excommunication from all the churches upon the earth could not have been so dreadful to me as the interpretation which I could not avoid putting upon this dream." The other evil prognostication grew out of an effort to repeat the Creed for the purpose of testing his faith. Such an experiment to a man with his mind overthrown, and in the depths of religious despondency, was sure to agitate him to the center. When he reached the second sentence, the first was obliterated from his memory. He endeavored to recover it, and just as he was about to succeed, a tremulous sensation in the fibers of his brain defeated the attempt. He was thrown into agony by the omen. He made another trial, and the effect was precisely the same. He no longer doubted that it was a supernatural interposition to inform him that he had no part whatever in the truths expressed in the Creed. His desperation was complete. His knees knocked against each other," and he howled with horror." He had a sensation like that of real fire in his heart, and he concluded that it was meant to be a token and a foretaste of the eternal flames. He composed some Sapphics, in which he describes himself as 66 more abhorred than Judas ;" and while exclaiming that hatred and vengeance are waiting with impatience to seize his soul, he deems it an aggravation of his lot that hell is bolted against him lest it should afford him some shelter from his miseries.* In this deplorable condition he remembered his cousin Martin Madan,† an evan * The fourth stanza concludes with the lines, "I'm called, if vanquished, to receive a sentence Worse than Abiram's;" and the expression, "if vanquished," was pronounced by Southey to be evidently a mistake. "He did not," Mr. Willmott justly remarks, "remember the history in the sixteenth chapter of Numbers, where Dathan and Abiram, the leaders of a rebellion against Moses, are resolved to abide the consequences of it. Accordingly they were vanquished, and the opening of the earth was the result of the defeat." Cowper thought their fate preferable to his own, because they were engulfed at once; while of himself he says: "I, fed with judgment, in a fleshly tomb am Buried above ground." Southey supposed that "fed with judgment" was another corruption, from his not being aware of the phraseology of the Bible: "I will feed them with judgment." (Ez. 34: 16.) There was a double connection between him and the poet. Cowper's aunt, Judith Cowper, married Colonel Madan, the father of Martin, and gelical clergyman, whom he had hitherto thought an enthusiast, and to whom he now turned as his best hope of relief. Madan proved to him from the Bible that Jesus Christ was a sacrifice for sin, and Cowper gathered a gleam of comfort from a doctrine which he instantly saw was adapted to his case, though he questioned whether the pardon purchased for others would be extended to him. Up to this time, he says: "I was as much unacquainted with the Redeemer in all his saving offices as if his name had never reached me." He was revolving the subject with comparative calmness when a fresh attack supervened. The anxieties of his mind had begun by disordering his brain. The process was now reversed, and the increase of the physical malady brought back his mental alarms. He was in that state in which "Nature breeds Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than fables yet have feigned or fear conceived." The character which these chimeras assumed was determined by the predominant direction of his thoughts. He awoke one morning with the sound of torments ringing in his ears. "Satan," he says, plied me close with horrible visions and more horrible voices." As he walked up and down his room in dismay, expecting the earth to open and swallow him up, a horrible darkness came over him, and with it a sensation of a heavy blow within his head. He cried out with the pain, his expressions grew confused, and it became evident to his friends that he was too far gone to be at large. He had a slight acquaintance with an amiable physician, who kept a private asylum at St. Alban's, and to whom he paid in later years the ful compliment of designating him as grace died with gratitude and joy. My eyes filled with tears, and my voice was choked with transport. I could only look up to heaven in silent fear, overwhelmed with love and wonder." It might be inferred, both from Cowper's letters and poetry, that, apart from his insanity, his tempera Dr. cheerfulness was more congenial to him than the ebullitions of enthusiasm. It was entirely otherwise. "My feelings," he wrote to Mr. Unwin, "are all of the intense kind. I never received a little pleasure from any thing in my life; if I am delighted, it is in the extreme." The sudden rebound from months of agonizing despair to unclouded happiness produced the utmost violence of transport. Cotton was alarmed lest it should terminate in a fatal frenzy. But the ecstasies of joy are more transient than the visitations of pain, and the danger from this source was not of long duration. Yet an unusual exultation animated him for weeks. If he did but mention the name of the Redeemer, tears of thanksgiving were ready to run down his cheeks. He was too elated to sleep much, and grudged every hour spent in slumber. "To rejoice," he says, "day and night was all my employment." He celebrated the mercy which had visited him in a hymn entitled "The Happy Change." It was not in the pride of authorship that he wrote. He tells us that when his passions were roused he had always recourse to verse as the only adequate vehicle for his impetuous thoughts. To keep silence was impossible, and no prose which was not inflated could, in his own opinion, have done justice to his conceptions. Cowper dated his madness from the moment when he felt as if he had received a blow upon his brain. As long as his thoughts remained coherent, he seems to have considered himself sane. In the midst of the wild disarray of his ideas, his conviction of the terrible nature of his sins, and his expectation of instant judgment was tranquil, and that a composed ment, continued clear and uninterrupted. Five months were spent in this awful delusion. By long familiarity with the prospect, he began to grow indifferent to it. He determined that, pending the execution of the sentence, he would endeavor to enjoy himself. He laughed at the stories of Dr. Cotton, and told him some of his own to match them. He even regretted that he had not indulged his appetites more freely, and envied those miserable spirits who had run the round of sensuality before they met the just retribution of their deeds. Notwithstanding that these notions savored of insanity, and that he retained his belief in his dreadful doom, his inclination towards cheerfulness was the turning-point in his malady. This second and milder stage of the disorder had lasted nearly three months, when he was visited (July 25, 1764) by his only and much loved brother, who was a Fellow of Ben'et College, Cambridge. Cowper gave vent to the fixed idea of his mindhis expectation of sudden judgment. His brother protested that the whole was a delusion. The vehemence with which he spoke arrested the attention of the poor patient, who, bursting into tears, ex claimed: "If it be a delusion I am the happiest of beings!" Hour by hour his hope increased. His visions that night were pleasing instead of gloomy, and at breakfast next morning he had a growing conviction that the decree of condemna tion was not irrevocable. For weeks he had never opened the Bible. His reviving spirits induced him to take it up, and the first verse which met his eye was the twenty-fifth of the third of Romans: "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God." In the crisis of his disorder he would have thought that he was specially excepted from the blessing. His reason having returned, he did not hesitate to take the doctrine to himself. "Unless," he says, "the Almighty arm had been under me, I think I should have The "Personal Narrative" of Cowper is a complete refutation of the popular notion that religion made him mad. Both his attacks arose from causes that had no connection with it, and when the subject engaged no part of his attention. In the first visitation, it was only after the disease had taken root that he sought relief from prayer, which he abandoned the moment his health was restored. In the second and more terrible concussion of his mind, it was not till his frenzy had driven him to attempt suicide that his conscience took alarm, and diverted his attention from what would equally have fed the disease—the ruin of his prospects, his personal disgrace, the censure, or worse, the compassion of his friends. Being already insane when he commenced the review of his past lfe, he saw it of necessity through the distorting medium of a disordered imagination. Rational for the most part as were his conceptions of Christianity, he may even, when he was convalescent, have overrated the enormity of some of his actions. But his testimony to facts must not be confounded with the interpretation he put upon them. Although his judgments in one or two particulars may have been erroneous, his statements of what he really did and thought bear the stamp of scrupulous fidelity, and if their accuracy is admitted, he did not err in concluding that his general conduct called for bitter repentance. He had not, indeed, lived a life of open profligacy-for those, he says, who knew him best esteemed him "a good sort of man;" but he had passed his days in self-indulgence, and in the total neglect of religion. He had entirely abandoned the practice of devotion, and seems not to have believed in its efficacy. When, subsequent to his conversion, he told his friend Hill that he could only return his kindness by prayers, he added: "If you should laugh at my conclusion, I should should,laugh not be angry, though I should be grieved. It is not long since that I should have laughed at such a recompense myself." In a word, while professing a belief in Christianity, he held it folly to pay in practice any allegiance to the Creator. I thought," he says, "the services of my Maker and Redeemer an unnecessary labor; I despised those who thought otherwise; and if they spoke of the love of God, I pronounced them madmen." Unquestionably many of his former acquaintances now pronounced the same verdict upon him, with the specious addition that they would urge the fact that he had been insane for a triumphant proof that his religion was insanity. He anticipated this result, and "was concerned to reflect that a convert made in Bedlam was more likely to be a stumbling-block to others than to advance their faith." The manner, however, in which he had acquired a knowledge of himself and the Gospel could not affect the truth of his conclusions, and he might well be thankful for any dispensation which enabled him, after living without God in the world, 66 Cowper remained nearly a year at St. Alban's after his disorder had abated. In Dr. Cotton he had a friend who loved Christianity, and who was as well qualified to afford assistance in this department "as in that which was more immediately his province." Every morning the physician conversed with his patient upon what was now the absorbing topic of his thoughts. He was consequently happy in his retreat, and a nature less sensitive than his might have shrunk from reäppearing in the world. The expense alone induced him to quit what he called "the place of his second nativity," and which he ever after associated with his joyful recovery, and not with its wretched antecedents. He wished, on removing, to fix his residence near Cambridge, that he might share the society of his brother, and he was, at any rate, resolved that he would appear no more in London, "the scene of his former abominations." The painful recollections connected with it, the awkwardness of meeting his old companions, his determiation to shake off the greater part of them, and the impossibility of pursuing his profession, all combined to turn him from his previous haunts. He resigned a small office-that of Commissioner of Bankrupts-worth 60l. a year, for the double reason that it required his presence in town, and that his ignorance of law would not permit him, now he weighed the words which he swore, to take the customary oath. The scanty income which remained would have been insufficient for his maintenance if his relations had not clubbed together a little later to make him an allowance. The frightful proofs he had given of the desperate nature of his malady left them no room to blame him. His brother could find him no convenient lodgings nearer than Huntingdon. Thither Cowper set out on the 17th June, 1765, his heart aching at the thought of returning to a world in the pollutions of which he had had so "sad a share," and dreading lest his ears, as he journeyed, should be offended by oaths, which were the common language of the time. He took Cambridge by the way. He arrived at his new abode on the 22d, and his spirits sank when he found himself alone in a strange place without a friend to comfort him. He walked a mile from the town, and kneeling down in a screened "To see by no fallacious light or dim nook of a field, prayed that he might be Earth made for man, and man himself for Him." cheered and supported. He returned to his lodgings light in heart. The next day was Sunday. Entering the church with feelings different from what he had ever entered a church before, he could with difficulty restrain his emotions. His heart warmed to all the congregation; and observing that a man who sat in the pew with him was singing with much devotion, he inwardly exclaimed: "Bless you for praising Him whom my soul loveth!" A vivid and beautiful picture which almost reproduces the impressions he de scribes. He had very uncomfortable expectations of the accommodation he should meet with at Huntingdon, and found to his surprise that he liked his lodgings, the locality, and the people. He thought the town among the neatest in England. well before he became acquainted with them, and imagined that he should find every place unpleasant that had not an Unwin. Delighted as Cowper ceemed with the whole of the family, the real attraction to him was Mrs. Unwin and her son. Their doctrinal opinions were the same with his own, their piety as earnest and pervading. A reserved person is chilled by reserve and disgusted by forwardness. An ingenuous frankness alone can put him at his ease and elicit a responsive freedom. The artless candor of the young man immediately won the confidence of his bashful elder. They poured out their hearts to each other at the first interview, and the moment his visitor was gone, Cowper retired to his bed-room and prayed that God would give "fervency and perpetuity to the friendship, even unto death." As he prayed, so it proved in the issue. Of the mother he wrote, at the very com Among the friends which Cowper made at Huntingdon was the family of the Unwins, consisting of husband and wife, and a son and daughter. The father, an elderly clergyman, who held a college liv-mencement of the acquaintance: "That ing upon which he did not reside, had woman is a blessing to me, and I never once been master of the free school, and see her without being the better for her had now a large house in the town where company." Just at the time when his solihe took private pupils. He is described tary situation grew irksome to him, one of by Cowper "as a man of learning and Mr. Unwin's pupils left. It occurred to good sense, and as simple as Parson Cowper that he might, perhaps, be allowAdams." His wife, who was much young-ed to fill the vacancy. The effect which er than himself, was the daughter of a draper in Ely of the name of Cawthorne. "She has," writes Cowper, "a very uncommon understanding, has read much to excellent purpose, and is more polite than a duchess." The son was just of age. He was of a singularly amiable and vivacious disposition, with the openness and frankness of youth, had fair talents, and more than average acquirements. The daughter, a girl of eighteen, "was of a piece with the rest of the family," and "was rather handsome and genteel," but she must have missed one great charm of the poet's society from having no perception of his humor, which, like a dish of delicate flavor, is lost upon obtuse palates, though, to those who can taste it, it is as much more delicious as it is more refined than coarsely-seasoned viands. This lit-pations. tle domestic group he pronounced to be altogether the cheerfulest and most agreeable it was possible to conceive. The impression was mutual. From the moment he set foot in the circle, "he was treated as if he had been a near relation. Fascinated by these new companions, he wondered that he liked Huntingdon so the notion had upon him showed that He had resided there four months, when he wrote that in Mrs. Unwin, "he could almost fancy his own mother restored to life again to compensate him for all the friends he had lost, and all his connections broken." On a subsequent occasion, he composed some lines in which he happily expressed the familiar truth, that inci dents which appear to us mysterious or purposeless furnish us, in their full development, "With proof that we and our affairs Of all the illustrations of this fact which his memorable history afforded, none was more conspicuous than the Providence which led him against his own wishes to Huntingdon, and guided his unwilling footsteps to the door of the Unwins. His disposition inclined him to marriage, but he had too much conscience to run the risk of transmitting his frightful malady, and it is clear that from the period of his second attack, which admitted of no doubtful construction, he never entertained the idea. He had hardly appeared to be cut off forever from the intimate delights of a domestic circle, when he found them in the friendship of the inestimable woman whose story is henceforth blended with his own. The days of Cowper flowed on in tranquil cheerfulness between devotion, reading, conversation, walking, and gardening. Little more than a year and a half had elapsed when the peace of the household was suddenly interrupted by the violent. death of Mr. Unwin. As he was riding one Sunday morning in July, 1767, to his curacy of Gravely, he was flung from his horse, and his head was dreadfully fractured. He was too much injured to be carried back to Huntingdon, and after lingering till the Thursday, he expired in a cottage about a mile from his home. At such a moment the sympathy of her devoted companion must have been as important to Mrs. Unwin as her own had previously been to him. They at once determined that the change of circumstances should not dissolve a bond which had become stronger than ever; but in a different way the event was big with consequences to Cowper, and instead of depriving him of one associate, supplied him with a second. A few days after the accident, the celebrated John Newton was on his road through Huntingdon. His journey thitherwards at this crisis was said by the poet eighteen years af terwards to have been such a wonderful dispensation of Providence, that he thought it gave him a claim to the especial attention of a ghostly counselor, who had been sent by heaven for the express purpose of finding him out. The result was accomplished by the zealous minister calling, at the request of an acquaintance, upon Mrs. Unwin, to whom he was then a perfect stranger. He invited the friends to settle at his cure of Olney, in Buckinghamshire, and they gladly embraced the offer for the sake of his preaching and conversation. He hired for them an old house, of which the garden at the back was only separated by an orchard from the garden of the vicarage. By opening doors in the walls of the respective domains, a direct communication was established, and the two families lived almost as one. In September, the poet removed to a dwelling which was to be his home for twenty years, and where almost all the works were composed which have given an interest to his name and history. The front of his new tenement looked upon the market-place, and wore such a desolate aspect, that when young Mr. Unwin first saw it, he was shocked to think that his mother lived there. The rest of the town was not attractive. Cowper describes it as "populous, and inhabited chiefly by the half-starved and ragged of the earth." Pecuniary embarrassments had induced the Vicar, Moses Brown, to become a pluralist, and he resided at Blackheath, where he was chaplain of Morden College. His debts failed to make a numerous family a care to him. He said that when he had only two or three children, he thought he should have been distracted with the anxiety of providing for them, but when he had a dozen, he was easy, and thought no more of the matter. According to Mr. Cecil, he was a pious minister, who had trained many of his people in the way they should go, and an over-indulgent father, who had allowed his sons to take the way they should not. Mr. Newton had been his deputy for three years and a half when Cowper settled in the parish. It was a remark of the famous Dr. Sydenham that "every body some time or other would be the better or the worse for having but spoken to a good or bad man." The curate of Olney was one of those persons to whom few could speak without being the better for it. His father was the master of a trading vessel, and he had himself spent the larger part of twenty years at sea. He was once impressed on board a man-of-war, was made a midshipman, de |