time the wife of Mr. Hesketh, afterward made a baronet. When he came of age he received, through the influence of an uncle, a small government appointment, and took chambers in the Inner Temple, ostensibly to study law, and at the age of twenty-four was formally called to the bar, but with no purpose of practising the profession. There were two or three government positions to which the right of nomination was vested in one of his uncles; and he looked for. ward to obtaining one of these. Mr. Ashley Cowper began to look unfavorably upon a marriage between his daughter and nephew. "If you marry William Cowper," he said to her, "what will you do?" "Do, sir?" replied Theodora, "wash all day, and ride out on the great dog at night." He at length positively forbade the union, and prohibited his nephew from visiting at his house, alleging for his reason his decided objection to the marriage of cousins. The final parting took place about 1752, and the lovers never met again. Theodora never forgot him, and in after years found occasion for doing him great service. She died in 1824, at the age of about eighty, having survived Cowper nearly a quarter of a century. When near her end she sealed up all the letters and verses which he had addressed to her, and placed them in the hands of a female friend. This friend died in the same year with Theodora; and the papers fell into the hands of a relative, by whom a portion of them was published in 1825, under the title of Early Poems. The first symptoms of the mental malady with which Cowper was afflicted during the greater part of his life manifested themselves when he was about twenty-four. Of this he wrote long after in one of his letters, "I was struck 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." This period of gloom passed away in a few months; but to reappear after a few years in a more aggravated form. His father, who had married again, died suddenly in 1756, leaving very little to his sons; and Cowper was before long reduced to pecuniary straits. A couple of government officesthat of Reading Clerk and Clerk of the Journals to the House of Lords-to which his uncle, Major Cowper, had the right of presentation-fell vacant, and Cowper was offered his choice between them. He chose the latter, the less lucrative but more private one. But it was necessary that he should pass an examination as to his fitness to perform the quite formal duties required of him. "A thunderbolt," he says, "would have been as welcome to me as this intelligence." For six months he tried in vain to prepare himself for the examination. Then his reason quite gave way. Three times he attempted suicide. In the autumn of 1763 he sent for Major Cowper, and, in spite of all remonstrances, threw up the nomination. At this time he wrote those wild and whirling verses which show something of the nature of the great cloud of darkness which enveloped him: LINES WRITTEN DURING A PERIOD OF INSANITY. Hatred and vengeance-my eternal portion, Damned below Judas, more abhorred than he was, Man disavows, and Deity disowns me; Hard lot encompassed with a thousand dangers, Him the vindictive rod of angry Justice Buried above ground. In December, 1763, Cowper was placed by his friends in the private asylum for lunatics, at St. Albans, kept by Dr. Nathaniel Cotton, a physician of rare worth and capacity, the author of several poems of no inconsiderable merit. Here he remained for two years, and by slow degrees regained his sanity. His younger brother was now a Fellow of a Cambridge College, and Cowper, in order to be near him, took up his residence at Huntingdon, the nearest place where suitable accommodations could be obtained. Almost by accident he made the acquaintance of Mr. Unwin, a clergyman who occupied a large house, and received pupils to be prepared for the University. The Unwins were persuaded to receive Cowper as a boarder, and a warm attachment sprung up between them which was only broken by death. But two years after, Mr. Unwin was killed by being thrown from his horse. He had expressed the wish that in case of his death, Cowper should still have a home with his widow. Mary Unwin was left with quite limited means, and the great house was given up. She with Cowper took up their residence in the neighboring parish of Olney, of which John Newton was curate. Cowper became a kind of informal lay assistant to the energetic Newton. He visited the parishioners, read prayers with the sick, and even conducted extempore prayers. But the strong meat which was nourishment to the robustminded Newton, proved deleterious to Cowper. In the doctrine of Predestination Newton saw an assured guarantee that final salvation was sure to all the elect; Cowper saw in it equal assurance of final reprobation to the non-elect-of whom he believed himself to be one. His insanity returned in the most aggravated form. He himself, writing years after, records the characteristics of his mental condition at this time: COWPER'S THIRD PERIOD OF INSANITY. I was suddenly reduced from my wonted rate of understanding to an almost childish imbecility. I did not 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 |