LETTER XXI.

To Mrs. COWPER, Holles-Street Cavendish-Square.

DEAR COUSIN,

Olney, June 7, 1770.

I am obliged to you for sometimes thinking of an unseen Friend, and bestowing a Letter upon me. It gives me pleasure to hear from you, especially to find that our gracious Lord enables you to weather out the storms you meet with, and to cast anchor within the veil.

You judge rightly of the manner, in which I have been affected by the Lord's late dispensation towards my Brother. I found în it cause of sorrow, that I lost so near a relation, and one so deservedly dear to me, and that he left me just when our sentiments upon the most interesting subject became the same: But much more cause of joy, that it pleased God to give me clear and evident proof, that he had changed his heart, and adopted him into the number of his children. For this I hold myself peculiarly bound to thank him, because he might have done all, that he was pleased to do for him, and yet have afforded him neither strength nor opportunity to declare it. I doubt not that he enlightens the understandings, and works a gracious change in the hearts of many in their last moments, whose surrounding friends are not made acquainted with it.

He told me that from the time he was first ordained, he began to be dissatisfied with his religious opinions, and to suspect that

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there were greater things concealed in the Bible, than were generally believed, or allowed to be there. From the time when I first visited him after my release from St. Alban's, he began to read upon the subject. It was at that time I informed him of the views of divine truth, which I had received in that school of affliction. He laid what I said to heart, and begun to furnish himself with the best writers upon the controverted points, whose works he read with great diligence and attention, comparing them all the while with the Scripture. None ever truly and ingenuously sought the truth, but they found it. A spirit of earnest inquiry is the gift of God, who never says to any, seek ye my face in vain. Accordingly about ten days before his death, it pleased the Lord to dispell all his doubts, to reveal in his heart the knowledge of the Saviour, and to give him firm and unshaken peace in the belief of his ability and willingness to save. As to the affair of the Fortune-teller he never mentioned it to me, nor was there any such paper found as you mention. I looked over all his papers before I left the place, and had there been such a one, must have discovered it. I have heard the report from other quarters, but no other particulars than that the woman foretold him when he should die. I suppose there may be some truth in the matter, but whatever he might think of it before his knowledge of the truth, and however extraordinary her predictions might really be, I am satisfied that he had then received far other views of the wisdom and majesty of God, than to suppose that he would entrust his secret counsels to a vagrant, who did not M 2

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mean I suppose, to be understood to have received her intelligence from the Fountain of Light, but thought herself sufficiently honored by any, who would give her credit for a secret intercourse of this kind with the Prince of Darkness.

Mrs. Unwin is much obliged to you for your kind enquiry after her. She is well, I thank God, as usual, and sends her reHer Son is in the Ministry, and has the Living of

spects to you. Stock, in Essex.

We were last week alarmed with an account of his being dangerously ill; Mrs. Unwin went to see him, and in a few days left him out of danger.

The Letters of the afflicted Poet to this amiable and sympathetic Relation have already afforded to my Reader an insight into the pure recesses of Cowper's wonderful mind at some remarkable periods of his life, and if my Reader's opinion of these Letters is consonant to my own, he will feel concerned, as I do, to find a chasm of ten years in this valuable correspondence; the more so, as it was chiefly occasioned by a new, a long, and severe visitation of that mental malady, which periodically involved in calamitous oppression, the superior faculties of this interesting Sufferer. His extreme depression seems not to have recurred immediately on the shock of his Brother's death. In the autumn of the year in which he sustained that affecting loss, he wrote the following serious, but animated Letter to Mr. Hill.

LETTER XXII.

DEAR JOE,

LETTER XXII.

To JOSEPH HILL, Esqr.

Sept. 25, 1770.

I have not done conversing with terrestial objects, though I should be happy were I able to hold more continual converse with a Friend above the skies. He has my heart, but he allows a corner in it for all who shew me kindness, and therefore one for you. The storm of 63 made a wreck of the friendships I had contracted in the course of many years, yours excepted, which has survived the tempest.

I thank you for your repeated invitation. Singular thanks are due to you for so singular an instance of your regard. I could not leave Olney unless in a case of absolute necessity, without much inconvenience to myself and others.

In his sequestered life he seems to have been much consoled and entertained by the society of his pious friend Mr. Newton, in whose religious pursuits he appears to have taken an active part by the composition of sixty-eight Hymns. Mr. Newton wished and expected him to have contributed a much larger number, as he has declared in the Preface to that collection of Hymns, which contains these devotional effusions of Cowper, distinguished by the

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initial letter of his name.

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The Volume composed for the inhabi

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tants of Olney was the joint production of the Divine and the Poet, and intended, as the former expressly says in his Preface, "Monument to perpetuate the remembrance of an intimate and endeared Friendship-With this pleasing view (continues Mr. Newton) I entered upon my part, which would have been smaller "than it is, and the book would have appeared much sooner, and “in a very different form, if the wise, tho' mysterious Providence "of God had not seen fit to cross my wishes. We had not pro"ceeded far upon our proposed plan, before my dear Friend was “prevented by a long and affecting indisposition from affording me 66 any farther assistance."-The severe illness of the Poet, to which these expressions relate began in 1773, and extended beyond the date of the Preface (from which they are quoted) February 15, 1779.

These socical labours of the Poet with an exemplary Man of God, for the purpose of promoting simple piety, among the lower classes of the people, must have been delightful in a high degree to the benevolent heart of Cowper, and I am persuaded he alludes to his own feelings on this subject, in the following passage from his Poem on Conversation.

True Bliss, if Man may reach it, is compos'd

Of hearts in union mutually disclos'd;

And, farewell else all hope of pure delight!

Those hearts should be reclaim'd, renew'd, upright:

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