[743] The Task, book vi.
[744] Job xxxiii. 13.
[745] The following is the result of the information obtained by the Editor on this subject, after the minutest inquiry. A lady who was on a visit at Mr. Newton's, in London, saw, it is said, this Memoir of Cowper lying, among other papers, on the table. She was led to peruse it, and felt a deeper interest in the contents, from having herself been recently recovered from a state of derangement. She privately copied the manuscript, and communicated it to some friend. It was finally published by a pious character, who considered that in so doing he exonerated the religious views of Cowper from the charge of having been instrumental to his malady.
[746] Market Street. Hayley places this village in Hertfordshire, and Cowper in Bedfordshire. Both are right, for the public road or street forms a boundary between the two counties.
[747] We deeply lament that boys frequently leave public schools most discreditably deficient even in the common principles of the Christian faith. My late lamented friend, the Rev. Legh Richmond, used to observe that Christ was crucified between classics and mathematics. A great improvement might be effected in the system of modern education, if a brief but compendious summary of divine truth, or analysis of the Bible, were drawn up, divided into parts, suited to the different gradations of age and knowledge, and introduced into our public schools under the sanction of the Episcopal Bench. Care should also be taken, in the selection of under-masters, to appoint men of acknowledged religious as well as classical attainments, who might specially superintend the religious improvement of the boys. Such are to be found in our Universities, men not less eminent for divine than profane knowledge. A visible reformation would thus be effected, powerfully operating on the moral and spiritual character of the rising generation.
[748] Ashley Cowper, Esq.
[749] Here we first observe the ground-work of Cowper's malady, originating in constitutional causes, and morbid temperament.
[750] A relative of Cowper's ought to have been the last to prohibit the perusal of Herbert's Poems, because Dr. John Donne, the pious and eminent Dean of St. Paul's, one of Cowper's ancestors, was the endeared friend of that holy man, to whom, not long before his death, he sent a seal, representing a figure of Christ extended upon an anchor, the emblem of Hope, to be kept as a memorial.
Izaak Walton bears the following expressive testimony to Herbert's Temple, or Sacred Poems.
"A book, in which by declaring his own spiritual conflicts, he hath comforted and raised many a dejected and discomposed soul, and charmed them into sweet and quiet thoughts; a book, by the frequent reading whereof, and the assistance of that Spirit that seemed to inspire the author, the reader may attain habits of peace and piety, and all the gifts of the Holy Ghost and Heaven: and may, by still reading, still keep those sacred fires burning upon the altar of so pure a heart, as shall free it from the anxieties of this world, and keep it fixed upon things that are above." See Walton's Lives.