would have required stronger evidence of its inutility than that the author appeared by his dedication to be mad?" A copy however was made, and was transmitted more than twenty years afterwards to Dr. Hawkesworth for insertion in the Adventurer", 66 as a literary curiosity, which was in danger of being lost for want of a repository wherein it might be preserved." "Of all the recorded delusions," says Dr. Aikin, " to which the human mind is subjected, none perhaps is more remarkable than this, which apparently could not be put into a form of words for description without demonstratively proving its fallacy." Mr. Newton seems to have hoped that Cowper could not fail to perceive this, and that in detecting a plain delusion in a case which in some respects strikingly resembled his own, he might be led to suspect himself of being in like manner self-deluded. Any such hope was destroyed by Cowper's reply.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

March 14, 1782.

I was not unacquainted with Mr. Browne's extraordinary case, before you favoured me with his letter and his intended dedication to the queen, though I am obliged to you for a sight of those two curiosities, which I do not recollect to have ever seen till you sent them. I could, however, were it not a subject that would make us all melancholy, point out to you some essential differences between his state of mind and my own, which would prove mine to be by far the most deplorable of the two. I suppose no man would

4 No. 88.

despair, if he did not apprehend something singular in the circumstances of his own story, something that discriminates it from that of every other man, and that induces despair as an inevitable consequence. You may encounter his unhappy persuasion with as many instances as you please, of persons who, like him, having renounced all hope, were yet restored; and may thence infer that he, like them, shall meet with a season of restoration; but it is in vain. Every such individual accounts himself an exception to all rules, and therefore the blessed reverse, that others have experienced, affords no ground of comfortable expectation to him. But you will say, it is reasonable to conclude that as all your predecessors in this vale of misery and horror have found themselves delightfully disappointed at last, so will you :—I grant the reasonableness of it; it would be sinful, perhaps, because uncharitable, to reason otherwise; but an argument, hypothetical in its nature, however rationally conducted, may lead to a false conclusion; and in this instance, so will yours. But I forbear. For the cause above mentioned, I will say no more, though it is a subject on which I could write more than the mail would carry. I must deal with you as I deal with poor Mrs. Unwin, in all our disputes about it, cutting all controversy short by an appeal to the event.

W. C.

Simon Browne died under this delusion, soon after his dedication was written, in the fifty-second year of his age, in consequence of diseases brought upon him by his

5 1732.

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6

sedentary life, and deranged spirits. The case resembled Cowper's, in his refusing to join in any act of worship public or private, in his feeling at first strong temptations to suicide, and afterwards becoming calm and composed, even cheerful when not thinking of his own condition," and in his retaining his intellectual faculties in full vigour. There was this difference, that Browne, while he fancied himself deprived of all mental power, engaged willingly in work which required close reasoning; and of this Cowper was afraid. "I cannot," said he, "bear much thinking. The meshes of that fine net-work, the brain, are composed of such mere spinners' threads in me, that when a long thought finds its way into them, it buzzes, and twangs, and bustles about at such a rate as seems to threaten the whole contexture. A certain degree of occupation he found agreeable and salutary; but he understood his own condition well enough to avoid any thing which required laborious thought, or would produce in himself any strong and painful emotion. To Mr. Newton, (the correspondent to whom he wrote most gravely,) he says, "I can compare this mind of mine to nothing that resembles it more than to a board that is under

6 Being once importuned to say grace at the table of a friend, he excused himself many times; but the request being still repeated, and the company kept standing, he discovered evident tokens of distress; and after some irresolute gestures and hesitation, expressed with great fervour this ejaculation: 'Most merciful and Almighty God, let thy Spirit which moved upon the face of the waters when there was no light descend upon me; that from this darkness there may rise up a man to praise Thee!"-Adventurer, No. 88.

7 To Mr. Newton, July 12, 1780.

while I am writing to

the carpenter's plane, (I mean, you;) the shavings are my uppermost thoughts; after a few strokes of the tool it acquires a new surface; this again, upon a repetition of his task, he takes off, and a new surface still succeeds. Whether the shavings of the present day will be worth your acceptance, I know not. I am unfortunately made neither of cedar nor mahogany, but truncus ficulnus, inutile lignum ; consequently, though I should be planed till I am as thin as a wafer, it will be but rubbish to the last."

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Easterly winds, which are proverbially neither good for man nor beast, he thought unfavourable to him in all his occupations, especially that of writing. Disturbed sleep had the same effect. "Such nights," said he, as I frequently spend are but a miserable prelude to the succeeding day, and indispose me above all things to the business of writing; yet with a pen in my hand, if I am able to write at all, I find myself gradually relieved; and as I am glad of any employment that may serve to engage my attention, so especially I am pleased with an opportunity of conversing with you, though it be but upon paper. This occupa

tion above all others assists me in that self-deception to which I am indebted for all the little comfort I enjoy; things seem to be as they were, and I almost forget that they never can be so again"."

He believed that the moon affected him, and that there was no human being who did not more or less experience its effects. If she had any crabs among her acquaintance, he told one of his friends, she would if she attended to them find them always much more 8 June 23, 1780. 9 To Mrs. Newton, June, 1780.

peevish and ill-tempered at the new and full moon than at any other time; for he was sure it influenced the temper as well as the brain, when either was at all disordered. Upon his own temper it had no effect, for that was equally sweet at all times, but it had a very perceptible one upon his spirits; during the full moon he was observed to be always low, and "quite different to what he was at any other season 10." It is possible that he may have been thus affected, because he expected to be so; but the fact is certain, whether it be considered as the effect of imagination alone, or as a case in proof of the old opinion concerning the influence of the moon upon lunatics.

The effect was upon his spirits, not upon his intellect, or temper; and the degree of apprehension with which he looked to the full of the moon, was not more than that wherewith he regarded an east wind. But he dreaded the return of that month in which his former seizures had occurred; and his friends knowing this, dreaded it for him. Writing to Mr. Newton, he says, "When January returns, you have your feelings concerning me, and such as prove the faithfulness of your friendship. I have mine also concerning myself, but they are of a cast different from yours. Yours have a mixture of sympathy and tender solicitude, which makes them, perhaps, not altogether unpleasant. Mine, on the contrary, are of an unmixed nature, and consist simply, and merely, of the most alarming apprehensions. Twice has that month returned upon me, accompanied by such horrors as I have no reason to suppose ever made part of the experience 10 Lady Hesketh's Anecdotes, p. 61, 62.