In January, 1787, he experienced a fresh attack, though surrounded by the beautiful scenery of Weston; which seems to prove that local causes were not so influential as some have suggested. A much better reason may be assigned in the lamented death of his endeared friend, Mr. Unwin. This illness continued eight months, and greatly enfeebled his health and spirits. "This last tempest," he remarks, in a letter to Mr. Newton, "has left my nerves in a worse condition than it found them; my head, especially, though better informed, is more infirm than ever."[760] In December 1791, Mrs. Unwin experienced her first attack; and in May 1792, it was renewed with aggravated symptoms, during Hayley's visit to Weston. He describes its powerful effect on Cowper's nerves in expressive language, and none can be more expressive than his own, at the close of the same year. "The year ninety-two shall stand chronicled in my remembrance as the most melancholy that I have ever known, except the few weeks that I spent at Eartham."[761] Cowper's mental depression kept pace with the spectacle of her increasing imbecility, till at length, yielding to the pressure of these accumulating sorrows, he sank under the violence of the shock.
The coincidence of these facts is worthy of observation, as they seem to prove that the embers of the original constitutional malady never became extinct, and required only some powerful stimulant to revive the flame. Religious feelings unquestionably concurred, because whatever predominates in the mind furnishes the materials of excitement; but it was not the religion of a creed, for what creed ever proclaimed the delusion under which Cowper laboured.[762] His persuasion was in opposition to his creed, for he knew that he was once saved, and yet believed that he should be lost, though his creed assured him that, where divine grace had once revealed its saving power, it never failed to perfect its work in mercy—that the Saviour's love is unchangeable, and that whom he hath loved he loveth unto the end (John xiii. 1). His case, therefore, was an exception to his creed, and consequently must be imputed to the operation of other causes.
We trust we have now succeeded in tracing to its true source the origin of Cowper's malady, and that the numerous facts which have been urged must preclude the possibility of future misconception.
There are some distinguishing features in this mysterious malady which are too extraordinary not to be specified. We notice the following:—
1st. The free exercise of his mental powers continued during the whole period of his depression, with the exception of two intervals, from 1773 to 1776, and a season of eight months in the year 1787. With these intermissions of study, all his works were written in moments of depression and unceasing nervous excitement.
It still further shows the singular mechanism of his wonderful mind, that his Montes Glaciales, or Ice Islands, exhibiting decided marks of vigour of genius, were composed in the last stage of his malady—within five weeks of his decease—when his heart was lacerated by sorrow, his imagination scared by dreams, and the heavens over his head were as brass. The public papers had announced a phenomenon, which the voyages of Captains Ross and Parry have now made more familiar, viz., the disruption of immense masses of ice in the North Pole, and their appearance in the German Ocean. Cowper seized this incident as a fit subject for his poetic powers, and produced the poem from which we make the following extract:—
What portents, from what distant region, ride,
Unseen till now in ours, th' astonish'd tide?—
What view we now? more wondrous still! Behold!
Like burnish'd brass they shine, or beaten gold;
And all around the pearl's pure splendour show,
And all around the ruby's fiery glow.
Come they from India, where the burning earth,
All bounteous, gives her richest treasures birth;
And where the costly gems, that beam around
The brows of mightiest potentates, are found?
No. Never such a countless, dazzling store
Had left, unseen, the Ganges' peopled shore—
Whence sprang they then?
——Far hence, where most severe
Bleak Winter well-nigh saddens all the year,
Their infant growth began. He bade arise
Their uncouth forms, portentous in our eyes.
Oft, as dissolv'd by transient suns, the snow
Left the tall cliff to join the flood below,
He caught, and curdled with a freezing blast
The current, ere it reach'd the boundless waste.
By slow degrees uprose the wondrous pile
And long successive ages roll'd the while,
Till, ceaseless in its growth, it claim'd to stand
Tall as its rival mountains on the land.
Thus stood, and, unremovable by skill
Or force of man, had stood the structure still;
But that, though firmly fixt, supplanted yet
By pressure of its own enormous weight,
It left the shelving beach—and, with a sound
That shook the bellowing waves and rocks around,
Self-launch'd, and swiftly, to the briny wave,
As if instinct with strong desire to lave,
Down went the pond'rous mass.
See Poems.
2ndly. His malady, however oppressive to himself, was not perceptible to others.
The Editor is enabled to state this remarkable fact on the authority of Dr. Johnson, confirmed by the testimony of Lady Throckmorton, and John Higgins, Esq., of Turvey Abbey, formerly of Weston.