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source of his malady, they were the first occasion and instrument of its cure.*

The Memoir is interesting in another respect. It elucidates the early events of Cowper's history. One important subject is however omitted-his attachment to Miss Theodora Cowper, the failure of which formed no small ingredient in the disappointments of his early life. This omission we shall be enabled to supply.

With these preliminary remarks we shall now introduce this curious and remarkable document, simply suppressing those portions which violate the feelings, without being essential to the substance of the narrative.

*The following is the result of the information obtained by the Editor on this subject, after the minutest inquiry. A lady who was on a visit at Mr. Newton's, in London, saw, it is said, this Memoir of Cowper lying, among other papers, on the table. She was led to peruse it, and felt a deeper interest in the contents, from having herself been recently recovered from a state of derangement. She privately copied the manuscript, and communicated it to some friend. It was finally published by a pious character, who considered that in so doing he exonerated the religious views of Cowper from the charge of having been instrumental to his malady.

MEMOIR

OF THE EARLY LIFE OF

WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ.

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.

MEMOIR,

&c.

I CANNOT recollect, that, till the month of December, in the thirty-second year of my life, I had ever any serious impressions of the religious kind, or at all bethought myself of the things of my salvation, except in two or three instances. The first was of so transitory a nature, and passed when I was so very young, that, did I not intend what follows for a history of my heart, so far as religion has been its object, I should hardly mention it.

At six years old, I was taken from the nursery, and from the immediate care of a most indulgent mother, and sent to a considerable school in Bedfordshire. Here I had hardships of different kinds to conflict with, which I felt more sensibly in proportion to the tenderness with which I had been treated at home. But my chief affliction consisted in my being singled out from all the other boys, by

Market Street. Hayley places this village in Hertfordshire, and Cowper in Bedfordshire. Both are right, for the public road or street forms a boundary between the two counties.

a lad about fifteen years of age, as a proper object upon whom he might let loose the cruelty of his temper. I choose to forbear a particular recital of the many acts of barbarity, with which he made it his business continually to persecute me: it will be sufficient to say, that he had, by his savage treatment of me, impressed such a dread of his figure upon my mind, that I well remember being afraid to lift up my eyes upon him, higher than his knees; and that I knew him by his shoe-buckles, better than any other part of his dress. May the Lord pardon him, and may we meet in glory!

One day, as I was sitting alone on a bench in the school, melancholy, and almost ready to weep at the recollection of what I had already suffered, and expecting at the same time my tormentor every moment, these words of the Psalmist came into my mind, "I will not be afraid of what man can do unto me." I applied this to my own case, with a degree of trust and confidence in God, that would have been no disgrace to a much more experienced Christian. Instantly I perceived in myself a briskness of spirits, and a cheerfulness, which I had never before experienced; and took several paces up and down the room with joyful alacrity,—his gift in whom I trusted. Happy had it been for me, if this early effort towards a dependence on the blessed God had been frequently repeated by me. But, alas! it was the first and last instance of the kind between infancy and manhood. The cruelty of this boy, which he had long practised in so secret a manner that no creature suspected it,

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