were real obstructions. Getting into the coach, which he thought he had just quitted for ever, and pulling up all the blinds, he determined upon drinking the laudanum in this situation. After many abortive attempts, made during the interval, in which he felt the phial as it were swayed away from his lips, as if by an invisible hand, he once more reached the Temple, half dead with anguish, and stupified by the fumes of the drug, and some drops that had been swallowed in this internal struggle. Alighting and hastening to his chambers, he prepared resolutely to fiuish the work of the enemy of his soul. Locking both the outer and inner doors of his apartment, he got into bed half undressed, and poured the laudanum into a small basin, placed within reach upon a chair. In this situation, shuddering with horror at the thought of what he was about to perpetrate, he lay for some time, bitterly reproaching himself for cowardice and folly, yet still overruled by an inward voice, which seemed to sound in his ear,- Think what you are doing! Consider, and live!' "At length, with desperate intent, he extended his hand to the deadly draught; his fingers lost all power, and could not lay hold. I might still have made a shift,' such are his words,' with both hands, dead and lifeless as they were, to have raised the basin to my mouth, for my arms were not at all affected.' But this new difficulty-the torpid contraction of his extremities, struck him with something like reverence and wonder as a divine interposition. While he lay musing on these better thoughts, he heard a key turned in the lock of the outer chamber door, and his laundress's husband entered. The presence even of an infant, is a safeguard in the hour of temptation,' says Locke. This interruption saved Cowper. He got up, hid the basin, and dressed himself. But again he was left alone, to renew the dreadful conflict with the adversary. This time, in all probability, the deed would have been accomplished, since the whole afternoon was passed in solitude, and without interruption. But the mercy of God interposed, by representing the enormity of his crime in so strong a light, that, in a temporary indignation, Cowper snatched up the basin, as soon as the attendant disappeared, poured the laudanum into a vessel of water, and threw the whole out of the window. "The remorse was but transitory, and, in fact, seems to have had reference rather to the manner than the intent of self-murder. The rest of the day was spent in a stupid insensibility, and the sense of guilt having passed away, crime again recurred as the only possible deliverance. This was the last day previous to his appearance before the House, and a report had even been circulated among his friends, that he had resolved to brave the examination. One of the most intimate of these called upon him in the evening; they spent some time in cheerful conversation. His friend departed, in the hope that the report was well founded; and Cowper, as he left his chambers, said in his heart-I shall see thee no more.' "The sequel is best given in his own words :'I went to bed, as I thought, to take my last sleep in this world. The next morning was to place me at the bar of the House, and I determined not to see it. I slept as usual, and awoke about three o'clock. Immediately I arose, and, by the help of a rush. light, found my penknife, took it into bed with me, and lay with it for some hours directly pointed against my heart. Twice or thrice I placed it upright under my left breast, leaning all my weight upon it; but the point was broken off square, and would not penetrate. In this manner, time passed till the day began to break. I heard the clock strike seven, and instantly it occurred to me that there was no time to be lost. The chambers would soon be opened, and my friend would call to take me with him to Westminster. Now is the time, thought I-this the crisis! -no more dallying with the love of life. I arose, and, as I thought, bolted the inner door of my chambers, but was mistaken; my touch deceived me, and I left it as I found it. My preservation, indeed, as it will appear, did not depend upon that incident; but I now mention it, to shew that the good providence of God watched over me, to keep open every way of deliverance, that nothing might be left to hazard. "No hesitating thought remained; I fell greedily to the execution of my purpose. My garter was made of a broad scarlet binding, with a sliding buckle, being sewn together at the end. By the help of the buckle I made a noose, and fixed it about my neck, straining it so tight, that I hardly left a passage for my breath, or for the blood to circulate; the tongue of the buckle held it fast. At each corner of the bed was placed a wreath of carved work, fastened by an iron pin, which passed up through the midst of it. The other part of the garter, which made a loop, I slipped over one of them, and hung by it some seconds, drawing up my feet under me, that they might not touch the floor; but the carved work slipped off, and the garter with it. I then fastened it to the frame of the tester, winding it round, and tying it in a strong knot. The frame broke short, and let me down again. The third effort was more likely to succeed. I set the door open, which reached within a foot of the ceiling, and, by the help of a chair, I could command the top of it; and the loop being large enough to admit a large angle of the door, was easily fixed so as not to slip off again. I pushed away the chair with my foot, and hung at my whole length. While I hung there, I distinctly heard a voice say three times, 'Tis over!' Though I am sure of the fact, and was so at the time, yet it did not at all alarm me, or affect my resolution. I hung so long, that I lost all sense-all consciousness of existence. "When I came to myself, I thought myself in hell; the sound of my own dreadful groans was all that I heard; and a feeling like that produced by a flash of lightning just beginning to seize upon me, passed over my whole body. In a few seconds, I found myself fallen, with my face on the floor. In about half a minute, I recovered my feet, and, reeling and staggering, stumbled into bed again. By the blessed providence of God, the garter, which had held me till the bitterness of temporal death was past, broke, just before eternal death had taken place upon me. The stagnation of the blood under one eye, in a broad crimson spot, and a red circle about my neck, shewed plainly that I had been on the brink of the grave. Soon after I got into bed, I was surprised to hear a noise in the dining-room, where the laundress was lighting a fire. She had found the door unbolted, notwithstanding my design to fasten it, and must have passed the bed-chamber door, while I was hanging on it, and yet never perceived me. She heard me fall, and presently came to ask me if I were well; adding, she feared I had been in a fit. I sent her to a friend, to whom I related the whole affair, and despatched him to my kinsman at the coffee-house. As soon as the latter arrived, I pointed to the broken garter which lay in the middle of the room, and apprized him also of the attempt I had been making. His words were, 'My dear Mr. Cowper, you terrify me, to be sure-you cannot hold the office at this rate--where is the deputation? I gave him the key of the drawer where it was deposited; and his business requiring his immediate attendance, he took it away with him; and thus ended all my connection with the Parliament House.'"-pp. 76-80. We omit the learned biographer's observations upon this truly terrific occurrence, because we think they were not required by the interests of religion, which the doctor conceives himself to be so urgently called upon to vindicate. It was quite sufficient for him to point out, as indeed he has done very correctly, that religion, as a principle of conduct, was little known to Cowper at that period, and possessed no apparent influence over his thought. Not until this event had roused serious reflections in the mind of the poet, was his attention called to the concerns of his soul; but he now listened to the salutary instruction of the Rev. Martin Madan, his cousin, with earnestness, and with the tears of deep humility and contrition. "the "He urged," says Cowper, in his narrative, necessity of a lively faith in Jesus Christ; not an assent only of the understanding, but a faith of application, an actual laying hold of it, and embracing it as a salvation wrought out for me personally. Here I failed, and deplored my want of such a faith. He told me it was the gift of God, which, he trusted, He would bestow upon me. I could only reply, 'I wish he would,'-a very irreverent petition, but a very sincere one, and such as the blessed God, in his due time, was pleased to answer.' But the disease was not eradicated by these spiritual applications. It was seated in the brain, some of the physical functions of which were constitutionally disordered. On the forenoon of the day after his interview with his cousin, he experienced the attack in his brother's presence. "If it were possible," these are his own words, "that a heavy blow could light upon the brain without touching the skull, such was the sensation I felt. I clapped my hand to my forehead, and cried aloud through the pain it gave me; while, at every stroke, my thoughts and expressions became more wild and incoherent." It is astonishing that, with this fact from the sufferer himself, Dr. Memes should for a moment have thought there was any occasion to vindicate religion from the ridiculous charge of having produced the insanity of the poet of Christianity. If religion is at all to be named in connexion with this dreadful affliction, we shall find it assisting and strengthening the recovery of his intellect. His meditations on the gospel were continual, and they, not unfrequently, were uttered in poetic strains. Only two of his compositions have been preserved. The idea of the following is from Rev. xxi. 5, "Behold, I make all things new." "How blest thy creature is, O God, He views the lustre of thy word, The Day-spring from on high! Through all the storms that veil the skies, Struck by that light, the human heart, A barren soil no more, Sends the sweet smell of grace abroad, Where serpents lurk'd before. The soul, a dreary province once, Of Satan's dark domain, Feels a new empire form'd within, The glorious orb, whose golden beams Has cheer'd the nations with the joys Can shine upon the heart." p. 89. With this we shall take leave of these volumes. The few incidents of which the outline of the life of Cowper consists are known to most of our readers, and the admirers of the poet will find no just reason to be dissatisfied with the present biographer and editor, although we are of opinion that the Translation of Homer is spoken of in terms much beneath its merits, and that there is still room for a critical examination of the works and genius of an author who will be popular in every part of the globe where Christianity is known, and where the English language is spoken. REVIEW.-The Duties of Men. By Silvio Pellico, Author of " My Ten Years' Imprisonment;" "Francesca da Rimini ;" and other Works; translated from the Italian by Thomas Roscoe, Author of "the Landscape Annual." Longman, & Co. London. 1834. THIS small work is the production of a man who has sustained a severe martyrdom for his virtuous and intelligent patriotism, and it is now presented, in our own language, to the British public, by Mr. Thomas Roscoe, who, in a life of the calmminded and amiable author, has manifested a congeniality of spirit. We owe much to the taste and discernment with which Mr. R. has enriched our romantic literature from the captivating volumes of Italian fiction, as well as for the critical accuracy with which he has edited our native works of a similar class; but he comes now before us with a far higher claim to the regard of the friends of true religion, and of those who, in the peaceable and beneficent progress of knowledge, perceive the gradual improvement of the political and social condition of mankind. It is not, we are well aware, in scientific knowledge, nor in an intimate acquaintance with the policy, the interests, or the civil history of states, that we are to look for any continuous amelioration of the human race. Man cannot be happy while his ignorance of his social duties and his habits of contending for power keep him perpetually in a state of internal enmity: and what is there to subdue that restless enmity, but the love of God, which is, in its practical influence, charity among men. Christi anity, when investigated and understood, will be found to be the only principle by which the selfish dissensions of nations, originating in all the disorders of envy and mistrust, of oppressive tyranny and smouldering revenge, can be harmonised. Our duty to God and our love of one another, are two commandments in words only: they are one in effect; the second is necessarily contained in the first; and the history of past ages, whether ancient or modern, carries with it this moral on every page,― that the liberation of man from the wrongs and tyrannies of his fellow-man, is not to be sought in sanguinary revolutions, but in that knowledge and love of God which subdues the spirit, and shews us how we depend individually upon one another, and all of us depend upon Him. "The ardent and penetrating mind of Pellico became early aware that no durable good-no real improvement in social and political institutions-had followed in the train of those violent and blood stained revolutions recorded in the annals of our race. Hence he derived his well-known repugnance to all violent measures; nor was this founded in reason alone: to his natural gentleness, his noble feelings, and poetical temperament, wise and conciliatory principles were far more congenial. He felt that his country had been long sufficiently advanced in knowledge and civilization to deserve a milder and happier form of government, but he strongly advocated the principle of conciliation in all he said and did-in his poetical, and in his prose writings in private and in public; yet neither his blamelessness of life and principles, the power of knowledge, nor the progress of civilization, availed to save him, and his noblest fellow-countrymen, from the rage of political persecution. The utter powerlessness of these moral weapons, sharpened as they were by clear-sighted reason, by justice, and by love of independence, when placed in array against the hordes of ignorance and irreligious barbarism, frequently recurred to his mind during his solitary prison hours, and led him to reflect, long and deeply, on the subject of man's nature, and the causes which produced so much corruption and unhappiness in his individual, his social, and his political relations. had beheld the futility of that wisdom, that national intelligence, though combined with 2D. SERIES, NO. 42.-VOL. IV. He the utmost devotedness of spirit, derived from worldly sources, which arrays patriotism against hordes of slaves; he felt that the only power to be relied upon was a moral and religious power; and that the immemorial failure of freedom in achieving what human institutions, arose from the daring is good and great in human character, as in sions, in his individual, his social, and his and impious substitution of man's low paspolitical capacity, for the pure, healing precepts, and impressive commands of his Divine Master. He saw that, without individual virtue, there could be no social happiness; that, without social virtue there could be no national happiness; and that, without national virtue, founded on these elementary principles, there could be no political happiness, no independence, no liberty worth either living or dying for. By tracing these, and all other virtues, back to their primeval source, he found the root of all in genuine, practical christianity; he found that unless they derived their nutriment from this source, they everywhere faded and perished. He saw that they had been put to the test, age after age, country after country ;-they had been cherished by the idolatry of the brave, the martyrdom of the good and the great; they had been weighed in the balance by time and experience, and found wanting. He still traced, through successive revolutions, despotism, oppression, corruption, injustice, and public crimes of the deepest dye, triumphant over the mere human virtues→→ over all the goodness and the greatness of man's qualities; for this armour was not of celestial proof. The most wonderful of moral discoveries was not yet made-the possible power of christianity over the most corrupt and despotic minds. After the test of establishing its empire, therefore, over his own life and actions, it could not but strike Pellico, that, by the dissemination of a knowledge of the happiness he had derived from the practical influence of this faith, he would be creating an engine of immense irresistible might, at once against the corruption of the people, and the impious supremacy which they had dared to confer upon their idol conquerors under whose Scourge they have since writhed. He must have seen and felt, that by no other process than that of their true conversion to christianity, from that state of unregenerated and worse than pharisaical blindness, in which the rulers of nations denominated each other christian, and protectors of the christian faith, could the corrupt powers of this world be shaken-the thrones of despotism gradually undermined-injustice and oppression of every kind made insensibly to disappear before the radiant light of pure Christianity. To be free, he, doubtless, reasoned, a people must be virtuous and religious; and once individually and nationally inspired ba sense of the goodness, the greatnes 186.-vc 20 superior happiness of a religion as benevolent as it is holy, all shapes and forms of tyranny, corruption, wicked hatred between high and low, with a thousand other evils which afflict humanity, will ultimately vanish like foul and heavy mists before the splendour of the morning sun."-p. v. to ix. Silvio Pellico was born, it appears from Maroncelli, at Saluzzo in Piedmont, about the year 1789. His family was respectable, though not opulent, and the members of it were bound together by the domestic affections, and by an ardour for intellectual attainments, which emanated from powers of a high order, and, in Silvio, “rose into the fire of brilliant genius," while unhappily they "called forth the suspicions and persecutions of political enemies." His mother, whom in temperament of mind he seems to have closely resembled, was a woman of " superior mind and accomplishments," and of a "religious dispo sition." "It has often been remarked," observes Mr. Roscoe, "that the characters of extraordinary men have been more or less moulded by early maternal care and judgment; and it has almost uniformly been asserted by genius itself, in various walks of literature and of science, that to this source was to be chiefly attributed the degree of excellence to which it attained.* In all the vicissitudes of fortune, the mother of Silvio retained the same courage and the same well-regulated affection for her children; and, in virtuous opposition to the prevailing custom, she was at once their nurse, and their earliest instructress."-p. xiii. We regret that our limits will not permit us to follow Mr. Roscoe through his views of education, as connected with that of the * In opening the Rev. Mr. Cattermole's introductory essay to Dr. Hall (Bishop of Norwich's) Treatises, which lies upon our desk, we have accidentally lighted on a passage corroborative of this fact. "The excellent prelate, Joseph Hall, was among those numerous examples on record, of persons memorable for religious and moral worth, who have had reason to ascribe the formation of their characters, under providence, to the care of maternal piety. "His mother," he says, "was a woman of that rare sanctity, that, were it not for my interest in nature, I dare say, that neither Aleth, the mother of that just honour of Clairval, nor Monica, nor any other of those pious matrons anciently famous for devotion, need to disdain her admittance to comparison. So had she profited in the school of Christ, that it was hard for any friend to come from her discourse no whit holier. How often have I blessed the memory of those divine passages of experimental divinity which I have heard from her mouth! What day did she pass without a large task of private devotion? Never any lips have read to me such feeling lectures of piety; neither have I known any soul that more accurately practised them than her own. Shortly, for I can hardly take off my pen from so exemplary a subject, her life and death were saint-like.' Introductory Essay, p. xiv. subject of his very elegant piece of biography; and, indeed, had we a wider arena, we might, perhaps, [have ventured to combat what appears to be his leading opinion. The intellectual powers, we think, are the proper and the only objects of tuition, and that it is dangerous to attempt to engraft upon the moral boughs, a bud of any fruit whatever, of a different growth. Improve the intellectual faculties as much as possible,-store them with facts to such a degree that truth can never present itself before them without their recognising it in every form, and under every disguise. Then, if you will, propose your moral dogmas; but even then beware how, with the authority of a tutor or a father, you insist upon the adoption of any. "Of a bodily constitution which subjected him to much illness, Silvio was reared with difficulty, and contrary to the repeated prophecies of the medical faculty; who, at first, pronounced it to be impossible he should survive to see his seventh year; and, appearing to have decided at last that he held life renewable only on a seven years' lease, they asserted that either his fourteenth or his twenty-first year would find him in his grave. This does not speak favourably for the state of medicine in Piedmont at the close of the last century: "But though the third of these assertions shared the same fate, Silvio, as regarded his physical powers, had by no means an easy task to refute them. To the infinite tenderness and care of a mother, he owed his prolonged existence. When the faculty had passed their septennial act, they left him in articulo mortis, as they believed; but while in extreme exhaustion, his admirable parent, with a devotion rivalling any upon record, restored him by the milk from her own breast, and may be said, indeed, again to have given him life."-p. xix. During his youth, or rather his boyhood, Silvio and his brother were accustomed to commit to memory, and to recite dramatic pieces, which were chiefly the production of their father, Signor Onorato : "Among the young persons accustomed to bear a part in these recreations, was a sweet interesting young girl, named Carlottina, who was cut off at the early age of fourteen. Her unfolding loveliness, and sensibility of character, appears to have made no transient impression on Silvio's young mind,―as, however romantic it may seem, we are told that the image of his youthful love frequently visited the midnight couch of the captive of Spielberg, or gave a melancholy occupation to the heavy hours and days of sad waking thoughts and early recollections."-p. xxv. A mind deeply imbued with the philosophy of christianity, if we may be permitted to use an expression in itself so characteristic of the subject of this memoir, could not be wanting to its own support, when, in "a solitude, appalling as the dungeons of Spielberg," it was thrown wholly upon its own resources : "A fact which farther shows the triumph of the principle sought here to be illustrated, and of such vital importance in the education of future generations, was the captive's own division of his time and studies. These he distinguished by terming them, a life of study, and a life of action; corresponding with the intellectual, and moral or practical use of the human faculties. First, his life of study was conducted by certain mechanical rules, distributing what is possible to be known into several classes, and these again into particular courses, the process of which served to revive what he had before known, and, in some instances, to add to his stock of knowledge. When confined in the same dungeon with his friend Maroncelli, he pursued the same plan; and they thus acquired repositories, more or less abundant, through which each took their separate courses of knowledge, except in cases where the memory of one proved treacherous, and the other could aid him, or undertook to give instructions in a branch unknown to the other. One day, for instance, was devoted, according to this arrangement, to repetitions of history; another to those of philosophy; a third, to those of geography, chronology, mathematics, the fine arts; and, in proportion as each acquired a proficiency, he spoke one day in French, another in German, a third in Latin, and a fourth in the English language. "This, which was considered only as contemplative or passive study, was invariably completed by the active; which means, that the one who felt equal to the task collected and condensed his thoughts upon a given subject, directed his mind to the production of some work, a process which at times, by dint of strong mental tension, as in the case of Newton extracting the square-root in his own head, arrived at complete execution. No one, by this plan, need be destitute of a subject for active study, in whatever degree of solitude or captivity he may happen to be-namely, the study of himself, with the object of making himself better; a study wholly independent of varying creeds and sects, and one to which each of the prisoners devoted himself by a philosophic vow, pronounced either on the day of their sentence or on the following. It is sufficiently curious and novel, being pronounced under such circumstances, to give it in the words of Maroncelli. It is to the following tenor :Calamity, not justice, hath stricken us; let us show that it hath stricken men, and not children. Every condition has its duties and the first duty of the unhappy, be he captive or be he free, is to suffer with magnanimity; his second, to draw wisdom from misfortune; and the third, to pardon. Already was written in our hearts 'Il giusto, il ver, la libertà sospiro! For justice, truth, and liberty I sigh. 'Shall calamity have the effect of erasing words like these? Rather let us subdue, and not be subdued by it. If any captive survive to see the light, let him be witness for the others here condemned to perpetual darkness, and let our vow be fulfilled without reference to the inhumanity of those who oppress us. This shall only be allowed to act as an incentive to a higher degree of virtue; we prepare ourselves to attain it, and to learn to rejoice in the necessity imposed upon us of improving our hearts and minds.' "It is for civilized Europe to decide whether characters capable of displaying resignation, fortitude, and magnanimity, such as breathe in these resolutions were supported by truth and justice, and in how far they could have merited the infliction of the most fearful of human ills. That cause must be indeed good and holy, and deeply imbued with the purest spirit of christianity, which could not only enable them to survive a series of suffering so prolonged, but to pardon their enemies, and meet the fury of their persecution with the language of conciliation and peace. By what spirit, on the other hand, their oppressors were actuated-how much in accordance with the precepts and injunctions of their Divine Master, a master by whom the motives and actions of princes must one day be weighed - -we shall not, however we deplore it, stop to inquire."p. xxvii. to xxx. But, in speaking of the religious strength which enabled him to sustain the rigors of this dreadful captivity, we have passed over the circumstances which led to it. He was born twin with a sister, of a lovely person, and congenial in disposition with himself. She espoused a distant relative at Lyons, and her beloved brother accomWhile panied her to her new abode. devoted there to the studies congenial to his youth, he was suddenly roused to a degree of impassioned patriotism by a poem of Foscolo's, called "I Sepolcri," the Tombs. He immediately quitted France for his native country. Italy was then a kingdom attached to the French empire, and his father was at Milan, acting as chief of division under the minister of In the society of Monti and Foscolo, the poetic genius of Pellico was rapidly matured. He wrote his Francesca da Rimini, and his Eufemio; became acquainted with Mad. de Stael, and Schlegel war. |