the earth would open her mouth and swallow me, my conscience
scaring me, and the city of refuge out of reach and out of
sight, a strange and horrible darkness fell upon me. If it
were possible that a heavy blow could light on the brain
without touching the skull, such was the sensation I felt. I
clapped my hand to my forehead, and cried aloud, through the
pain it gave me. At every stroke my thoughts and expressions
became more wild and incoherent; all that remained clear was
the sense of sin, and the expectation of punishment. These
kept undisturbed possession all through my illness, without
interruption or abatement.’
It is idle to follow details further. The deep waters had passed over
him, and it was long before the face of his mind was dry or green again.
He was placed in a lunatic asylum, where he continued many months, and
which he left apparently cured. After some changes of no moment, but
which by his own account evinced many traces of dangerous excitement,
he took up his abode at Huntingdon, with the family of Unwin; and it
is remarkable how soon the taste for easy and simple, yet not wholly
unintellectual society, which had formerly characterised him, revived
again. The delineation cannot be given in any terms but his own:—
‘We breakfast commonly between eight and nine; till eleven,
we read either the Scripture, or the sermons of some faithful
preacher of these holy mysteries; at eleven we attend divine
service, which is performed here twice every day; and from
twelve to three we separate, and amuse ourselves as we please.
During that interval, I either read, in my own apartment, or
walk, or ride, or work in the garden. We seldom sit an hour
after dinner, but if the weather permits, adjourn to the
garden, where, with Mrs. Unwin and her son, I have generally
the pleasure of religious conversation till tea-time. If it
rains, or is too windy for walking, we either converse within
doors, or sing some hymns of Martin’s collection, and by the
help of Mrs. Unwin’s harpsichord, make up a tolerable concert,
in which our hearts, I hope, are the best and most musical
performers. After tea we sally forth to walk in good earnest.
Mrs. Unwin is a good walker, and we have generally travelled
about four miles before we see home again. When the days are
short, we make this excursion in the former part of the day,
between church time and dinner. At night we read, and converse,
as before, till supper, and commonly finish the evening either
with hymns, or a sermon, and last of all the family are called
to prayers. I need not tell _you_, that such a life as this is
consistent with the utmost cheerfulness; accordingly we are all
happy, and dwell together in unity as brethren. Mrs. Unwin
has almost a maternal affection for me, and I have something
very like a filial one for her, and her son and I are brothers.
Blessed be the God of our salvation for such companions, and
for such a life—above all, for a heart to like it.’
The scene was not however to last as it was. Mr. Unwin, the husband of
Mrs. Unwin, was suddenly killed soon after, and Cowper removed with Mrs.
Unwin to Olney, where a new epoch of his life begins.
The curate of Olney at this time was John Newton, a man of great energy
of mind, and well known in his generation for several vigorous books,
and still more for a very remarkable life. He had been captain of a
Liverpool slave ship—an occupation in which he had quite energy enough
to have succeeded, but was deeply influenced by serious motives, and
became one of the strongest and most active of the Low Church clergymen
of that day. He was one of those men who seem intended to make excellence
disagreeable. He was a converting engine. The whole of his own enormous
vigour of body—the whole steady intensity of a pushing, impelling,
compelling, unoriginal mind—all the mental or corporeal exertion he
could exact from the weak or elicit from the strong, were devoted to
one sole purpose—the effectual impact of the Calvinistic tenets on the
parishioners of Olney. Nor would we hint that his exertions were at
all useless. There is no denying that there is a certain stiff, tough,
agricultural, clayish English nature, on which the aggressive divine
produces a visible and good effect. The hardest and heaviest hammering
seems required to stir and warm that close and coarse matter. To impress
any sense of the supernatural on so secular a substance is a great good,
though that sense be expressed in false or irritating theories. It is
unpleasant, no doubt, to hear the hammering; the bystanders are in an
evil case; you might as well live near an iron-ship yard. Still the blows
do not hurt the iron. Something of the sort is necessary to beat the
coarse ore into a shining and useful shape; certainly that does so beat
it. But the case is different when the hundred-handed divine desires
to hit others. The very system which, on account of its hard blows, is
adapted to the tough and ungentle, is by that very reason unfit for the
tremulous and tender. The nature of many men and many women is such that
it will not bear the daily and incessant repetition of some certain and
indisputable truths. The universe has of course its dark aspect. Many
tremendous facts and difficulties can be found which often haunt the
timid and sometimes incapacitate the feeble. To be continually insisting
on these, and these only, will simply render both more and more unfit for
the duties to which they were born. And if this is the case with certain
fact and clear truth, how much more with uncertain error and mystic
exaggeration! Mr. Newton was alive to the consequence of his system: ‘I
believe my name is up about the country for preaching people mad; for
whether it is owing to the sedentary life women lead here, &c. &c., I
suppose we have near a dozen in different degrees disordered in their
heads, and most of them, I believe, _truly gracious people_.’ He perhaps
found his peculiar views more generally appreciated among this class of
young ladies than among more healthy and rational people, and clearly
did not wholly condemn the delivering them, even at this cost, from the
tyranny of the ‘carnal reason.’
No more dangerous adviser, if this world had been searched over,
could have been found for Cowper. What the latter required was prompt
encouragement to cheerful occupation, quiet amusement, gentle and
unexhausting society. Mr. Newton thought otherwise. His favourite motto
was _Perimus in licitis_. The simple round of daily pleasures and genial
employments which give instinctive happiness to the happiest natures,
and best cheer the common life of common men, was studiously watched
and scrutinised with the energy of a Puritan and the watchfulness of an
inquisitor. Mr. Newton had all the tastes and habits which go to form
what in the Catholic system is called a spiritual director. Of late years
it is well known that the institution, or rather practice of confession,
has expanded into a more potent and more imperious organisation. You
are expected by the priests of the Roman Church not only to confess
to them what you have done, but to take their advice as to what you
shall do. The future is under their direction, as the past was beneath
their scrutiny. This was exactly the view which Mr. Newton took of his
relation to Cowper. A natural aptitude for dictation—a steady, strong,
compelling decision,—great self-command, and a sharp perception of
all impressible points in the characters of others,—made the task of
guiding ‘weaker brethren’ a natural and pleasant pursuit. To suppose a
shrinking, a wounded, and tremulous mind, like that of Cowper’s, would
rise against such bold dogmatism, such hard volition, such animal nerve,
is to fancy that the beaten slave will dare the lash which his very eyes
instinctively fear and shun. Mr. Newton’s great idea was that Cowper
ought to be of some use. There was a great deal of excellent hammering
hammered in the parish, and it was sinful that a man with nothing to do
should sit tranquil. Several persons in the street had done what they
ought not; football was not unknown; cards were played; flirtation was
not conducted ‘improvingly.’ It was clearly Cowper’s duty to put a stop
to such things. Accordingly he made him a parochial implement; he set
him to visit painful cases, to attend at prayer meetings, to compose
melancholy hymns, even to conduct or share in conducting public services
himself. It never seems to have occurred to him that so fragile a mind
would be unequal to the burden—that a bruised reed does often break;
or rather if it did occur to him, he regarded it as a subterranean
suggestion, and expected a supernatural interference to counteract the
events at which it hinted. Yet there are certain rules and principles
in this world which seem earthly, but which the most excellent may not
on that account venture to disregard. The consequence of placing Cowper
in exciting situations was a return of his excitement. It is painful to
observe, that though the attack resembled in all its main features his
former one, several months passed before Mr. Newton would permit any
proper physical remedies to be applied, and then it was too late. We need
not again recount details. Many months of dark despondency were to be
passed before he returned to a simple and rational mind.
The truth is, that independently of the personal activity and dauntless
energy which made Mr. Newton so little likely to sympathise with
such a mind as Cowper’s, the former lay under a still more dangerous
disqualification for Cowper’s predominant adviser, viz., an erroneous
view of his case. His opinion exactly coincided with that which Cowper
first heard from Mr. Madan during his first illness in London. This view
is in substance that the depression which Cowper originally suffered
from was exactly what almost all mankind, if they had been rightly aware
of their true condition, would have suffered also. They were ‘children
of wrath,’ just as he was; and the only difference between them was,
that he appreciated his state and they did not,—showing, in fact, that
Cowper was not, as common persons imagined, on the extreme verge of
insanity, but, on the contrary, a particularly rational and right-seeing
man. So far, Cowper says, with one of the painful smiles which make his
‘Narrative’ so melancholy, ‘my condition was less desperate.’ That is,
his counsellors had persuaded him that his malady was rational, and his
sufferings befitting his true position,—no difficult task, for they had
the poignancy of pain and the pertinacity of madness on their side: the
efficacy of their arguments was less when they endeavoured to make known
the sources of consolation. We have seen the immediate effect of the
first exposition of the evangelical theory of faith. When applied to the
case of the morbidly-despairing sinner, that theory has one argumentative
imperfection which the logical sharpness of madness will soon discover
and point out. The simple reply is, ‘I do not feel the faith which you
describe. I wish I could feel it; but it is no use trying to conceal the
fact, I am conscious of nothing like it.’ And this was substantially
Cowper’s reply on his first interview with Mr. Madan. It was a simple
denial of a fact solely accessible to his personal consciousness; and,
as such, unanswerable. And in this intellectual position (if such it can
be called) his mind long rested. At the commencement of his residence
at Olney, however, there was a decided change. Whether it were that
he mistook the glow of physical recovery for the peace of spiritual
renovation, or that some subtler and deeper agency was, as he supposed,
at work, the outward sign is certain; and there is no question but
that during the first months of his residence at Olney, and his daily
intercourse with Mr. Newton, he did feel, or supposed himself to feel,
the faith which he was instructed to deem desirable, and he lent himself
with natural pleasure to the diffusion of it among those around him. But
this theory of salvation requires a metaphysical postulate, which to many
minds is simply impossible. A prolonged meditation on unseen realities
is sufficiently difficult, and seems scarcely the occupation for which
common human nature was intended; but more than this is said to be
essential. The meditation must be successful in exciting certain feelings
of a kind peculiarly delicate, subtle, and (so to speak) unstable. The
wind bloweth where it listeth; but it is scarcely more partial, more
quick, more unaccountable, than the glow of an emotion excited by a
supernatural and unseen object. This depends on the vigour of imagination
which has to conceive that object—on the vivacity of feeling which has to
be quickened by it—on the physical energy which has to support it. The
very watchfulness, the scrupulous anxiety to find and retain the feeling,
are exactly the most unfavourable to it. In a delicate disposition like
that of Cowper, such feelings revolt from the inquisition of others,
and shrink from the stare of the mind itself. But even this was not the
worst. The mind of Cowper was, so to speak, naturally terrestrial. If a
man wishes for a nice appreciation of the details of time and sense, let
him consult Cowper’s miscellaneous letters. Each simple event of every
day—each petty object of external observation or inward suggestion, is
there chronicled with a fine and female fondness, a wise and happy
faculty, let us say, of deriving a gentle happiness from the tranquil and
passing hour. The fortunes of the hares—Bess who died young, and Tiney
who lived to be nine years old—the miller who engaged their affections
at once, his powdered coat having charms that were irresistible—the
knitting-needles of Mrs. Unwin—the qualities of his friend Hill, who
managed his money transactions—
‘An honest man, close buttoned to the chin,
Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within’—
live in his pages, and were the natural, insensible, unbiassed occupants
of his fancy. It is easy for a firm and hard mind to despise the minutiæ
of life, and to pore and brood over an abstract proposition. It may be
possible for the highest, the strongest, the most arduous imagination to
live aloof from common things—alone with the unseen world, as some have
lived their whole lives in memory with a world which has passed away.
But it seems hardly possible that an imagination such as Cowper’s—which
was rather a detective fancy, perceiving the charm and essence of things
which are seen, than an eager, actuating, conceptive power, embodying,
enlivening, empowering those which are not seen—should leave its own
home—the _domus et tellus_—the sweet fields and rare orchards which it
loved,—and go out alone apart from all flesh into the trackless and
fearful and unknown Infinite. Of course, his timid mind shrank from it at
once, and returned to its own fireside. After a little, the idea that he
had a true faith faded away. Mr. Newton, with misdirected zeal, sought to
revive it by inciting him to devotional composition; but the only result
was the volume of ‘Olney Hymns’—a very painful record, of which the
burden is
‘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.’
‘The Preacher’ himself did not conceive such a store of melancholy
forebodings.
The truth is, that there are two remarkable species of minds on which
the doctrine of Calvinism acts as a deadly and fatal poison. One is the
natural, vigorous, bold, defiant, hero-like character, abounding in
generosity, in valour, in vigour, and abounding also in self-will, and
pride, and scorn. This is the temperament which supplies the world with
ardent hopes and keen fancies, with springing energies, and bold plans,
and noble exploits; but yet, under another aspect and in other times, is
equally prompt in desperate deeds, awful machinations, deep and daring
crimes. It one day is ready by its innate heroism to deliver the world
from any tyranny; the next it ‘hungers to become a tyrant’ in its turn.
Yet the words of the poet are ever true and are ever good, as a defence
against the cold narrators who mingle its misdeeds and exploits, and
profess to believe that each is a set-off and compensation for the other.
You can ever say—
‘Still he retained,
’Mid much abasement, what he had received
From Nature, an intense and glowing mind.’
It is idle to tell such a mind that, by an arbitrary irrespective
election, it is chosen to happiness or doomed to perdition. The evil and
the good in it equally revolt at such terms. It thinks, ‘Well, if the
universe be a tyranny, if one man is doomed to misery for no fault, and
the next is chosen to pleasure for no merit—if the favouritism of time
be copied into eternity—if the highest heaven be indeed like the meanest
earth,—then, as the heathen say, it is better to suffer injustice than to
inflict it, better to be the victims of the eternal despotism than its
ministers, better to curse in hell than serve in heaven.’ And the whole
burning soul breaks away into what is well called Satanism—into wildness,
and bitterness, and contempt.
Cowper had as little in common with this proud, Titanic, aspiring genius
as any man has or can have, but his mind was equally injured by the same
system. On a timid, lounging, gentle, acquiescent mind, the effect is
precisely the contrary—singularly contrasted, but equally calamitous.
‘I am doomed, you tell me, already. One way or other the matter is
already settled. It can be no better, and it is as bad as it can be. Let
me alone; do not trouble me at least these few years. Let me at least
sit sadly and bewail myself. Action is useless. I will brood upon my
melancholy and be at rest;’ the soul sinks into ‘passionless calm and
silence unreproved,’ flinging away ‘the passionate tumult of a clinging
hope,’ which is the allotted boon and happiness of mortality. It was,
as we believe, straight towards this terrible state that Mr. Newton
directed Cowper. He kept him occupied with subjects which were too great
for him; he kept him away from his natural life; he presented to him
views and opinions but too well justifying his deep and dark insanity; he
convinced him that he ought to experience emotions which were foreign to
his nature; he had nothing to add by way of comfort, when told that those
emotions did not and could not exist. Cowper seems to have felt this. His
second illness commenced with a strong dislike to his spiritual adviser,
and it may be doubted if there ever was again the same cordiality
between them. Mr. Newton, too, as was natural, was vexed at Cowper’s
calamity. His reputation in the ‘religious world’ was deeply pledged to
conducting this most ‘interesting case’ to a favourable termination. A
failure was not to be contemplated, and yet it was obviously coming and
coming. It was to no purpose that Cowper acquired fame and secular glory
in the literary world. This was rather adding gall to bitterness. The
unbelievers in evangelical religion would be able to point to one at
least, and that the best known among its proselytes, to whom it had not
brought peace—whom it had rather confirmed in wretchedness. His literary
fame, too, took Cowper away into a larger circle, out of the rigid
decrees and narrow ordinances of his father-confessor, and of course the
latter remonstrated. Altogether there was not a cessation, but a decline
and diminution of intercourse. But better, according to the saying, had
they never met or never parted. If a man is to have a father-confessor,
let him at least choose a sensible one. The dominion of Mr. Newton had
been exercised, not indeed with mildness, or wisdom, or discrimination,
but, nevertheless, with strong judgment and coarse acumen—with a bad
choice of ends, but at least a vigorous selection of means. Afterwards it
was otherwise. In the village of Olney there was a schoolmaster, whose
name often occurs in Cowper’s letters,—a foolish, vain, worthy sort of
man: what the people of the west call a ‘scholard,’ that is, a man of
more knowledge and less sense than those about him. He sometimes came
to Cowper to beg old clothes, sometimes to instruct him with literary
criticisms, and is known in the ‘Correspondence’ as ‘Mr. Teedon, who
reads the “Monthly Review,”’ ‘Mr. Teedon, whose smile is fame.’ Yet to
this man, whose harmless follies his humour had played with a thousand
times, Cowper, in his later years, and when the dominion of Mr. Newton
had so far ceased as to leave him, after many years, the use of his own
judgment, resorted for counsel and guidance. And the man had visions, and
dreams, and revelations!! But enough of such matters.
The peculiarity of Cowper’s life is its division into marked periods.
From his birth to his first illness he may be said to have lived in one
world, and for some twenty years afterwards, from his thirty-second to
about his fiftieth year, in a wholly distinct one. Much of the latter
time was spent in hopeless despondency. His principal companions during
that period were Mr. Newton, about whom we have been writing, and Mrs.
Unwin, who may be said to have broken the charmed circle of seclusion in
which they lived by inciting Cowper to continuous literary composition.
Of Mrs. Unwin herself ample memorials remain. She was, in truth, a most
excellent person—in mind and years much older than the poet—as it were
by profession elderly, able in every species of preserve, profound in
salts, and pans, and jellies; culinary by taste; by tact and instinct
motherly and housewifish. She was not, however, without some less
larderiferous qualities. Lady Hesketh and Lady Austen, neither of them
very favourably-prejudiced critics, decided so. The former has written,
‘She is very far from grave; on the contrary, she is cheerful and gay,
and laughs _de bon cœur_ upon the smallest provocation. Amidst all the
little puritanical words which fall from her _de tems en tems_, she seems
to have by nature a great fund of gaiety.... I must say, too, that she
seems to be very well read in the English poets, as appears by several
little quotations which she makes from time to time, and has a true taste
for what is excellent in that way.’ This she showed by persuading Cowper
to the composition of his first volume.