One more of these melancholy communications, which, like the last, is without a date, I suppose to have been written at this time; it is the latest that has been published; and indeed the correspondence with Teedon seems very soon afterwards to have ceased. Other illusions, it may be inferred, had passed away for a while when this was written, and one fatal impression for the time possessed him wholly. DEAR SIR, Friday Morning. I am not well, but far from being so. I wake almost constantly under the influence of a nervous fever; by which my spirits are affected to such a degree that the oppression is almost insupportable. Since I wrote last, I have been plunged in deeps, unvisited, I am convinced, by any human. soul but mine; and though the day in its progress bears away with it some part of this melancholy, I am never cheerful, because I can never hope, and am so bounded in my prospects, that to look forward to another year to me seems madness. In this state of mind how can I write? It is in vain to attempt it. I have neither spirits for it, as I have often said, nor leisure. Yet, vain as I know the attempt must prove, I purpose in a few days to renew it. Mrs. Unwin is as well as when I wrote last, but, like myself, dejected-dejected both on my account and on her own. Unable to amuse herself either with work or reading, she looks forward to a new day with despondence, weary of it before it begins, and longing for the return of night. Thus it is with us both. If I endeavor to pray, I get my answer in a double portion of misery. My petitions, therefore, are reduced to three words, and those not very often repeated" God, have mercy!" Adieu! Yours, WM. COWPER. "It was a spectacle," says Hayley, "that might awaken compassion in the sternest of human characters to see the health, the comfort, and the little fortune, of a man so dis tinguished by intellectual endowments and by moral excellence, perishing most deplorably. A sight so affecting made inany friends of Cowper solicitous and importunate, that his declining life should be honorably protected by public munificence. Men of all parties agreed, that a pension might be granted to an author of his acknowledged merit with graceful propriety; and we might apply to him, on this topic, the very expressive words which the poet Claudian addresses, on a different occasion, to his favorite hero: Suffragia vulgi Jam tibi detulerant, quidquid mox debuit aula. "It was devoutly to be wished, that the declining spirits of Cowper should be speedily animated and sustained by assistance of this nature, because the growing influence of melancholy not only filled him with distressing ideas of his own fortune, but threatened to rob him of the power to make any kind of exertion in his own behalf. His situation and his merits were perfectly understood, humanely felt, and honorably acknowledged by persons, who, while they declared that he ought to receive an immediate public support, seemed to possess both the inclination and the power to ensure it. But such is the difficulty of doing real good, experienced even by the great and powerful, or so apt are statesmen to forget the pressing exigence of meritorious individuals in the distractions of official perplexity, that month after month elapsed, in which the intimate friends of Cowper confidently, yet vainly, expected to see him happily rescued from some of the darkest evils impending over him, by an honorable provision for life. "Imagination can hardly devise any human condition more truly affecting than the state of the poet at this period. His generous and faithful guardian, Mrs. Unwin, who had preserved him through seasons of the severest calamity, was now, with her faculties and fortune impaired, sinking fast into second childhood. The distress of neart that he felt in beholding the cruel change in a companion so justly dear to him, conspiring with his constitutional melancholy, was gradually undermining the exquisite faculties of his mind. But depressed as he was by these complicated afflictions, Providence was far from deserting this excellent inan. His female relation, whose regard he had cultivated as his favorite correspondent, now devoted herself very nobly to the superintendence of a house, whose two interesting inhabitants were rendered, by age and trouble, alinost incapable of attending to the ordinary offices of life. "Those only who have lived with the superannuated and the melancholy, can properly appreciate the value of such magnanimous friendship." CHAPTER XVIII. HAYLEY'S THIRD VISIT. COW LADY HESKETH AT WESTON. WHEN Lady Hesketh had inquired, in the autumn, at what time her coming would be most convenient, Cowper replied, that since he despaired of ever having her there in the height of summer, which for her own sake he desired most, the depth of winter would be the most eligible season for him; "for then," said he, "it is that in general I have most need of a cordial, and particularly in the month of January." She came at the close of November, soon after Hayley's departure, and her intention was to remain till February. Knowing as she did the awful change that had taken place in Mrs. Unwin, and the injurious manner in which he was necessarily affected by it, she thought him, on her arrival, better than she had expected; but in the second week of the month which he always dreaded, his malady returned in full force, and in its worst form. One of his illusions at this time was that it was his duty to inflict upon himself severe penance for his sins; - such at least is the tradition which Mackintosh' and Mr. Basil Montagu heard at Olney seven years afterwards; and this, if it were so, was a state of comparative happiness to the more abiding character of his madness; for in the performance of penance, the belief in a consequent remission of sins is implied. Six days he sate "still and silent as death," and took no other food during that time than a small piece of bread dipped in wine and water. After every attempt to rouse him had failed, his medical attendant suggested, as the only remaining hope, that Mrs. Unwin should indirectly invite him to go out with her, if she could be induced to do this; for her state of mind now required almost as much management as his. She, however, perceived the necessity of making the experiment, and observing that it was a fine morning, said she should like to try to walk. Cowper immediately rose, took her by the arm, and the spell which had fixed him to his chair was broken. This appears to have been the last instance in which her influence over him was exerted for his good. Towards the end of February his cousin Johnson came from Norfolk, and assisted in attending on him as long as he could be absent from his professional duties. Soon after his departure, Mr. Greatheed thought it necessary to let Hayley know the extent of the evil. DEAR SIR, TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ. Newport Pagnel, April 8, 1794. Lady Hesketh's correspondence acquainted you with the melancholy relapse of our dear friend at Weston; but I am uncertain whether you know, that in the last fortnight he has refused food of every kind, except now and then a very small piece of toasted bread, dipped generally in water, sometimes mixed with a little wine. This, her ladyship informs me, was the case till last Saturday, since when he has eat a little at each family meal. He persists in refusing such medicines as are indispensable to his state of body. In such circumstances, his long continuance in life cannot be expected. How devoutly to be wished is the alleviation of his danger and distress! You, dear sir, who know so well the worth of our beloved and admired friend, sympathize with his affliction, and deprecate his loss doubtless in no ordinary degree; you have already most effectually expressed and proved the warmth of your friendship. I cannot think that any thing but your society would have been sufficient, during the infirmity under which his mind has long been oppressed, to have supported him against the shock of Mrs. Unwin's paralytic attack. I am certain that nothing else could have prevailed upon him to undertake the journey to Eartham. You have succeeded where his other friends knew they could not, and where they apprehended no one could. How natural, therefore, nay, how reasonable, is it for them to look to you, as most likely to be instrumental, under the blessing of God, for relief in the present distressing and alarming crisis! It is, indeed, scarcely attemptable to ask any person to take such a journey, and involve himself in so melancholy a scene, with an uncertainty of the desired success; increased as the apparent difficulty is, by dear Mr. Cowper's aversion to all company, and by poor Mrs. Unwin's mental and bodily infirmities. On these accounts Lady Hesketh dares not ask it of you, rejoiced as she would be at your arrival. Am not I, dear sir, a very presumptuous person, who, in the face of all opposition, dare do this? I am imboldened by those two powerful supporters, conscience and experience. Was I at Eartham, I would certainly undertake the labor I presume to recommend, for the bare possibility of restoring Mr. Cowper to himself, to his friends, to the public, and to God. The man who would have hesitated to obey that summons must have had a harder heart than Hayley. Nothing, he says, could be more unseasonable to him in point of personal convenience; he was even forced to borrow money for the journey.2 Cowper, who used to welcome him so After stating this in a letter to his wife, he adds, that he was forced also "to bring Jenny as his attendant, having been recently obliged to send poor Mary to London, because she had fallen into a state of mind little superior to that of the dear unhappy Cowper, to whom indeed she has often compared herself for constitutional melancholy."— Mem. of T. 9. Hayley, p. 83. If Hayley had paid any regard to appearances, he would not have taken either Mary or Jenny for his attendant. But Hayley was a person" of incoherent transactions," to borrow an appropriate expression from Angus M'Diarmid, "Ground Officer on the Earl of Breadalbane's estate of Edinample." |