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.