SOUTHEY'S COMMENTS. 275 passed since I began to hope that, having walked the whole breadth of the bottom of this Red Sea, I was beginning to climb the opposite shore, and I prepared to sing the song of Moses. But I have been disappointed; those hopes have been blasted; those comforts have been wrested from me. I could not be so duped, even by the Arch Enemy himself, as to be made to question the divine nature of them; but I have been made to believe (which you will say is being duped still more) that God gave them to me in derision, and took them away in vengeance. Such, however, is and has been my persuasion many a long day, and when I shall think on that subject more comfortably, or, as you will be inclined to tell me, more rationally and scripturally, I know not." Yet it is just about this time that Southey undertakes to say, on account of Cowper's enjoyment of the society of Lady Hesketh, and the tone of cheerfulness in his letters, and the absence of any marked religious strain, that Cowper was happier than he had ever been since the days of his youth! This contains a covert but studied depreciation of the brightness and blessedness of Cowper's life in the happy years of his early experience in Huntingdon and Olney, after his conversion. It reminds us of Southey's declaration that the period when Cowper was so absorbed in religious duties and employments, and enjoyed such close and un 276 SOUTHEY'S COMMENTS. interrupted communion with his God and Saviour, was "preposterously called the happy period of his life." Southey had also remarked, with a similar concealed reference, that the summer of 1781, when the poet, beneath the cloud of spiritual gloom, was engaged upon his first poetical volume, driven to that work, as he himself said, by mental anguish, was the happiest Cowper ever passed. Southey even intimated that the tenor of Cowper's religious life previously, so absorbed in devotional ideas and pursuits, had tended to bring back his madness, and was one exasperating cause of the access that ensued in 1773. He would persuade the reader that it was a perilous and injudicious thing in Newton to have engaged his friend in such a deeply interesting employment as the composition of the "Olney Hymns ;" and he quotes the two affecting stanzas, "Where is the blessedness I knew," "The peaceful hours I once enjoyed, as a proof of the supposed danger of a return to madness! Southey also declared, in reference to Cowper's religious life with Newton, that "the course of life LETTER то LADY HESKETH. 277 into which Cowper had been led at Olney, tended to alienate him from the friends whom he loved best." In this sentence he referred partly to Lady Hesketh and her family, whose correspondence with Cowper had dropped, apparently because on Cowper's part it was maintained almost solely on religious subjects. Southey says that the last letter Lady Hesketh received from Cowper, at that time, 66 was in a strain of that melancholy pietism which casts a gloom over every thing, and which seems at once to chill the intellect and wither the affections." That we may know what it is that Southey can sneer at as a melancholy pietism, and what it is that in his view casts a gloom over human life, and chills the intellect and withers the affections, we shall quote this interesting and admirable letter. It is dated January 30th, 1767, and commences "MY DEAR LADY HESKETH: "I am glad you spent your summer in a place so agreeable to you. As to me, my lot is cast in a country where we have neither woods, nor commons, nor pleasant prospects; all is flat and insipid; in the summer adorned only with blue willows, and in the winter covered with a flood. Such it is at present: our bridges shaken almost in pieces; our poor willows torn away by the roots, and our haycocks almost afloat. Yet even here we 278 LETTER TO LADY HESKETH. are happy; at least I am so; and if I have no groves with benches conveniently disposed, nor commons overgrown with thyme to regale me, neither do I want them. You thought to make my mouth water at the charms of Taplow, but you see you are disappointed. My dear cousin! I am a living man; and I can never reflect that I am so, without recollecting at the same time that I have infinite cause of thanksgiving and joy. This makes every place delightful to me where I can have leisure to meditate upon those mercies by which I live, and indulge a vein of gratitude to that gracious God who has snatched me like a brand out of the burning. Where had I been, but for His forbearance and long-suffering?—even with those who shall never see His face in hope, to whom the name of Jesus, by a just judgment of God, is become a torment instead of a remedy. Thoughtless and inconsiderate wretch that I was! I lived as if I had been my own creator, and could continue my existence to what length and in what state I pleased; as if dissipation was the narrow way which leads to life, and a neglect of the blessed God would certainly end in the enjoyment of Him. But it pleased the Almighty to convince me of my fatal error before it indeed became such; to convince me that in communion with Him we may find that happiness for which we were created, and that a life without LETTER TO LADY HESKETH. 279 God in the world is a life of trash, and the most miserable delusion. Oh, how had my own corruptions and Satan together blinded and befooled me! I thought the service of my Maker and Redeemer a tedious and unnecessary labor; I despised those who thought otherwise; and if they spoke of the love of God, I pronounced them madmen. As if it were possible to serve and love the Almighty being too much, with whom we must dwell forever, or be forever miserable without Him. "Would I were the only one that had ever dreamed this dream of folly and wickedness! but the world is filled with such, who furnish a continual proof of God's almost unprovokable mercy; who set up for themselves in a spirit of independence upon Him who made them, and yet enjoy that life by His bounty which they abuse to His dishonor. You remember me, my dear cousin, one of this trifling and deluded multitude. Great and grievous afflictions were applied to awaken me out of this deep sleep, and, under the influence of Divine grace, have, I trust, produced the effect for which they were intended. If the way in which I had till that time proceeded had been according to the word and will of God, God had never interposed to change it. That He did is certain; though others may not be so sensible of that interposition, yet I am sure of it. To think as I once did, therefore, must be wrong. Whether to think as I now |