ed so much of his life. Its commencement he has thus described in his own melancholy Memoirs.

I was struck, not long after my settlement in the Temple, with such a dejection of spirits, as none but they who have felt the same can have the least conception of. Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in horror, and rising up in despair. I presently lost all relish for those studies to which I had before been closely attached; the classics had no longer any charms for me; I had need of something more salutary than amusement, but I had no one to direct me where to find it.

"At length I met with Herbert's Poems; and, gothic and uncouth as they were, I yet found in them a strain of piety which I could not but admire. This was the only author I had any delight in reading. I pored over him all day long; and though I found not here, what I might have found, a cure for my malady, yet it never seemed so much alleviated as while I was reading him. At length I was advised by a very near and dear relative, to lay him aside; for he thought such an author more likely to nourish my disorder than to remove it.

"In this state of mind I continued near a twelvemonth; when having experienced the inefficacy of all human means, I at length betook myself to God in prayer; such is the rank which our Redeemer holds in our esteem, never resorted to but in the last instance, when all creatures have failed to succour us. My hard heart was at length softened; and my stubborn knees brought to bow. I composed a set of prayers, and made frequent use of them. Weak as my faith was, the Almighty, who will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax, was graciously pleased to hear me.

66

"A change of scene was recommended to me, and I embraced an opportunity of going with some friends to Southampton, where I spent several months. Soon after our arrival, we walked to a place called Freemantle, about a mile from the town; the morning was clear and calm; the sun shone bright upon the sea; and the country on the borders of it was the most beautiful I had ever seen. We sat down upon an eminence, at the end of that arm of the sea, which runs between Southampton and the New Forest. Here it was that on a sudden, as if another sun had been kindled that instant in the heavens, on purpose to dispel sorrow and vexation of spirit, I felt the weight of all my misery taken off; my heart became light

and joyful in a moment; I could have wept with transport had I been alone. I must needs believe that nothing less than the Almighty fiat could have filled me with such inexpressible delight; not by a gradual dawning of peace, but as it were with a flash of his life-giving countenance. I think I remember something like a glow of gratitude to the Father of mercies, for this unexpected blessing, and that I ascribed it to his gracious acceptance of my prayers. But Satan, and my own wicked heart, quickly persuaded me that I was indebted for my deliverance, to nothing but a change of scene, and the amusing varieties of the place. By this means he turned the blessing into a poison; teaching me to conclude that nothing but a continued circle of diversion, and the indulgence of appetite, could secure me from a relapse.

66

Upon this hellish principle, as soon as I returned to London, I burnt my prayers, and away went all thoughts of devotion and dependance upon God my Saviour. Surely it was of his mercy that I was not consumed; glory be to his grace!"

This instantaneous transition from deep and morbid melancholy, to a state of genial feeling, has been represented as a providential dispensation.. a gracious call; and undoubtedly Cowper regarded it in that light when he drew up the narrative of his own mental sufferings. But the accuracy with which such cases are described may be sometimes questioned, even when, as in this instance, the sincerity of the individual is unquestionable. Present feeling gives a colouring to the past and it is not more difficult for a painter in middle age to paint his own portrait from a looking-glass, not as he sees himself there, but as he was in his youth, than it is to represent faithfully an evanescent state of feeling, after an interval of many years.

It is remarkable that, often as his sea-side recollections occur in Cowper's correspondence, he never alludes to this peculiar incident, not even when speaking of the very scene, to the very person for whom, and at whose especial request, there is reason to believe this narrative was written. "I remember Southampton well," he says to Mr. Newton, "having spent much time there; but though I was young, and had no objections on the score of conscience either to dancing or cards, I never was in the assembly room in my life. I never was fond of company, and especially disliked it in the country. A walk to Netley Abbey, or to Freemantle, or to Redbridge, or a book by the fire

side, had always more charms for me than any other amusement that the place afforded. I was also a sailor, and being of Sir Thomas Hesketh's party, who was himself born one, was often pressed into the service. But though I gave myself an air and wore trowsers, I had no genuine right to that honour, disliking much to be occupied in great waters, unless in the finest weather. How they contrive to elude the wearisomeness that attends a sea-life, who take long voyages, you know better than I; but for my own part, I seldom have sailed so far as from Hampton river to Portsmouth, without feeling the confinement irksome, and sometimes to a degree that was almost insupportable. There is a certain perverseness, of which I believe all men have a share, but of which no man has a larger share than I; I mean that temper, or humour, or whatever it is to be called, that indisposes us to a situation, though not unpleasant in itself, merely because we cannot get out of it. I could not endure the room in which I now write, were I conscious that the door were locked. In less than five minutes I should feel myself a prisoner, though I can spend hours in it, under an assurance that I may leave it when I please, without experiencing any tedium at all. It was for this reason, I suppose, that the yacht was always disagreeable to me. Could I have stepped out of it into a corn-field or a garden, I should have liked it well enough; but being surrounded with water, I was as much confined in it as if I had been surrounded by fire, and did not find that it made me any adequate compensation for such an abridgement of my liberty. I make little doubt but Noah was glad when he was enlarged from the ark; and we are sure that Jonah was when he came out of the fish; and so was I to escape from the good sloop the Harriet."

On the 14th of June, 1754, Cowper was called to the bar; that he had taken no pains to qualify himself for his profession is certain, and it is probable that he had as little intention as inclination to pursue it, resting in indolent reliance upon his patrimonial means, and in the likely expectation that some official appointment would be found for him in good time.

One of his then familiar friends describes the society in which Cowper was placed, in no flattering colours. "The Temple," says he, "is the barrier that divides the city and suburbs; and the gentlemen who reside there seem influenced by the situation of the place they inhabit. Templars are in general a kind

of citizen courtiers. They aim at the air and mien of the drawing-room; but the holiday smartness of a 'prentice, heightened with some additional touches of the rake or coxcomb, betrays itself in every thing they do. The Temple, however, is stocked with its peculiar beaux, wits, poets, critics, and every character in the gay world; and it is a thousand pities that so pretty a society should be disgraced with a few dull fellows, who can submit to puzzle themselves with cases and reports, and have not taste enough to follow the genteel method of studying the law 6"

In 1756 he lost his father. "At that time I was young," he says', “too young to have reflected much. It had never occurred to me that a parson has no fee-simple in the house and glebe he occupies. There was neither tree, nor gate, nor stile, in all that country, to which I did not feel a relation, and the house itself I preferred to a palace. I was sent for from London to attend him in his last illness, and he died just before I arrived. Then, and not till then, I felt, for the first time, that I and my native place were disunited for ever; I sighed a long adieu to fields and woods, from which I once thought I never should be parted, and was at no time so sensible of their beauties, as just when I left them all behind me, to return no more. Three years after his father's death, he removed from the Middle to the Inner Temple, and purchased chambers' there, in an airy situation. About this time he was made a Commissioner of Bankrupts; but he was more employed with literature than law, and perhaps more with love than literature. He had fixed his affections on one of those cousins with whom he and Thurlow used to giggle and make giggle in Southampton Row,.. Theodora Jane, second daughter of his uncle, Ashley Cowper. She was an accomplished woman, her person elegant, and her understanding more than ordinarily good.

6 Connoisseur, No. 1. 7 Letter to Mr. Rose, Oct. 19, 1787.

Mr. Cowper had married a second wife, who survived him. She is mentioned but once in Cowper's Correspondence, and that only incidentally, but so as to show that a not unfrequent intercourse was kept up between them. In a letter to Mr. Hill, he says, "I shall possibly now and then desire you to call at the seed-shop in your way to Westminster, though sparingly. Should I do it often, you would begin to think you had a mother-in-law at Berkhampstead."-Private Corr. i. 18.

• They cost him two hundred and fifty pounds.

Attachments formed under such circumstances, when the parties may almost be said to have grown up together, take root before they are suspected on either side. The first effect upon him was to produce a change in his manners, of which he was himself conscious; he lost that uncomfortable bashfulness, for which, in dispositions resembling his, a public school affords no cure; he paid some attention to his dress, ventured to bear a part in general conversation, and sometimes endeavoured to distinguish himself in it. When the lady's father perceived their mutual inclination, he objected to it at first, on the score of want of means, and said to his daughter, "If you marry William Cowper, what will you do?" "Do, sir?" she replied; "wash all day, and ride out on the great dog at night!" Such an answer rather indicated a light spirit and a playful temper, than the deep affection which was really felt, and which, when it had been rendered hopeless, was faithfully retained through life. For when the passion became more serious, Mr. Ashley Cowper refused his consent, upon the ground that marriage was improper between persons so nearly related. This opinion is one of the few Romish superstitions that have survived the Reformation. But though as a general principle, it is a mere superstition, introduced by a crafty priesthood as one means for extending the power and increasing the wealth of a corrupt and profligate church; such marriages must ever be regarded as ill-omened in cases where there is an hereditary tendency to any mortal or miserable disease. There is no reason for supposing that any such tendency existed in this case; but Mr. Ashley Cowper may very probably have seen in the state of mind into which his nephew had fallen soon after he removed to the Temple, unequivocal symptoms of the affliction which afterwards befell him.

It is said, that though thus "frustrated in their wishes, the cousins did not cease to love, nor occasionally to meet," and that, though Theodora deemed herself bound in duty to obey her father's will in this the most important of all earthly concerns, Cowper still hoped to overcome an objection which appeared to him unreasonable, because he was not conscious and could not be told, wherein its strength consisted. The intercourse seems to have ceased when he understood that the father's

10 This account he gives in one of his early poems, entitled, "Of Himself."