years, during all which time he laboured in this pursuit with unwearied diligence, as leifure and opportunity were afforded. Amongst his dying words were thefe, "Brother, I thought you wrong, yet wanted to believe as you did. I found myself not able to believe, yet always thought I fhould one day be brought to do fo." From the ftudy of books, he was brought upon his death-bed, to the ftudy of himself, and there learnt to renounce his righteousness, and his own moft amiable character, and to fubmit himself to the righteousness which is of God by faith. With thefe views he was defirous of death. Satisfied of his intereft in the bleffing purchased by the blood of Chrift, he prayed for death with earnestness, felt the approaches of it with joy, and died in peace. Yours, my dear friend, WM. COWPER. The exquifite fenfibility of Cowper could not fail to fuffer deeply on the lofs of fuch a brother; but it is the peculiar bleffing of a religious turn of mind, that it serves as an antidote against the corrofive influence of forrow. Devotion, if it had no other beneficial effect on the human character, would be still inestimable to man, as a medicine for the anguish he feels, in lofing the objects of his affection. How far it proved fo in the prefent cafe, the reader will be enabled to judge by a letter, in which Cowper defcribes his fenfations on this awful event to one of his favourite correspondents. LETTER XXII. To Mrs. COWPER, Holles-Street, Cavendifh-Square. DEAR COUSIN, OLNEY, June 7, 1770. I AM obliged to you for fometimes thinking of an unfeen friend, and beftowing 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 forms 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 difpenfation towards my brother. I found in it caufe of forrow, that I loft fo near a relation, and one so deservedly dear to me, and that he left me just when our fentiments upon the most interesting subject became the fame : 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, whofe furrounding friends are not made acquainted with it. He told me that from the time he was first ordained, he began to be diffatisfied with his religious opinions, and to fufpect 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 fchool of affliction. He laid what I faid 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 Scriptures. None ever truly and ingenuously fought the truth, but they found it. A fpirit of earnest inquiry is the gift of God, who never fays to any, feek ye my face in vain. Accordingly about ten days before his death, it pleafed the Lord to difpel all his doubts, to reveal in his heart the knowledge of the Saviour, and to give him firm and unfhaken peace in the belief of his ability and willingnefs to fave. 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 fuch 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 fhould die. I fuppofe there may be fome 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 fatisfied he had then received far other views of the wisdom and majefty of God, than to fuppofe that he would entrust his fecret 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 fufficiently honoured by any, who would give her credit for a fecret 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 ufual, and fends her refpects to you. Her fon is in the ministry, and has the Living of Stock, in Effex. We were last week alarmed with an account of his being dangerously ill; Mrs. Unwin went to fee him, and in a few days left him out of danger. The letters of the afflicted Poet to this amiable and fympathetic relation have already afforded to my reader an infight into the pure receffes of Cowper's wonderful mind at fome remarkable periods of his life, and if my reader's opinion of these letters is confonant to my own, he will feel concerned, as I do, to find a chaẩm of ten years in this valuable correfpondence; the more fo as it was chiefly occafioned by a new, a long, and fevere vifitation of that mental malady, which periodically involved in calamitous oppreffion, the fuperior faculties of this interesting fufferer. His extreme depreffion feems not to have recurred immediately on the fhock of his brother's death. In the autumn of the year in which he sustained that affecting lofs, he wrote the following serious, but animated letter to Mr. Hill. DEAR JOE, LETTER XXII. To JOSEPH HILL, Efq. Sept. 25, 1770. I HAVE not done converfing with terrestrial objects, though I fhould be happy were I able to hold more continual converfe with a Friend above the fkies. He has my heart, but he allows a corner in it for all who fhew me kindness, and therefore one for you. The ftorm of '63 made a wreck of the friendships I had contracted in the course of many years, yours excepted, which has furvived the tempeft. I thank you for your repeated invitation. Singular thanks are due to you for fo fingular an instance of your regard. I could not leave Olney unless in a cafe of abfolute neceffity, without much inconvenience to myself and others. In his fequeftered life he feems to have been much confoled and entertained by the fociety of his pious friend Mr. Newton, in whofe religious purfuits he appears to have taken an active part by the composition of fixty-eight Hymns. Mr. Newton wifhed and expected him to have contributed a much larger number, as he has declared in the preface to that collection of Hymns, which contains thefe devotional effufions of Cowper, dif tinguished by the initial letter of his name. The volume compofed for the inhabitants of Olney was the joint production of the Divine and the Poet, and intended, as the former exprefsly fays in his preface, " as a Monument to perpetuate the remembrance of an intimate and endeared friendship. With this pleafing view (continues Mr. Newton) I entered upon my part, which would have been maller than it is, and the book would have appeared much fooner, and in a very different form, if the wife, though mysterious Providence of God had not feen fit to cross my wishes. We had not proceeded far upon our propofed plan, before my dear friend was prevented by a long and affecting indifpofition from affording me any further affistance."-The fevere illness of the Poet, to which thefe expreffions relate, began in 1773, and extended beyond the date of the preface (from which they are quoted) February 15, 1779. Thefe focial labours of the Poet with an exemplary man of God, for the purpose of promoting fimple piety, among the lower claffes of people, muft have been delightful in a high degree to the benevolent heart of Cowper, and I am perfuaded he alludes to his own feelings on this subject, in the following paffage from his Poem on Converfation. True blifs, if man may reach it, is compos'd And, farewel elfe all hope of pure delight! Those hearts should be reclaim'd, renew'd, upright: But fouls, that carry on a bleft exchange |