AT OLNEY--MR. NEWTON.
Cowper had not been two years with the Unwins when Mr. Unwin, the
father, was killed by a fall from his horse; this broke up the
household. But between Cowper and Mrs. Unwin an indissoluble tie had
been formed. It seems clear, notwithstanding Southey's assertion to
the contrary, that they at one time meditated marriage, possibly as a
propitiation to the evil tongues which did not spare even this most
innocent connexion; but they were prevented from fulfilling their
intention by a return of Cowper's malady. They became companions for
life. Cowper says they were as mother and son to each other; but Mrs.
Unwin was only seven years older than he. To label their connexion is
impossible, and to try to do it would be a platitude. In his poems
Cowper calls Mrs. Unwin Mary; she seems always to have called him Mr.
Cowper. It is evident that her son, a strictly virtuous and religious
man, never had the slightest misgiving about his mother's position.
The pair had to choose a dwelling-place; they chose Olney in
Buckinghamshire, on the Ouse. The Ouse was "a slow winding river,"
watering low meadows, from which crept pestilential fogs. Olney was a
dull town, or rather village, inhabited by a population of lace-makers,
ill-paid, fever-stricken, and for the most part as brutal as they were
poor. There was not a woman in the place excepting Mrs. Newton with
whom Mrs. Unwin could associate, or to whom she could look for help in
sickness or other need. The house in which the pair took up their
abode was dismal, prison-like, and tumble-down; when they left it, the
competitors for the succession were a cobbler and a publican. It
looked upon the Market Place, but it was in the close neighbourhood of
Silver End, the worst part of Olney. In winter the cellars were full
of water. There were no pleasant walks within easy reach, and in
winter Cowper's only exercise was pacing thirty yards of gravel, with
the dreary supplement of dumb-bells. What was the attraction to this
"well," this "abyss," as Cowper himself called it, and as, physically
and socially, it was?
The attraction was the presence of the Rev. John Newton, then curate of
Olney. The vicar was Moses Brown, an Evangelical and a religious
writer, who has even deserved a place among the worthies of the
revival; but a family of thirteen children, some of whom it appears too
closely resembled the sons of Eli, had compelled him to take advantage
of the indulgent character of the ecclesiastical polity of those days
by becoming a pluralist and a non-resident, so that the curate had
Olney to himself. The patron was the Lord Dartmouth, who, as Cowper
says, "wore a coronet and prayed." John Newton was one of the shining
lights and foremost leaders and preachers of the revival. His name was
great both in the Evangelical churches within the pale of the
Establishment, and in the Methodist churches without it. He was a
brand plucked from the very heart of the burning. We have a memoir of
his life, partly written by himself, in the form of letters, and
completed under his superintendence. It is a monument of the age of
Smollett and Wesley, not less characteristic than is Cellini's memoir
of the times in which he lived. His father was master of a vessel, and
took him to sea when he was eleven. His mother was a pious Dissenter,
who was at great pains to store his mind with religious thoughts and
pieces. She died when he was young, and his stepmother was not pious.
He began to drag his religious anchor, and at length, having read
Shaftesbury, left his theological moorings altogether, and drifted into
a wide sea of ungodliness, blasphemy, and recklessness of living. Such
at least is the picture drawn by the sinner saved of his own earlier
years. While still but a stripling he fell desperately in love with a
girl of thirteen; his affection for her was as constant as it was
romantic; through all his wanderings and sufferings he never ceased to
think of her, and after seven years she became his wife. His father
frowned on the engagement, and he became estranged from home. He was
impressed; narrowly escaped shipwreck, deserted, and was arrested and
flogged as a deserter. Released from the navy, he was taken into the
service of a slave-dealer on the coast of Africa, at whose hands, and
those of the man's negro mistress, he endured every sort of
ill-treatment and contumely, being so starved that he was fain
sometimes to devour raw roots to stay his hunger. His constitution
must have been of iron to carry him through all that he endured. In
the meantime his indomitable mind was engaged in attempts at
self-culture; he studied a Euclid which he had brought with him,
drawing his diagrams on the sand, and he afterwards managed to teach
himself Latin by means of a Horace and a Latin Bible, aided by some
slight vestiges of the education which he had received at a grammar
school. His conversion was brought about by the continued influences
of Thomas a Kempis, of a very narrow escape, after terrible sufferings,
from shipwreck, of the impression made by the sights of the mighty deep
on a soul which, in its weather-beaten casing, had retained its native
sensibility, and, we may safely add, of the disregarded but not
forgotten teachings of his pious mother. Providence was now kind to
him; he became captain of a slave ship, and made several voyages on the
business of the trade. That it was a wicked trade he seems to have had
no idea; he says he never knew sweeter or more frequent hours of divine
communion than on his two last voyages to Guinea. Afterwards it
occurred to him that though his employment was genteel and profitable,
it made him a sort of gaoler, unpleasantly conversant with both chains
and shackles; and he besought Providence to fix him in a more humane
calling,
In answer to his prayer came a fit of apoplexy, which made it dangerous
for him to go to sea again. He obtained an office in the port of
Liverpool, but soon he set his heart on becoming a minister of the
Church of England. He applied for ordination to the Archbishop of
York, but not having the degree required by the rules of the
Establishment, he received through his Grace's secretary "the softest
refusal imaginable." The Archbishop had not had the advantage of
perusing Lord Macaulay's remarks on the difference between the policy
of the Church of England and that of the Church of Rome, with regard to
the utilization of religious enthusiasts. In the end Newton was
ordained by the Bishop of Lincoln, and threw himself with the energy of
a newborn apostle upon the irreligion and brutality of Olney. No
Carthusian's breast could glow more intensely with the zeal which is
the offspring of remorse. Newton was a Calvinist of course, though it
seems not an extreme one, otherwise he would probably have confirmed
Cowper in the darkest of hallucinations. His religion was one of
mystery and miracle, full of sudden conversions, special providences
and satanic visitations. He himself says that "his name was up about
the country for preaching people mad:" it is true that in the eyes of
the profane Methodism itself was madness; but he goes on to say
"whether it is owing to the sedentary life the women live here, poring
over their (lace) pillows for ten or twelve hours every day, and
breathing confined air in their crowded little rooms, or whatever may
be the immediate cause, I suppose we have near a dozen in different
degrees disordered in their heads, and most of them I believe truly
gracious people." He surmises that "these things are permitted in
judgment, that they who seek occasion for cavilling and stumbling may
have what they want." Nevertheless there were in him not only force,
courage, burning zeal for doing good, but great kindness, and even
tenderness of heart. "I see in this world," he said, "two heaps of
human happiness and misery; now if I can take but the smallest bit from
one heap and add it to the other I carry a point--if, as I go home, a
child has dropped a half-penny, and by giving it another I can wipe
away its tears, I feel I have done something." There was even in him a
strain, if not of humour, of a shrewdness which was akin to it, and
expressed itself in many pithy sayings. "If two angels came down from
heaven to execute a divine command, and one was appointed to conduct an
empire and the other to sweep a street in it, they would feel no
inclination to change employments." "A Christian should never plead
spirituality for being a sloven; if he be but a shoe-cleaner, he should
be the best in the parish." "My principal method for defeating heresy
is by establishing truth. One proposes to fill a bushel with tares;
now if I can fill it first with wheat, I shall defy his attempts." That
his Calvinism was not very dark or sulphureous, seems to be shown from
his repeating with gusto the saying of one of the old women of Olney
when some preacher dwelt on the doctrine of predestination--"Ah, I have
long settled that point; for if God had not chosen me before I was
born, I am sure he would have seen nothing to have chosen me for
afterwards." That he had too much sense to take mere profession for
religion appears from his describing the Calvinists of Olney as of two
sorts, which reminded him of the two baskets of Jeremiah's figs. The
iron constitution which had carried him through so many hardships,
enabled him to continue in his ministry to extreme old age. A friend
at length counselled him to stop before he found himself stopped by
being able to speak no longer. "I cannot stop," he said, raising his
voice. "What! shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can
speak?"
At the instance of a common friend, Newton had paid Mrs. Unwin a visit
at Huntingdon, after her husband's death, and had at once established
the ascendancy of a powerful character over her and Cowper. He now
beckoned the pair to his side, placed them in the house adjoining his
own, and opened a private door between the two gardens, so as to have
his spiritual children always beneath his eye. Under this, in the most
essential respect, unhappy influence, Cowper and Mrs. Unwin together
entered on "a decided course of Christian happiness." That is to say
they spent all their days in a round of religious exercises without
relaxation or relief. On fine summer evenings, as the sensible Lady
Hesketh saw with dismay, instead of a walk, there was a prayer-meeting.
Cowper himself was made to do violence to his intense shyness by
leading in prayer. He was also made to visit the poor at once on
spiritual missions, and on that of almsgiving, for which Thornton, the
religious philanthropist, supplied Newton and his disciples with means.
This, which Southey appears to think about the worst part of Newton's
regimen, was probably its redeeming feature. The effect of doing good
to others on any mind was sure to be good; and the sight of real
suffering was likely to banish fancied ills. Cowper in this way gained
at all events a practical knowledge of the poor, and learned to do them
justice, though from a rather too theological point of view. Seclusion
from the sinful world was as much a part of the system of Mr. Newton,
as it was of the system of Saint Benedict. Cowper was almost entirely
cut off from intercourse with his friends and people of his own class.
He dropped his correspondence even with his beloved cousin, Lady
Hesketh, and would probably have dropped his correspondence with Hill,
had not Hill's assistance in money matters been indispensable. To
complete his mental isolation it appears that having sold his library
he had scarcely any books. Such a course of Christian happiness as
this could only end in one way; and Newton himself seems to have had
the sense to see that a storm was brewing, and that there was no way of
conjuring it but by contriving some more congenial occupation. So the
disciple was commanded to employ his poetical gifts in contributing to
a hymnbook which Newton was compiling. Cowper's Olney hymns have not
any serious value as poetry. Hymns rarely have. The relations of man
with Deity transcend and repel poetical treatment. There is nothing in
them on which the creative imagination can be exercised. Hymns can be
little more than incense of the worshipping soul. Those of the Latin
church are the best; not because they are better poetry than the rest
(for they are not), but because their language is the most sonorous.
Cowper's hymns were accepted by the religious body for which they were
written, as expressions of its spiritual feeling and desires; so far
they were successful. They are the work of a religious man of culture,
and free from anything wild, erotic, or unctuous. But on the other
hand there is nothing in them suited to be the vehicle of lofty
devotion, nothing, that we can conceive a multitude or even a
prayer-meeting uplifting to heaven with voice and heart. Southey has
pointed to some passages on which the shadow of the advancing malady
falls; but in the main there is a predominance of religious joy and
hope. The most despondent hymn of the series is _Temptation_, the
thought of which resembles that of _The Castaway_.
Cowper's melancholy may have been aggravated by the loss of his only
brother, who died about this time, and at whose death-bed he was
present; though in the narrative which he wrote, joy at John's
conversion and the religious happiness of his end seems to exclude the
feelings by which hypochondria was likely to be fed. But his mode of
life under Newton was enough to account for the return of his disease,
which in this sense may be fairly laid to the charge of religion. He
again went mad, fancied as before that he was rejected of heaven,
ceased to pray as one helplessly doomed, and again attempted suicide.
Newton and Mrs. Unwin at first treated the disease as a diabolical
visitation, and "with deplorable consistency," to borrow the phrase
used by one of their friends in the case of Cowper's desperate
abstinence from prayer, abstained from calling in a physician. Of this
again their religion must bear the reproach. In other respects they
behaved admirably. Mrs. Unwin, shut up for sixteen months with her
unhappy partner, tended him with unfailing love; alone she did it, for
he could bear no one else about him; though to make her part more
trying he had conceived the insane idea that she hated him. Seldom has
a stronger proof been given of the sustaining power of affection.
Assuredly of whatever Cowper may have afterwards done for his kind, a
great part must be set down to the credit of Mrs. Unwin.
Mary! I want a lyre with other strings,
Such aid from heaven as some have feigned they drew,
An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new
And undebased by praise of meaner things,
That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings,
I may record thy worth with honour due,
In verse as musical as thou art true,
And that immortalizes whom it sings.
But thou hast little need. There is a book
By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light,
On which the eyes of God not rarely look,
A chronicle of actions just and bright;
There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary shine,
And, since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine.
Newton's friendship too was sorely tried. In the midst of the malady
the lunatic took it into his head to transfer himself from his own
house to the Vicarage, which, he obstinately refused to leave; and
Newton bore this infliction for several months without repining,
though, he might well pray earnestly for his friend's deliverance.
"The Lord has numbered the days in which I am appointed to wait on him
in this dark valley, and he has given us such a love to him, both as a
believer and a friend, that I am not weary; but to be sure his
deliverance would be to me one of the greatest blessings my thoughts
can conceive." Dr. Cotton was at last called in, and under his
treatment, evidently directed against a bodily disease, Cowper was at
length restored to sanity.
Newton once compared his own walk in the world to that of a physician
going through Bedlam. But he was not skilful in his treatment of the
literally insane. He thought to cajole Cowper out of his cherished
horrors by calling his attention to a case resembling his own. The
case was that of Simon Browne, a Dissenter, who had conceived the idea
that, being under the displeasure of Heaven, he had been entirely
deprived of his rational being and left with merely his animal nature.
He had accordingly resigned his ministry, and employed, himself in
compiling a dictionary, which, he said, was doing nothing that could
require a reasonable soul. He seems to have thought that theology fell
under the same category, for he proceeded to write some theological
treatises, which he dedicated to Queen Caroline, calling her Majesty's
attention to the singularity of the authorship as the most remarkable
phenomenon of her reign. Cowper, however, instead of falling into the
desired train of reasoning, and being led to suspect the existence of a
similar illusion in himself, merely rejected the claim of the pretended
rival in spiritual affliction, declaring his own case to be far the
more deplorable of the two.
Before the decided course of Christian happiness had time again to
culminate in madness, fortunately for Cowper, Newton left Olney for St.
Mary Woolnoth. He was driven away at last by a quarrel with his
barbarous parishioners, the cause of which did him credit. A fire
broke out at Olney, and burnt a good many of its straw-thatched
cottages. Newton ascribed the extinction of the fire rather to prayer
than water, but he took the lead in practical measures of relief, and
tried to remove the earthly cause of such visitations by putting an end
to bonfires and illuminations on the 5th of November. Threatened with
the loss of their Guy Fawkes, the barbarians rose upon him, and he had
a narrow escape from their violence. We are reminded of the case of
Cotton Mather, who, after being a leader in witch-burning, nearly
sacrificed his life in combatting the fanaticism which opposed itself
to the introduction of inoculation. Let it always be remembered that
besides its theological side, the Revival had its philanthropic and
moral side; that it abolished the slave trade, and at last slavery;
that it waged war, and effective war, under the standard of the gospel,
upon masses of vice and brutality, which had been totally neglected by
the torpor of the Establishment; that among large classes of the people
it was the great civilizing agency of the time.
Newton was succeeded as curate of Olney by his disciple, and a man of
somewhat the same cast of mind and character, Thomas Scott the writer
of the _Commentary on the Bible_ and _The Force of Truth_. To Scott
Cowper seems not to have greatly taken. He complains that, as a
preacher, he is always scolding the congregation. Perhaps Newton had
foreseen that it would be so, for he specially commended the spiritual
son whom he was leaving, to the care of the Rev. William Bull, of the
neighbouring town of Newport Pagnell, a dissenting minister, but a
member of a spiritual connexion which did not stop at the line of
demarcation between Nonconformity and the Establishment. To Bull
Cowper did greatly take, he extols him as "a Dissenter, but a liberal
one," a man of letters and of genius, master of a fine imagination--or,
rather, not master of it--and addresses him as _Carissime Taurorum_.
It is rather singular that Newton should have given himself such a
successor. Bull was a great smoker, and had made himself a cozy and
secluded nook in his garden for the enjoyment of his pipe. He was
probably something of a spiritual as well as of a physical Quietist,
for he set Cowper to translate the poetry of the great exponent of
Quietism, Madame Guyon. The theme of all the pieces which Cowper has
translated is the same--Divine Love and the raptures of the heart that
enjoys it--the blissful union of the drop with the Ocean--the
Evangelical Nirvana. If this line of thought was not altogether
healthy, or conducive to the vigorous performance of practical duty, it
was at all events better than the dark fancy of Reprobation. In his
admiration of Madame Guyon, her translator showed his affinity, and
that of Protestants of the same school, to Fenelon and the Evangelical
element which has lurked in the Roman Catholic church since the days of
Thomas a Kempis.