I cannot think myself authorized to mention the names of all who did honour to Cowper, and to themselves, on this occasion, but I trust the Bishop of Landaff will forgive me, if my sentiments of personal regard towards him, induce me to take an affectionate liberty with his name, and to gratify myself by recording, in these Pages, a very pleasing example of his liberal attention to the interests of humanity. He endeavoured evangelically to chear, and invigorate the mind of Cowper, but the depression of that disordered mind was the effect of bodily disorder so obstinate, that it received not the slightest relief, from what, in a season of corporeal health, would have afforded the most animated gratification to this interesting Invalide. The pressure of his malady had now made him utterly deaf to the most honorable praise. He had long discontinued the revisal of his Homer, but by the entreaty of his young Kinsman he was persuaded to resume it in September 1797, and he persevered in it, oppressed as he was by indisposition, till March 1799.-On Friday evening, the eighth of that month, he completed his revisal of the Odyssey, and the next morning wrote part of a new Preface. To watch over the disordered health of afflicted genius, and to to lead a powerful, but oppressed spirit, by gentle encouragement, to exert itself in salutary occupation, is an office that requires a very rare union of tenderness, intelligence, and fortitude. To contemplate, and minister to a great mind in a state, that borders on mental desolation, is like surveying, in the midst of a desert, the tottering ruins of palaces and temples, where the faculties of the spectator are almost absorbed in wonder, and regret, and where every step is taken with awful apprehension. It seemed as if Providence had expressly formed the young Kinsman of Cowper to prove exactly such a guardian to his declining years, as the peculiar exigencies of his situation required. I never saw the human being, that could, I think, have sustained the delicate, and arduous office (in which the inexhaustible virtues of Mr. Johnson persevered to the last) through a period so long, with an equal portion of unvaried tenderness, and unshaken fidelity. A man, who wanted sensibility, would have renounced the duty; and a man, endowed with a particle too much of that valuable, though perilous, quality, must have felt his own health utterly undermined by an excess of sympathy with the sufferings perpetually in his sight. Mr. Johnson has completely discharged perhaps the most trying of human duties; and I trust he will forgive me for this public declaration, that, in his mode of discharging it, he has merited the most cordial esteem from all, who love the memory of Cowper. Even a stranger may consider it as striking proof of his tender tender dexterity in soothing and guiding the afflicted Poet, that he was able to engage him steadily to pursue and finish the revisal and correction of his Homer, during a long period of bodily and mental sufferings, when his troubled mind recoiled from all intercourse with his most intimate friends, and laboured under a morbid abhorrence of all chearful exertion. But in deploring the calamity of my Friend, and describing the merit of his affectionate Attendant, I must not forget that it is still incumbent on me, as a faithful Biographer, to notice a few circumstances in the dark and distressful years that Cowper had yet to linger on earth. In the Summer of 1798, Mr. Johnson was induced to vary his plan of remaining for some months in the marine village of Mundsley, and thought it more eligible for the Invalide to make frequent visits from Dereham to the coast, passing a week at a time by the sea-side. Cowper, in his Poem on Retirement, seems to inform us what his own sentiments were in a season of health, concerning the regimen most proper for the disease of melancholy. "Virtuous and faithful Heberden, whose skill The frequent change of place, and the magnificence of marine VOL. II. E E scenery scenery, produced at times a little relief to his depressive sensations. On the seventh of June 1798, he surveyed the Light-house at Happisburgh, and expressed some pleasure on beholding, through a telescope, several ships at a distance. Yet in his usual walk with Mr. Johnson by the sea-side, he exemplified but too forcibly his own affecting description of melancholy silence, "That silent tongue "Could give advice, could censure, or commend, 66 Renounc'd alike its office, and its sport, "Its brisker and its graver strains fall short: 66 Both fail beneath a Fever's secret sway, "And like a summer brook, are past away." But this description is applicable only in the more oppressive preceding years, for of the Summer 1798 Mr. Johnson says, "We had no longer air and exercise alone, but exercise and Homer hand in hand." On the twenty-fourth of July Cowper had the honor of a visit from a Lady, for whom he had long entertained affectionate respect, the Dowager Lady Spencer-and it was rather remarkable, that on the very morning she called upon him, he happened to have begun his revisal of the Odyssey, which he had originally inscribed to her. Such an incident in a happier season would have produced a very enlivening effect on his spirits; but, in his present state, it had not even the power to lead him into any free conversation with his amiable visitor. The only amusement that he appeared to admit without reluctance, was the reading of Mr. Johnson, who, indefatigable in the supply of such amusement, had exhausted an immense collection of Novels; and at this period began reading to the Poet his own Works. To these he listened also in silence, and heard all his Poems recited in order, till the Reader arrived at the History of John Gilpin, which he begged not to hear. Mr. Johnson proceeded to his Manuscript Poems :-To these he willingly listened, but made not a single remark on any. In October 1798, the pressure of his melancholy seemed to be mitigated in some little degree, for he exerted himself so far as to write, without solicitation, to Lady Hesketh; and I insert passages of this Letter, because, gloomy as it is, it describes in a most interesting manner, the sudden attack of his malady, and tends to confirm an opinion that his mental disorder arose from a scorbutic habit, which, when his perspiration was obstructed, occasioned an unsearchable obstruction in the finer parts of his frame. Such a cause would produce, I apprehend, an effect exactly like what my suffering Friend describes in this affecting Letter. you DEAR COUSIN, You describe delightful scenes, but decribe them to one who, if he even saw them, could receive |