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my attendance at the bar of the House, that I might there publicly entitle myself to the office, was, in effect, to exclude me from it. In the mean time, the interest of my friend, the causes of his choice, and my own reputation and circumstances, all urged me forward, and pressed me to undertake that which I saw to be impracticable. They whose spirits are formed like mine, to whom a public exhibition of themselves, on any occasion, is mortal poison, may have some idea of the horror of my situation-others can have none. My continual misery at length brought on a nervous fever: quiet forsook me by day, and peace by night; even a finger raised against me seemed more than I could bear."

"In this posture of mind, I attended regularly at the office, where, instead of a soul upon the rack, the most active spirits were essential to my purpose. I expected no assistance from any one there, all the inferior clerks being under the influence of my opponents; accordingly, I received none. The Journal books were, indeed, thrown open to me, a thing. which could not be refused, and from which, perhaps, a man in health, with a head turned to business, might have gained all the information wanted. But it was not so with me. I read without perception, and was so distressed, that had every clerk in the office been my friend, it would have availed me little, for I was not in a condition to receive instruction, much less to elicit it from manuscripts, without direction."

The following extract from a letter to his amiable cousin, Lady Hesketh, written 9th August, 1763, through which runs that happy mixture, of what may not perhaps improperly be termed, playful seriousness, which distinguishes almost the whole of his epistolary productions, and imparts to them a charm superior to that of almost any other writer, will illustrate the state of his mind at that period. " Having promised to write to you, I make haste to be as good as my word. I have a pleasure in writing to you at any time, but especially at the present, when my days are spent in reading the Journals, and my nights in dreaming of them, an employment not very agreeable to a head that has long been habituated to the luxury of choosing its subject, and has been as little employed upon business, as if it had grown upon the shoulders of a much wealthier gentleman. But the numscull pays for it now, and will not presently forget the discipline it has undergone lately. If I succeed in this doubtful piece of promotion, I shall have at least the satisfaction to reflect upon, that the volumes I write will be treasured up with the

utmost care for ages, and will last as long as the English constitution, a duration which ought to satisfy the vanity of any author. Oh my good cousin! If I was to open my heart to you, I could show you strange sights; nothing, I flatter myself, that would shock you, but a good deal that would make you wonder. I am of a very singular temper, and very unlike all the men that I have ever conversed with. Certainly I am not an absolute fool; but I have more weakness than the greatest of all fools I can recollect at present. In short, if I was as fit for the next world as I am unfit for this -and God forbid that I should speak it in vanity-I would not change conditions with any saint in Christendom. Ever since I was born, I have been good at disappointing the most natural expectations. Many years ago, cousin, there was a possibility that I might prove a very different thing from what I am at present. My character is now fixed, and riveted fast upon me; and, between friends, is not a very splendid one, or likely to be guilty of much fascination."

Many months was Cowper thus employed, constant in the use of means to qualify himself for the office, yet despairing as to the issue. At length he says,

"The vacation being pretty far advanced, I repaired to Margate. There, by the help of cheerful company, a new scene, and the intermission of my painful employment, I presently began to recover my spirits; though even here, for some time after my arrival, (notwithstanding, perhaps, the preceding day had been spent agreeably, and without any disturbing recollection of my circumstances,) my first reflections, when I awoke in the morning, were horrible and full of wretchedness. I looked forward to the approaching winter, and regretted the flight of every moment which brought it nearer, like a man borne away, by a rapid torrent, into a stormy sea, whence he sees no possibility of returning, and where he knows he cannot subsist. By degrees, I acquired such a facility in turning away my thoughts from the ensuing crisis, that, for weeks together, I hardly adverted to it at all: but the stress of the tempest was yet to come, and was not to be avoided by any resolution of mine to look another way."

"How wonderful are the works of the Lord, and his ways past finding out! Thus was he preparing me for an event which I least of all expected, even the reception of his blessed gospel, working by means which, in all human contemplation, must needs seem directly opposite to that purpose,

but which, in his wise and gracious disposal, have, I trust, effectually accomplished it."

On

In October, 1763, Cowper was again required to attend the office, and prepare for the final push. This recalled all his fears, and produced a renewal of all his former misery. revisiting the scene of his previous ineffectual labours, he felt himself pressed by difficulties on either side, with nothing before him but prospects of gloom and despair. He saw that he must either keep possession of the situation to the last extremity, and thus expose himself to the risk of public rejection for his insufficiency, or relinquish it at once, and thus run the hazard of ruining his benefactor's right of appointment, and losing the only chance he seemed to have of procuring for himself a comfortable competence for life, and of being united to the individual to whom he was most tenderly and affectionately attached.

His terrors on this occasion had become so overwhelming, as to induce that lamented aberration of mind under which he is generally known to have suffered. The dreadful apprehensions which for so long a time had haunted him day and night, leaving him not a moment's interval of peace, had, at length, wound him up to the highest pitch of mental agony. The anguish of his lacerated spirit was inconceivable. The idea of appearing in public was, to his gentle but amiable mind, even more bitter than death. To his disordered perception there appeared no possibility for him to escape from the horrors of his situation, but by an escape from life itself. Death, which he had always shuddered at before, he began ardently to wish for now. He could see nothing before him but difficulties perfectly insurmountable. The supposed ruined state of his pecuniary circumstances the imagined contempt of his relations and acquaintance-and the apprehended prejudice he should do his patron, urged the fatal expedient upon his shattered intellect, which he now meditated with inexpressible energy.

At this important crisis, when it pleased God, who giveth not to man an account of his proceedings, to permit a cloud, darker than midnight, to gather round the mind of the poet, so that he saw no possible way of escape but the one above alluded to, and when he peculiarly needed the counsel of some judicious and kind friend, it so happended that he fell successively into the company of two most unhappy sophists, who both advanced claims to the right of self-destruction, and whose fallacious arguments won him over to their pernicious views. This was, unhappily, rendered more easy than

it otherwise would have been, by his recollection of an impious book which he had read when very young, the arguments of which, though they then appeared to him, in their true light, as utterly inconclusive and perfectly contemptible, now came afresh to his disordered mind, and seemed irrefutable; the situation in which he was now placed, inducing him to catch eagerly at anything that would justify the means of relief to which he wished to resort. How careful ought all to be, who are entrusted with the education of youth, that no pernicious books may fall into their hands! No evil consequences may, perhaps, arise from it at the time, but who can calculate what may be the future result?

The disordered state of Cowper's mind, at this period, will be seen by the following anecdote. Taking up a newspaper for the day, his eye caught a satirical letter which it happened to contain, and though it had no relation whatever to his case, he doubted not but the writer was fully acquainted with his purpose, and in fact, intended to hasten its execution. Wrought up to a degree of anguish almost unbearable, he now experienced a convulsive agitation that in a manner deprived him of all his powers. Hurried on by the deplorable inducements above related, and perceiving no possibility of escaping from his misery by any other means, all around him wearing only an aspect of gloom and despair, it will be no wonder to the reader, that before the tremendous day approached, the day on which his tender spirit was to have encountered an examination before the House of Lords, he had made several attempts at the escape above alluded to. Most happily, indeed, and most mercifully, for himself and for others, they were only attempts; for it was the will of a gracious Providence, not only to preserve his life for the exercise of a sound and vigorous mind, but to make that mind an instrument of incalculable benefit to his country, and, we may almost say, to the world, by advancing and promoting the best interests of mankind, morality, and religion.

The depths of affliction and sorrow which the amiable sufferer now endured were such, that he might truly say with the Psalmist, "All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me, I am troubled: I am bowed down greatly, my heart is pained within me, my sorrow is continually before me; fearfulness and trembling are come upon me. I sink in deep mire where is no standing, I am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me." When at length the long-dreaded day arrived, the approach of which he had feared more than he feared death itself, such were the melancholy results of

his distress, that all his friends immediately acquiesced in the propriety of his relinquishing the situation for ever. Thus ended his connexion with the House of Lords; unhappily, however, his sufferings did not end here. Despair still inflicted on him its deadliest sting, and he saw not how it could be extracted; Grief poured its full tide of anguish into his heart, and he could perceive nothing before him but one interminable prospect of misery.

"O Providence! mysterious are thy ways !
Inflexible thine everlasting plans!

The finite power of man can ne'er resist

The unseen hand which guides, protects, preserves,
Nor penetrates the inscrutable design

Of Him, whose council is his sovereign will.
Prosperity's bright sun withdraws his beams,
Thick clouds and tempests gather round the sky,
The winds of fierce temptations, and the waves
Of trials fell, assault the feeble bark,

And drive it headlong 'midst the cragged rocks.
We look with wonder on, but seek in vain
The deep designs of Heaven herein to scan;
The sacred page itself reveals not this.
Yet who that knows there is a Power above
Would not assert eternal Providence,

And justify the works of God to man?""

At this period of the poet's history, it appears desirable to remark, in confutation of those who attribute, or at least endeavour to attribute his malady to his religion, that, viewed either as an originating cause, or in any other light, it can never be proved to have had any connection with it. It will not be denied, that those sacred truths, which, in all cases where they are properly received, prove an unfailing source of the most salutary contemplation to the underanged mind, were in his case, through the distorting medium of his malady, converted into a vehicle of intellectual poison. It is, however, as Dr. Johnson well observes, "a most erroneous and unhappy idea to suppose, that those views of Christianity which Cowper adopted, and of which, when enjoying the intervals of reason, after he was brought to the knowledge of them, he was so bright an ornament, had in any degree contributed to excite the malady with which he was afflicted. It is capable of the clearest demonstration that nothing was further from the truth. On the contrary, all those alleviations of sorrow, those delightful anticipations of heavenly

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