242 COWPER'S ENJOYMENT cated, might, perhaps, be forgotten, or at least too slightly remembered." Thus it was that Cowper never wrote with weariness, never but with pleasure, never except spontaneously; and this was a great source and secret of his success. He said himself that there were times when he was no more of a poet than he was a mathematician, but at other times it seemed as easy for him to pour forth the sweetest thoughts and feelings, in the sweetest, simplest style, as for a child to breathe. He once said to his friend Unwin, as also to Lady Hesketh, that he was so formed as to be, in regard to pleasure and pain, in extremes; whatever gave him any pleasure gave him much; and he enjoyed much in the work of composition. It was an amusement that carried him away from himself; or rather it transported him from his gloomy self to his radiant and hopeful self under the light of heaven; from the experience of an imagined despair to that region of heavenly experience taught of God, amid thoughts of the richest wisdom, and feelings kindling with the theme; emotions grateful, devout, affectionate, crowding forth from the opened doors of that life hid with Christ in God, before which, at other times, despair kept such gloomy and forbidding watch, that there was no access to it, no communion with it. The labor of his authorship on heavenly themes was as the work of those who, passing IN COMPOSITION. 243 through the Valley of Baca, make it a well; it was like Isaac's labor in digging the wells which the Philistines in their malignity had filled and sealed up with dirt and stones; and in its happy result to himself, it was as a hand Divine reached down to draw him up from an abyss of wretchedness. "The quieting and composing effect of it," he told Newton, "was such, and so totally absorbed have I sometimes been in my rhyming occupation, that neither the past nor the future (those themes which to me are so fruitful in regret at other times) had any longer a share in my contemplation.” This was just because, in meditating on these sweet celestial themes, he had retreated from the mob of accusing and despairing tumultuous thoughts into that holy of holies, where his life was in a double sense hid with Christ in God. He stole away gradually, by such delightful occupation, from his own despair, and the Enemy found there was one secret recess which he could not enter, one pavilion where God could hide the troubled wanderer from the strife of tongues. CHAPTER XX. TENOR OF COWPER'S LIFE AND EMPLOYMENTS.THE IDLE AND THE BUSY MAN.-TRANSLATION OF HOMER.-HIS ACCOUNT OF THIS WORK TO NEWTON. In the year 1786, Cowper wrote to Lady Hesketh, in reference to his mental malady, a letter descriptive of the same, from which we have already quoted some passages. "It will be thirteen years in little more than a week," said he, “since this malady seized me. Methinks I hear you ask -your affection for me will, I know, make you wish to do so-'Is it removed?' I reply, in great measure, but not quite. Occasionally I am much distressed, but that distress becomes continually less frequent, and I think less violent." "In the year when I wrote The Task-for it occupied me about a year-I was very often most supremely unhappy; and am, under God, indebted in a good part to that work for not having been much worse.' This was written in January, a month, the recurrence of which Cowper always dreaded,, for it was in that month that his tremendous malady had COWPER'S EMPLOYMENTS. 245 seized him, and he feared its periodical return. But the style of this letter shows how cheerfully he could speak of his malady when he exerted himself to view it and describe it from the bright side. Cowper here says that while writing "The Task” he was often supremely unhappy; it was a period in which he was threatened with a second recurrence of his malady in all its force, and he suffered indescribably from dejection of spirits. Yet let us look from another point of view, and that Cowper's own point, chosen by himself in his poem, upon the tenor of his life and employments, and we shall see the same supremely unhappy person happier than thousands whom the world call happy; and even in his own conscious estimation not unfavored of his God, nor without deep and constant enjoyment. How various his employments, whom the world Esteems that busy world an idler too! Friends, books, a garden, and perhaps his pen, And Nature in her cultivated trim Dressed to his taste, inviting him abroad- 246 BUSY HOURS. From whom are all our blessings, business finds By causes not to be divulged in vain, To its just point, the service of mankind. That has a heart, and keeps it; has a mind Has business; feels himself engaged to achieve A life all turbulence and noise may seem To him that leads it, wise, and to be praised; But wisdom is a pearl with most success Or dives not for it, or brings up instead, Now this and similar passages are truly descriptive of Cowper's own character and pursuits; and while beguiled by such tastes and employments from the work of brooding over his own despondency, he was by no means so unhappy as he sometimes seems, in his letters. 'My descriptions," says he, "are all from nature; not one of them secondhanded. My delineations of the heart are from my own experience; not one of them borrowed from books, or in the least degree conjectural." 66 Now the possessor of such an experience as Cowper frequently delineates can not be called unhappy, whatever local, or occasional, or even perpetual causes of dejection may weigh upon the |