phenomena of the case it describes, and some extracts might have been given from the manuscript, which would sufficiently have vouched for its correctness; it was unpardonable not to make this use of the document; but, this end being answered, it might then have been consigned to the sacred silence of the grave. We should have honoured the sensibility of the Biographer, if, having once distinctly disclosed the nature and traced the origin of the malady, he had forborne to dwell on the fearful details. The case once understood, there would have been a stop put to the pryings of a prurient curiosity.

The fact is, however, that the offence which Cowper's Biographer was most sedulous to obviate, related as much to his religious character as to his physical ailments. There are persons who would far sooner tolerate a poet's being a madman, than his being a saint. That Cowper laboured under a very peculiar species of hypochondriasis, which left him the entire command of his faculties in reference to every subject but one, and that one subject himself, was so clearly understood, that there could be no pretence, on the score of delicacy, for suppressing the letters in this collection which allude to the false impression on his mind. The gloom which they bespeak, is not of a deeper shade than some of his published poems betray; in particular those exquisitely affecting stanzas entitled "The Castaway." Nothing can be more touching than Cowper's story even as told by Hayley. Why then withhold these interesting illustrations of his history? We can conceive of no other reason, than because they exhibit what is far more repulsive to many of his admirers than insanity itself,-that practical sense of religion which is deemed a sort of madness. What this pious sufferer imagined that he had for ever lost, and was miserable because he despaired of regaining, was the presence and favour of God,-an object which the madness of the sane consists in despising. His concern would not have appeared less irrational to the irreligious, had no delusion existed in his mind to give it the character of despair. In fact, the period of his history at which he enjoyed, together with the unclouded sunshine of reason, the peace and joy of religion, the interval from 1764 to 1773, during which he was most truly himself, is precisely that stage in which he retreats the furthest from the admiration of worldly-minded persons. It was then that his genuine character broke through the mists and shadows which veiled alike his morning and his sunset, and he appeared the cheerful and affectionate, though timid and retiring man, the devout and elevated being which religion had made him. But it was then, too, that he appeared to many of his relatives the most mad, though, if his own account may

1

be taken, he was not only sane, but happy. With precisely the same theological views that he retained through the remainder of his life, he derived only comfort from religion, and this during a period more than sufficient to develop their characteristic influence. And when he became subsequently the victim of that afflictive hallucination, he could not avoid acknowledging, that his gloomy persuasion was at variance with every article of his creed, and he was driven to regard himself as an inexplicable exception to his own principles.

One of the most striking letters in this collection, is that addressed to the Rev. Mr. Newton, March 14, 1782, in which he comments on the closely analogous case of the learned Simon Browne, who imagined that the thinking faculty within him was annihilated by the immediate hand of an avenging God.

• MY DEAR FRIEND,

'I was not unacquainted with Mr. B's extraordinary case, before you favoured me with his letter and his intended dedication to the Queen, though I am obliged to you for a sight of those two curiosities, which I do not recollect to have ever seen till you sent them. I could, however, were it not a subject that would make us all melancholy, point out to you some essential differences between his state of mind and my own, which would prove mine to be by far the most deplorable of the two. I suppose no man would despair, if he did not apprehend something singular in the circumstances of his own story, something that discriminates it from that of every other man, and that induces despair as an inevitable consequence. You may encounter his unhappy persuasion with as many instances as you please, of persons who, like him, having renounced all hope, were yet restored; and may thence infer that he, like them, shall meet with a season of restoration—but it is in vain. Every such individual accounts himself an exception to all rules, and therefore the blessed reverse that others have experienced, affords no ground of comfortable expectation to him. But you will say, it is reasonable to conclude that, as all your predecessors in this vale of misery and horror have found themselves delightfully disappointed at last, so will you:-1 grant the reasonableness of it; it would be sinful, perhaps, because uncharitable, to reason otherwise; but an argument hypothe tical in its nature, however rationally conducted, may lead to a false conclusion; and in this instance, so will yours. But I forbear. For the cause above-mentioned I will say no more, though it is a subject on which I could write more than the mail would carry. I must deal with you as I deal with poor Mrs. Unwin in all our disputes about it, cutting all controversy short by an appeal to the event.-W. C.'

The melancholy ingenuity with which a disordered mind can baffle all argument, was never perhaps so strikingly displayed. Here is an admission, or rather an anticipation, of every thing

that could be urged to shew the irrationality of despair; the Writer seems all but conscious that his own persuasion was a delusion; and yet the impression remains-it will not yield to the force of logic. How can a man be reasoned out of what he admits to be irrational, but still feels or fancies to be real? In another letter to the same invaluable friend, at the beginning of 1784, he thus pours forth the anguish of his feelings, sensible that the cause must appear to others imaginary, and that the doctrines of religion forbade his despair.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

The new year is already old in my account. I am not, indeed, sufficiently second-sighted to be able to boast by anticipation an acquaintance with the events of it yet unborn, but rest convinced 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 num ber, 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 envelops 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 mani 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 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 judgement 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 left that the fruit can ever pay the expense of the fallow? I forestal the answer :-God's 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.'

"In all this," we may truly say in the language of holy writ, "he sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." Perhaps there never was a finer instance of filial submission to the Divine will, than is here exhibited, under the heaviest visitation that can befal an intelligent being. The sufferer does not indeed say, "If he slay me, yet will I trust in him," because the idea which overspread and eclipsed his mind, forbade the possibility of such a trust. But, wild and irrational as was the supposition, the surrender of soul was not less implicit, the resignation not less real and exemplary, which in effect said, Though he damn me, yet, I will justify him. Cowper's despair was, in fact, a purely physical sensation. He had not been led into it. by any mental process; it was not a conclusion at which he had arrived by the operation of either reason or conscience; for it was unconnected with any one tenet or principle which he held. It had fallen upon him as a visitation, and he struggled with it as with an incubus, half suspecting that it was a phantom that seemed to weigh him down, but still it was there; and he here argues from its continuance to its reality. If I ⚫ am recoverable, why am I thus?' The sensation was real: it could not be reasoned away, any more than can a head-ache or a fit of the stone. It was as clearly a case of hypochondriasis, as those instances in which the patient has fancied himself a tea-pot, or a sack of wool, or has imagined his thinking substance destroyed. Cowper's only seemed to be a more rational impression that it was not really so, is evident from the specific nature of the idea on which he fixed, namely, that he was excluded from salvation for not having committed suicide. That this idea produced his melancholy, no one who deserves to be himself considered as rational, can pretend: it was his melancholy which produced the idea. Religion could not have given birth to it, nor could it have survived one moment the presence of distemper. The patient more than half suspected at times that disease was the cause of all his mental suffering; but he could not know it, the impossibility of discerning between what is delusive and what is real, constituting the very essence of the disease: that knowledge would have involved his being sane on the very point to which his irrationality was limited; he would then have been well. It is observable, that he never attempts to give a reason for his despair,

but only assumes that its existence in his mind proved the truth of the impression which seemed to himself to cause it: in this, he argued as all hypochondriacs and maniacs do. But, in fancying himself crippled, and made useless, and turned out of service, he argued not irrationally; he was only mistaken; and it is pleasing to reflect, (as it has long since been to him a source of the purest joy and gratitude to know,) how greatly he was mistaken. All the mystery has long ago been explained to him.

In the above letter, he evidently alludes to his belief in the doctrine of Final Perseverance (which, properly understood, is but the doctrine of Regeneration) as flatly opposed, in every case but his own, to his mournful conclusion, or rather delusion. He does not doubt his having been truly made a partaker of spiritual life, but, with his own peculiar force of expression, intimates that his soul had been slain by the hand of God. Mr. Newton appears to have seen the total unutility of combating this impression by argument, and to have attempted to dissuade his afflicted friend from suffering himself to dwell on the topic. Cowper's reply throws still further light on the true nature of his disorder, as well as on his social habits and amiable character.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

'I converse, you say, upon other subjects than that of despair, and may therefore write upon others. Indeed, my friend, I am a man of very little conversation upon any subject. From that of despair I abstain as much as possible, for the sake of my company; but I will venture to say that it is never out of my mind one minute in the whole day. I do not mean to say that I am never cheerful. I am often so: always, indeed, when my nights have been undisturbed for a season. But the effect of such continual listening to the language of a heart hopeless and deserted is, that I can never give much more than half my attention to what is started by others, and very rarely start any thing myself. My silence, however, and my absence of mind make me sometimes as entertaining as if I had wit. They furnish an occasion for friendly and good-natured raillery; they raise a laugh, and 1 partake of it. But you will easily perceive that a mind thus occupied is but indifferently qualified for the consideration of theological matters. The most useful and the most delightful topics of that kind are to me forbidden fruit;-I tremble if I approach them. It has happened to me sometimes, that I have found myself imperceptibly drawn in, and made a party in such discourse. The consequence has been, dissatisfaction and self-reproach. You will tell me, perhaps, that I have written upon these subjects in verse, and may, therefore, if I please, in prose. But there is a difference. The search after poetical expression, the rhyme, and the numbers, are all affairs. of some difficulty; they amuse, indeed, but are not to be attained