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MY DEAR FRIEND,

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.

June 27, 1772.

I only write to return you thanks for your kind offer :— Agnosco veteris vestigia flammæ. But I will endeavour to go on without troubling you. Excuse an expression that dishonours your friendship; I should rather say, it would be a trouble to myself, and I know you will be generous enough to give me credit for the assertion. I had rather want many things, any thing, indeed, that this world could afford me, than abuse the affection of a friend. I suppose you are sometimes troubled upon my account. But you need not. I have no doubt it will be seen, when my days are closed, that I served a Master who would not suffer me to want any thing that was good for me. He said to Jacob, "I will surely do thee good;" and this he said, not for his sake only, but for ours also, if we trust in Him. This thought relieves me from the greatest part of the distress I should else suffer in my present circumstances, and enables me to sit down peacefully upon the wreck of my fortune. Yours ever, my dear friend,

MY DEAR FRIEND,

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.

W. C.

July 2, 1772.

My obligations to you sit easy upon me, because I am sure you confer them in the spirit of a friend. 'Tis pleasant to some minds to confer obligations, and it is not unpleasant to others to be properly sensible of them. I hope I have this pleasure, and can with a true sense of your kindness subscribe myself, Yours, W. C.

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.

Nov. 5, 1772.

Believe me, my dear friend, truly sensible of your invitation, though I do not accept it. My peace of mind is of so delicate a constitution, that the air of London will not agree with it. You have my prayers,-the only return I can make you, for your many acts of still-continued friendship.

If you should smile, or even laugh at my conclusion, and I were near enough to see it, I should not be angry, though I should be grieved. It is not long since I should have laughed

at such a recompense myself. But glory be to the name of Jesus, those days are past, and, I trust, never to return!

I am yours, and Mrs. Hill's, with much sincerity,

W. C.

These letters may have been written in a frame of "settled tranquillity and peace," but it was a tranquillity that had rendered his feelings of friendship torpid; and if this was "the only sunshine he ever enjoyed through the cloudy day of his afflicted life," it was not the sunshine of a serene sky.

The vicarage of Olney was in the Earl of Dartmouth's gift, a nobleman of whom Richardson is reported to have said, when asked if he knew an original answerable to his portrait of Sir Charles Grandison, that he might apply it to him if he were not a methodist. The earl had given this living to Moses Brown, probably upon the recommendation of Hervey, the author of the Meditations, under whose patronage Brown, who had been a pen-cutter by trade, and a dramatist, had taken orders. Moses Brown was a poet, whose poems have not been fortunate enough to obtain a place in the General Collections, though better entitled to it than some which are found there. He published an edition of Izaak Walton's delightful book, being himself an angler, and, as Izaak would have added, a very honest man. His Piscatory Eclogues are better known by name than any of his other writings. But though thus given to poetry, and addicted to the recreation which seems to have most attractions for a meditative mind, he had not been negligent in his vocation as a fisher of men. Mr. Cecil says of him that he was 66 an evangelical minister, and a good man;" that “of course he had afforded wholesome instruction to the parishioners of Olney, and had been the instrument of a sound conversion in many of them;" that he had a numerous family, and met with considerable trials in it; that he too much resembled Eli in his indulgence of his children, and, that being under the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, he had therefore accepted the chaplaincy of Morden College, Blackheath, while vicar of Olney. It was in consequence of Moses Brown having thus been compelled to become a non-resident incumbent, that Mr. Newton, in the year 1764, had been ordained upon the curacy of Olney.

2 Memoirs of Hannah More, vol. iii. p. 78.

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In nominating him to this curacy, Lord Dartmouth provided, as he conscientiously sought to do, for the spiritual wants of the flock; but the provision for the temporal necessities of the pastor was poor indeed. "The curacy of Olney"," says Mr. Newton, "is thirty pounds, surplice fees about eight; subscriptions, &c. from the people have to me sometimes been forty pounds; but I question if it would be near so much to a new comer ; perhaps no more than thirty pounds, if that.' He took the curacy with an understanding that he might expect the living, if it should become vacant, and the vicar was at that time more than threescore years of age. But Moses Brown was one of those men who "be so strong that they come to fourscore," and the curate of Olney would have had little indeed for the poor and needy of his parishioners, and nothing for hospitality, if he had not introduced himself to Mr. Thornton, who was known as "the common patron of every useful and pious endeavour" by sending him the narrative of his own life, which he had concluded just before the curacy had been offered him, and published in the same year. Mr. Thornton replied "in his usual manner," that is, by accompanying his letter with a valuable bank note; and some months after, he paid Mr. Newton a visit at Olney. A closer connexion being now formed between friends who employed their distinct talents in promoting the same benevolent cause, Mr. Thornton left a sum of money with Mr. Newton to be appropriated to the defraying his necessary expenses, and relieving the poor. "Be hospitable," said Mr. Thornton, "and keep an open house for such as are worthy of an entertainment; help the poor and needy I will statedly allow you two hundred pounds a year, and readily send whatever you have occasion to draw for more." Cowper was supplied also by this excellent man with a sum for charitable distribution, Mr. Thornton having been informed how little his means for relieving the distressed was commensurate with his will.

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Cowper at this time read little: he had parted with a good collection of books when his affairs in London were settled; afterwards he often regretted this; but during the first year of his residence at Olney he seems to have had neither inclination nor leisure for reading. Mr. Unwin was settled upon a living in Essex; his sister had married a clergyman by name Powley, 3 March 9, 1777.

4 Cecil's Memoirs of Mr. Newton.

and removed to a great distance in Yorkshire. Cowper, therefore, had no other society than that of Mrs. Unwin and Mr. Newton ; and he held no communication with his absent friends. He was not, however, without some intellectual employment; Mr. Newton having formed the intention of producing a volume of hymns persuaded him to engage in it;

a desire," he says, "of promoting the faith and comfort of sincere Christians, though the principal, was not the only motive to this undertaking. It was likewise intended as a monument to perpetuate the remembrance of an intimate and endeared friendship."

One of Cowper's biographers thinks it not improbable that Mr. Newton might have witnessed in his morbid tendency to melancholy, whereof he then discovered symptoms, some traces of the deep and extensive wound which his mind had received by his brother's death, though his efforts to conceal it were incessant; and that for this reason "he wisely engaged him in a literary undertaking, congenial with his taste, suited to his admirable talents, and perhaps more adapted to alleviate his distress than any other that could have been selected." And Mr. Hayley has been reprehended for representing it as a perilous employment, considering what Cowper's malady had been.

Yet if Cowper expressed his own state of mind in these hymns, (and who can doubt that they were written with no simulated feeling, and those with most feeling which are most passionate?) Hayley has drawn the right conclusion from the fact.

Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and his word?

5 Taylor's Life of Cowper, p. 102.

6"It may be doubtful," he says, "if the intense zeal with which Cowper embarked in this fascinating pursuit, had not a dangerous tendency to undermine his very delicate health. Such an apprehension naturally arises from a recollection of what medical writers of great ability have said on the awful subject of mental derangement. Whenever the slightest tendency to that misfortune appears, it seems expedient to guard a tender spirit from the attractions of Piety herself. So fearfully and wonderfully are we made, that man in all conditions ought perhaps to pray that he never may be led to think of his Creator, and of his Redeemer, either too lightly or too intensely; since human misery is often seen to arise equally from an utter neglect of all spiritual concerns, and from a wild extravagance of devotion."

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill 7.

Again, but in a strain that denoted a more fearful state:

My former hopes are fled,
My terror now begins:
I feel, alas! that I am dead
In trespasses and sins.
Ah, whither shall I fly!

I hear the thunder roar,

The law proclaims destruction nigh,
And vengeance at the door!

And in another, which is entitled The Contrite Heart:
The Lord will happiness divine

On contrite hearts bestow.
Then tell me, gracious God, is mine

A contrite heart or no?

I hear, but seem to hear in vain,
Insensible as steel:

If aught is felt, 'tis only pain
To find I cannot feel.

I sometimes think myself inclin'd
To love thee if I could;
But often feel another mind,
Averse to all that's good.

My best desires are faint and few,
I fain would strive for more;

But when I cry, "My strength renew,"
Seem weaker than before.

Thy saints are comforted, I know,
And love thy house of prayer;
I therefore go where others go,
But find no comfort there.

O make this heart rejoice or ache!
Decide this doubt for me;

And if it be not broken, break;

And heal it, if it be?!

It is true that expressions of hope follow the two former which have been here adduced, and that in other parts

passages
there is a tone of cheerful devotion.

Table he says,

7 Olney Coll. Book i. Hymn 3. 9 Ib. Book i. Hymn 64.

In his Welcome to the

8 Ib. Book iii. Hymn 8.

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