Mr. Bull gives several letters from Mr. Newton belonging to this period. That they breathe real piety needs not to be said; but they are not altogether pleasing to read. Instead of enlarging upon God's care for His creatures, and His mercy toward every soul which seeks after Him, he gives highly-wrought pictures of particular providences, and searches after God's love in religious excitement. The Lord is to be found not in the still small voice, but in the wind, the earthquake, and the fire. Where these are not, so it might seem, God is not. As long as these feelings were kept alive by the unhealthful religious stimulants, Cowper could boast of his "decided Christian happiness.' But a time comes when stimulants fail to act, and then reaction comes, and ruin with it.

Threatenings appeared from a very early period of his residence at Olney. In a letter to Hill, for instance, dated June 16, 1768, he expresses his belief that his life is drawing to an end. All his letters are upon religious topics, and generally gloomy in tone; he drops his old friends, and even writes chilling letters to Hill-one declining an invitation, another in reply to the announcement of his marriage. The common idea that his first years at Olney were happy ones is certainly not well-founded.

His melancholy was greatly increased by the death of his brother, which took place at Cambridge in March 1770. Their affection from infancy had been unbroken, and Cowper mourned for him deeply. He gave expression to his feelings by writing a memoir of him, which was afterwards published by Newton. (No. 9 in List of Works, p. xviii. See also the "Time Piece," 780-787.) His brother left £700, but £350 were owed to his college; the rest was transferred to Cowper's account by Hill. loser by his brother's death.

But he speaks of himself as being a considerable He must therefore have received a regular allowance from him as well as from his other relatives.*

In 1771 Mr. Newton proposed that they should jointly compose a volume of hymns, partly "for the promotion of the faith and comfort of sincere Christians,” partly to perpetuate the memory of their friendship. The work was undertaken, but not completed for 8 years. It was then published with this title :

The volume is dated Olney, February 15, 1779, and contains 348 hymns, Cowper's being distinguished by a C.

Many of these compositions have become so popular, that a collection of hymns without them would seem incomplete. Such, for example, is Newton's "How sweet the name of Jesus sounds. There are others which are not in the least suited for congregational worship. Poems, for example, like the seventh in the present volume are not acts of worship, but diatribes. Some begin as prayers, but trail off into sermons, like the 22d. But all Cowper's hymns throw light upon his mental state at the time, and there are several allusions to the circumstances of his life. Such compositions as Nos. 8 and 9, the one written in joy, the other in sadness,- -are not only beautiful, but such as probably all faithful Christians at one time or another are ready to adopt. But it is different with such pieces as Nos. 37-44. The expressions of assurance are hardly to be distinguished from cries of despair. "Assurance of salvation' is a cardinal point in the Calvinist's creed, and it would not be difficult to lay one's hand upon a remarkable case in which great physical energy and exuberant animal spirits joined with this assurance have given wonderful life and power to a preacher. Preaching comes so easy in such a case, there is no attempt to grapple with the hard problems which perplex more subtle and thoughtful minds, there is an impatience of them; the creed is an easy one to its holder, and he goes on his way rejoicing. But Cowper's mind was a delicate one, his brain restless and busy; the full assurance which on Newton's word he held to be necessary was a physical impossibility with him, and thereof came despondency and sadness. The high wave is not more naturally followed by the deep trough. Brooding over his morbid sensations increased them; his mind oscillated fearfully on the balance between assurance of salvation, and assurance of perdition, till his whole being reeled and tottered. Before the work had proceeded very far, he was a second time insane. This accounts for the fact that eight years elapsed between the projection of the Olney Hymns and their publication. The return of his malady also put a stop to his intended marriage with Mrs. Unwin. Their engagement has been warmly denied. Southey writes: "I believe it to be utterly unfounded; for that no such engagement was either known or suspected by Mr. Newton I am enabled to assert, and who can suppose that it would have been concealed from him?" On what ground he makes this assertion he does not say, but there is an assertion on the other side, lately made known, of which the truth cannot be doubted. Mr. Bull, in his Memorials of Newton, declares that again and again he had heard his father say that they were about to be married when Cowper's malady returned in 1773, and that Bull knew this from Mrs. Unwin herself. And then he adds the following extract

from Newton's hitherto unpublished diary:

"They were congenial spirits, united in the faith and hope of the gospel, and their intimate and growing friendship led them in the course of four or five years to an engagement of marriage,

which was well known to me, and to most of their and my friends, and was to have taken place in a few months, but was prevented by the terrible malady which seized him about that time.'

This settles the question, and shows that Southey was mistaken. The evidence from Cowper's own letters is too slight to build upon, but, viewed in the light of the positive statement, it is confirmatory. Cowper must have known that, as far as society is concerned, he was in a false position with regard to Mrs. Unwin. He could hardly expect that his excellent and pure life would secure them from ill-natured remarks, nor did it; but it is moreover natural to suppose that their feelings towards each other had changed. Her kindness at first had recalled to his memory the love of his long-lost mother; he had leaned upon her and admired her. But after her husband's death her kindness was no longer that of the wife of an old man, it was that of a woman only four or five years his senior. And thus friendship, trust, and admiration, ended in marriage engagement. Cowper's condition from this time forward was not such as to render a renewal of their hopes possible, and there is no further evidence upon the subject. But the fact as now stated throws light upon a matter which will find its due place in our history, and which has caused much perplexity.

The second attack of insanity came on by degrees. His letters at this time, as well as the Olney Hymns, show his oscillations of spirit.

:

The following extracts from the Memorials of Newton are painfully expressive :"Tuesday, July 7 [1772].—Time fully taken up in visiting and receiving visits. Preached at the Great House from Heb. ii. 18, to which I was led by Mr. Cowper's prayer."

Next day, in a letter to his wife, he says:—

"Dear Sir Cowper is in the depths as much as ever. The manner of his prayer last night led me to speak from Heb. ii. 18. I do not think he was much the better for it, but perhaps it might suit others."

Not the better for it! No, for most unwittingly Newton has created a Frankenstein, and is now sorrowing that he cannot control it.*

On January 2, 1773, Newton writes thus :

“My time and thoughts much engrossed to-day by an afflicting and critical dispensation at Orchard Side. I was sent for early this morning, and returned astonished and grieved."

There was too sad reason for grief. The poor lunatic had again attempted his life, and he repeated the attempt more than once. He became persuaded that it was the sovereign wili of God that he should do so, and because he failed, he believed himself condemned to double perdition. He ceased not only from public worship,

"I believe my name is up about the country for preaching people mad; for whether it is owing to the sedentary life the women lead here, poring over their [lace] pillows for ten or twelve hours every day, and breathing confined air in their crowded little rooms, or whatever may be the immediate cause, I suppose we have near a dozen in different degrees disordered in their heads, and most of them, I believe, truly gracious-people."-Letter of Newton to Thornton.

but from private prayer. "For him to implore mercy," he said, "would only anger God the more.

In order to be out of hearing of the noise of the annual fair, which was held in April, he visited Newton at the vicarage, and being there, entreated not to be sent away. There he remained till May in the following year; so piteous were his tears and entreaties to be suffered to remain, that Newton had not the heart to remove him. His malady, on the whole, was still increasing upon him. Yet it was not till October 1773 that Newton thought of consulting Dr. Cotton. It was too late then; perhaps it would have been of no use earlier. Some years later the unhappy patient described the thousand fancies which beset him; but there is no good in repeating a sick man's dreams. Mrs. Unwin watched over him all this time with the most tender solicitude. She undertook the care of him single-handed, and shared her diminished income with him. The expense of his living fell heavily also on Newton, as appears from a letter to his benefactor Thornton; but Newton's affection was too unselfish to allow him to put his poor friend from his house. During this sad time Cowper employed himself in gardening. He spoke little,— never except when questioned. The first signs of improvement were seen in the garden; he began to make remarks on the state of the trees, and the growing of them. One day when feeding the chickens some trifle made him smile. "That is the first smile for sixteen months," said Newton, His companion, taking courage from this, proposed to return home. He consented, and having done so, was impatient of the few days' necessary delay. At home he again took to gardening, and also to carpentering. A friend gave him three hares, which he may be said to have immortalised. Ten years later he wrote his famous article in the Gentleman's Magazine [June, 1784], giving an account of these animals, and his arrangements for their health and comfort. His friends, pleased with his interest, gave him other animals-five rabbits, two guinea-pigs, two dogs, a magpie, a jay, a starling, and some pigeons, canaries, and goldfinches. The interest he took in them shows that his mind was partially recovering itself, though the clouds still hung heavily upon it. “As long as he is employed,” says Newton of this period, "he is tolerably easy; but as soon as he leaves off, he is instantly swallowed up by the most gloomy apprehensions, though in everything that does not concern his own peace he is as sensible and discovers as quick a judgment as ever.

What I have already said will indicate the opinion to which I have been brought on the relation of his religious views to his madness. I have never forgotten—who could, in reading this strange and melancholy life?—that insanity is verily an inscrutable mystery, on which it behoves our words at all times to be wary and few. I do not believe certainly that religious opinions were the original cause of the madness. When I began the study of this life I believed that I should find that the views were merely the form which the madness happened to

* Bull, p. 202.

take.

But this belief I cannot now hold. It became as clear to me as any demonstration could make it, that the Calvinistic doctrine and religious excitements threw an already trembling mind off its balance, and aggravated a malady which but for them might probably have been cured.

In 1776 he recommenced correspondence, as well as reading, and his letters are even playful. He had written none since 1772. One of the first was to Hill, thanking him for a present of fish.* He also took to sketching, and drew "mountains, valleys, woods, streams, ducks, and dabchicks." But this employment hurt his eyes. He formed a plan of taking three or four boys into his house as pupils, but none offered. Several friends, Hill especially, lent him books, on which he sent back criticisms. In one letter he asks especially for a work on the microscope, and Vincent Bourne's Poems. But his letters as yet were few.

66

In September 1779 Mr. Newton, who was disappointed and out of heart at his ill-success with the people of Olney, was presented by Thornton to the living of St. Mary Woolnoth, and left Olney at the end of the year. His last act before doing so was the publication of the Olney Hymns, by which Cowper was first introduced to the world. His departure naturally made great changes in Cowper's habits and doings, the chief being that he had much time thrown on his hands. In order to fill up the gap in his small circle of acquaintance, Newton, on leaving, introduced him to the Rev. W. Bull, an Independent minister residing at NewportPagnell, five miles from Olney. This choice was a happy one, and they became fast friends. Cowper had a knack of giving all his friends nicknames, and Mr. Bull become Carissime Taurorum. But the distance between their homes, and Bull's hard work, prevented them from being much together, and Cowper was thrown on his own resources. He worked at his garden with more energy than ever, built frames for pine plants, and glazed the kitchen windows. achievement he gives a very humorous account in one of his letters. He revived his law studies a little, and gave advice gratis in a few cases. But, happily for English literature, he began to betake himself regularly to poetical composition. It is noticeable that "Nose v. Eyes," as well as the lines "On the Burning of Lord Mansfield's Library," were written now. Speaking of the first of these, "Happy is the man," says he, "who knows just so much law as to make himself a little merry now and then with the solemnity of judicial proceedings." But in a letter to Newton a few days later, he uses a ghastly similitude about this jocularity. He compares himself to harlequin dancing round a corpse.

Of his last

His prophecy concerning Thurlow had been fulfilled in June 1778, when the latter succeeded Earl Bathurst as Lord Chancellor of England. Cowper's friends hoped that this would bring some preferment to him, and William Unwin, now *Cowper was remarkably fond of fish. "The most ichthyophagous of Protestants" he called himself. It is most amusing, in turning over his letters, to find him asking for fish over and + Letter to Hill, July 6, 1776.

over.