The Works of William Cowper / His life, letters, and poems, now first completed by the introduction of Cowper's private correspondence

by William Cowper

TO MARY.

The twentieth year is well-nigh past,
Since first our sky was overcast,
Ah, would that this might be the last!
My Mary!

Thy spirits have a fainter flow,
I see thee daily weaker grow—
'Twas my distress that brought thee low,
My Mary!

Thy needles, once a shining store,
For my sake restless heretofore,
Now rust disus'd, and shine no more,
My Mary!

For, though thou gladly wouldst fulfil
The same kind office for me still,
Thy sight now seconds not thy will,
My Mary!

But well thou playd'st the housewife's part,
And all thy threads with magic art,
Have wound themselves about this heart,
My Mary!

Thy indistinct expressions seem
Like language utter'd in a dream;
Yet me they charm, whate'er the theme,
My Mary!

Thy silver locks, once auburn bright,
Are still more lovely in my sight
Than golden beams of orient light,
My Mary!

For, could I view nor them nor thee,
What sight worth seeing could I see?
The sun would rise in vain for me,
My Mary!

Partakers of thy sad decline,
Thy hands their little force resign;
Yet, gently prest, press gently mine,
My Mary!

Such feebleness of limbs thou prov'st,
That now at every step thou mov'st
Upheld by two, yet still thou lov'st,
My Mary!

And still to love, though prest with ill,
In wintry age to feel no chill,
With me is to be lovely still,
My Mary!

But, ah! by constant heed I know,
How oft the sadness that I show
Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe,
My Mary!

And, should my future lot be cast
With much resemblance of the past,
Thy worn-out heart will break at last,
My Mary!

On Tuesday, the twenty-eighth of July, 1795, Cowper and Mrs. Unwin removed, under the care and guidance of Mr. Johnson, from Weston to North-Tuddenham, in Norfolk, by a journey of three days, passing through Cambridge without stopping there. In the evening of the first day they rested at the village of Eaton, near St. Neot's. Cowper walked with his young kinsman in the churchyard by moonlight, and spoke with much composure on the subject of Thomson's Seasons, and the circumstances under which they were probably written. This conversation was almost his last glimmering of cheerfulness.

At North-Tuddenham the travellers were accommodated with a commodious, untenanted parsonage-house, by the kindness of the Rev. Leonard Shelford. Here they resided till the nineteenth of August. It was the considerate intention of Mr. Johnson not to remove them immediately to his own house, in the town of East-Dereham, lest the situation in a market-place should be distressing to the tender spirits of Cowper.

In their new temporary residence they were received by Miss Johnson and Miss Perowne, whose gentle and sympathizing spirit peculiarly qualified them to discharge so delicate an office, and to alleviate the sufferings of the dejected poet.

Severe as his depressive malady appeared at this period, he was still able to bear considerable exercise, and, before he left Tuddenham, he walked with Mr. Johnson to the neighbouring village of Mattishall, on a visit to his cousin, Mrs. Bodham. On surveying his own portrait by Abbot, in the house of that lady, he clasped his hands in a paroxysm of pain, and uttered a vehement wish, that his present sensations might be such as they were when that picture was painted.

In August 1795, Mr. Johnson conducted his two invalids to Mundsley, a village on the Norfolk coast, in the hope that a situation by the sea-side might prove salutary and amusing to Cowper. They continued to reside there till October, but without any apparent benefit to the health of the interesting sufferer.

He had long relinquished epistolary intercourse with his most intimate friends, but his tender solicitude to hear some tidings of his favourite Weston induced him, in September, to write a letter to Mr. Buchanan. It shows the severity of his depression, but proves also that transient gleams of pleasure could occasionally break through the brooding darkness of melancholy.

He begins with a poetical quotation:

"To interpose a little ease,
Let my frail thoughts dally with false surmise!"

"I will forget, for a moment, that to whomsoever I may address myself, a letter from me can no otherwise be welcome than as a curiosity. To you, sir, I address this; urged to it by extreme penury of employment, and the desire I feel to learn something of what is doing, and has been done, at Weston, (my beloved Weston!) since I left it.

"The coldness of these blasts, even in the hottest days, has been such, that, added to the irritation of the salt-spray, with which they are always charged, they have occasioned me an inflammation in the eye-lids, which threatened a few days since to confine me entirely, but, by absenting myself as much as possible from the beach, and guarding my face with an umbrella, that inconvenience is in some degree abated. My chamber commands a very near view of the ocean, and the ships at high water approach the coast so closely, that a man furnished with better eyes than mine might, I doubt not, discern the sailors from the window. No situation, at least when the weather is clear and bright, can be pleasanter; which you will easily credit, when I add, that it imparts something a little resembling pleasure even to me.—Gratify me with news of Weston! If Mr. Gregson, and your neighbours the Courtenays are there, mention me to them in such terms as you see good. Tell me if my poor birds are living! I never see the herbs I used to give them, without a recollection of them, and sometimes am ready to gather them, forgetting that I am not at home. Pardon this intrusion!

"Mrs. Unwin continues much as usual.

"Mundsley, Sept. 5, 1795."

---

Mr. Buchanan endeavoured, with great tenderness and ingenuity, to allure his dejected friend to prolong a correspondence, that seemed to promise some little alleviation to his melancholy; but this distressing malady baffled all the various expedients that could be devised to counteract its overwhelming influence.

Much hope was entertained from air and exercise, with a frequent change of scene.—In September, Mr. Johnson conducted his kinsman (to the promotion of whose recovery he devoted his most unwearied efforts) to take a survey of Dunham-Lodge, a seat at that time vacant; it is situated on high ground, in a park, about four miles from Swaffham. Cowper spoke of it as a house rather too spacious for him, yet such as he was not unwilling to inhabit—a remark which induced Mr. Johnson, at a subsequent period, to become the tenant of this mansion, as a scene more eligible for Cowper than the town of Dereham.—This town they also surveyed in their excursion; and, after passing a night there, returned to Mundsley, which they quitted for the season on the seventh of October.

They removed immediately to Dereham; but left it in the course of a month for Dunham-Lodge, which now became their settled residence.

The spirits of Cowper were not sufficiently revived to allow him to resume either his pen or his books; but the kindness of his young kinsman continued to furnish him with inexhaustible amusement, by reading to him almost incessantly; and, although he was not led to converse on what he heard, yet it failed not to rivet his attention, and so to prevent his afflicted mind from preying on itself.

In April, 1796, Mrs. Unwin, whose infirmities continued to engage the tender attention of Cowper, even in his darkest periods of depression, received a visit from her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Powley. On their departure, Mr. Johnson assumed the office which Mrs. Powley had tenderly performed for her venerable parent, and regularly read a chapter in the Bible every morning to Mrs. Unwin before she rose. It was the invariable custom of Cowper to visit his poor old friend the moment he had finished his breakfast, and to remain in her apartment while the chapter was read.

In June, the pressure of his melancholy appeared in some degree alleviated, for, on Mr. Johnson's receiving the edition of Pope's Homer, published by Wakefield, Cowper eagerly seized the book, and began to read the notes to himself with visible interest. They awakened his attention to his own version of Homer. In August he deliberately engaged in a revisal of the whole, and for some time produced almost sixty new lines a day.

This mental occupation animated all his intimate friends with a most lively hope of his progressive recovery. But autumn repressed the hope that summer had excited.

In September the family removed from Dunham-Lodge to try again the influence of the sea-side, in their favourite village of Mundsley.

Cowper walked frequently by the sea; but no apparent benefit arose, no mild relief from the incessant pressure of melancholy. He had relinquished his Homer again, and could not yet be induced to resume it.

Towards the end of October, this interesting party retired from the coast to the house of Mr. Johnson, in Dereham—a house now chosen for their winter residence, as Dunham-Lodge appeared to them too dreary.

The long and exemplary life of Mrs. Unwin was drawing towards a close:—the powers of nature were gradually exhausted, and on the seventeenth of December she ended a troubled existence, distinguished by a sublime spirit of piety and friendship, that shone through long periods of calamity, and continued to glimmer through the distressful twilight of her declining faculties. Her death was calm and tranquil. Cowper saw her about half an hour before the moment of expiration, which passed without a struggle or a groan, as the clock was striking one in the afternoon.

On the morning of that day, he said to the servant who opened the window of his chamber, "Sally, is there life above stairs?" A striking proof of his bestowing incessant attention on the sufferings of his aged friend, although he had long appeared almost totally absorbed in his own.

In the dusk of the evening he attended Mr. Johnson to survey the corpse; and after looking at it a very few moments he started suddenly away, with a vehement but unfinished sentence of passionate sorrow. He spoke of her no more.

She was buried by torch-light, on the twenty-third of December, in the north aisle of Dereham church; and two of her friends, impressed with a just and deep sense of her extraordinary merit, have raised a marble tablet to her memory with the following inscription:

IN MEMORY OF MARY,
WIDOW OF THE REV. MORLEY UNWIN,
AND
MOTHER OF THE REV. WILLIAM CAWTHORN UNWIN,
BORN AT ELY, 1724.
BURIED IN THIS CHURCH 1796.

Trusting in God, with all her heart and mind
This woman prov'd magnanimously kind;
Endur'd affliction's desolating hail,
And watch'd a poet thro' misfortune's vale.
Her spotless dust, angelic guards, defend!
It is the dust of Unwin, Cowper's friend!
That single title in itself is fame,
For all who read his verse revere her name.

It might have been anticipated that the death of Mrs. Unwin, in Cowper's enfeebled state, would have proved too severe a shock to his agitated nerves. But it is mercifully ordained that, while declining years incapacitate us for trials, they, at the same time, weaken the sensibility to suffering, and thereby render us less accessible to the influence of sorrow. It may be regarded as an instance of providential mercy to this afflicted poet, that his aged friend, whose life he had so long considered as essential to his own, was taken from him at a time when the pressure of his malady, a perpetual low fever, both of body and mind, had, in a great degree, diminished the native energy of his faculties and affections.

Owing to these causes, Cowper was so far preserved in this season of trial, that, instead of mourning the loss of a person in whose life he had seemed to live, all perception of that loss was mercifully taken from him; and, from the moment when he hurried away from the inanimate object of his filial attachment, he appeared to have no memory of her having existed, for he never asked a question concerning her funeral, nor ever mentioned her name.

Towards the summer of 1797, his bodily health appeared to improve, but not to such a degree as to restore any comfortable activity to his mind. In June he wrote a brief letter to Hayley, but such as too forcibly expressed the cruelty of his distemper.

The process of digestion never passed regularly in his frame during the years that he resided in Norfolk. Medicine appeared to have little or no influence on his complaint, and his aversion at the sight of it was extreme.

From asses' milk, of which he began a course on the twenty-first of June in this year, he gained a considerable acquisition of bodily strength, and was enabled to bear an airing in an open carriage, before breakfast, with Mr. Johnson.

A depression of mind, which suspended the studies of a writer so eminently endeared to the public, was considered by men of piety and learning as a national misfortune, and several individuals of this description, though personally unknown to Cowper, wrote to him in the benevolent hope that expressions of friendly praise, from persons who could be influenced only by the most laudable motives in bestowing it, might re-animate his dejected spirit. Among these might be enumerated Dr. Watson, the Bishop of Llandaff, who kindly addressed him in the language of encouragement and of soothing consolation; but the pressure of his malady had now made him utterly deaf to the most honourable praise.

He had long discontinued the revisal of his Homer, when his kinsman, dreading the effect of the cessation of bodily exercise upon his mind during a long winter, resolved, if possible, to engage him in the revisal of this work. One morning, therefore, after breakfast, in the month of September, he placed the Commentators on the table, one by one; namely, Villoison, Barnes, and Clarke, opening them all, together with the poet's translation, at the place where he had left off a twelvemonth before, but talking with him, as he paced the room upon a very different subject, namely, the impossibility of the things befalling him which his imagination had represented; when, as his companion had wished, he said to him, "And are you sure that I shall be here till the book you are reading is finished?" "Quite sure," replied his kinsman, "and that you will also be here to complete the revisal of your Homer," pointing to the books, "if you will resume it to-day." As he repeated these words he left the room, rejoicing in the well-known token of their having sunk into the poet's mind, namely, his seating himself on the sofa, taking up one of the books, and saying in a low and plaintive voice, "I may as well do this, for I can do nothing else."[741]

In this labour he persevered, oppressed as he was by indisposition, till March 1799. On Friday evening, the eighth of that month, he completed his revisal of the Odyssey, and the next morning wrote part of a new preface.

To watch over the disordered health of afflicted genius, and to lead a powerful, but oppressed, spirit by gentle encouragement, to exert itself in salutary occupation, is an office that requires a very rare union of tenderness, intelligence, and fortitude. To contemplate and minister to a great mind, in a state that borders on mental desolation, is like surveying, in the midst of a desert, the tottering ruins of palaces and temples, where the faculties of the spectator are almost absorbed in wonder and regret, and where every step is taken with awful apprehension.

Hayley, in alluding to Dr. Johnson's kind and affectionate offices, at this period, bears the following honourable testimony to his merits, which we are happy in transcribing. "It seemed as if Providence had expressly formed the young kinsman of Cowper to prove exactly such a guardian to his declining years as the peculiar exigencies of his situation required. I never saw the human being that could, I think, have sustained the delicate and arduous office (in which the inexhaustible virtues of Mr. Johnson persevered to the last) through a period so long, with an equal portion of unvaried tenderness and unshaken fidelity. A man who wanted sensibility would have renounced the duty; and a man endowed with a particle too much of that valuable, though perilous, quality, must have felt his own health utterly undermined, by an excess of sympathy with the sufferings perpetually in his sight. Mr. Johnson has completely discharged, perhaps, the most trying of human duties; and I trust he will forgive me for this public declaration, that, in his mode of discharging it, he has merited the most cordial esteem from all, who love the memory of Cowper. Even a stranger may consider it as a strong proof of his tender dexterity in soothing and guiding the afflicted poet, that he was able to engage him steadily to pursue and finish the revisal and correction of his Homer, during a long period of bodily and mental sufferings, when his troubled mind recoiled from all intercourse with his most intimate friends, and laboured under a morbid abhorrence of all cheerful exertion."

In the summer of 1798, his kinsman was induced to vary his plan of remaining for some months in the marine village of Mundsley, and thought it more eligible to make frequent visits from Dereham to the coast, passing a week at a time by the sea-side.

Cowper, in his poem on "Retirement," seems to inform us what his own sentiments were, in a season of health, concerning the regimen most proper for the disease of melancholy.

Virtuous and faithful Heberden, whose skill
Attempts no task it cannot well fulfil,
Gives melancholy up to nature's care,
And sends the patient into purer air.

The frequent change of place, and the magnificence of marine scenery, produced at times a little relief to his depressed spirits. On the 7th of June 1798, he surveyed the light-house at Happisburgh, and expressed some pleasure on beholding, through a telescope, several ships at a distance. Yet, in his usual walk with his companion by the sea-side, he exemplified but too forcibly his own affecting description of melancholy silence:

That silent tongue
Could give advice, could censure, or commend,
Or charm the sorrows of a drooping friend;
Renounc'd alike its office and its sport,
Its brisker and its graver strains fall short:
Both fail beneath a fever's secret sway,
And, like a summer-brook, are past away.

On the twenty-fourth of July, Cowper had the honour of a visit from a lady, for whom he had long entertained affectionate respect, the Dowager Lady Spencer—and it was rather remarkable, that on the very morning she called upon him he had begun his revisal of the Odyssey, which was originally inscribed to her. Such an incident in a happier season would have produced a very enlivening effect on his spirits: but, in his present state, it had not even the power to lead him into any free conversation with his distinguished visitor.

The only amusement that he appeared to admit without reluctance was the reading of his kinsman, who, indefatigable in the supply of such amusement, had exhausted a successive series of works of fiction, and at this period began reading to the poet his own works. To these he listened also in silence, and heard all his poems recited in order, till the reader arrived at the history of John Gilpin, which he begged not to hear. Mr. Johnson proceeded to his manuscript poems; to these he willingly listened, but made not a single remark on any.

In October 1798, the pressure of his melancholy seemed to be mitigated in some little degree, for he exerted himself so far as to write the following letter, without solicitation, to Lady Hesketh.

---

Dear Cousin,—You describe delightful scenes, but you describe them to one, who, if he even saw them, could receive no delight from them: who has a faint recollection, and so faint, as to be like an almost forgotten dream, that once he was susceptible of pleasure from such causes. The country that you have had in prospect has been always famed for its beauties; but the wretch who can derive no gratification from a view of nature, even under the disadvantage of her most ordinary dress, will have no eyes to admire her in any.

In one day, in one minute, I should rather have said, she became an universal blank to me, and though from a different cause, yet with an effect as difficult to remove as blindness itself.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mundsley, Oct. 13, 1798.

---

On his return from Mundsley to Dereham, in an evening towards the end of October, Cowper, with Miss Perowne and Mr. Johnson, was overturned in a post-chaise: he discovered no terror on the occasion, and escaped without injury from the accident.

In December he received a visit from his highly esteemed friend, Sir John Throckmorton, but his malady was at that time so oppressive that it rendered him almost insensible to the kind solicitude of friendship.

He still continued to exercise the powers of his astonishing mind: upon his finishing the revisal of his Homer, in March, 1799, his kinsman endeavoured in the gentlest manner to lead him into new literary occupation.

For this purpose, on the eleventh of March he laid before him the paper containing the comencement of his poem on "The Four Ages." Cowper altered a few lines; he also added a few, but soon observed to his kind attendant—"that it was too great a work for him to attempt in his present situation."

At supper Mr. Johnson suggested to him several literary projects that he might execute more easily. He replied—"that he had just thought of six Latin verses, and if he could compose anything it must be in pursuing that composition."

The next morning he wrote the six verses he had mentioned, and subsequently added the remainder, entitling the poem, "Montes Glaciales."

It proved a versification of a circumstance recorded in a newspaper, which had been read to him a few weeks before, without his appearing to notice it. This poem he translated into English verse, on the nineteenth of March, to oblige Miss Perowne. Both the original and the translation appear in the Poems.

On the twentieth of March he wrote the stanzas entitled "The Cast-away," founded on an anecdote in Anson's Voyage, which his memory suggested to him, although he had not looked into the book for many years.

As this poem is the last original production from the pen of Cowper, we shall introduce it here, persuaded that it will be read with an interest proportioned to the extraordinary pathos of the subject, and the still more extraordinary powers of the poet, whose lyre could sound so forcibly, unsilenced by the gloom of the darkest distemper, that was conducting him, by slow gradations, to the shadow of death.

THE CAST-AWAY.

Obscurest night involv'd the sky;
Th' Atlantic billows roar'd,
When such a destin'd wretch as I,
Wash'd headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home for ever left.

No braver chief could Albion boast
Than he with whom he went,
Nor ever ship left Albion's coast,
With warmer wishes sent.
He lov'd them both, but both in vain,
Nor him beheld, nor her again.

Not long beneath the 'whelming brine,
Expert to swim, he lay;
Nor soon he felt his strength decline,
Or courage die away;
But wag'd with death a lasting strife,
Supported by despair of life.

He shouted; nor his friends had fail'd
To check the vessel's course,
But so the furious blast prevail'd,
That, pitiless, per force,
They left their out-cast mate behind,
And scudded still before the wind.

Some succour yet they could afford;
And, such as storms allow,
The cask, the coop, the floated cord,
Delayed not to bestow.
But he (they knew) nor ship, nor shore,
Whate'er they gave, should visit more.

Nor cruel, as it seem'd, could he
Their haste himself condemn,
Aware that flight, in such a sea,
Alone could rescue them;
Yet bitter felt it still to die
Deserted, and his friends so nigh.

He long survives, who lives an hour
In ocean, self-upheld:
And so long he, with unspent pow'r,
His destiny repell'd:
And ever, as the minutes flew,
Entreated help, or cry'd—"Adieu!"

At length his transient respite past,
His comrades who before
Had heard his voice in ev'ry blast,
Could catch the sound no more.
For then, by toil subdued, he drank
The stifling wave, and then he sank.

No poet wept him: but the page
Of narrative sincere,
That tells his name, his worth, his age,
Is wet with Anson's tear.
And tears by bards or heroes shed,
Alike immortalize the dead.

I therefore purpose not, or dream,
Descanting on his fate!
To give the melancholy theme
A more enduring date,
But misery still delights to trace
Its 'semblance in another's case.

No voice divine the storm allay'd,
No light propitious shone;
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
We perish'd, each alone;
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And 'whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he.

In August he translated this poem into Latin verse. In October he went with Miss Perowne and Mr. Johnson to survey a larger house in Dereham, which he preferred to their present residence, and in which the family were settled in the following December.

Though his corporeal strength was now evidently declining, the urgent persuasion of his kinsman induced him to amuse his mind with frequent composition. Between August and December, he wrote all the translations from various Latin and Greek epigrams, which the reader will find in the present volume.

In his new residence, he amused himself with translating a few fables of Gay's into Latin verse. The fable which he used to recite when a child—"The Hare and many Friends"—became one of his latest amusements.

These Latin fables were all written in January 1800. Towards the end of that month, Hayley requested him to new-model a passage in his Homer, relating to the curious monument of ancient sculpture, so gracefully described by Homer, called the Cretan Dance. This being the last effort of his pen, and the passage being interesting, as a representation of ancient manners, we here insert it.

To these the glorious artist added next
A varied dance, resembling that of old
In Crete's broad isle, by Dædalus, compos'd
For bright-hair'd Ariadne. There the youths
And youth-alluring maidens, hand in hand,
Danc'd jocund, ev'ry maiden neat attir'd
In finest linen, and the youths in vests
Well-woven, glossy as the glaze of oil.
These all wore garlands, and bright falchions those,
Of burnish'd gold, in silver trappings hung;—
They, with well-tutor'd step, now, nimbly ran
The circle, swift, as when, before his wheel
Seated, the potter twirls it with both hands
For trial of its speed; now, crossing quick
They pass'd at once into each other's place.
A circling crowd surveyed the lovely dance,
Delighted; two, the leading pair, their head
With graceful inclination bowing oft,
Pass'd swift between them, and began the song.

See Cowper's Version, Book xviii.

On the very day that this endearing mark of his kindness reached Hayley, a dropsical appearance in his legs induced Mr. Johnson to have recourse to fresh medical assistance. Cowper was with great difficulty persuaded to take the remedies prescribed, and to try the exercise of a post-chaise, an exercise which he could not bear beyond the twenty-second of February.

In March, when his decline became more and more visible, he was visited by Mr. Rose. He hardly expressed any pleasure on the arrival of a friend whom he had so long and so tenderly regarded, yet he showed evident signs of regret at his departure, on the sixth of April.

The illness and impending death of his talented son precluded Hayley from sharing with Mr. Rose in these last marks of affectionate attention towards the man, whose genius and virtues they had once contemplated together with mutual veneration and delight; whose approaching dissolution they felt, not only as an irreparable loss to themselves, but as a national misfortune. On the nineteenth of April, Dr. Johnson remarks, the weakness of this truly pitiable sufferer had so much increased, that his kinsman apprehended his death to be near. Adverting, therefore, to the affliction, as well of body as of mind, which his beloved inmate was then enduring, he ventured to speak of his approaching dissolution as the signal of his deliverance from both these miseries. After a pause of a few moments, which was less interrupted by the objections of his desponding relative than he had dared to hope, he proceeded to an observation more consolatory still; namely, that, in the world to which he was hastening, a merciful Redeemer had prepared unspeakable happiness for all his children—and therefore for him. To the first part of this sentence, he had listened with composure, but the concluding words were no sooner uttered, than his passionately expressed entreaties, that his companion would desist from any further observations of a similar kind, clearly proved that, though it was on the eve of being invested with angelic light, the darkness of delusion still veiled his spirit.[742]

On Sunday, the twentieth, he seemed a little revived.

On Monday he appeared dying, but recovered so much as to eat a slight dinner.

Tuesday and Wednesday he grew apparently weaker every hour.

On Thursday he sat up as usual in the evening.

In the course of the night, when exceedingly exhausted, Miss Perowne offered him some refreshment. He rejected it with these words, the very last that he was heard to utter, "What can it signify?"

Dr. Johnson closes the affecting account in the following words.

"At five in the morning of Friday 25th, a deadly change in his features was observed to take place. He remained in an insensible state from that time till about five minutes before five in the afternoon, when he ceased to breathe. And in so mild and gentle a manner did his spirit take its flight, that though the writer of this Memoir, his medical attendant Mr. Woods, and three other persons, were standing at the foot and side of the bed, with their eyes fixed upon his dying countenance, the precise moment of his departure was unobserved by any."

From this mournful period, till the features of his deceased friend were closed from his view, the expression which the kinsman of Cowper observed in them, and which he was affectionately delighted to suppose "an index of the last thoughts and enjoyments of his soul, in its gradual escape from the depths of despondence, was that of calmness and composure, mingled, as it were, with holy surprise."

He was buried in St. Edmund's Chapel, in the church of East Dereham, on Saturday, May 2nd, attended by several of his relations.

He left a will, but without appointing his executor. The administration, therefore, of the little property he possessed devolved on his affectionate relative, Lady Hesketh; but not having been carried into effect by that Lady, the office, on her decease, was undertaken by his cousin german, Mrs. Bodham.

Lady Hesketh raised a marble tablet to his memory, with the following inscription from the pen of Hayley:

IN MEMORY OF
WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ.
BORN IN HERTFORDSHIRE,
1731,
BURIED IN THIS CHURCH.

Ye, who with warmth the public triumph feel
Of talents, dignified by sacred zeal,
Here, to devotion's bard devoutly just,
Pay your fond tribute due to Cowper's dust!
England, exulting in his spotless fame,
Ranks with her dearest sons his favourite name.
Sense, fancy, wit, suffice not all to raise
So clear a title to affection's praise;
His highest honours to the heart belong;
His virtues form'd the magic of his song.

We have now conducted the endeared subject of this biography through the various scenes of his chequered and eventful life, till its last solemn termination; and it is impossible that any other feelings can have been awakened than those of admiration for his genius, homage for his virtues, and profound sympathy for his sufferings. It was fully anticipated by his friends, that the hour of final liberation, at least, would have been cheered by that calm sense of the divine presence, which is the delightful foretaste of eternal rest and glory. Young beautifully observes:

The chamber where the good man meets his fate
Is privileged beyond the common walk
Of virtuous life, quite on the verge of heaven.

The Bible proclaims the same animating truth. "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace!" The divine faithfulness is an ample security for the fulfilment of these declarations; but the promises of God, firm and unchangeable as they are in themselves, after all, can be realized only in a mind disposed for their reception; as the light cannot pass through a medium that is incapable of admitting it. Such, alas! is the influence of physical causes and of a morbid temperament on the inward perceptions of the soul, that it is possible to be a child of God, without a consciousness of the blessing, and to have a title to a crown, and yet feel to be immured in the depths of a dungeon.

The consolation to the friends of the unhappy sufferer, if not to the patient himself, is, that the chains are of his own forging, and that, if he had but the discernment to know it, the delusion would promptly vanish, and the peace of God flow into the soul like a river.

That such was the case with Cowper, no one can doubt for a moment. A species of mental aberration, on a particular subject, involved his mind in a strange and sad delusion. The Sun of Righteousness, therefore, failed in his last moments to impart its refreshing light and comfort, because the cloud of despair intervened, and obscured the setting beams of grace and glory.

Who can contemplate so mysterious a process of the mind, without exclaiming—

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful is man!
How passing wonder He, who made him such!
Who centred in our make such strange extremes!

It is impossible to dwell on the manner of Cowper's death, and not to be reminded of the wish cherished by himself on this subject, and recorded so impressively in the following lines:

So life glides smoothly and by stealth away,
More golden than that age of fabled gold
Renowned in ancient song; not vex'd with care,
Or stained with guilt, beneficent, approved
Of God and man, and peaceful in its end.
So glide my life away! and so, at last,
My share of duties decently fulfill'd,
May some disease, not tardy to perform
Its destined office, yet with gentle stroke,
Dismiss me weary to a safe retreat,
Beneath the turf that I have often trod.[743]

God mercifully granted the best portion of his prayer, but saw fit to deny the rest. No conscious guilt or open transgression stained his life; his heart was the seat of every beneficent and kind affection. As an author, he was blessed with an honourable career of usefulness; the public voice conferred upon him the title to immortality, and succeeding times have ratified the claim. But if perception be necessary to enjoyment, he was not "peaceful in his end;" for he died without this conviction. He did not, like Elijah, ascend in a chariot of fire; it was his lot rather to realize the quaint remark of some of the old divines, "God sometimes puts his children to bed in the dark," that they may have nothing whereof to boast; that their salvation may appear to be more fully the result of his own free and unmerited mercy, and that in this, as in all things, he may be known to act as a sovereign, who "giveth no account of his matters."[744]

But the severest exercises of faith are always mingled with some gracious purpose; and God may perhaps see fit to appoint these dark dispensations, that the transition into eternity may be more glorious; and that the emancipated spirit, bursting the shackles of death and sin, and delivered from the bondage of its fears, may rise with a nobler triumph from the depths of humiliation into the very presence-chamber of its God.

These remarks are so closely connected with the subject of Cowper's afflicting malady, that the time is now arrived when it is necessary to enter into a more detailed view of its nature and character; to trace its origin and progress, and to disengage this complicated question from that prejudice and misrepresentation which have so inveterately attached to it. At the same time, it is with profound reluctance that the Editor enters upon this painful theme, from a deep conviction that it does not form a proper subject for discussion, and that the veil of secrecy is never more suitably employed, than when it is thrown over infirmities which are too sacred to meet the gaze of public observation. This inquiry is now, however, no longer optional. Cowper himself has, unfortunately, suffered in the public estimation by the manner in which his earliest biographer, Hayley, has presented him before the public. By suppressing some very important letters, which tended to elucidate his real character, an air of mystery has been imparted which deeply affects its consistency; while, by attributing what he could not sufficiently conceal of the malady of the poet to the operation of religious causes, truth has been violated, and an unmerited wound inflicted upon religion itself. Thus Hayley, from motives of delicacy most probably, or from misapprehension of the subject, has committed a double error; while others, misled by his authority, have unhappily aided in propagating the delusion.

The Private Correspondence of Cowper, which is exclusively incorporated with the present edition, is of the first importance, as it dispels the mystery previously attached to his character. All that now remains is, to establish by undeniable evidence that, so far from religious causes having been instrumental to his malady, the order of events and the testimony of positive facts both militate against such a conclusion.

For this purpose, we shall now introduce to the notice of the reader, copious extracts from the Memoir of Cowper, written by himself, containing the particulars of his life, from his earliest years to the period of his malady and subsequent recovery. This remarkable document was intended to record his sense of the Divine mercy in the preservation of his life, during a season of disastrous feeling; and to perpetuate the remembrance of that grace which overruled this event, in so remarkable a manner, to his best and eternal interests. He designed this document principally for the perusal of Mrs. Unwin, to whose hands it was most confidentially entrusted. A copy was also presented to Mr. Newton, and ultimately to Dr. Johnson; but the parties were strictly enjoined never to allow another copy to be taken. By some means the Memoir at length found its way before the public. On this ground the editor feels less difficulty in communicating its purport; as the seal of secrecy has been already broken, though in the estimation of Dr. Johnson and his friends, in so unauthorized a manner. Its publication, however, has been unquestionably attended by one beneficial result, in having established, beyond the possibility of contradiction, that so far from Cowper's religious views having been the source of his malady, they were the first occasion and instrument of its cure.[745]

The Memoir is interesting in another respect. It elucidates the early events of Cowper's history. One important subject is however omitted, his attachment to Miss Theodora Cowper, the failure of which formed no small ingredient in the disappointments of his early life. This omission we shall be enabled to supply.

With these preliminary remarks we shall now introduce this curious and remarkable document, simply suppressing those portions which violate the feelings, without being essential to the substance of the narrative.