of health, concerning the regimen most proper for the disease of melancholy. Virtuous and faithful Heberden, whose skill Attempts no task it cannot well fulfil, Gives melancholy up to nature's care, And sends the patient into purer air. The frequent change of place, and the magnificence of marine scenery, produced at times a little relief to his depressive sensations. On the 7th 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, Its brisker and its graver strains fall short: 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 honour 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 proceedM VOL. 4. ed 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. DEAR COUSIN, You describe, delightful scenes, but you describe them to one, who, if he even saw them, could receive no delight from them: who has a faint recollection, and so faint, as to be like an almost forgotten dream, that once he was susceptible of pleasure from such causes. The country that you have had in prospect, has been always famed for its beauties; but the wretch who can derive no gratification from a view of nature, even under the disadvantage of her most ordinary dress, will have no eyes to admire her in any. In one day, in one minute, I should rather have said, she became an universal blank to me, and though from a different cause, yet with an effect as difficult to remove, as blindness itself. Mundsley, October 13, 1798. On his return from Mundsley to Dereham, in an evening towards the end of October, Cowper, with Miss Perowne, and Mr. Johson, was overturned in a post chaise-He discovered no terror on the occasion, and escaped without injury from the accident. In December he received a visit from his highly esteemed friend, Sir John Throckmorton, but his malady was at that time so oppressive, that it rendered him almost insensible to the kind solicitude of friendship. He still continued to exercise the powers of his astonishing mind; upon his finishing the revisal of his Homer, in March 1799, Mr. Johnson endeavoured in the gentlest manner to lead him into new literary occupation. For this purpose on the eleventh of March he laid before him the paper containing the commencment of his poem on The Four Ages. Cowper altered a few lines; he also added a few, but soon observed to his kind attendant-" That it was too great a work for him to attempt in his present "situation." At supper Mr. Johnson suggested to him several literary projects, that he might execute more easily. He replied-" That he had just thought of "six Latin verses, and if he could compose any thing "it must be in pursuing that composition." The next worning he wrote the six verses he had mentioned, and added a few more, entitling the poem, Montes Glaciales. It proved a versification of a circumstance recorded in a news-paper, which had been read to him |