vernable: it had been, at one time or other, sufficiently excited to induce Cowper to believe himself specially visited by divine favour. The subsequent exhaustion of its powers had the effect of persuading him he was equally an object of divine wrath. He could not work himself up to that extatic frame of thought to which in earlier years he had attained, and this sluggishness he construed into a desertion and rejection of the Lord. Unfortunately for the poor sufferer, instead of forming an acquaintance with some men of sound understanding, he fell into intimacies with such as were not only incompetent to administer the wholesome medicine of rational discourse to his bewildered senses, but who absolutely aggravated the affliction. We consider Mr. Newton to have acted a most cruel and reprehensible part, for we find ample evidence in these letters of his having checked his too credulous friend in endeavouring by innocent recreation to recover his serenity-see vol. ii, p. 81, where Cowper exculpates himself from the heavy charge of seeking amusement by driving out in a carriage, and going to one or two neighbours' houses! Here we see the ascetic system in full vigour, and wonder not at the irremediable depression entailed upon Cowper by his respect and friendship for this mischievous counsellor.

66

The worthy rector of Yaxham with Welborne, is anxious to establish his opinion, that it was not religion which occasioned his friend and relative to suffer under such a dreadful depression of spirits. The reason he gives for it is, that no known system of divinity" can be charged with supporting such a belief as Cowper entertained. But this assertion proves nothing, except that Cowper's religion differed from that of other men. His opinions were not the less derived from religious convictions. because his creed differed from that of Dr. Johnson of Yaxham. Indeed, the evidence on which Cowper founded his persuasion of his rejected and hopeless state, is the evidence on which so many others believe themselves to be "accepted and saved." This evidence is, an "internal conviction." The direction which it takes depends upon the temperament of the individual. In some cases it assumes that of a lively and sanguine hope, in others, of a fearful and doubting anxiety. It is equally the work of imagination whether we persuade ourselves we are born to be saved, or born to be destroyed. Divine communication once admitted, is easily modified by the power of fancy,* and becomes a source

* Cowper is persuaded that the Lord informed him of his will on several special occasions. In particular he directed him to go to Eartham, and not to take orders; to translate Homer and not to compose any more original matter. See vol, ii, p. 297.

either of happiness or of dreadful apprehension. It is, therefore, vain to pretend that religion had no share in producing what, in conjunction with an intense sensibility, and reasoning powers of a low order, it is so likely to produce: an overwrought excitement of the mental faculties. And it affords an highly instructive example of the mischiefs which attend a habit of admitting propositions into the mind unsupported by evidence. We lose that power of governing the associations, and of discriminating between truth and deception, which is the test of a strong, or a weak intellect. It is more than probable that the poet's aberration of intellect would have taken place under any circumstances, but no other subject could have supplied such distressing images for the disordered fancy to fasten upon.

Mr. Hayley is so good as to lay down a rule for providing against such a source of calamity, which for its clearness and originality deserves to be repeated. He says, that "on the awful subject of our Redeemer we ought neither to think too little, nor too much!" Life of Cowper, vol. i. p. 88.

But it was not only on the subject of fatalism that the powers of Cowper's mind were enfeebled. That extreme sensibility, the loveliness of which is so eternally lauded by Mr. Hayley, also had its effect in weakening his judgment, and in preventing him from adopting measures conducive to his own happiness. There cannot be a more pregnant instance of it than his abjuring the society of that person whose society was beyond every other blessing valuable in his condition. In spite of Mr. Hayley's elaborate endeavours to confuse our ideas upon this occasion, we see plainly that "sensibility" was at the bottom of the mischief. Mrs. Unwin's unworthy selfishness, and Cowper's infirmity of purpose, are both resolved by his panegyrist into "sensibility," and we see what were its effects-it prevented the poet from uniting himself for life with one of the most charming of women; whose affectionate cares and whose exhilarating society were above all things calculated to "minister to a mind diseased."

We must now present a few specimens of these letters, and shall first extract one addressed to the rev. John Newton, indicating the most depressed tone of spirits.-(Cowper was then in his 53rd year.)

Sept. 8, 1783.

"My dear Friend, I have been lately more dejected and more distressed than usual; more harassed by dreams in the night, and more deeply poisoned by them in the following day. I know not what is portended by an alteration for the worse, after eleven years of misery; but firmly believe that it is not designed as the introduction of a change for

the better. You know not what I suffered while you were here, nor was there any need you should. Your friendship for me would have made you in some degree a partaker in my woes; and your share in them would have been increased by your inability to help me. Perhaps, indeed, they took a keener edge from the consideration of your presence. The friend of my heart, the person with whom I had formerly taken sweet counsel, no longer useful to me as a minister, no longer pleasant to me as a Christian, was a spectacle that must necessarily add the bitterness of mortification to the sadness of despair. I now sce a long winter before me, and must get through it as I can. I know the ground before I tread upon it. It is hollow; it is agitated; it suffers shocks in every direction; it is like the soil of Calabria-all whirlpool and undulation. But I must reel through it; at least if I be not swallowed up by the way. Your's, W. C.-Vol. i. p. 267.

Again, to the same person he writes a few months afterwards as follows

-

'January 13th, 1784.

I

My dear Friend, The new year is already old in my account. am not, indeed, sufficiently second-sighted to be able to boast by anticipation an acquaintance with the wants of it yet unborn, but rest cons vinced, that, be they what they may, not one of them comes a messenger of good to me. If even death itself should be of the number, he is no friend of mine. It is an alleviation of the woes, even of an unenlightened man, that he can wish for death, and indulge a hope, at least, that in death he shall find deliverance. But loaded as my life is with despair, I have no such comfort as would result from a supposed probability of better things to come were it once ended. For, more unhappy than the traveller with whom I set out, pass through what difficulties I may, through whatever dangers and afflictions, I am not a whit the nearer home, unless a dungeon may be called so. This is no very

agreeable theme, but in so great a dearth of subjects to write upon, and especially impressed as I am at this moment with a sense of my own condition, I could choose no other. The weather is an exact emblem of my mind in its present state. A thick fog envelopes every thing, and at the same time it freezes intensely. You will tell me that this cold gloom will be succeeded by a cheerful spring, and endeavour to encourage me to hope for a spiritual change resembling it; but it will be lost labour. Nature revives again; but a soul once slain lives no more. The hedge that has been apparently dead, is not so; it will burst into leaf and blossom at the appointed time; but no such time is appointed for the stake that stands in it. It is as dead as it seems, and will prove itself no dissembler. The latter end of next month will complete a period of eleven years in which I have spoken no other language. It is a long time for a man, whose eyes were once opened, to spend in darkness; long enough to make despair an inveterate habit, and such it is in me. My friends, I know, expect that I shall see yet again. They think

* Meaning the new year.

it necessary to the existence of divine truth, that he who once had possession of it should never finally lose it. I admit the solidity of this reasoning in every case but my own. And why not in my own? For causes which to them it appears madness to allege, but which rest upon my mind with a weight of immoveable conviction. If I am recoverable, why am I thus? Why crippled and made useless in the church, just at that time of life when my judgment and experience being matured, I might be most useful. Why cashiered and turned out of service, till, according to the course of nature, there is not life enough left in me to make amends for the years I have lost; till there is no reasonable hope that the fruit can ever pay the expenses of the fallow? I forestal the answer: Gods ways are mysterious, and he giveth no account of his matters: an answer that would serve my purpose as well as theirs that use it. There is a mystery in my destruction, and in time it shall be explained. Yours. W. C.

This letter, melancholy as it is, is superior in point of energy and beauty of expression to almost any of the author's poetical productions; and the observation at the close-that the mysteriousness of the divine agency is equally consistent with, and available to, directly opposite conclusions, shews an acuteness which it had been better for him if he had oftener exercised.

Of his lively manner of treating an ordinary topic, our readers will be pleased to see another example. On emerging from a darkened period of some years, he writes to Mrs. Newton thus:

'June, 1780.

'Dear Madam ;-When I write to Mr. Newton, he answers me by letter; when I write to you, you answer me in fish. I return you many thanks for the mackarel and lobster. They assured me in terms as intelligible as pen and ink could have spoken, that you still remember Orchard side; and though they never spoke in their lives, and it was still less to be expected from them that they should speak, being dead, they gave us an assurance of your affection that corresponds exactly with that which Mr. Newton expresses towards us in all his letters. For my own part, I never in my life began a letter more at a venture than the present. It is possible that I may finish it, but perhaps more than probable that I shall not.

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

巒

'You have never yet, perhaps, been made acquainted with the unfortunate Tom F ***· 's misadventure. He and his wife returning from Hanslope fair, were coming down Weston-lane; to wit, themselves, their horse, and their great wooden panniers, at ten o'clock at night. The horse having a lively imagination and very weak nerves, fancied he either saw or heard something, but has never been able to say what. A sudden fright will impart activity and a momentary vigour, even to lameness itself. Accordingly, he started and sprang from the middle of

the road to the side of it, with such surprising alacrity, that he dismounted the gingerbread-baker and his gingerbread wife, in a moment. Not contented with this effort, nor thinking himself yet out of danger, he proceeded as fast as he could to a full gallop, rushed against the gate at the bottom of the lane, and opened it for himself, without perceiving that there was any gate there. Still he gallopped, and with a velocity and momentum continually increasing, till he arrived in Olney. I had been in bed about ten minutes, when I heard the most uncommon and unaccountable noise that can be imagined. It was, in fact, occasioned by the clattering of tin patty-pans and a Dutch-oven against the sides of the panniers. Much gingerbread was picked up in the street, and Mr. Lucy's windows were broken all to pieces. Had this been all, it would have been a comedy, but we learned, the next morning, that the poor woman's collar-bone was broken, and she has hardly been able to resume her occupation since.

*

*

*

Yours, dear Madam,' W. C.-Vol. 1, page 53.

The second volume is less pleasing than the first, containing, for the most part, a dismal portraiture of a diseased mind; yet there are passages interspersed which make the whole more or less interesting. The greatest merit of these volumes, after all, is, as we stated at the commencement of this article, the complete acquaintance with the author's character and thoughts to which they conduct us; and, considering how instructive a study this may be made, we are glad that so valuable an addition to the former evidence has been rescued from obscurity, for the use and benefit of the public, by the reverend Editor.

ART. IV. An Appeal to the Public and to the Legislature, on the Necessity of affording Dead Bodies to the Schools of Anatomy, by Legislative Enactment. By William Mackenzie. Glasgow. 1824. EVERY one desires to live as long as he can. Every one values health" above all gold and treasure." Every one knows that as far as his own individual good is concerned, protracted life and a frame of body sound and strong, free from the thousand pains which flesh is heir to, are unspeakably more important than all other objects, because life and health must be secured before any possible result of any possible circumstance can be of consequence to him. In the improvement of the art which has for its object the preservation of health and life, every individual is, therefore, deeply interested. An enlightened physician and a skilful surgeon, are in the daily habit of administering to their fellow men more real and unquestionable good, than is communicated, or communicable by any other class of human beings to another. Ignorant physicians and surgeons are the most deadly enemies of the community: the plague itself