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TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.*

Olney, Jan. 29, 1769.

My dear Joe,-I have a moment to spare, to tell you that your letter is just come to hand, and to thank you for it. I do assure you, the gentleness and candor of your manner engages my affection to you very much. You answer with mildness to an admonition, which would have provoked many to anger. I have not time to add more, except just to hint that, if I am ever enabled to look forward to death with comfort, which, I thank God, is sometimes the case with me, I do not take my view of it from the top of my own works and deservings, though God is witness that the labor of my life is to keep a conscience void of offence towards Him. He is always formidable to me, but when I see him disarmed of his sting, by having sheathed it in the body of Christ Jesus.

Yours, my dear friend,

W. C.

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. Olney, July 31, 1769. Dear Joe,-Sir Thomas crosses the Alps, and Sir Cowper, for that is his title at Olney, prefers his home to any other spot of earth in the world. Horace, observing this difference of temper in different persons, cried out a good many years ago, in the true spirit of poetry, "How much one man differs from another!" This does not seem a very sublime exclamation in English, but I remember we were taught to admire it in the original. My dear friend, I am obliged to you for your invitation: but being long accustomed to retirement, which I was always fond of, I am now more than ever unwilling to revisit those noisy and crowded scenes, which I never loved, and which I now abhor. I remember you with all the friendship I ever professed, which is as much as ever I entertained for any man. But the strange and uncommon incidents of my life have given an entire new turn to my whole character and conduct, and rendered me incapable of receiving pleasure from the same employments and amusements of which I could readily partake in former days.

I love you and yours, I thank you for your continued remembrance of me, and shall not cease to be their and your

Affectionate friend and servant,

W. C.

Cowper's present retirement was distinguished by many private acts of beneficence, and his exemplary virtue was such that the opulent sometimes delighted to make him their almoner. In his sequestered life at

Private correspondence.

Olney, he ministered abundantly to the wants of the poor, from a fund with which he was supplied by that model of extensive and unostentatious philanthropy, the late John Thornton, Esq., whose name he has immortalized in his Poem on Charity, still honoring his memory by an additional tribute to his virtues in the following descriptive eulogy, written immediately on his decease, in the year 1790.

Poets attempt the noblest task they can,
Praising the Author of all good in man;
And next commemorating worthies lost,
The dead in whom that good abounded most.

Thee therefore of commercial fame, but more
Fam'd for thy probity, from shore to shore-
Thee, Thornton, worthy in some page to shine
As honest and more eloquent than mine,
I mourn; or, since thrice happy thou must be,
The world, no longer thy abode, not thee,
Thee to deplore were grief misspent indeed;
It were to weep that goodness has its meed,
That there is bliss prepared in yonder sky,
And glory for the virtuous when they die.
What pleasure can the miser's fondled hoard
Or spendthrift's prodigal excess afford,
Sweet as the privilege of healing woe
That privilege was thine; Heaven gave thee
Suffer'd by virtue combating below! [means
To illumine with delight the saddest scenes,
Till thy appearance chased the gloom, forlorn
As midnight, and despairing of a morn.
Thou hadst an industry in doing good,
Restless as his who toils and sweats for food.
Av'rice in thee was the desire of weakh
By rust unperishable, or by stealth.
And, if the genuine worth of gold depend
On application to its noblest end,

Thine had a value in the scales of heaven,
And though God made thee of a nature prone
Surpassing all that mine or mint have given:
To distribution, boundless, of thy own;
And still, by motives of religious force,
Impell'd thee more to that heroic course;
Yet was thy liberality discreet,
Nice in its choice, and of a temp'rate heat;
And, though in act unwearied, secret still,
As, in some solitude, the summer rill
And cheers the drooping flowers, unheard, ur
Refreshes, where it winds, the faded green,

seen.

Such was thy charity; no sudden start, After long sleep of passion in the heart, Of close alliance with th' eternal mind; But stedfast principle, and in its kind Traced easily to its true source above, To Him, whose works bespeak his nature, love. Thy bounties all were Christian, and I make This record of thee for the Gospel's sake; That the incredulous themselves may see Its use and power exemplified in thee.

This simple and sublime eulogy was a just tribute of respect to the memory of this dis tinguished philanthropist; and, among the happiest actions of this truly liberal man, we may reckon his furnishing to a character so

reserved and so retired as Cowper the means of enjoying the gratification of active and costly beneficence; a gratification in which the sequestered poet had delighted to indulge, before his acquaintance with Mr. Newton afforded him an opportunity of being concerned in distributing the private, yet extensive, bounty of an opulent and exemplary merchant.

Cowper, before he quitted St. Alban's, assumed the charge of a necessitous child, to extricate him from the perils of being edueated by very profligate parents; he sent him to a school at Huntingdon, transferred him, on his removal, to Olney, and finally set.led him as an apprentice at Oundle, in Northamptonshire.

delight in. Happy are you, my dear friend, in being able to discern the insufficiency of all it can afford to fill and satisfy the desires of an immortal soul. That God who created us for the enjoyment of himself, has determined in mercy that it shall fail us here, in order that the blessed result of our inquiries after happiness in the creature may be a warm pursuit and a close attachment to our true interests, in fellowship and communion with Him, through the name and mediation of a dear Redeemer. I bless his goodness and grace that I have any reason to hope I am a partaker with you in the desire after better things than are to be found in a world polluted with sin, and therefore devoted to destruction. May He enable us both to The warm, benevolent, and cheerful piety consider our present life in its only true of Mr. Newton, induced his friend Cowper to light, as an opportunity put into our hands participate so abundantly in his parochial to glorify him amongst men by a conduct plans and engagements, that the poet's time suited to his word and will. I am miserably and thoughts were more and more engrossed defective in this holy and blessed art, but I by devotional objects. He became a valua- hope there is at the bottom of all my sinful ble auxiliary to a faithful parish priest, su- infirmities a sincere desire to live just so perintended the religious exercises of the long as I may be enabled, in some poor poor, and engaged in an important undertak-measure, to answer the end of my existence ing, to which we shall shortly have occasion to advert.

But in the midst of these pious duties he forgot not his distant friends, and particularly his amiable relation and correspondent, of the Park-house, near Hertford. The following letter to that lady has no date, but it was probably written soon after his establishment at Olney. The remarkable memento in the postscript was undoubtedly introduced to counteract an idle rumor, arising from the eircumstance of his having settled himself under the roof of a female friend, whose age and whose virtues he considered to be suffieient securities to ensure her reputation as well as his own.

TO MRS. COWPER.

in this respect, and then to obey the sum-
mons and attend him in a world where they
who are his servants here shall pay him an
unsinful obedience forever. Your dear mo-
ther is too good to me, and puts a more
charitable construction upon my silence than
the fact will warrant. I am not better em-
ployed than I should be in corresponding
with her. I have that within which hinders
me wretchedly in everything that I ought to
do, and is prone to trifle, and let time and
every good thing run to waste.
I hope
however to write to her soon.

My love and best wishes attend Mr. Cow-
per, and all that inquire after me. May God
be with you, to bless you and to do you
good by all his dispensations; do not forget
me when you are speaking to our best
Friend before his mercy seat.
W. C.

Yours ever,

N. B. I am not married.

My dear Cousin,-I have not been behindhand in reproaching myself with neglect, but desire to take shame to myself for my unprofitableness in this, as well as in all other In the year 1769, the lady to whom the respects. I take the next immediate oppor-preceding letters are addressed was involved tunity, however, of thanking you for yours, in domestic affliction; and the following, and of assuring you that, instead of being which the poet wrote to her on the occasion, surprised at your silence, I rather wonder is so full of genuine piety and true pathos, that you or any of my friends have any room that it would be an injury to his memory to left for so careless and negligent a corresuppress it. spondent in your memories. I am obliged to you for the intelligence you send me of my Lindred, and rejoice to hear of their welfare. He who settles the bounds of our habitations his at length cast our lot at a great distance from each other, but I do not therefore forget their former kindness to me, or cease to be interested in their well being. You live in the centre of a world I know you do not

TO MRS. COWPER.

Olney, Aug. 31, 1769. My dear Cousin,-A letter from your brother Frederick brought me yesterday the most afflicting intelligence that has reached me these many years. I pray to God to comfort you, and to enable you to sustain

this heavy stroke with that resignation to his will which none but Himself can give, and which he gives to none but his own children. How blessed and happy is your lot, my dear friend, beyond the common lot of the greater part of mankind; that you know what it is to draw near to God in prayer, and are acquainted with a throne of grace! You have resources in the infinite love of a dear Redeemer which are withheld from millions: and the promises of God, which are yea and amen in Jesus, are sufficient to answer al your necessities, and to sweeten the bitterest cup which your heavenly Father will ever put into your hand. May He now give you liberty to drink at these wells of salvation, till you are filled with consolation and peace in the midst of trouble. He has said, "When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee."* You have need of such a word as this, and he knows your need of it, and the time of necessity is the time when he will be sure to appear in behalf of those who trust in him. I bear you and yours upon my heart before him night and day, for I never expect to hear of distress which shall call upon me with a louder voice to pray for the sufferer. know the Lord hears me for myself, vile and sinful as I am, and believe, and am sure, that he will hear me for you also. He is the friend of the widow, and the father of the fatherless, even God in his holy habitation; in all our afflictions he is afflicted, and chastens us in mercy. Surely he will sanctify this dispensation to you, do you great and everlasting good by it, make the world appear like dust and vanity in your sight, as it truly is, and open to your view the glories of a better country, where there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor pain; but God shall wipe away all tears from your eyes forever. Oh that comfortable word! "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction;" so that our very sorrows are evidences of our calling, and he chastens us because we are his children.

self; he was hurried to Cambridge by the dangerous illness of his brother, then residing as a fellow at Bene't College. An affection truly fraternal had ever subsisted between the brothers, and the reader will recollect what the poet has said, in one of his letters, concerning their social intercourse while he resided at Huntingdon.

In the first two years of his residence at Olney, he had been repeatedly visited by Mr. John Cowper, and how cordially he returned that kindness and attention the following letter will testify, which was probably written in the chamber of the invalid.

TO MRS. COWPER.

March 5, 1770.

My brother continues much as he was. His case is a very dangerous one-an imposthume of the liver, attended by an asthma and dropsy. The physician has little hope of his recovery, I believe I might say none at all, only, being a friend, he does not formally give him over by ceasing to visit him, lest it should sink his spirits. For my own part, I have no expectation of his recovery, except by a signal interposition of ProviIdence in answer to prayer. His case is clearly beyond the reach of medicine; but I have seen many a sickness healed, where the danger has been equally threatening, by the only Physician of value. I doubt not he will have an interest in your prayers, as he has in the prayers of many. May the Lord incline his ear and give an answer of peace. I know it is good to be afflicted. I trust that you have found it so, and that under the teaching of God's own Spirit we shall both be purified. It is the desire of my soul to seek a better country, where God shall wipe away all tears from the eyes of his people; and where, looking back upon the ways by which he has led us, we shall be filled with everlasting wonder, love, and praise.

My dear cousin, I commit you to the word of his grace, and to the comforts of his Holy Spirit. Your life is needful for your family: may God, in mercy to them, prolong it, and may he preserve you from the dangerous effects which a stroke like this might have upon a frame so tender as yours. I grieve with you, I pray for you; could I do more I would, but God must comfort you.

I must add no more.

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The sickness and death of his learned, pious, and affectionate brother, made a very strong impression on the tender heart and mind of Cowper-an impression so strong, that it induced him to write a narrative of the remarkable circumstances which oecurred at the time. He sent a copy of this narrative to Mr. Newton. The paper is curious in every point of view, and so likely to awaken sentiments of piety in minds where it may be most desirable to have them awakIn the following year the tender feelings ened, that Mr. Newton subsequently commuof Cowper were called forth by family afflic-nicated it to the public.* tion that pressed more immediately on him

Yours, in our dear Lord Jesus,

*Isaiah xliii. 2.

W. C.

† Isaiah xlviii. 10.

Here it is necessary to introduce a brief * For this interesting document, see p. 483

account of the interesting person whom the poet regarded so tenderly. John Cowper was born in 1737. Being designed for the church, he was privately educated by a clergyman, and became eminent for the extent and variety of his erudition in the university of Cambridge. The remarkable change in his views and principles is copiously displayed by his brother, in recording the pious close his life. Bene't College, of which he was a fellow, was his usual residence, and it became the scene of his death, on the 20th of March, 1770. Fraternal affection has exeented a perfectly just and graceful description of his character, both in prose and verse. We transcribe both as highly honorable to these exemplary brethren, who may indeed be said to Irave dwelt together in unity.

"He was a man" (says the poet in speaking of his deceased brother) "of a most candid and ingenuous spirit; his temper remarkably sweet, and in his behavior to me he had always manifested an uncommon affection. His outward conduct, so far as it fell under my notice, or I could learn it by the report of others, was perfectly decent and unblamable. There was nothing vicious in any part of his practice, but, being of a studious, thoughtful turn, he placed his chief delight in the acquisition of learning, and made such proficiency in it, that he had but few rivals in that of a classical kind. He was critically skilled in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages; was beginning to make himself master of the Syriac, and perfectly understood the French and Italian, the latter of which he could speak fluently. Learned however as he was, he was easy and cheerful in his conversation, and entirely free from the stiffness which is generally contracted by men devoted to such pursuits."

"I had a brother once: Peace to the memory of a man of worth! A man of letters, and of manners too! Of manners sweet, as virtue always wears, When gay good humor dresses her in smiles! He grac'd a college, in which order yet Was sacred, and was honored, lov'd, and wept By more than one, themselves conspicuous there!"

Another interesting tribute to his memory will be found in the following letter.

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which he withholds from others, and if he was pleased to withhold all that makes an outward difference between me and the poor mendicant in the street, it would still become me to say, his will be done.

It pleased God to cut short my brother's connexions and expectations here, yet not without giving him lively and glorious views of a better happiness than any he could propose to himself in such a world as this. Notwithstanding his great learning, (for he was one of the chief men in the university in that respect,) he was candid and sincere in his inquiries after truth. Though he could not come into my sentiments when I first acquainted him with them, nor, in the many conversations which I afterward had with him upon the subject, could he be brought to acquiesce in them as scriptural and true, yet I had no sooner left St. Alban's than he began to study, with the deepest attention, those points in which we differed, and to furnish himself with the best writers upon them. His mind was kept open to conviction for five years, during all which time he labored in this pursuit with unwearied diligence, as leisure and opportunity were afforded. Amongst his dying words were these: "Brother, I thought you wrong, yet wanted to believe as you did. I found myself not able to believe, yet always thought I should be one day brought to do so." From the study of books he was brought, upon his deathbed, to the study of himself, and there learned to renounce his righteousness and his own most amiable character, and to submit himself to the righteousness which is of God by faith. With these views he was desirous of death, Satisfied of his interest in the blessing purchased by the blood of Christ, he prayed for death with earnestness, felt the approach of it with joy, and died in peace.

Yours, my dear friend,

W. C.

It is this simple yet firm reliance on the merits of the Saviour, and on his atoning blood and righteousness, that can alone impart true peace to the soul. Such was the faith of patriarchs, prophets and apostles; and such will be the faith of all who are taught of God. Works do not go before, but follow after; they are not the cause, but the effect; the fruits of faith, and indispensable to glorify God, to attest the power and reality of divine grace, and to determine the measure of our everlasting reward.

sion are still further disclosed in the followCowper's feelings on this impressive occaing letter.

TO MRS. COWPER.

Olney, June 7, 1770.

My dear Cousin,—I am obliged to you for

sometimes thinking of an unseen friend, and be stowing 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 in it cause of sorrow that I had lost so near a relation, and one so deserveely 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 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 began 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 dispel 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 intrust his secret counsels to a vagrant, who did not 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 inquiry after her. She is well, I thank God, as usual, and sends her respects to you. Her son is in the ministry, and has the living of 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. W. C.

ative afford a pleasing insight into the reThe letters of the poet to this amiable relcesses of his pious and sympathizing mind; and, if they have awakened the interest which they are so calculated to excite, the reader will feel concerned to find a chasm of ten years in this valuable correspondence; the more so as it was chiefly occasioned by a cause which it will soon be our painful office to detail in the course of the ensuing passages. In the autumn of the year in which he sustained the loss of his excellent brother, he wrote the following letter to Mr. Hill.

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.*

Olney, Sept. 25, 1770. Dear Joe,-I have not done conversing

letters of Cowper to Mr. Hill, as well as a preceding one * It is impossible to read this and the four following in page 49, and not to remark their altered tone and diminished cordiality of feeling. The forgetfulness of former ties and pursuits is often, we know, made a subject of reproach against religious characters. How then is Cowper to be vindicated? Does religion pervert the and exalts them; but it changes their current, and fixes feelings? We believe, on the contrary, that it purifies them on higher and nobler objects. Cowper's mind, it must be remembered, had experienced a great moral revolution, which had imparted a new and powerful impression to his views and principles. In this state of things, Mr. Hill (lamenting possibly the change) solicits ciations. But the relish for these enjoyments was gone; they had lost their power to charm and captivate. "I am now more than ever," says Cowper, unwilling to revisit those noisy and crowded scenes, which I never loved, and which I now abhor; the incidents of my life have given an entire new turn to my whole character and conduct, and rendered me incapable of receiving pleasure from the same employments and amusements of which I could readily partake in former days." (See page 50.) Hill reiterates the invitation, and Cowper his refusal. Thus one party was advancing in spirituality, while the other remained stationary. The bond was therefore necessarily weakened, because identity of feeling must ever consti tute the basis of all human friendships and intercourse; and the mind that has received a heavenly impulse canobjects. It cannot ascend and descend at the same mo not return with its former ardor to the pursuit of earthly ment. Such, however, was the real worth and honesty of Mr. Hill, that their friendship still survived, and a me morial of it is recorded in lines familiar to every reader

his return to London, and to his former habits and asso

of Cowper.

"An honest man, close button'd to the chin. Broad-cloth without, and a warm heart within."

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