LETTERS TO NEWTON.

259

In connexion with these letters to Newton in regard to his visit, how beautiful are the stanzas of poetry in which Cowper had sent him an invitation in the Spring. The piece closes with these three verses :

"Old Winter, halting o'er the mead,

Bids me and Mary mourn;

But lovely Spring peeps o'er his head,
And whispers your return.

"Then April, with her sister May,
Shall chase him from the bowers,
And weave fresh garlands every day,
To crown the smiling hours.

"And if a tear that speaks regret
Of happier times appear,

A glimpse of joy that we have met
Shall shine, and dry the tear."

These letters are still more striking, from the fact that even while writing them, Cowper was in the enjoyment of good health, and at the date of the last more than usually happy and cheerful in the family circle, Lady Hesketh being at that time a member of it. Cowper apologises for the "dismal strain" in which he has written, and then says: "Adieu, my dear friend. We are well; and notwithstanding all that I have said, I am myself as cheerful as usual. Lady Hesketh is here, and in her company even I, except now and then for a moment, forget my sorrows."

Certainly it cannot be the gloom of despair, when the presence of a beloved friend can so effectually dispel the sorrow as to make it forgotten for days together, except now and then for a moment. Cowper had acquired, in the long comparative loneliness of his state, the habit of

260

DARKENING HOURS.

brooding over his gloom, and if a cheerful, affectionate, and happy spirit like Lady Hesketh's could always have been with him, and especially to separate him from the charge of a perpetual anxious watchfulness over the declining health and faculties of his dear Mary, the result would have been very different. His mind and heart were in no condition to endure "the dreadful post of observation darkening every hour;" and it was a terrible complication of inward gloom and images of despair, with such a reality of external distress answering to them, when the deplorable condition of his dearest friend came to be the subject of incessant care and contemplation.

HARASSING NIGHT-VISIONS.

261

CHAPTER XXV.

The year 1791-Friendship between Hayley and Cowper-Hayley's visit to Weston, and Cowper's to Eartham-Illness of Mrs Unwin -Engagement on Milton.

IN 1791 the interesting friendship between Hayley and Cowper commenced, with a frequent and affectionate correspondence by letter. Hayley then visited Cowper at Weston, and during the month of his visit, was enabled to calm and comfort his friend beneath the shock which the whole family sustained in an attack of paralysis with which Mrs Unwin was most suddenly and unexpectedly afflicted. Electricity was found to be a successful remedy, and she gradually recovered, though very feeble still when Hayley left them. At this time Hayley was forty-seven years of age, Cowper sixty-one, and Mrs Unwin nearly seventy. But from this period Cowper's mental malady seems to deepen and darken, while the intervals of relief and cheerfulness grow more infrequent and transient. His visit to Hayley at Eartham was a season of partial enjoyment, but Mrs Unwin's increasing illness was a cause of deep dejection and of ceaseless care. The gloom and distress of Cowper's mind were sometimes insupportable. Despair seemed not only to have involved his heart, but threat

262

HARASSING NIGHT-VISIONS.

ened even a paralysis of his intellect. The dread delusion that his soul had been rejected of God still adhered to him, after his recovery from the attack in 1787, and his system was more than ever subject to nervous fever and disturbance. In his sleep he was racked with distressing dreams, and scared with visions, so that his nights were dreadful. "Distressed and full of despair, the day hardly ever comes in which I do not utter a wish that I had never been born. And the night is become so habitually a season of dread to me that I never lie down on my bed with comfort, and am in this respect a greater sufferer than Job, who, concerning his hours of rest, could hope at least, though he was disappointed; but in my case, to go to sleep is to throw myself into the mouth of my enemy."

In another letter he says, "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." Mrs Unwin, too, was in a deplorable condition, which itself overtasked Cowper's sympathy and care. paralytic illnesses were gradually rendering her own mind gloomy and helpless, so that the combination of distresses in their condition was deplorably affecting. "Like myself," wrote Cowper, "she is 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

Her

IMPRESSIONS IN DREAMS.

263

despondence, weary of it before it begins, and longing for the return of night. Thus it is with us both. If I endeavour 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.'

This situation was so gloomily and deplorably painful, that, as Cowper himself said, it seemed miraculous in his own eyes, that always occupied as he was in the contemplation of the most distressing subjects, he was not absolutely incapacitated for the common offices of life. "My purpose," said he, "is to continue such prayer as I can make, although with all this reason to conclude that it is not accepted, and though I have been more than once forbidden, in my own apprehension, by Him to whom it is addressed." At another time he says, "Neither waking nor sleeping have I any communications from God, but am perfectly a withered tree, fruitless and leafless. A consciousness that He exists, that once He favoured me, but that I have offended to the forfeiture of all such mercies, is ever present with me; and of such thoughts consist the whole of my religious experiences."

Again, "I feel in the mean time everything that denotes a man an outcast and a reprobate. I dream in the night that God has rejected me finally, and that all promises and all answers to prayers made for me are mere delusions. I wake under a strong and clear conviction that these communications are from God, and in the course of the day nothing occurs to invalidate that persuasion. As I have said before, there is a mystery in this matter that I am not able to explain. I believe myself the only instance