and Colman, (now eminent for their literary attainments,) whom he assisted in their periodical paper, entitled the Connoisseur; and it is supposed that his talents, for that pleasing and useful species of composition, were equalled only by those of Addison himself. By the interest of his family, Cowper had great prospects of advancement, and, in the year 1762 he was appointed to the office of Reading Clerk and Clerk of the Private Committees in the House of Lords; this station his peculiar disposition made extremely perplexing, and finding himself unable to support its most essential duty, that of reading in public, he resigned, and his friends endeavoured to procure for him a situation more consonant to the tenor of his disposition. Their good intentions were again defeated, for Cowper being promoted, in the same assembly, to the office of Clerk of the Journals, and an unexpected event making his attendance indispensible, his apprehension and alarm on the occasion so absolutely overpowered his reason, as to render him incapable of that honourable employ. The situation of Cowper at this period was so distressing, that his relatives were induced to remove him to St. Alban's, and place him under the care of Dr. Cotton, a gentleman remarkable for the urbanity of his manners. With him he continued a considerable time, a prey to settled me lancholy; this, though partly occasioned by the above circumstance, was greatly increased by awful apprehensions of eternal vengeance; apprehensions which had long oppressed his mind, but from which, at length, he was mercifully relieved; and, to use the language of holy writ, he was brought to experience his interest in that "everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure." In the summer of 1765, he quitted St. Alban's, and retired to private lodgings in the town of Huntingdon, where he became acquainted with the family of the Rev. Mr. Unwin. This was the most important intimacy, from its result, that Cowper ever formed, though it was ac quired in the most fortuitous way. On his first visit to one of the churches in Huntingdon, he engaged the notice of William Cawthorne Unwin, son of the above-mentioned divine, who, observing somewhat peculiarly interesting in his countenance and manner, on the conclusion of the service, followed him to a lonely walk, and introduced himself to his acquaintance. The friendship of the Unwins was a source of the most refined pleasure to the solitary poet, who, in a short time, left his lodgings and became an inmate of their house, where he experienced every attention friendship could devise, or the purest affection confer; and, if any man ever enjoyed felicity unalloyed in a world of sad vicissitude, Cowper certainly did in the company of his new friends. But short, is the duration of all sublunary bliss. The hemisphere of their enjoyment was suddenly overcast by the accidental death of the elder Mr. Unwin, whose existence was terminated by a fall from his horse, before Cowper had enjoyed his acquaintance two years. Shortly after the death of Mr. Unwin, his widow and Cowper removed, through the invitation of the Rev. Mr. Newton, to Olney, in Buckinghamshire, of which parish Mr. Newton was then curate; and, as the views of the poet and the clergyman, on religi ous subjects, were exactly coincident, a mutual attachment arose, and they jointly produced a volume, entitled OLNEY HYMNS; an undertaking eminently adapted to the genius of Cowper, as may appear by the following extract, in which the most beautiful imagery and the most devout effusions of piety are happily combined. The calm retreat, the silent shade, There, if thy spirit touch the soul, O with what joy, and peace, and love, There, like the nightingale, she pours Nor asks a witness to her song, Nor thirsts for human praise. Such was the growing friendship of these amiable characters, that they omitted no opportunity of enjoying an intercourse which seemed to constitute, in an equal degree, the happiness of both; and it might have been supposed that no impediment existed, as their residences were not more than three or four hundred yards asunder; yet, such was the reluctance of Cowper to sustain public notice, that he devised means to render their visits more frequent, and less exposed to the never-wearied eye of indolent curiosity*. * The vignette, on the title-page, represents the Summer-house of Cowper: through the window is seen part of the parsonage house, and B Thus situated, and with such friends, Cowper might have been once more happy; but, before he had completed the number allotted to him of the Olney Hymns, he was again attacked by that rooted melancholy, which seemed so completely interwoven with his constitution, that neither medical art could eradicate, nor human reason repel it. This relapse was occasioned by the death of his beloved brother, the Rev. John Cowper; and though it did not occur immediately, the painful experience of Mrs. Unwin was sufficiently demonstrative of its cause, as, from that time, his mind gathered, each succeeding day, a train of desponding reflections, which ended in the the wall which surrounds the garden belonging to it. In this wall a door was opened, which being separated from his garden by an or chard, he rented a passage across the latter, for which he paid one guinea per annum: from this circumstance the place was called Guinea Field. This little summer-house, which measures on the floor six feet nine inches, by five feet five, he humorously describes in various letters, published in Hayley's Life of Cowper. It was formerly occupied, he says in one of those letters, by an apothecary as smoking room, and it appears he had contrived a hole in the ground (covered by a trap door) in which he kept his bottles. And in another to his cousin, Lady Hesketh, who was about to visit Olney, he calls it a "Band-box" and his " Work-shop," in which he fabricates all his verse in summer time, and amuses her with the idea, that, when she pays him a visit there, they shall be as close park'd as two wax figures in an old-fashioned picture frame." |