incumbent died, seemingly at an opportune moment; and about the same time the joint offices of reading-clerk and clerk of the committees were vacated by resignation. Major Cowper, who was patentee of these appointments, made his cousin an offer of "the two most profitable places"-in other words, the joint office-and the latter thoughtlessly accepted it. On reflection, however, the idea of a public exhibition in the House of Lords quite overcame him, and he sought permission to exchange his office for the less lucrative post of clerk of the journals. The exchange was effected, but the object was not obtained. Cowper was "bid to expect an examination at the bar of the House touching his sufficiency for the post he had taken." The thought of such an exhibition was so appalling, that in time it overthrew his rea son. There is nothing very astonishing in this. There are many men-men, too, in other respects not wanting in courage and confidence-who would rather forfeit a lucrative appointment than make a public exhibition of themselves, and stand an examination before such a tribunal as the House of Lords. It may be asked, then, why Cowper could not relieve his mind at once by throwing up the appointment? The answer is, that his abandonment of the office would have been a confession of incompetency, and that such a confession would have compromised his kinsman. He endeavored, therefore, to qualify and to brace himself up for the threatened examination. It need not be said how hopeless are all such attempts. It would have been nothing short of a miracle if he had succeeded. Had his organization been far less delicate—had he never been subject excess of nervous irritability almost amounting to insanity-the experiment would have disastrously failed. As it was, the horror of the impending trial only increased upon him. The more he struggled to obtain light, the more hopeless was the darkness. It is unnecessary to enter into any details illustrative of this miserable period of Cowper's life. All the frightful circumstances are fully on record, as narrated by the poet himself. His excessive anxiety brought on "nervous fever," which was somewhat allayed by a visit to Margate, where change of scene and cheerful company enabled him for a while to shake off his terrors. But on returning to London and the journals, his old misery came back upon him, and he was more grievously tormented than before. He saw no escape from his agony, but madness to an a or death. The former, as he thought, came too slowly, so he took refuge in the latter He bought laudanum to poison himself. He went down to the Custom-house quay to drown himself. Finally, he hanged himsel in his chambers; but falling to the ground, just as strangulation was commencing, he was baffled in this last attempt. He seems then to have awakened to a sense of his guilt. But mind and body, thus cruelly exercisedthus rent and shattered and convulsed, were now giving way. It was impossible that they could much longer withstand this continued tension. "A numbness," he wrote in his own painful Memoir of these sad events, "seized upon the extremities of my body, and life seemed to retreat before it; my hands and feet became cold and stiff; a cold sweat stood upon my forehead; my heart seemed at every pulse to beat its last, and my soul to cling to my lips as if on the very brink of departure. No convicted criminal ever feared death more, or was more afraid of dying. At eleven o'clock, my brother called upon me, and in about an hour after his arrival, that distemper of mind which I had so ardently wished for actually seized me...... A strange and horrible darkness fell upon me. If it were possible that a heavy blow could light upon the brain, without touching the skull, such was the sensation I felt." He was conveyed to a private asylum, kept at St. Albans by Dr. Nathaniel Cotton, an excellent and accomplished man. His mental alienation was of the most terrible, but not the most uncommon kind. After what had happened, it was almost a necessary consequence that his insanity should be of the gloomiest type, and that he should believe himself beyond the pale of salvation. Under the judicious treatment of Dr. Cotton, however, he slowly recovered. His terrible delusions began in time to clear away, and after eighteen months spent in the St. Albans Asylum, he was sufficiently restored to be removed to Huntingdon, where a lodging had been secured for him by his brother. His spirit was becoming every day more. tranquil. He found solace in prayer. He attended divine service. His heart was full of unspeakable gratitude and joy. The goodness of God was the continual theme of his meditations. At Huntingdon he made the acquaintance of the Unwins. The family consisted of Mr. Unwin, a non-resident clergyman; his wife; a son, intended for holy orders; and a daughter, whom Cowper de scribed as "rather handsome and genteel.” How this acquaintance ripened into intimacy, and how Cowper became an inmate of the Unwins' house, is too well known to need recital. He seems at this period of his life to have been happy and cheerful. He took sufficient exercise-even riding upon horseback. He wrote, indeed, that he had "become a professed horseman ;" and nothing was better calculated to strengthen his health and cheer his spirits. But a melancholy accident brought this peaceful interval of life to a close. Mr. Unwin was thrown from his horse and killed. How the survivors—that is, how Mrs. Unwin and Cowper-determined not to forsake each other, but to dwell together and to administer to each other's wants, is known to all who are acquainted with even the merest outline of the poet's life. Of this curious compact, which Mr. Bell truly describes as "an exceptional case, not to be judged by ordinary standards," we purpose to offer no opinion, further than that, beautiful as was the constancy of the friendship which was so long maintained between them, the union was in some respects unfortunate in its results to both. But the most unfortunate thing of all was the choice of their residence. They were attracted to Olney-a small townlet on the banks of the Ouse, in Buckinghamshire-by that remarkable man, Mr. Newton, who, then at the commencement of his distinguished evangelical career, was acting as curate of the parish. He recommended Mrs. Unwin to remove to Olney, and offered to secure a house for her. To this she readily assented, and her companion willingly ratified the choice. mischief at last, as the following passages of a letter to Mrs. Unwin's son clearly indicate. Need we look any further for the source of Cowper's sufferings at Olney?— "When you first contemplated," he wrote, "the front of our abode, you were shocked. In your eyes it had the appearance of a prison; and you sighed at the thought that your mother lived in it. Your view of it was not only just, put pro phetic. It had not only the aspect of a place built for the purpose of incarceration, but it has actually served that purpose through a long, long period, and we have been the prisoners. Here we have no neighborhood we have a bad air in winter, impregnated with the fishy-smelling fumes of the marsh miasma. ... and sometimes longer..... Both your mother's Here we are confined from September to March, constitution and mine have suffered materially by such close and long confinement; and it is high time, unless we intend to retreat into the grave, that we should seek out a more wholesome re sidence." Here In another letter, addressed to Mr. Newton, he wrote: A fever of the slow and spirit-oppressing kind seems to belong to all, except the natives, who have dwelt in Olney many years; and the natives have putrid fevers. Both they and we, I believe, are immediately indebted for our respective maladies to an atmosphere encumbered with raw vapors issuing from flooded meadows; and we in particular, have fared the worse for sitting so filled with water. often, and sometimes for weeks, over a cellar To the evil effects of climate and situation, far more than to the companionship of Mr. Newton, and to the pursuits into which he was led by that exemplary divine, are we to attribute the return of his malady. Mr. Bell, with the highest respect for Newton's character, is, however, of a different opinion. So, in the autumn of 1767, Cowper went to live at Olney. It would have been difficult to select, from one end of the kingdom to another, a more unfortunate place of residence for a nervous invalid. The house itself resembled a prison. The principal "The change to Olney," he says, "materially sitting-room was over a cellar filled with disturbed the tranquillity which Cowper had water. The surrounding country was low, hitherto enjoyed, and which was so essential to damp, miasmatic. During several months his mental health. The calm daily prayers of of the year it was almost impossible to go Huntingdon, which shed a balm upon his spirit out of doors. There was no pleasant neigh-that at once strengthened and composed him, borly society. All the influences, external and internal, to which he was subjected at this time, were enervating and depressing; and they abundantly fed his disease. A slow fever began gradually to consume both Cowper and his companion, but although they suffered miserably from its effects, it was long before they began thoroughly to understand the cause. ship; prayer-meetings were established in the parish, at which Cowper actually assisted; he was called upon to visit the sick; to pray by the bedside of the dying; to investigate the condition of the poor of a populous and extensive parish, and to administer to their wants, which he was enabled to do by a fund placed at his disposal by were displaced by more frequent evangelical wor Mr. Thornton, a rich merchant; and, drawn gradually into the duties of a spiritual adviser, he exchanged the quiet and the leisure of the last day relaxation, the evening walk, for the onerous and agitating labors of a sort of lay-curate to Mr. Newton. The effect of this change on a delicate organization, already shattered by a disease which the slightest excitement, especially of a religious character, was likely to bring back, could not be otherwise than injurious." fever; and we have already cited an equally distinct recognition of the fact that his nervhealthiness of the climate of Olney. The ous fever was mainly occasioned by the unsame atmospheric poison acts differently upon different constitutions. It has, however, one general rule of action. It attacks To this we cannot but ask in reply, "Is it the weakest place. It lodges itself wherever so?" Is it so, Festus ? Our own belief is, that visiting the poor and relieving their wants is any thing but a dreary and depressing occupation; and that "quiet and leisure" were not precisely what Cowper most wanted. What he wanted was active occupation-occupation both for body and mind; something, too, to draw him out of himself. The contemplation of such scenes as he witnessed in the houses of the poor, as Newton's lay- curate, must have largely awakened that sympathy with others' sufferings, which more than any thing else perhaps, saves a man from dwelling upon his own. We are not sure that if we were called upon to prescribe for the worst forms of hypochondriasis, we should not recommend the sufferer to fill his purse and go out to visit the poor. Such an occupation must in itself have been salutary even in Cowper's case.* But it was not sufficient to counteract the other evil influences of which we have spoken. The marsh miasma of Olney was doing its sure work upon Cowper's irritable constitution. He was continually inhaling the slow poison of the place. A nervous fever was preying upon him. "Having suf. fered so much by nervous fevers myself," he wrote in 1776, "I know how to congratulate Ashley on his recovery. Other distempers only batter the walls; but they creep silently into the citadel, and put the garrison to the sword." It need not be explained to the dullest reader, that the citadel here spoken of is the head-arx formæ facies, and that the garrison is the brain, or the reason. We have here therefore a distinct avowal of Cowper's opinion that his reason was destroyed by the operation of nervous We are entirely of opinion, however, that it was extremely injudicious to call upon Cowper, to whom a public exhibition of himself was, as he himself said, in any state, mortal poison-to take an active and outward part in the prayer-meetings of Olney. Mr. Greathead, who preached his funeral sermon, said, "I have heard him say, that when expected to take the lead in this social worship, his mind was always greatly agitated for some hours preceding." there is a predisposition to receive it. We need take no trouble to explain why the fever which in the poorer class of inhabitants assumed a putrid type, should in one so organized as William Cowper attack the nerves and affect the brain. When he wrote about "the nervous fever" creeping silently into the citadel, he had been nine years resident at Olney, the three last of which had been passed under the influence of the most terrible depression. Still, for three years longer he continued under the same influence, but considerably mitigated by time. In 1776 the fury of the storm had expended itself, and in 1779 it had well-nigh blown over. He said afterwards, that he did not quite lose his senses, but that he lost the power of exercising them. "I could return," he said, "a rational answer to a difficult question; but a question was necessary, or I never spoke at all. This state of mind was accompanied, as I suppose it to be in most instances of the kind, with misapprehensions of things and persons, which made me a very untractable patient. I believed that every body hated me, and that Mrs. Unwin hated me most of all; was convinced that all my food was poisoned; together with ten thousand vagaries of the same stamp." There is nothing here that may not be-indeed, that has not been-clearly traced to derangement of the physical constitution. But the disease was suffered to make progress under a mistaken sense of its import, until the enemy could with difficulty be dislodged. Southey says that Mr. Newton and Mrs. Unwin, being clearly of opinion that their poor friend was torn by an unclean spirit, would not for many months seek that professional aid which before had been exercised with such salutary results. During the season of his slow recovery, he amused himself by taming hares, carpentering, gardening, and painting landscapes; and when, in 1780, his mind seemed to have recovered its original strength, it was suggested to him that he would do well to cultivate his poetical powers. He frequently wrote slight occasional pieces; and now he was stimulated to more sustained efforts by the affectionate solicitude of his friends. They sent him to court the muses, not in search of fame, but of health. Suffering, indeed, made him a poet, as it has made many others. Encompassed by the midnight of absolute despair," he wrote long afterwards to Mr. Newton, "and a thousand times filled with unspeakable horror, I first commenced as an author. Distress drove me to it; and the impossibility of subsisting without some employment still recommends it." But there was something wanted to give effect to the proposed remedy. Cowper himself well knew what it was. In the poem of "Retirement," he significantly says, Virtuous and faithful Heberden, whose skill Cowper ought to have been removed from Olney on the first appearance of his malady But he remained there throughout nineteen long years, at the end of which it had become intolerable to him. It is probable, however, that he would not have had sufficient energy and resolution to effect a change, but for a circumstance which in the course of the year 1786 exercised a happy influence a comfort to me, but in the present day I am doubly sensible of its value. She leaves nothing unsaid, nothing undone, that she thinks will be conducive to our well-being; and, so far as she is concerned, I have nothing to wish, but that I could believe her sent hither in mercy to myself; then I should be thankful." Lady Hesketh saw, at the first glance, the fatal mistake that had been committed when Cowper and Mrs. Unwin were prevailed upon to fix their residence in the Olney Bastile. They needed little persuasion or encouragement to induce them to remove to a more cheerful abode, though without any, they would probably have continued to stagnate in the old place. Lady Hesketh's warnings were quite sufficient to fix the resolution of both. In the course of June, Cowper wrote to his old friend Joseph Hill-the "honest man close buttoned to the chin" of the wellto break his chains. "Olney," he said, "will known "Epistle," that he had determined not be much longer the place of our habitation. At a village two miles distant (Weston Underwood) we have hired a house of Mr. Throckmorton. It is situated very near to our most agreeable landlord and his agreeable pleasure-grounds. In him and his wife we shall find such companions as will always make the time pass pleasantly whilst they are in the country, and his grounds will afford pondence for a quarter of a century, arrived us good air and walking-room in the winter on a visit at Olney. She brought an admir-two advantages which we have not enjoy. able physician with her, in the shape of a ed at Olney, where I have no neighbors with carriage and horses; and Cowper, who had whom I can converse, and where been, for many years, literally incarcerated months in the year I have been imprisoned in a dreary prison-house, with a companion by dirty and impassable ways, till both my who, like himself, was wasting away under health and Mrs. Unwin's have suffered mathe destroying influences to which they were terially." Many passages of similar import both subjected at Olney, was prevailed upon might be drawn from Cowper's letters; but to accompany his cousin on her pleasant rural after what we have already written, we need drives, and was wonderfully refreshed by not pile up evidence to prove that when the the recreation. She was in all respects, too, Olney house was selected for his residence, a most delightful companion. Her it was written down against him that he made sunshine in that shady place on the should never again enjoy a continuance of banks of the Ouse. Even in his letters to physical or mental health. Mr. Newton, Cowper could not refrain from chanting her praises in a full swell of gratitude. over the remainder of his life. In that year his cousin, Lady Hesketh, with whom he had been in a familiar and affectionate corres presence "Lady Hesketh," wrote the poet," by her affectionate behavior, the cheerfulness of her conversation, and the constant sweetness of her temper, has cheered us both, and Mrs. Unwin not less than me. By her help we get change of air and scene, though still resident at Olney, and by her means have intercourse with some families in this country, with whom but for her we could never have been acquainted. Her presence here would seven In November, 1786, Cowper and Mrs. Unwin removed themselves to Weston. He was charmed with his new abode. He wrote playfully that the change was as great as "from St. Giles to Grosvenor Square." But it had come too late. Those nineteen dreary years in the Olney prison-house had done their sure work both upon Cowper and upon Mrs. Unwin. He had been fast subsiding again into a state of depression, when Lady Hesketh had arrived to cheer him ; but although her presence delayed the attack, not been many weeks settled at Weston when I the fever which he had brought with him from Olney began to assert itself, and with it came his old despondency. The evil was perhaps precipitated by a calamity which befell the two invalids at this time. "Hardly," he wrote, "had we begun to enjoy the change, when the death of Mrs. Unwin's son cast a gloom upon every thing." This exemplary man was fondly loved by Cowper, and his unexpected death was a heavy blow to him. It fell, too, at an inopportune moment, and, doubtless, evolved the crisis which otherwise change of scene might have retarded for a time. As the year commenced he felt the fever creeping in his veins. "I have had a little nervous fever, my dear," he wrote to Lady Hesketh, "that has somewhat abridged my sleep." A few days afterwards, writing to Mr. Newton, he said with reference to another's trials, "I have no doubt it is distemper. But distresses of mind that are occasioned by distemper, are the most difficult of all to deal with." He knew this but too well, for it was his own case. To Lady Hesketh, too, he wrote again on the 18th of January, "My fever is not yet gone; but sometimes seems to leave me. It is altogether of the nervous kind, and attended now and then with much dejection." The ink with which this was written was scarcely dry, when the storm burst over him in all its fury. A terrible darkness fell upon him, which continued throughout many months. His agony was so extreme that again he sought refuge in death. But for the timely interposition of Mrs. Unwin, he would have been laid in the suicide's grave. In July he suddenly awoke, as it were, from a terrible dream, and returned to his usual avocations. He devoted himself to his translation of Homer, and seems to have fallen into the error of applying himself too closely to study. He took little exercise, and seldom went beyond the limits of his own and his neighbor's grounds. "I stay much at home," he wrote, "and have not travelled twenty miles from this place and its environs more than once these twenty years." His health and his spirits were subject to considerable fluctuations. Even the improved situation of Weston could not dislodge the enemy which for nearly twenty years had been creeping into the "citadel." Nor was Mrs. Unwin more fortunate. Her health had long utterly failed her. Her faculties were becoming clouded. Extraordinary delusions possessed them both. At last, in the winter of 1791, the poor lady was stricken down by paralysis; and from that time, though every effort was made to rally her, and she even consented to accompany Cowper on a visit to Hayley, at Eastham in Sussex, she continued to grow more and more imbecile, until it was plain that she was totally incompetent to manage the affairs of her household. It need not be said that the melancholy sight of his poor friend's infirmity, which was continually before him, had the worst possible effect on the poet's mind. In 1794 he was in a pitiable state. He refused medicine; he refused food. He was continually pacing his room, backwards and forwards, like a beast in a cage. Dr. Willis was sent for and did all that his unequalled skill could accomplish. But such interposition was too late. Lady Hesketh attended on him, and ministered to his wants with the most sisterly assiduity, but nothing could raise him from the hopeless dejection into which he was sunk. In the summer of 1795 it had become obviously necessary to make some new arrangements for the disposal of the two sufferers; and it happened fortunately that at this time Dr. Johnson, of North-Tuddenham, a young relative of Cowper's, who united with a sound judgment the highest rectitude of conduct and the most unfailing kindness of heart, expressed his eagerness to take charge of them; and they were quietly removed to Norfolk. He watched over their declining years as though they had been his parents. Nothing could have been more judicious than the treatment to which Cowper was subjected; but, as we have said before, it was too late. Such transient signs of revival as manifested themselves in Norfolk only indicated what might have been done at an earlier stage. In December, 1796, Mrs. Unwin died. Cowper, being taken to see the corpse, burst out into a passionate exclamation of sorrow, but left the sentence unfinished, and never spoke of his friend again. He survived her more than three years, but they were years of suffering, bodily and mental. The low fever which had clung so tormentingly to him was now preying on his very vitals. "The process of digestion," we are told, "never passed regularly in his frame;" and "medicine had no influence upon his complaint." The only marvel is, that thus hopelessly prostrated he so long continued to live. Frequent change of place, and the magnificence of marine scenery," even then, however, "produced a lit tle relief to his depressed spirit." The remedy, indeed, was being applied when he could no longer profit by it. In 1799, his |
