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little of Christianity itself, little or nothing of a true Christian experience. What sweeter internal evidence of the genuineness and depth of Cowper's piety can we conceive than the pathetic pleadings of his soul poured forth in stanzas like the following:

God of my life, to Thee I call,
Afflicted at Thy feet I fall;

When the great water-floods prevail,
Leave not my trembling heart to fail!

Friend of the friendless and the faint!
Where should I lodge my deep complaint?
Where, but with Thee, whose open door
Invites the helpless and the poor.

Did ever mourner plead with Thee
And Thou refuse that mourner's plea?
Does not the Word still fixed remain
That none shall seek Thy face in vain ?

That were a grief I could not bear,
Didst Thou not hear and answer prayer;
But a prayer-hearing answering God
Supports me under every load.

Fair is the lot that 's cast for me;
have an advocate with Thee;
They whom the world caresses most
Have no such privilege to boast.

Poor though I am, despised, forgot,

Yet God, my God, forgets me not;
And He is safe, and must succeed,

For whom the Lord vouchsafes to plead.

The unhappy, ill-natured, almost malignant tone sometimes assumed by Southey in his criti

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cisms on Cowper's malady, and in his remarks on the tender religious sympathy and care of his friends, reminds us of Saul under the gloom of an evil spirit, casting javelins at Jonathan and David. The perversity of prejudice, almost making a fool of the critic, even in the very sphere in which he prided himself on his superior discrimination, has rarely ever been displayed so grossly as in the following paragraph in regard to the Olney Hymns, and Newton's influence over Cowper:-" Mr. Thornton took a thousand copies for distribution; but Cowper's influence would never have been extended beyond the sphere in which those hymns circulated, and would have been little there, if he himself had continued under the influence of Mr. Newton. Mr. Newton would not have thought of encouraging him to exercise his genius in any thing but devotional poetry; and he found it impossible to engage him again in that, because of the unhappy form which his hallucination had assumed."

If Cowper had never written a single line beyond the four or five hymns in the Olney Collection, beginning "The Spirit breathes upon the Word," "Far from the world, O Lord, I flee," "O for a closer walk with God," "God moves in a mysterious way," and "There is a fountain filled with blood," the gift of those four or five hymns to the Church of God by Cowper's

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sanctified genius, through Newton's instrumentality, would have been a greater and more precious gift for literature and religion, perhaps, than all his biographer's voluminous writings put together. Be this as it may, there is no apology that can be given for the distorting and discoloring bitterness with which the attempt has sometimes been made to caricature such piety as was manifested in the experience and life of Christians like Wesley, Whitefield, Lady Huntingdon, Newton, and Cowper.

6

CHAPTER IX.

MYSTERY AND MEANING OF THE DIVINE DISCIPLINE WITH COW-
PER. HIS ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF.-INSTRUCTIVE
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

INTEREST OF

No name in the annals of literature inspires a deeper personal interest than that of Cowper. A mystery still hangs around the malady that shrouded his mind in gloom, deepened at intervals into madness. It was a mystery quite impenetrable before the publication of his own memoir of his remarkable conversion; a memoir that brings us to a point where the rest of his life and his personal experiences are clearly traced by his own letters. These form the most interesting collection to be found in any literature in the world. Not only the origin and progress of his various literary designs, and of the productions of his genius, but the different phases of his mental disorder, are to be traced step by step. It is the investigation of that derangement, so peculiar, so continued, so profound, that forms the province of deepest interest in the study of his biography; an investigation

THE

STRICKEN

DEER.

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disclosing scenes of the divine providence in man's discipline, most solemn and instructive.

In one of his letters to his friend Unwin, Cowper quoted a Latin adage that he remembered, which he said would have made a good motto for his poem of "Retirement." Bene vixit qui bene latuit— he has lived well who has been wisely hidden. It might be applied to Cowper's whole life, withdrawn by Divine Providence from the busy world, but especially to that part of it so sweetly hid with Christ in God, when Cowper first fled from the world and abode beneath the shadow of the Almighty. God withdrew him from society to prepare him for the work he had appointed for him to accomplish.

In the third book of the "Task," entitled the Garden, there occurs that exquisitely beautiful and affecting passage, which Cowper himself has noted in the argument to the book, with the words, Some account of myself. It has been a thousand times read, a thousand times quoted, yet the thousandth time with not less interest than before:

I was a stricken deer, that left the herd
Long since; with many an arrow deep infixed
My panting side was charged, when I withdrew
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.
There was I found by one who had Himself
Been hurt by the archers. In His side he bore,
And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars.

With gentle force soliciting the darts,

He drew them forth, and healed, and bade me live.
Since then, with few associates, in remote