There was a period when the chase was not considered to be incompatible with the functions of the sacred office. On this subject Cowper exclaims, with just and indignant feeling—
Is this the path of sanctity? Is this
To stand a way-mark in the road to bliss?
Go, cast your orders at your bishop's feet,
Send your dishonour'd gown to Monmouth-street!
The sacred function in your hands is made—
Sad sacrilege! no function, but a trade!
The Progress of Error.
The danger of popular applause:
O popular applause! what heart of man
Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?
The wisest and the best feel urgent need
Of all their caution in the gentlest gales;
But, swell'd into a gust—who then, alas!
With all his canvass set, and inexpert,
And therefore heedless, can withstand thy power?
Ah, spare your idol! think him human still.
Charms he may have, but he has frailties too!
Dote not too much, nor spoil what ye admire.
These rebukes, pungent as they are, were needed. The works of Mrs. Hannah More bear unquestionable testimony to this fact. But we may now record with gratitude a very perceptible change, and appeal to the evidences of reviving piety among all classes of the clergy.
Though the singular and mysterious malady of Cowper has been the occasion of repeated remark, yet we cannot dismiss the subject without a few concluding reflections.
In contrasting with his other letters the correspondence with Newton, the chosen depositary of all his secret woe, it is difficult to recognise in the writer the same identity of character. His mind appears to have undergone some transforming process, and the gay and lively tints of his sportive imagination to be suddenly shrouded in the gloom of a mysterious and appalling darkness. We seem to enter into the regions of sorrow and despair, and to trace the terrific inscription so finely drawn by the poet, in his celebrated "Inferno:"
"Voi ch' entrate lasciate ogni speranza."[787]
Ye who enter here leave all hope behind.