262 COWPER ON THE MOUNT load of his misery was lightened and his health and spirits rose, he found, and felt, and acknowledged this tendency, this passion, and knew that he needed God's chastising hand. And yet, at the same time, when in the depths of spiritual distress, he felt as though the very last dregs of that passion had been wrung out from him, as though the applauses of a world could not affect him, as though the Arch-Enemy himself could never again touch him with that dart. There are two extraordinary letters written, the one to his friend Newton, the other to Lady Hesketh, both of surpassing interest, but still more deeply interesting when compared; written in different states of mind, yet at times very near each other; which show at once how deeply he had been made to understand himself, and yet how much less he knew of himself than God knew for him; how clearly in the abyss he could see the darkness, yet how soon upon the mount he might become insensible to the danger. "God knows," he said to Newton in 1785, "that my mind having been occupied more than twelve years in the contemplation of the most distressing subjects, the world, and its opinion of what I write is become as unimportant to me as the whistling of a bird in a bush." If the world did not approve him, he thought that would not trouble him. "And as to their commendations, if I should chance to AND IN THE VALLEY. 263 win them. I feel myself equally invulnerable there. The view that I have had of myself for many years has been so truly humiliating, that I think the praises of all mankind could not hurt me. God knows that I speak my present sense of the matter at least most truly, when I say that the admiration of creatures like myself seems to me a weapon the least dangerous that my worst enemy could employ against me. I am fortified against it by such solidity of real self-abasement, that I deceive myself most egregiously if I do not heartily despise it. Praise belongeth to God; and I seem to myself to covet it no more than I covet Divine honors. Could I assuredly hope that God would at last deliver me, I should have reason to thank Him for all that I have suffered, were it only for the sake of this single fruit of my affliction, that it has taught me how much more contemptible I am in myself than I ever before suspected, and has reduced my former share of self-knowledge (of which at that time I had a tolerably good opinion) to a mere nullity in comparison with what I have acquired since. "Self is a subject of inscrutable misery and mischief, and can never be studied to so much advantage as in the dark; for as the bright beams of the sun seem to impart a beauty to the foulest objects, and can make even a dunghill smile, so the light of God's countenance, vouchsafed to a fallen crea 264 COWPER ON THE MOUNT ture, so sweetens him and softens him for the time, that he seems both to others and himself to have nothing savage or sordid about him. But the heart is a nest of serpents, and will be such while it continues to beat. If God cover the mouth of that nest with His hand, they are hush and snug; but if He withdraw His hand, the whole family lift up their heads and hiss, and are as active and venomous as ever. This I always professed to believe from the time that I had embraced the truth, but never knew it as I do now." Here is deep self-knowledge, and yet the ground and possibility of self-forgetfulness and self-deception. Dear, afflicted friend, (Newton might have written to him,) may God keep you in His hand, safe from the treacherous praises of the world, till He take the whole brood and family of serpents out of your heart; for till He does that with us, then only are we safe; and meanwhile He will burn them out, with our hearts in the hottest crucible, if there be no other way. But beware of Peter's word, nor confidently say, even in regard to what seems now so worthless to you as human applause, It never can hurt me, but grant it never may ! Nor was even Cowper, with all his tremendous gloom and mental suffering, yet out of danger. The letter to Lady Hesketh is a frank, sincere avowal in an interval of brighter spirits, of the AND IN THE VALLEY. 265 66 ardent thirst for fame which he knew to be in him; but it seems clear that in the light it did not appear quite so glaringly to be one of the brood of serpents, hush and snug, as it had done in the dark. "I am not ashamed," he says to his beloved cousin, "to confess that having commenced an author, I am most abundantly desirous to succeed as such. I have (what, perhaps, you little suspect me of) in my nature an infinite share of ambition. But with it I have at the same time, as you well know, an equal share of diffidence. To this combination of opposite qualities it has been owing, that till lately I stole through life without undertaking any thing, yet always wishing to distinguish myself. At last I ventured, ventured too in the only path that, at so late a period, was yet open to me; and am determined, if God have not determined otherwise, to work my way through the obscurity that has been so long my portion, into notice. Every thing, therefore, that seems to threaten this my favorite purpose with disappointment, affects me nearly. I suppose that all ambitious minds are in the same predicament. He who seeks distinction must be sensible of disappointment exactly in the same proportion as he desires applause. "And now, my precious cousin, I have unfolded my heart to you in this particular without a speck of dissimulation. Some people, and good people, 266 A NEW ATTACK. too, would blame me. But you will not; and they, I think, would blame without just cause. We certainly do not honor God when we bury, or when we neglect to improve, as far as we may, whatever of talent He may have bestowed upon us, whether it be little or much. In natural things as well as in spiritual, it is a never-failing truth that to him who hath, that is, to him who occupies what he hath diligently, and so as to increase it, more shall be given. Set me down, therefore, my dear, for an industrious rhymer, so long as I shall have the ability. For in this only way is it possible for me, so far as I can see, either to honor God or to serve man, or even to serve myself." But God, in Cowper's case, would “hide pride from man." He still kept him in the furnace, and again and again permitted all the waves and billows of an almost infernal despair to go over him. In 1787, in the dreaded month of January, in the midst of his labors on Homer, a severe access of his malady prostrated him so completely, that for six months he could not put pen to paper. The attack, he afterward told Newton, could not be of a worse kind. It was foreboded by a nervous fever, which he told Lady Hesketh was attended with much dejection, and kept him during a whole week almost sleepless. During this season of almost madness, the sight of any face except Mrs. Unwin's was to him an insupportable grievance; even New |