be admitted, is known to God only. I can say but this: that if he is still my Father, his paternal severity has, toward me, been such as that I have reason to account it unexampled. For though others have suffered desertion, yet few, I believe, for so long a time, and perhaps none a desertion accompanied with such experiences. But they have this belonging to them: that as they are not fit for recital, being made up merely of infernal ingredients, so neither are they susceptible of it; for I know no language in which they could be expressed. They are as truly things which it is not possible for man to utter, as those were which Paul heard and saw in the Third Heaven. If the ladder of Christian experience reaches, as I suppose it does, to the very presence of God, it has nevertheless its foot in the abyss. And if Paul stood, as no doubt he did, in that experience of his to which I have just alluded, on the topmost round of it, I have been standing, and still stand on the lowest, in this thirteenth year that has passed since I descended. In such a situation of mind, encompassed by the midnight of absolute despair, and a thousand times filled with unspeakable horror, I first commenced an author. Distress drove me to it; and the impossibility of subsisting without some employment, still recommends it. I am not, indeed, so perfectly hopeless as I was; but I am equally in need of an occupation, being often as much, and sometimes even more, worried than I cannot amuse myself, as I once could, with carpenters' or with gardeners' tools, or with squirrels and guineapigs. At that time I was a child. But since it has pleased God, whatever else he withholds, to restore to me a man's mind, I have put away childish things. Thus far, therefore, it is plain that I have not chosen or prescribed to myself my own way, but have been providentially led to it; perhaps might say, with equal propriety, compelled and scourged into it for certainly, could I have made my choice, or were I permitted to make it even now, those hours which I spend in poetry I would spend with God. But it is evidently his will that I should spend them as I do, because every other way of employing them he himself continues to make impossible. If, in the course of such an occupation, or by inevitable consequence of it, either my former connexions are revived, or new ones occur, these things are as much a part of the dispensation as the leading points of it themselves; the effect, as much as

ever.

the cause. If his purposes in thus directing me are gracious, he will take care to prove them such in the issue; and, in the mean time, will preserve me (for he is as able to do that in one condition of life as in another) from all mistakes in conduct that might prove pernicious to myself, or give reasonable offence to others. I can say it as truly as it was ever spoken, -Here I am: let him do with me as seemeth him good.

At present, however, I have no connexions, at which either you, I trust, or any who love me and wish me well, have occasion to conceive alarm. Much kindness indeed I have experienced at the hands of several, some of them near relations, others not related to me at all; but I do not know that there is among them a single person from whom I am likely to catch contamination. I can say of them all, with more truth than Jacob uttered when he called kid venison, “The

Lord thy God brought them unto me." I could show you among them two men, whose lives, though they have but little of what we call evangelical light, are ornaments to a Christian country; men who fear God more than some who even profess to love him. But I will not particularize farther on such a subject. Be they what they may, our situations are so distant, and we are likely to meet so seldom, that were they, as they are not, persons even of exceptionable manners, their manners would have little to do with me. We correspond, at present, only on the subject of what passed at Troy three thousand years ago; and they are matters that, if they can do no good, will at least hurt nobody.

Your friendship for me, and the proof that I see of it in your friendly concern for my welfare on this occasion, demanded that I should be explicit. Assure yourself that I love and honour you, as upon all accounts, so especially for the interest that you take, and have ever taken in my welfare, most sincerely. I wish you all happiness in your new abode, all possible success in your ministry, and much fruit of your newly-published labours; and am, with Mrs. Unwin's love to yourself and Mrs. Newton,

Most affectionately yours,
My dear friend,

W. C.

From the renewal of their intercourse, Lady Hesketh had manifested the most sincere and affectionate solicitude for her poor kinsman's welfare. Her offers of pecuniary assistance

had been accepted as frankly as they were made,-this being one of those cases in which it is equally blessed to give and to receive. She had enquired minutely into the state of his health, and finding that he suffered much from indigestion, insisted upon his sending for a physician from Northampton. She sent him wine, and ordered him a supply of oysters through the season. Mrs. Unwin, so far from feeling that jealousy with which she has been reproached, was prepared to esteem her as more than a friend. "Tell Lady Hesketh that I truly love and honour her," was the message which she charged Cowper to deliver: "Now, my cousin," said he, "you may depend upon it as a most certain truth, that these words from her lips are not an empty sound: I never in my life heard her profess a regard for any one that she felt not. She is not addicted to the use of such language upon ordinary occasions; but when she speaks it, speaks from the heart. She has baited me this many a day, even as a bear is baited, to send for Dr. Kerr. But, as I hinted to you upon a former occasion, I am as muleish as most men are, and have hitherto most gallantly refused. But what is to be done now? If it were uncivil not to comply with the solicitations of one lady, to be unmoved by the solicitations of two, would prove me to be a bear indeed. I will therefore summon him to the consideration of said stomach and its ailments, without delay, and you shall know the result 37"

The physician's opinion was favourable; he saw no reason to doubt a speedy recovery;-indeed his medicines seem to have produced their desired effect, and Cowper reported, in playful sport, his progress toward recovery. Of mental malady there was at that time no manifestation. Lady Hesketh feared to touch upon that string; but he, who understood her feelings, entered upon it himself. "You do not ask me, my dear," said he, "for an explanation of what I could mean by anguish of mind. Because you do not ask, and because your reason for not asking consists of a delicacy and tenderness peculiar to yourself; for that very cause I will tell you. A wish suppressed is more irresistible than many wishes plainly uttered. Know then, that in the year 1773, the same scene that was acted at St. Alban's opened upon me again at Olney, only covered with a still deeper shade of melancholy; and ordained 37 Nov. 30, 1785.

to be of much longer duration. I was suddenly reduced from my wonted rate of understanding, to an almost childish imbecility. I did not, indeed, lose my senses, but I lost the power to exercise them. I could return a rational answer, even to a difficult question; but a question was necessary, or I never spoke at all. This state of mind was accompanied, as I suppose it to be in most instances of the kind, with misapprehensions of things and persons, that made me a very untractable patient. I believed that every body hated me, and that Mrs. Unwin hated me most of all, -was convinced that all my food was poisoned, together with ten thousand meagrims of the same stamp. I would not be more circumstantial than is necessary. Dr. Cotton was consulted. He replied, that he could do no more for me than might be done at Olney, but recommended particular vigilance, lest I should attempt my life,

a caution for which there was the greatest occasion. At the same time that I was convinced of Mrs. Unwin's aversion to me, I could endure no other companion. The whole management of me consequently devolved upon her, and a terrible task she had. She performed it, however, with a cheerfulness hardly ever equalled on such an occasion; and I have often heard her say, that if ever she praised God in her life, it was when she found that she was to have all the labour. She performed it accordingly, but, as I hinted once before, very much to the hurt of her own constitution. It will be thirteen years, in little more than a week, since this malady seized me. Methinks I hear you ask,—your affection for me will, I know. make you wish to do so, Is it removed?" I reply, in great measure, but not quite. Occasionally I am much distressed, but that distress becomes continually less frequent, and, I think, less violent. I find writing, and especially poetry, my best remedy. (Perhaps had I understood music, I had never written verse, but had lived upon fiddle-strings instead.) It is better however as it is. A poet may, if he pleases, be of a little use in the world, while a musician, the most skilful, can only divert himself, and a few others. I have been emerging gradually from this pit. As soon as I became capable of action, I commenced carpenter, made cupboards, boxes, and stools. I grew weary of this in about a twelvemonth, and addressed myself to the making of bird-cages. To this employment succeeded that of gardening, which I intermingled with

that of drawing; but finding that the latter occupation injured my eyes, I renounced it, and commenced poet. I have given you, my dear, a little history in short hand. I know it will touch your feelings, but do not let it interest them too much. In the year when I wrote the Task, (for it occupied me about a year,) I was very often most supremely unhappy; and am, under God, indebted in a good part to that work for not having been much worse 38.5

The different state of mind in which Cowper described his malady at Olney, from that in which he drew up the dreadful narrative of his madness in the Temple and of his recovery at St. Alban's, might induce, if not a belief of his perfect restoration, a reasonable hope of it. In the former instance, he fully believed that the happy change which had taken place in him was supernatural; and of this, both Mr. Newton and Mrs. Unwin were so thoroughly persuaded, that many months elapsed after the second attack, violent as the access was, before they could bring themselves to ask Dr. Cotton's advice. They thought that the disease was the work of the Enemy, and that nothing less than Omnipotence could free him from it. Means they allowed were in general not only lawful but expedient; but his was a peculiar and exempt case, in which they were convinced that the Lord Jehovah would be alone exalted when the day of deliverance should come Cowper had now learned to take a saner view of his own condition; and Mrs. Unwin, who was no longer under any external excitement, and whose natural good sense had not yet been impaired, regarded it with the same sobriety, and while she prayed with unabating faith for his perfect restoration, employed all prudential means for averting a relapse. Experience, now that they were in a state to profit by it, had not been lost upon them; and Mr. Unwin, from the time that his correspondence with Cowper commenced, had exercised a constant and beneficial influence, both over his mother and his friend.

39

38 Jan. 16,1786. 39 This is affirmed in a letter of Mrs. Unwin's dated Oct. 7, 1773. It is one of the important letters for which the editor, the publishers, and the public are obliged to Mr. Upcott. Had it reached me in time its proper place would have been in the text:-it is now inserted among the Supplementary Notes.