97

COWPER.

He

WILLIAM COWPER was born at the rectory of Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, Nov. 26, 1731. was nearly related to the noble family of that name, his great-uncle having been chancellor and first Earl Cowper his grandfather, the brother of the chancellor, was a judge of the Common Pleas. Cowper's mother died before he was six years old. Soon afterwards he was sent to a country school, from which, at the age of nine, he was removed to Westminster. It is probable that one cause among others of his future unhappiness was the early loss of that tender parent, whose "constant flow of love," beautifully acknowledged in his verses on receiving her picture, and in many parts of his correspondence, made a deep and lasting impression on his infant mind. Cowper was exactly the boy to require a mother's care. His constitution was delicate, his mind sensitive and timid; and he discovered a tendency to dejection, which was

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aggravated by the tyranny then practised at our public schools. Quitting Westminster at eighteen, with a good character for talent and scholarship, he went at once into an attorney's office, where he spent three years, according to his own account, with very little profit. He then became a member of the Inner Temple, intending to practise at the bar. At this period of life he amused himself with composition, and showed a strong predilection for polite literature and agreeable society; but he had no taste for the law, and took no pains to qualify himself for his profession. Long afterwards he deeply lamented the loss of time during his early manhood, and earnestly warned his young friends against a similar error.

In 1763 Cowper was appointed to the lucrative office of reading clerk, and clerk of the private committees of the House of Lords. The fairest prospect of happiness now lay before him, for his union with one of his cousins, it is said, had only been deferred until he should obtain a satisfactory establishment. But the idea of reading in public was intolerable to him; and he gave up this office for the less valuable one of clerk of the journals, in which it was hoped that his personal appearance before the House would not be required. Unfortunately it did prove necessary that he should appear at the bar to qualify himself for the post. They whose spirits are formed like mine," he thus expressed himself in after-life, "to whom a public exhibition of themselves is mortal poison, may have some ideas of the horrors of my situation others can have none." He fought hard against this morbid feeling; but, when the day arrived for entering upon his duties, such was his terror and distress, that even his friends acquiesced in his abandoning the attempt. But his mind had been disordered in the struggle, and he shortly sank into deep religious despondency; so that it was found necessary,

in December, 1763, to place him in a lunatic asylum at St. Alban's, under the care of Dr. Cotton.

Cowper's insanity at this period, and the grievous dejection of the last twenty-seven years of his life, have been imputed to the so-called gloominess of his religious tenets. From that opinion we entirely dissent. No sense of religious abasement can be conceived able to drive a sane man to distraction at the thought of having to appear in a public capacity before Parliament; and Cowper's struggles and mental distress on that occasion were anterior to his receiving any serious impressions of religion. Moreover, it appears certain that his recovery was due to more encouraging views of the doctrines of the Gospel, assisted by the kind and judicious mental, as well as bodily, treatment of Dr. Cotton. For eight years his religion was the source of unfailing cheerfulness and active benevolence; and after he ceased to derive pleasure from it in his own person, he was still mild and charitable in his conduct towards others, and his opinions concerning them. The extent of Cowper's mental wandering on subjects unconnected with his own spiritual state is not perhaps generally known. A remarkable instance of it occurs in a letter to his esteemed friend, Mr. Newton, dated October 2, 1787, from which it appears that, during thirteen years, Cowper had entertained doubts of Mr. Newton's personal identity. At this latter period, therefore, there was hallucination of mind, as well as religious gloom. Cowper's recovery from his first illness is dated in July, 1764; but he remained with his friendly and beloved physician nearly a year more, after which he took lodgings at Huntingdon, directed by the wish of being within easy reach of his brother, who was a resident Fellow of Benet College, Cambridge.

He soon became acquainted with a family bearing the name of Unwin, consisting of a clergyman, his

wife and daughter, and one son, an undergraduate of Cambridge. Struck by Cowper's appearance, the latter threw himself into the stranger's way; and a feeling of mutual regard and esteem led to Cowper's establishing himself as a permanent inmate in Mr. Unwin's family in November, 1765. After the lapse of nearly two years in tranquil happiness, the sudden death of Mr. Unwin led to the family's departure from Huntingdon to Olney in Buckinghamshire, in October, 1767. But the foundation had been laid of a friendship which no misfortune or change of circumstance could destroy; and Cowper and Mrs. Unwin united their slender incomes, and continued to dwell under the same roof. The first six years of their abode at Olney were spent in domestic quiet and retirement almost unbroken, except by the society of Mr. Newton, an eminent and exemplary divine, who was then curate on the living. The well-known collection called the "Olney Hymns" were composed by Cowper and Newton, for the most part, during this period. But in 1773 Cowper's mental disease returned in the dreadful shape of religious despondency. He conceived himself to be set apart for eternal misery: yet amid the deep gloom produced by the loss of that spiritual happiness which he had enjoyed since his recovery from his first illness, he was so entirely submissive that he was accustomed to say, If holding up my finger would save me from endless torments, I would not do it against the will of God ;" and in accordance with the belief that his own fate was sealed, he ceased to pray, and absented himself entirely from divine worship. The depth of his dejection was gradually cheered by the affectionate, watchful, and judicious care of his guardian friend, Mrs. Unwin. One of the first signs of improvement was a desire to tame some leverets. He was soon supplied with three, which have obtained celebrity in

prose and verse, such as no other hares have enjoyed before or since. He tried at different times gardening, drawing, and a variety of trifling manual occupations, as methods of diverting his thoughts from his own miseries. Many arts I have exercised with this view," he says in a letter to Mrs. King, "for which nature never designed me, though among them were some in which I arrived at considerable proficiency, by mere dint of the most heroic perseverance. There is not a squire in all this country who can boast of having made better squirrel houses, hutches for rabbits, or bird-cages, than myself; and in the article of cabbage-nets I had no superior. But gardening was, of all employments, that in which I succeeded best, though even in this I did not suddenly attain perfection." (Oct. 11, 1788.) At last he devoted himself to writing; "a whim," he says elsewhere, "that has served me longest and best, and will probably be my latest.” His first volume of poems, containing Table Talk," &c. was published in the summer of 1781, having been written chiefly in the preceding winter. It was undertaken at the instance of Mrs. Unwin, who, on his recovery from a long fit of unusual dejection, urged him to devote his attention to a work of some extent, and such as should require a considerable share of application and attention. At the same time she suggested as a subject the "Progress of Error," which is the second piece in the volume. Cowper had already written many of his lighter pieces, and that at the times when he was labouring under the severest depression. He accounts for this singular phenomenon with his peculiar and playful humour: "The mind, long wearied with the sameness of a dull, dreary prospect, will gladly fix its eyes on anything that may make a little variety in its contemplations, though it were but a kitten playing with its tail."