The Works of William Cowper. William Cowper
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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.
Adieu, my dear Cousin! so much as I love you, I wonder how it has happened I was never in love with you. Thank Heaven that I never was, for at this time I have had a pleasure in writing to you, which in that case I should have forfeited. Let me hear from you, or I shall reap but half the reward that is due to my noble indifference.
Yours ever, and evermore,
W. C.
It was hoped from the change of his station that his personal appearance in parliament might not be required, but a parliamentary dispute made it necessary for him to appear at the bar of the House of Lords, to entitle himself publicly to the office.
Speaking of this important incident in a sketch, which he once formed himself, of passages in his early life, he expressed what he endured at the time in these remarkable words: "They whose spirits are formed like mine, to whom a public exhibition of themselves is mortal poison, may have some idea of the horrors of my situation—others can have none."
His terrors on this occasion arose to such an astonishing height, that they utterly overwhelmed his reason; for, although he had endeavoured to prepare himself for his public duty, by attending closely at the office for several months, to examine the parliamentary journals, his application was rendered useless by that excess of diffidence, which made him conceive that, whatever knowledge he might previously acquire, it would all forsake him at the bar of the House. This distressing apprehension increased to such a degree, as the time for his appearance approached, that, when the day so anxiously dreaded arrived, he was unable to make the experiment. The very friends who called on him for the purpose of attending him to the House of Lords, acquiesced in the cruel necessity of his relinquishing the prospect of a station so severely formidable to a frame of such singular sensibility.
The conflict between the wishes of honourable ambition and the terrors of diffidence so entirely overwhelmed his health and faculties, that, after two learned and benevolent divines (Mr. John Cowper, his brother, and the celebrated Mr. Martin Madan, his first cousin) had vainly endeavoured to establish a lasting tranquillity in his mind by friendly and religious conversation, it was found necessary to remove him to St. Alban's, where he resided a considerable time, under the care of that eminent physician, Dr. Cotton, a scholar and a poet, who added to many accomplishments a peculiar sweetness of manners, in very advanced life, when I had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with him.
The misfortune of mental derangement is a topic of such awful delicacy, that I consider it to be the duty of a biographer rather to sink, in tender silence, than to proclaim, with circumstantial and offensive temerity, the minute particulars of a calamity to which all human beings are exposed, and perhaps in proportion as they have received from nature those delightful but dangerous gifts, a heart of exquisite tenderness and a mind of creative energy.
This is a sight for pity to peruse,
Till she resembles, faintly, what she views;
Till sympathy contracts a kindred pain,
Pierc'd with the woes that she laments in vain.
This, of all maladies, that man infest,
Claims most compassion, and receives the less.
… … … … . …
But with a soul that ever felt the sting
Of sorrow, sorrow is a sacred thing.
… … … … …
… … … … . …
'Tis not, as heads that never ache suppose,
Forgery of fancy, and a dream of woes.
Man is a harp, whose chords elude the sight,
Each yielding harmony, disposed aright;
The screws revers'd, (a task, which, if He please,
God, in a moment, executes with ease),
Ten thousand, thousand strings at once go loose;
Lost, till He tune them, all their power and use.
… … … … . …
No wounds like those a wounded spirit feels;
No cure for such, till God, who makes them, heals.
And thou, sad sufferer, under nameless ill,
That yields not to the touch of human skill,
Improve the kind occasion, understand
A Father's frown, and kiss the chast'ning hand!
It is in this solemn and instructive light, that Cowper himself teaches us to consider the calamity of which I am now speaking; and of which, like his illustrious brother of Parnassus, the younger Tasso, he was occasionally a most affecting example. Providence appears to have given a striking lesson to mankind, to guard both virtue and genius against pride of heart and pride of intellect, by thus suspending the affections and the talents of two most tender and sublime poets, who resembled each other, not more in the attribute of poetic genius than in the similarity of the dispensation that quenched its light and ardour.
From December, 1763, to the following July, the sensitive mind of Cowper appears to have laboured under the severest suffering of morbid depression; but the medical skill of Dr. Cotton, and the cheerful, benignant manners of that accomplished physician, gradually succeeded, with the blessing of Heaven, in removing the indescribable load of religious despondency, which had clouded the faculties of this interesting man. His ideas of religion were changed from the gloom of terror and despair to the brightness of inward joy and peace.
This juster and happier view of evangelical truth is said to have arisen in his mind, while he was reading the third chapter of Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans. The words that rivetted his attention were the following:
"Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God." Rom. iii. 25.
It was to this passage, which contains so lucid an exposition of the Gospel method of salvation, that, under the divine blessing, the poet owed the recovery of a previously disordered intellect and the removal of a load from a deeply oppressed conscience—he saw, by a new and powerful perception, how sin could be pardoned, and the sinner be saved—that the way appointed of God was through the great propitiation and sacrifice upon the cross—that faith lays hold of the promise, and thus becomes the instrument of conveying pardon and peace to the soul.
It is remarkable how God, in every age, from the first promulgation of the Gospel to the present time, and under all the various modifications of society, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, has put his seal to this fundamental doctrine of the Gospel.
Whether we contemplate man amid the polished scenes of civilized and enlightened Europe, or the rude ferocity of savage tribes—whether it be the refined Hindoo, or the unlettered Hottentot, whose mind becomes accessible to the power and influences of religion, the cause and the effect are the same. It is the doctrine of the cross that works the mighty change. The worldly wise may reject this doctrine—the spiritually wise comprehend and receive it. But, whether it be rejected, with all its tremendous responsibilities, or received with its inestimable blessings, the truth itself still remains unchanged and unchangeable, attested by the records of every church and the experience of every believing heart—"the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is the power of God." 1 Cor. i. 18.
It is impossible not to admire the power, and adore the mercy, that thus wrought a double deliverance in the mind of Cowper by a process so remarkable. Devout contemplation became more and more dear to his reviving spirit. Resolving to relinquish all thoughts of a laborious profession, and all intercourse with the busy world, he acquiesced in a plan of settling at Huntingdon, by the advice of his brother, who, as a minister of the Gospel, and a fellow of Bene't College, Cambridge, resided in that University; a situation so near to the place chosen