many sick men had friends, it was not every man who had a friend that could pray for him," drew forth from the sufferer an additional tenderness. "He generally expressed it," says Cowper, "by calling for blessings upon me in the most affectionate terms, and with a look and manner not to be described." At the expiration of because I knew thee not myself." His Three years from this period, the joy which had resulted from his conversion was extinguished, never again, except in transient gleams, to be renewed on earth. Mr. Newton engaged him to join in the composition of a collection of hymns, partly "for the purpose of promoting the faith and comfort of sincere Christians," partly to perpetuate the remembrance of an endeared friendship." While the work was proceeding, his conversation one morning betrayed that his malady had returned. Southey produces a portion of two hymns, and the whole of a third, to show that the despairing nature of the ideas to which his mind had been directed by the employment was the cause of the calamity. The quotations are accompanied by the admission that, though the fragments which are given betray despondency, the strain in both cases passes on into hope, that in other parts of the series there is a tone of cheerful devotion, and that none of the sentiments differ from those which ordinary converts constantly experience. In fact, the states of feeling which Cowper has embodied in verse appear just as frequently in the productions of Mr. Newton. Impressions which are common to every Christian can be no evidence of a peculiar condition of mind. Cowper was so far from indulging in gloom, that his sixty-eight hymns, whether they are of praise, penitence, or prayer, are nearly all, in their conclusions, expressive of comfort, and there is not one that displays a tendency to morbid depression. The very specimen which Southey strangely adduces as "denoting a fearful state," was written to celebrate the deliverance from it, and is a song of triumph, and not of misery. It is clearly a description of his terrors at the Temple and St. Alban's, and ends with hailing the day-star that broke upon him and preserved him from despair. He depicts the dawn which chased away the darkness, and leaves us with a prospect as radiant as the sun from which he derives his comparison. In substance it is the same idea to which he gives utterance when, referring again to this crisis of his life, he says: "It taught my tears awhile to flow, But saved me from eternal woe." The inference which Southey drew from the few stanzas he extracted implies, what yet seems hardly credible, that he mistook the retrospective portions of the hymns for descriptions of the feelings of their author at the moment of composition. If it had been possible to compress such a chaos of remote and conflicting emotions into the brief space that he was engaged upon the task, the fruits would never have appeared in their present shape, for he must already have been raving mad. The form which Cowper's insanity ultimately assumed might lead some persons to overlook the fact that his religion hitherto had not been moody. When remorse, stimulated by disease, drove him to desperation, he had not yet entered upon his Christian life. He had no sooner tasted the sweets of it than he was transported with delight. Time, in taming down his spirits, did not quench them. He always referred to the eight years and a half which elapsed between his restoration at St. Alban's and the renewal of his disorder at Olney as to years of unparalleled joy. What they looked in the retrospect, they had ap peared in their passage. Wherever we catch a view of his feelings-in his "Personal Narrative," in his "Correspondence," in his sketch of his brother-he paints religion in bright and happy colors. Southey, speaking of one of his letters to Lady Hesketh, says, that "it is in a strain of that melancholy pietism which casts a gloom over every thing." The pietism might seem melancholy to those who could not sympathize with it. To Cowper it was exactly the reverse, and he tells his cousin on this identical occasion "that any place is delightful to him in which he can have leisure to meditate upon the mercies by which he lives, and indulge a vein of gratitude to God." "That he enjoyed a course of peace, short intervals excepted," from his removal to Olney up to the reappearance of his lunacy, we know from the testimony of Mr. Newton, who "passed these six years in daily admiring and aiming to imitate him." He was accustomed to take part in the prayer-meetings held in the parish, and he informed Mr. Greathead that his constitutional timidity vanished on these occasions "before his awful yet delightful consciousness of the presence of his Saviour." This, while it shows the exhilarating nature of his emotions when his heart was stirred the deepest, appears to have been the only act of doubtful prudence in which his piety engaged him, though the danger did not proceed from religious excitement, but from his nervous dread of a public display. His fear of an audience put an end to the idea of taking orders, which duty suggested to him when he came fresh with enthusiasm from St. Alban's. "Had | because, finding him devoted to religion I," he said, "the zeal of Moses, I should and fond of poetry, he advised him, when want an Aaron for my spokesman." The he was in his healthiest condition of mind, familiarity he had contracted in the interval with rustic congregations had not removed his apprehensions, and the prospect of pronouncing a prayer before a company of villagers agitated him for hours beforehand. Though the effect was comparatively brief, it bore too close a resemblance to his former disastrous experience to be hazarded wisely. No ill consequences appear to have ensued. A mode of life which kept him cheerful in the main for upwards of five years could not be very disastrous. Nor, unless Cowper communicated his sensations, could any blame be attached to Mr. Newton, who might easily suppose that the man who trembled to be examined at the bar of the House of Lords on a subject of which he knew nothing would have no apprehension of pouring out the petitions with filled his heart before the lace-makers of Olney. to put some of his religion into verse. Under every aspect, the theory is untenable that the train of thought suggested by the Hymns disordered his understanding. The notion has been chiefly entertained by those who disliked his school of theology, and their prejudices have influenced their opinion of the pernicious effects of his pious musings upon his reason. Although the fact were established, it would of itself prove nothing against the soundness of his belief. "The letters of Cowper," remarks Mr. Cecil, "show how much he was occupied at one time by the truths of the Bible, and at another time by the fictions of Homer; but his melancholy was originally a physical disease, which could be affected either by the Bible or Homer, but was utterly distinct in its nature from the matter of both." Whatever of good or evil is capable of agitating the mind will be capable of disordering it, and religion must continue to be one of the agents in insanity as long as it retains its vehement hold upon the human heart. It was in a different way, we conceive, from what has been alleged that the composition of the Olney Hymns, proved injurious to Cowper. In announcing, eight years afterwards, his next poetical under Even if Cowper's religious tendencies had been melancholy instead of cheerful, there is no reason to think that writing hymns would have deepened his gloom. His whole life was devoted to religion. It was the staple of his thoughts, his conversation, and his reading. He did not wait till he had to turn a stanza to fix meditations upon pious themes; and we can discover no warrant for Southey's as-taking to Mr. Newton, he adds: "Don't sertion, that in putting these habitual topics into meter, "he was led to brood over his sensations in a way which rendered him peculiarly liable to be deluded by them." That the act of versifying had not this result, but the reverse, we know from his own authority. In the long dark years, when religion seemed to frown upon him, and he trembled if he was even drawn in to speak of it, he could with pleasure make it the subject of his song, because, as he said, the difficulties of expression, rhyme, and numbers were an amusing exercise of ingenuity, and engrossed more attention than the matter. Not animated by faith and hope as when he wrote the Olney Hymns, but sunk in despair, he could descant in his works upon his own case, and upon all the themes which reminded him of his misery, and derived more advantage from the employment than from any other recreation. In the face of these facts, Mr. Newton has been charged with want of judgment, be alarmed; I ride Pegasus with a curb; he will never run away with me again. I have even convinced Mrs. Unwin that I can manage him and make him stop when I please." This plainly points to his hav ing pursued his theme with too much ardor before, and overtasked an intellect which was unable to endure a strain. It was his nature to throw himself with enthusiasm into any occupation which pleased him, and the nerve, he says, of his imagination twanged with vehemence under the energy of the pressure. undertaking could have enlisted more of his sympathies than the one in which Mr. Newton had embarked him, and prior to experience it was not easy to divine that he would rhyme with such assiduity as to bring on a fit of insanity. The malady assailed him in January, 1773. His power to set his faculties in motion was gone, and he spent hours in blank imbecility, unless an impetus was given to his mind by a question, when he was capable of re No He In turning a rational answer. A melancholy | to prepare it, and he passed the interva. of the darkest dye overshadowed him. in impatience. The attack lasted longer He believed that his food was poisoned, that every body hated him, and especially Mrs. Unwin, though he would allow no one else to wait upon him. His disposition to commit suicide required perpetual vigilance, which, coupled with the trying nature of his delusions, rendered the task of tending him a fearful task, both to mind and body. His incomparable friend discharged the office for nearly two years, not only with cheerfulness but with gratitude, and said that if ever she praised God, it was when she found that she was to have all the labor. Her constitution never entirely rallied from the shock it received Mr. Newton in a less degree had his share in the burthen. That he might be more out of the noise of a fair, Cowper moved in March, for a single night, to the Vicarage, which he had previously refused to enter, and chose to remain there a year and a quarter. As often as Mrs. Unwin urged him to return to his own house he wept and implored to be permitted to stay where he An inmate in his condition was no small disturbance to the domestic peace of Mr. Newton. But the piety and affection of that admirable man were equal to the occasion. "The Lord," he wrote towards the conclusion of the poor patient's stay, "has given us such a love to him, both as a believer and as a friend, that I am not weary." When the deliverance, came he confessed that his feelings had sometimes been restive, but added: "I think I can hardly suffer too much for such a friend." was. The recovery of Cowper followed the same course that it had done at St. Albans. From having his whole attention turned inwards upon his despairing thoughts, he began to notice the things about him. He fed the chickens; and some incident made him smile-the first smile that had been seen upon his face for more than sixteen months. He was continually employed in gardening, and talked freely upon his favorite employment. Other topics of conversation he rarely noticed. As he continued to improve, he expressed in verse, according to his wont, the desperate ideas which burned within him. At the end of May, 1774, he seemed to realize his position in Mr. Newton's house, and suddenly desired to go back to his own. A few days were necessary VOL. L.-NO. 1 than the one which grew out of the busi- 2 |