Chapter XIII: Front Matter (13)

But they are dead. ‘“So am not I,” said the foolish fat scullion.’ We are the English of the present day. We have cows and calves, corn and cotton; we hate the Russians; we know where the Crimea is; we believe in Manchester the great. A large expanse is around us; a fertile land of corn and orchards, and pleasant hedgerows, and rising trees, and noble prospects, and large black woods, and old church towers. The din of great cities comes mellowed from afar. The green fields, the half-hidden hamlets, the gentle leaves, soothe us with ‘a sweet inland murmur.’ We have before us a vast seat of interest, and toil, and beauty, and power, and this our own. Here is our home. The use of foreign literature is like the use of foreign travel. It imprints in early and susceptible years a deep impression of great, and strange, and noble objects; but we cannot live with these. They do not resemble our familiar life; they do not bind themselves to our intimate affection; they are picturesque and striking, like strangers and wayfarers, but they are not of our home, or homely; they cannot speak to our ‘business and bosoms’; they cannot touch the hearth of the soul. It would be better to have no outlandish literature in the mind than to have it the principal thing. We should be like accomplished vagabonds without a country, like men with a hundred acquaintances and no friends. We need an intellectual possession analogous to our own life; which reflects, embodies, improves it; on which we can repose; which will recur to us in the placid moments—which will be a latent principle even in the acute crises of our life. Let us be thankful if our researches in foreign literature enable us, as rightly used they will enable us, better to comprehend our own. Let us venerate what is old, and marvel at what is far. Let us read our own books. Let us understand ourselves.

With these principles, if such they may be called, in our minds, we gladly devote these early pages of our journal[32] to the new edition of Cowper, with which Mr. Bell has favoured us. There is no writer more exclusively English. There is no one—or hardly one, perhaps—whose excellences are more natural to our soil, and seem so little able to bear transplantation. We do not remember to have seen his name in any continental book. Professed histories of English literature, we dare say, name him; but we cannot recall any such familiar and cursory mention as would evince a real knowledge and hearty appreciation of his writings.

The edition itself is a good one. The life of Cowper, which is prefixed to it, though not striking, is sensible. The notes are clear, explanatory, and, so far as we know, accurate. The special introductions to each of the poems are short and judicious, and bring to the mind at the proper moment the passages in Cowper’s letters most clearly relating to the work in hand. The typography is not very elegant, but it is plain and business-like. There is no affectation of cheap ornament.

The little book which stands second on our list belongs to a class of narratives written for a peculiar public, inculcating peculiar doctrines, and adapted, at least in part, to a peculiar taste. We dissent from many of these tenets, and believe that they derive no support, but rather the contrary, from the life of Cowper. In previous publications, written for the same persons, these opinions have been applied to that melancholy story in a manner which it requires strong writing to describe. In this little volume they are more rarely expressed, and when they are it is with diffidence, tact, and judgment.

Only a most pedantic critic would attempt to separate the criticism on Cowper’s works from a narrative of his life. Indeed, such an attempt would be scarcely intelligible. Cowper’s poems are almost as much connected with his personal circumstances as his letters, and his letters are as purely autobiographical as those of any man can be. If all information concerning him had perished save what his poems contain, the attention of critics would be diverted from the examination of their interior characteristics to a conjectural dissertation on the personal fortunes of the author. The Germans would have much to say. It would be debated in Tübingen who were the Three Hares, why ‘The Sofa’ was written, why John Gilpin was not called William. Halle would show with great clearness that there was no reason why he _should_ be called William; that it appeared by the bills of mortality that several other persons born about the same period had also been called John; and the ablest of all the professors would finish the subject with a monograph showing that there was a special fitness in the name John, and that any one with the æsthetic sense who (like the professor) had devoted many years exclusively to the perusal of the poem, would be certain that any other name would be quite ‘paralogistic, and in every manner impossible and inappropriate.’ It would take a German to write upon the Hares.

William Cowper, the poet, was born on November 26, 1731, at his father’s parsonage, at Berkhampstead. Of his father, who was chaplain to the king, we know nothing of importance. Of his mother, who had been named Donne, and was a Norfolk lady, he has often made mention, and it appears that he regarded the faint recollection which he retained of her—for she died early—with peculiar tenderness. In later life, and when his sun was going down in gloom and sorrow, he recurred eagerly to opportunities of intimacy with her most distant relatives, and wished to keep alive the idea of her in his mind. That idea was not of course very definite; indeed, as described in his poems, it is rather the abstract idea of what a mother should be, than anything else; but he was able to recognise her picture, and there is a suggestion of cakes and sugar-plums, which gives a life and vividness to the rest. Soon after her death he was sent to a school kept by a man named Pitman, at which he always described himself as having suffered exceedingly from the cruelty of one of the boys. He could never see him, or think of him, he has told us, without trembling. And there must have been some solid reason for this terror, since—even in those days, when τύπτω meant ‘I strike,’ and ‘boy’ denoted a thing to be beaten—this juvenile inflicter of secret stripes was actually expelled. From Mr. Pitman, Cowper, on account of a weakness in the eyes, which remained with him through life, was transferred to the care of an oculist,—a dreadful fate even for the most cheerful boy, and certainly not likely to cure one with any disposition to melancholy; hardly indeed can the boldest mind, in its toughest hour of manly fortitude, endure to be domesticated with an operation chair. Thence he went to Westminster, of which he has left us discrepant notices, according to the feeling for the time being uppermost in his mind. From several parts of the ‘Tirocinium,’ it would certainly seem that he regarded the whole system of public school teaching not only with speculative disapproval, but with the painful hatred of a painful experience. A thousand genial passages in his private letters, however, really prove the contrary; and in a changing mood of mind, the very poem which was expressly written to ‘recommend private tuition at home’ gives some idea of school happiness.

‘Be it a weakness, it deserves some praise,
We love the play-place of our early days;
The scene is touching, and the heart is stone
That feels not at that sight, and feels at none.
The wall on which we tried our graving skill,
The very name we carved subsisting still,
The bench on which we sat while deep employed,
Though mangled, hacked, and hewed, not yet destroyed;
The little ones unbuttoned, glowing hot,
Playing our games, and on the very spot,
As happy as we once, to kneel and draw
The chalky ring, and knuckle down at taw;
To pitch the ball into the grounded hat,
Or drive it devious with a dextrous pat;
The pleasing spectacle at once excites
Such recollections of our own delights,
That viewing it, we seem almost t’ obtain
Our innocent sweet simple years again.
This fond attachment to the well-known place,
Whence first we started into life’s long race,
Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway,
We feel it e’en in age, and at our latest day.’

Probably we pursue an insoluble problem in seeking a suitable education for a morbidly melancholy mind. At first it seems a dreadful thing to place a gentle and sensitive nature in contact, in familiarity, and even under the rule of coarse and strong buoyant natures. Nor should this be in general attempted. The certain result is present suffering, and the expected good is remote and disputable. Nevertheless, it is no artificial difficulty which we here encounter—none which we can hope by educational contrivances to meet or vanquish. The difficulty is in truth the existence of the world. It is the fact, that by the constitution of society the bold, the vigorous, and the buoyant, rise and rule; and that the weak, the shrinking, and the timid, fall and serve. In after-life, in the actual commerce of men, even too in those quiet and tranquil pursuits in which a still and gentle mind should seem to be under the least disadvantage, in philosophy and speculation, the strong and active, who have confidence in themselves and their ideas, acquire and keep dominion. It is idle to expect that this will not give great pain—that the shrinking and timid, who are often just as ambitious as others, will not repine—that the rough and strong will not often consciously inflict grievous oppression—will not still more often, without knowing it, cause to more tremulous minds a refined suffering which their coarser texture could never experience, which it does not sympathise with, nor comprehend. Some time in life—it is but a question of a very few years at most—this trial must be undergone. There may be a short time, more or less, of gentle protection and affectionate care, but the leveret grows old—the world waits at the gate—the hounds are ready, and the huntsman too, and there is need of strength, and pluck, and speed. Cowper indeed, himself, as we have remarked, does not, on an attentive examination, seem to have suffered exceedingly. In subsequent years, when a dark cloud had passed over him, he was apt at times to exaggerate isolated days of melancholy and pain, and fancy that the dislike which he entertained for the system of schools, by way of speculative principle, was in fact the result of a personal and suffering experience. But, as we shall have (though we shall not, in fact, perhaps use them all) a thousand occasions to observe, he had, side by side with a morbid and melancholy humour, an easy nature, which was easily satisfied with the world as he found it, was pleased with the gaiety of others, and liked the sight of, and sympathy with, the more active enjoyments which he did not care to engage in or to share. Besides, there is every evidence that cricket and marbles (though he sometimes in his narratives suppresses the fact, in condescension to those of his associates who believed them to be the idols of wood and stone which are spoken of in the prophets) really exercised a laudable and healthy supremacy over his mind. The animation of the scene—the gay alertness which Gray looked back on so fondly in long years of soothing and delicate musing, exerted, as the passage which we cited shows, a great influence over a genius superior to Gray’s in facility and freedom, though inferior in the ‘little footsteps’ of the finest fancy,—in the rare and carefully-hoarded felicities, unequalled save in the immeasurable abundance of the greatest writers. Of course Cowper was unhappy at school, as he was unhappy always; and of course too we are speaking of Westminster only. For Dr. Pitman and the oculist there is nothing to say.

In scholarship Cowper seems to have succeeded. He was not, indeed, at all the sort of man to attain to that bold, strong-brained, confident scholarship which Bentley carried to such an extreme, and which, in almost every generation since, some Englishman has been found of hard head and stiff-clayed memory to keep up and perpetuate. His friend Thurlow was the man for this pursuit, and the man to prolong the just notion that those who attain early proficiency in it are likely men to become Lord Chancellors. Cowper’s scholarship was simply the general and delicate _impression_ which the early study of the classics invariably leaves on a nice and susceptible mind. In point of information it was strictly of a common nature. It is clear that his real knowledge was mostly confined to the poets, especially the ordinary Latin poets and Homer, and that he never bestowed any regular attention on the historians, or orators, or philosophers of antiquity, either at school or in after years. Nor indeed would such a course of study have in reality been very beneficial to him. The strong, analytic, comprehensive, reason-giving powers which are required in these dry and rational pursuits were utterly foreign to his mind. All that was congenial to him, he acquired in the easy intervals of apparent idleness. The friends whom he made at Westminster, and who continued for many years to be attached to him, preserved the probable tradition that he was a gentle and gradual, rather than a forcible or rigorous learner.

The last hundred years have doubtless seen a vast change in the common education of the common boy. The small and pomivorous animal which we so call is now subjected to a treatment very elaborate and careful,—that contrasts much with the simple alternation of classics and cuffs which was formerly so fashionable. But it may be doubted whether for a peculiar mind such as Cowper’s, on the intellectual side at least, the tolerant and corpuscular theory of the last century was not preferable to the intolerant and never-resting moral influence that has succeeded to it. Some minds learn most when they seem to learn least. A certain, placid, unconscious, equable in-taking of knowledge suits them, and alone suits them. To succeed in forcing such men to attain great learning is simply impossible; for you cannot put the fawn into the ‘Land Transport.’ The only resource is to allow them to acquire gently and casually in their own way; and in that way they will often imbibe, as if by the mere force of existence, much pleasant and well-fancied knowledge.

From Westminster Cowper went at once into a solicitor’s office. Of the next few years (he was then about eighteen) we do not know much. His attention to legal pursuits was, according to his own account, not very profound; yet it could not have been wholly contemptible, for his evangelical friend, Mr. Newton, who, whatever may be the worth of his religious theories, had certainly a sound, rough judgment on topics terrestrial, used in after years to have no mean opinion of the value of his legal counsel. In truth, though nothing could be more out of Cowper’s way than abstract and recondite jurisprudence, an easy and sensible mind like his would find a great deal which was very congenial to it in the well-known and perfectly settled maxims which regulate and rule the daily life of common men. No strain of capacity or stress of speculative intellect is necessary for the apprehension of these. A fair and easy mind, which is placed within their reach, will find it has learnt them, without knowing when or how.

After some years of legal instruction, Cowper chose to be called to the bar, and took chambers in the Temple accordingly. He never, however, even pretended to practise. He passed his time in literary society, in light study, in tranquil negligence. He was intimate with Colman, Lloyd, and other wits of those times. He wrote an essay in the _Connoisseur_, the kind of composition then most fashionable, especially with such literary gentlemen as were most careful not to be confounded with the professed authors. In a word, he did ‘nothing,’ as that word is understood among the vigorous, aspiring, and trenchant part of mankind. Nobody could seem less likely to attain eminence. Every one must have agreed that there was no harm in him, and few could have named any particular good which it was likely that he would achieve. In after days he drew up a memoir of his life, in which he speaks of those years with deep self-reproach. It was not indeed the secular indolence of the time which excited his disapproval. The course of life had not made him more desirous of worldly honours, but less; and nothing could be further from his tone of feeling than regret for not having strenuously striven to attain them. He spoke of those years in the Puritan manner, using words which literally express the grossest kind of active Atheism in a vague and vacant way; leaving us to gather from external sources whether they are to be understood in their plain and literal signification, or in that out-of-the-way and technical sense in which they hardly have a meaning. In this case the external evidence is so clear that there is no difficulty. The regrets of Cowper had reference to offences which the healthy and sober consciences of mankind will not consider to deserve them. A vague, literary, omnitolerant idleness was perhaps their worst feature. He was himself obliged to own that he had always been considered ‘as one religiously inclined, if not actually religious,’ and the applicable testimony, as well as the whole form and nature of his character, forbid us to ascribe to him the slightest act of licence or grossness. A reverend biographer has called his life at this time, ‘an unhappy compound of guilt and wretchedness.’ But unless the estimable gentleman thinks it sinful to be a barrister and wretched to live in the Temple, it is not easy to make out what he would mean. In point of intellectual cultivation, and with a view to preparing himself for writing his subsequent works, it is not possible he should have spent his time better. He then acquired that easy, familiar knowledge of terrestrial things—the vague and general information of the superficies of all existence—the acquaintance with life, business, hubbub, and rustling matter of fact, which seem odd in the recluse of Olney—and enliven so effectually the cucumbers of the ‘Task.’ It has been said that at times every man wishes to be a man of the world, and even the most rigid critic must concede it to be nearly essential to a writer on real life and actual manners. If a man has not seen his brother, how can he describe him? As this world calls happiness and blamelessness, it is not easy to fancy a life more happy—at least with more of the common elements of happiness,—or more blameless than those years of Cowper. An easy temper, light fancies,—hardly as yet broken by shades of melancholy brooding;—an enjoying habit, rich humour, literary, but not pedantic companions, a large scene of life and observation, polished acquaintance and attached friends: these were his, and what has a light life more? A rough hero Cowper was not and never became, but he was then, as ever, a quiet and tranquil gentleman. If De Béranger’s doctrine were true, ‘_Le bonheur tient au savoir-vivre_,’ there were the materials of existence here. What, indeed, would not De Béranger have made of them?

One not unnatural result or accompaniment of such a life was that Cowper fell in love. There were in those days two young ladies, cousins of Cowper, residents in London, to one of whom, the Lady Hesketh of after years, he once wrote:—‘My dear Cousin,—I wonder how it happened, that much as I love you, I was never in love with you.’ No similar providence protected his intimacy with her sister. Theodora Cowper, ‘One of the cousins with whom Thurlow used to giggle and make giggle in Southampton-row,’ was a handsome and vigorous damsel. ‘What!’ said her father, ‘What will you do if you marry William Cowper?’ meaning, in the true parental spirit, to intrude mere pecuniary ideas. ‘Do, sir!’ she replied, ‘Wash all day, and ride out on the great dog all night!’ a spirited combination of domestic industry and exterior excitement. It is doubtful, however, whether either of these species of pastime and occupation would have been exactly congenial to Cowper. A gentle and refined indolence must have made him an inferior washerman, and perhaps to accompany the canine excursions of a wife ‘which clear-starched,’ would have hardly seemed enough to satisfy his accomplished and placid ambition. At any rate, it certainly does seem that he was not a very vigorous lover. The young lady was, as he himself oddly said:—

‘Through tedious years of doubt and pain,
Fixed in her choice and faithful ... _but in vain_.’

The poet does indeed partly allude to the parental scruples of Mr. Cowper, her father; but house-rent would not be so high as it is, if fathers had their way. The profits of builders are eminently dependent on the uncontrollable nature of the best affections; and that intelligent class of men have had a table compiled from trustworthy data, in which the chances of parental victory are rated at ·0000000001, and those of the young people themselves at ·999999999,—in fact, as many nines as you can imagine. ‘It has been represented to me,’ says the actuary, ‘that few young people ever marry without some objection, more or less slight, on the part of their parents; and from a most laborious calculation, from data collected in quarters both within and exterior to the bills of mortality, I am led to believe that the above figures represent the state of the case accurately enough to form a safe guide for the pecuniary investments of the gentlemen, &c. &c.’ It is not likely that Theodora Cowper understood decimals, but she had a strong opinion in favour of her cousin, and a great idea, if we rightly read the now obscure annals of old times, that her father’s objections might pretty easily have been got over. In fact, we think so even now, without any prejudice of affection, in our cool and mature judgment. Mr. Cowper the aged had nothing to say, except that the parties were cousins—a valuable remark, which has been frequently repeated in similar cases, but which has not been found to prevent a mass of matches both then and since. Probably the old gentleman thought the young gentleman by no means a working man, and objected—believing that a small income can only be made more by unremitting industry,—and the young gentleman admitting this horrid and abstract fact, and agreeing, though perhaps tacitly, in his uncle’s estimate of his personal predilections, did not object to being objected to. The nature of Cowper was not, indeed, passionate. He required beyond almost any man the daily society of amiable and cultivated women. It is clear that he preferred such gentle excitement to the rough and argumentative pleasures of more masculine companionship. His easy and humorous nature loved and learned from female detail. But he had no overwhelming partiality for a particular individual. One refined lady, the first moments of shyness over, was nearly as pleasing as another refined lady. Disappointment sits easy on such a mind. Perhaps, too, he feared the anxious duties, the rather contentious tenderness of matrimonial existence. At any rate, he acquiesced. Theodora never married. Love did not, however, kill her—at least, if it did, it was a long time at the task, as she survived these events more than sixty years. She never, seemingly, forgot the past.

But a dark cloud was at hand. If there be any truly painful fact about the world now tolerably well established by ample experience and ample records, it is that an intellectual and indolent happiness is wholly denied to the children of men. That most valuable author, Lucretius, who has supplied us and others with an inexhaustible supply of metaphors on this topic, ever dwells on the life of his gods with a sad and melancholy feeling that no such life was possible on a crude and cumbersome earth. In general, the two opposing agencies are marriage and money; either of these breaks the lot of literary and refined inaction at once and for ever. The first of these, as we have seen, Cowper had escaped. His reserved and negligent reveries were still free, at least from the invasion of affection. To this invasion, indeed, there is commonly requisite the acquiescence or connivance of mortality; but all men are born, not free and equal, as the Americans maintain, but, in the old world at least, basely subjected to the yoke of coin. It is in vain that in this hemisphere we endeavour after impecuniary fancies. In bold and eager youth we go out on our travels. We visit Baalbec, and Paphos, and Tadmor, and Cythera,—ancient shrines and ancient empires, seats of eager love or gentle inspiration. We wander far and long. We have nothing to do with our fellow-men. What are we, indeed, to diggers and counters? We wander far; we dream to wander for ever, but we dream in vain. A surer force than the subtlest fascination of fancy is in operation. The purse-strings tie us to our kind. Our travel-coin runs low, and we must return, away from Tadmor and Baalbec back to our steady, tedious industry and dull work, to ‘_la vieille Europe_ (as Napoleon said) _qui m’ennuie_.’ It is the same in thought. In vain we seclude ourselves in elegant chambers, in fascinating fancies, in refined reflections. ‘By this time,’ says Cowper, ‘my patrimony being nearly all spent, and there being no appearance that I should ever repair the damage by a fortune of my own getting, I began to be a little apprehensive of approaching want.’ However little one is fit for it, it is necessary to attack some drudgery. The vigorous and sturdy rouse themselves to the work. They find in its regular occupation, clear decisions, and stern perplexities, a bold and rude compensation for the necessary loss or diminution of light fancies and delicate musings,—

‘The sights which youthful poets dream,
On summer eve by haunted stream.’

But it was not so with Cowper. A peculiar and slight nature unfitted him for so rough and harsh a resolution. The lion may eat straw like the ox, and the child put his head on the cockatrice’ den; but will even then the light antelope be equal to the heavy plough? Will the gentle gazelle, even in those days, pull the slow waggon of ordinary occupation?

The outward position of Cowper was, indeed, singularly fortunate. Instead of having to meet the long labours of an open profession, or the anxious decisions of a personal business, he had the choice among several lucrative and quiet public offices, in which very ordinary abilities would suffice, and scarcely any degree of incapacity would entail dismissal, or reprimand, or degradation. It seemed at first scarcely possible that even the least strenuous of men should be found unequal to duties so little arduous or exciting. He has himself said—

‘Lucrative offices are seldom lost
For want of powers proportioned to the post;
Give e’en a dunce the employment he desires,
And he soon finds the talents it requires;
A business with an income at its heels,
Furnishes always oil for its own wheels.’

The place he chose was called the Clerkship of the Journals of the House of Lords, one of the many quiet haunts which then slumbered under the imposing shade of parliamentary and aristocratic privilege. Yet the idea of it was more than he could bear.

‘In the beginning,’ he writes, ‘a strong opposition to my
friend’s right of nomination began to show itself. A powerful
party was formed among the Lords to thwart it, in favour of
an old enemy of the family, though one much indebted to its
bounty; and it appeared plain that, if we succeeded at last,
it would only be by fighting our ground by inches. Every
advantage, as I was told, would be sought for, and eagerly
seized, to disconcert us. I was bid to expect an examination
at the bar of the House, touching my sufficiency for the post
I had taken. Being necessarily ignorant of the nature of
that business, it became expedient that I should visit the
office daily, in order to qualify myself for the strictest
scrutiny. All the horror of my fears and perplexities now
returned. A thunderbolt would have been as welcome to me as
this intelligence. I knew, to demonstration, that upon these
terms the clerkship of the journals was no place for me. To
require my attendance at the bar of the House, that I might
there publicly entitle myself to the office, was, in effect, to
exclude me from it. In the meantime, the interest of my friend,
the honour of his choice, my own reputation and circumstances,
all urged me forward; all pressed me to undertake that which
I saw to be impracticable. They whose spirits are formed like
mine, to whom _a public exhibition of themselves, on any
occasion, is mortal poison_, may have some idea of the horrors
of my situation; others can have none.

‘My continual misery at length brought on a nervous fever:
quiet forsook me by day, and peace by night; a finger raised
against me was more than I could stand against. In this
posture of mind, I attended regularly at the office; where,
instead of a soul upon the rack, the most active spirits were
essentially necessary for my purpose. I expected no assistance
from anybody there, all the inferior clerks being under the
influence of my opponent; and accordingly I received none.
The journal books were indeed thrown open to me—a thing which
could not be refused; and from which, perhaps, a man in health,
and with a head turned to business, might have gained all
the information he wanted; but it was not so with me. I read
without perception, and was so distressed, that, had every
clerk in the office been my friend, it could have availed me
little; for I was not in a condition to receive instruction,
much less to elicit it out of manuscripts, without direction.
Many months went over me thus employed; constant in the use of
means, despairing as to the issue.’

As the time of trial drew near, his excitement rapidly increased. A short excursion into the country was attended with momentary benefit; but as soon as he returned to town he became immediately unfit for occupation, and as unsettled as ever. He grew first to wish to become mad, next to believe that he should become so, and only to be afraid that the expected delirium might not come on soon enough to prevent his appearance for examination before the lords,—a fear, the bare existence of which shows how slight a barrier remained between him and the insanity which he fancied that he longed for. He then began to contemplate suicide, and not unnaturally called to mind a curious circumstance:

‘I well recollect, too,’ he writes, ‘that when I was about
eleven years of age, my father desired me to read a vindication
of self-murder, and give him my sentiments upon the question: I
did so, and argued against it. My father heard my reasons, and
was silent, neither approving nor disapproving; from whence I
inferred that he sided with the author against me; though all
the time, I believe, the true motive for his conduct was, that
he wanted, if he could, to think favourably of the state of a
departed friend, who had some years before destroyed himself,
and whose death had struck him with the deepest affliction. But
this solution of the matter never once occurred to me, and the
circumstance now weighed mightily with me.’

And he made several attempts to execute his purpose, all which are related in a ‘Narrative,’ which he drew up after his recovery; and of which the elaborate detail shows a strange and most painful tendency to revive the slightest circumstances of delusions which it would have been most safe and most wholesome never to recall. The curiously careful style, indeed, of the narration, as elegant as that of the most flowing and felicitous letter, reminds one of nothing so much as the studiously beautiful and compact handwriting in which Rousseau used to narrate and describe the most incoherent and indefinite of his personal delusions. On the whole, nevertheless—for a long time, at least—it does not seem that the life of Cowper was in real danger. The hesitation and indeterminateness of nerve which rendered him liable to these fancies, and unequal to ordinary action, also prevented his carrying out these terrible visitations to their rigorous and fearful consequences. At last, however, there seems to have been possible, if not actual danger:

‘Not one hesitating thought now remained, but I fell greedily
to the execution of my purpose. My garter was made of a broad
piece of scarlet binding, with a sliding buckle, being sewn
together at the ends; by the help of the buckle I formed a
noose, and fixed it about my neck, straining it so tight
that I hardly left a passage for my breath, or for the blood
to circulate; the tongue of the buckle held it fast. At each
corner of the bed was placed a wreath of carved work, fastened
by an iron pin, which passed up through the midst of it: the
other part of the garter, which made a loop, I slipped over one
of these, and hung by it some seconds, drawing up my feet under
me, that they might not touch the floor; but the iron bent, and
the carved work slipped off, and the garter with it. I then
fastened it to the frame of the tester, winding it round, and
tying it in a strong knot. The frame broke short, and let me
down again.

‘The third effort was more likely to succeed. I set the door
open, which reached within a foot of the ceiling; by the help
of a chair I could command the top of it, and the loop being
large enough to admit a large angle of the door, was easily
fixed so as not to slip off again. I pushed away the chair with
my feet, and hung at my whole length. While I hung there, I
distinctly heard a voice say three times, “_’Tis over!_” Though
I am sure of the fact, and was so at the time, yet it did not
at all alarm me, or affect my resolution. I hung so long that I
lost all sense, all consciousness of existence.

‘When I came to myself again, I thought myself in hell; the
sound of my own dreadful groans was all that I heard, and
a feeling like that produced by a flash of lightning just
beginning to seize upon me, passed over my whole body. In a few
seconds I found myself fallen on my face to the floor. In about
half a minute I recovered my feet: and, reeling and staggering,
tumbled into bed again.

‘By the blessed providence of God, the garter which had held
me till the bitterness of temporal death was past, broke just
before eternal death had taken place upon me. The stagnation
of the blood under one eye, in a broad crimson spot, and a
red circle round my neck, showed plainly that I had been on
the brink of eternity. The latter, indeed, might have been
occasioned by the pressure of the garter, but the former was
certainly the effect of strangulation; for it was not attended
with the sensation of a bruise, as it must have been, had I, in
my fall, received one in so tender a part. And I rather think
the circle round my neck was owing to the same cause; for the
part was not excoriated, not at all in pain.

‘Soon after I got into bed, I was surprised to hear a noise
in the dining-room, where the laundress was lighting a fire;
she had found the door unbolted, notwithstanding my design to
fasten it, and must have passed the bed-chamber door while I
was hanging on it, and yet never perceived me. She heard me
fall, and presently came to ask me if I was well; adding, she
feared I had been in a fit.

‘I sent her to a friend, to whom I related the whole affair,
and dispatched him to my kinsman at the coffee-house. As soon
as the latter arrived, I pointed to the broken garter, which
lay in the middle of the room, and apprised him also of the
attempt I had been making. His words were, “My dear Mr. Cowper,
you terrify me! To be sure you cannot hold the office at this
rate,—where is the deputation?” I gave him the key of the
drawer where it was deposited; and his business requiring his
immediate attendance, he took it away with him; and thus ended
all my connection with the Parliament office.’

It must have been a strange scene; for, so far as appears, the outward manners of Cowper had undergone no remarkable change. There was always a mild composure about them, which would have deceived any but the most experienced observer; and it is probable that Major Cowper, his ‘kinsman’ and intimate friend, had very little or no suspicion of the conflict which was raging beneath his tranquil and accomplished exterior. What a contrast is the ‘broad piece of scarlet binding’ and the red circle, ‘showing plainly that I had been on the brink of eternity,’ to the daily life of the easy gentleman ‘who contributed some essays to the “St. James’s Magazine,” and more than one to the “St. James’s Chronicle,”’ living ‘soft years’ on a smooth superficies of existence, away from the dark realities which are, as it were, the skeleton of our life,—which seem to haunt us like a death’s head throughout the narrative that has been quoted!

It was doubtless the notion of Cowper’s friends, that when all idea of an examination before the Lords was removed, by the abandonment of his nomination to the office in question, the excitement which that idea had called forth would very soon pass away. But that notion was an error. A far more complicated state of mind ensued. If we may advance a theory on a most difficult as well as painful topic, we would say that religion is very rarely the proximate or impulsive cause of madness. The real and ultimate cause (as we speak) is of course that unknown something which we variously call predisposition, or malady, or defect. But the critical and exciting cause seems generally to be some comparatively trivial external occasion, which falls within the necessary lot and life of the person who becomes mad. The inherent excitability is usually awakened by some petty casual stimulant, which looks positively not worth a thought—certainly a terribly slight agent for the wreck and havoc which it makes. The constitution of the human mind is such, that the great general questions, problems, and difficulties of our state of being are not commonly capable of producing that result. They appear to lie too far in the distance, to require too great a stretch of imagination, to be too apt (for the very weakness of our minds’ sake, perhaps) to be thrust out of view by the trivial occurrences of this desultory world,—to be too impersonal, in truth, to cause the exclusive, anxious, aching occupation which is the common prelude and occasion of insanity. Afterwards, on the other hand, when the wound is once struck, when the petty circumstance has been allowed to work its awful consequence, religion very frequently becomes the predominating topic of delusion. It would seem as if, when the mind was once set apart by the natural consequences of the disease, and secluded from the usual occupations of, and customary contact with, other minds, it searched about through all the universe for causes of trouble and anguish. A certain pain probably exists; and even in insanity, man is so far a rational being that he seeks and craves at least the outside and semblance of a reason for a suffering, which is really and truly without reason. Something must be found to justify its anguish to itself. And naturally the great difficulties inherent in the very position of man in this world, and trying so deeply the faith and firmness of the wariest and wisest minds, are ever ready to present plausible justifications or causeless depression. An anxious melancholy is not without very perplexing sophisms and very painful illustrations, with which a morbid mind can obtain not only a fair logical position, but even apparent argumentative victories, on many points, over the more hardy part of mankind. The acuteness of madness soon uses these in its own wretched and terrible justification. No originality of mind is necessary for so doing. Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad—which read like professed exculpations of a contemplated insanity.

‘To this moment,’ writes Cowper, immediately after the passage which has been quoted, ‘I had felt no concern of a spiritual kind.’ But now a conviction fell upon him that he was eternally lost. ‘All my worldly sorrows,’ he says, ‘seemed as if they had never been; the terrors which succeeded them seemed so great and so much more afflicting. One moment I thought myself expressly excluded by one chapter; next by another.’ He thought the curse of the barren fig-tree was pronounced with an especial and designed reference to him. All day long these thoughts followed him. He lived nearly alone, and his friends were either unaware of the extreme degree to which his mind was excited, or unalive to the possible alleviation with which new scenes and cheerful society might have been attended. He fancied the people in the street stared at and despised him—that ballads were made in ridicule of him—that the voice of his conscience was eternally audible. He then bethought him of a Mr. Madan, an evangelical minister, at that time held in much estimation, but who afterwards fell into disrepute by the publication of a work on marriage and its obligations (or rather its _non_-obligations), which Cowper has commented on in a controversial poem. That gentleman visited Cowper at his request, and began to explain to him the gospel.

‘He spoke,’ says Cowper, ‘of original sin, and the corruption
of every man born into the world, whereby every one is a child
of wrath. I perceived something like hope dawning in my heart.
This doctrine set me more on a level with the rest of mankind,
and made my condition appear less desperate.’

‘Next he insisted on the all-atoning efficacy of the blood of
Jesus, and His righteousness, for our justification. While I
heard this part of his discourse, and the Scriptures on which
he founded it, my heart began to burn within me; my soul was
pierced with a sense of my bitter ingratitude to so merciful
a Saviour; and those tears, which I thought impossible, burst
forth freely. I saw clearly that my case required such a
remedy, and had not the least doubt within me but that this was
the gospel of salvation.

‘Lastly, he urged the necessity of a lively faith in Jesus
Christ; not an assent only of the understanding, but a faith of
application, an actually laying hold of it, and embracing it as
a salvation wrought out for me personally. Here I failed, and
deplored my want of such a faith. He told me it was the gift
of God, which he trusted He would bestow upon me. I could only
reply, “I wish He would:” a very irreverent petition, but a
very sincere one, and such as the blessed God, in His due time,
was pleased to answer.’

It does not appear that previous to this conversation he had ever distinctly realised the tenets which were afterwards to have so much influence over him. For the moment they produced a good effect, but in a few hours their novelty was over—the dark hour returned, and he awoke from slumber with a ‘stronger alienation from God than ever.’ The tenacity with which the mind in moments of excitement appropriates and retains very abstract tenets, that bear even in a slight degree on the topic of its excitement, is as remarkable as the facility and accuracy with which it apprehends them in the midst of so great a tumult. Many changes and many years rolled over Cowper—years of black and dark depression, years of tranquil society, of genial labour, of literary fame, but never in the lightest or darkest hour was he wholly unconscious of the abstract creed of Martin Madan. At the time indeed, the body had its rights, and maintained them.

‘While I traversed the apartment, expecting every moment that
the earth would open her mouth and swallow me, my conscience
scaring me, and the city of refuge out of reach and out of
sight, a strange and horrible darkness fell upon me. If it
were possible that a heavy blow could light on the brain
without touching the skull, such was the sensation I felt. I
clapped my hand to my forehead, and cried aloud, through the
pain it gave me. At every stroke my thoughts and expressions
became more wild and incoherent; all that remained clear was
the sense of sin, and the expectation of punishment. These
kept undisturbed possession all through my illness, without
interruption or abatement.’

It is idle to follow details further. The deep waters had passed over him, and it was long before the face of his mind was dry or green again.

He was placed in a lunatic asylum, where he continued many months, and which he left apparently cured. After some changes of no moment, but which by his own account evinced many traces of dangerous excitement, he took up his abode at Huntingdon, with the family of Unwin; and it is remarkable how soon the taste for easy and simple, yet not wholly unintellectual society, which had formerly characterised him, revived again. The delineation cannot be given in any terms but his own:—

‘We breakfast commonly between eight and nine; till eleven,
we read either the Scripture, or the sermons of some faithful
preacher of these holy mysteries; at eleven we attend divine
service, which is performed here twice every day; and from
twelve to three we separate, and amuse ourselves as we please.
During that interval, I either read, in my own apartment, or
walk, or ride, or work in the garden. We seldom sit an hour
after dinner, but if the weather permits, adjourn to the
garden, where, with Mrs. Unwin and her son, I have generally
the pleasure of religious conversation till tea-time. If it
rains, or is too windy for walking, we either converse within
doors, or sing some hymns of Martin’s collection, and by the
help of Mrs. Unwin’s harpsichord, make up a tolerable concert,
in which our hearts, I hope, are the best and most musical
performers. After tea we sally forth to walk in good earnest.
Mrs. Unwin is a good walker, and we have generally travelled
about four miles before we see home again. When the days are
short, we make this excursion in the former part of the day,
between church time and dinner. At night we read, and converse,
as before, till supper, and commonly finish the evening either
with hymns, or a sermon, and last of all the family are called
to prayers. I need not tell _you_, that such a life as this is
consistent with the utmost cheerfulness; accordingly we are all
happy, and dwell together in unity as brethren. Mrs. Unwin
has almost a maternal affection for me, and I have something
very like a filial one for her, and her son and I are brothers.
Blessed be the God of our salvation for such companions, and
for such a life—above all, for a heart to like it.’

The scene was not however to last as it was. Mr. Unwin, the husband of Mrs. Unwin, was suddenly killed soon after, and Cowper removed with Mrs. Unwin to Olney, where a new epoch of his life begins.

The curate of Olney at this time was John Newton, a man of great energy of mind, and well known in his generation for several vigorous books, and still more for a very remarkable life. He had been captain of a Liverpool slave ship—an occupation in which he had quite energy enough to have succeeded, but was deeply influenced by serious motives, and became one of the strongest and most active of the Low Church clergymen of that day. He was one of those men who seem intended to make excellence disagreeable. He was a converting engine. The whole of his own enormous vigour of body—the whole steady intensity of a pushing, impelling, compelling, unoriginal mind—all the mental or corporeal exertion he could exact from the weak or elicit from the strong, were devoted to one sole purpose—the effectual impact of the Calvinistic tenets on the parishioners of Olney. Nor would we hint that his exertions were at all useless. There is no denying that there is a certain stiff, tough, agricultural, clayish English nature, on which the aggressive divine produces a visible and good effect. The hardest and heaviest hammering seems required to stir and warm that close and coarse matter. To impress any sense of the supernatural on so secular a substance is a great good, though that sense be expressed in false or irritating theories. It is unpleasant, no doubt, to hear the hammering; the bystanders are in an evil case; you might as well live near an iron-ship yard. Still the blows do not hurt the iron. Something of the sort is necessary to beat the coarse ore into a shining and useful shape; certainly that does so beat it. But the case is different when the hundred-handed divine desires to hit others. The very system which, on account of its hard blows, is adapted to the tough and ungentle, is by that very reason unfit for the tremulous and tender. The nature of many men and many women is such that it will not bear the daily and incessant repetition of some certain and indisputable truths. The universe has of course its dark aspect. Many tremendous facts and difficulties can be found which often haunt the timid and sometimes incapacitate the feeble. To be continually insisting on these, and these only, will simply render both more and more unfit for the duties to which they were born. And if this is the case with certain fact and clear truth, how much more with uncertain error and mystic exaggeration! Mr. Newton was alive to the consequence of his system: ‘I believe my name is up about the country for preaching people mad; for whether it is owing to the sedentary life women lead here, &c. &c., I suppose we have near a dozen in different degrees disordered in their heads, and most of them, I believe, _truly gracious people_.’ He perhaps found his peculiar views more generally appreciated among this class of young ladies than among more healthy and rational people, and clearly did not wholly condemn the delivering them, even at this cost, from the tyranny of the ‘carnal reason.’