Cowper | Page 9

the Major contributing,
in spite of the rather trying incident of the nomination. His brother was
kind and did a brother's duty, but there does not seem to have been
much sympathy between them; John Cowper did not become a convert
to Evangelical doctrine till he was near his end, and he was incapable
of sharing William's spiritual emotions. Of his brilliant companions, the
Bonnell Thorntons and the Colmans, the quondam members of the
Nonsense Club, he heard no more, till he had himself become famous.
But he still had a staunch friend in a less brilliant member of the Club,
Joseph Hill, the lawyer, evidently a man who united strong sense and
depth of character with literary tastes and love of fun, and who was
throughout Cowper's life his Mentor in matters of business, with regard
to which he was himself a child. He had brought with him from the
asylum at St. Albans the servant who had attended him there, and who
had been drawn by the singular talisman of personal attraction which
partly made up to this frail and helpless being for his entire lack of
force. He had also brought from the same place an outcast boy whose
case bad excited his interest, and for whom he afterwards provided by
putting him to a trade. The maintenance of these two retainers was
expensive and led to grumbling among the subscribers to the family
subsidy, the Major especially threatening to withdraw his contribution.
While the matter was in agitation, Cowper received an anonymous
letter couched in the kindest terms, bidding him not distress himself,
for that whatever deduction from his income might be made, the loss
would be supplied by one who loved him tenderly and approved his
conduct. In a letter to Lady Hesketh, he says that he wishes he knew
who dictated this letter, and that he had seen not long before a style
excessively like it. He can scarcely have failed to guess that it came
from Theodora.
It is due to Cowper to say that he accepts the assistance of his relatives
and all acts of kindness done to him with sweet and becoming
thankfulness; and that whatever dark fancies he may have had about his

religious state, when the evil spirit was upon him, he always speaks
with contentment and cheerfulness of his earthly lot. Nothing splenetic,
no element of suspicions and irritable self-love, entered into the
composition of his character.
On his release from the asylum he was taken in hand by his brother
John, who first tried to find lodgings for him at or near Cambridge, and
failing in this, placed him at Huntingdon, within a long ride, so that
William becoming a horseman for the purpose, the brothers could meet
once a week. Huntingdon was a quiet little town with less than two
thousand inhabitants, in a dull country, the best part of which was the
Ouse, especially to Cowper, who was fond of bathing. Life there, as in
other English country towns in those days, and indeed till railroads
made people everywhere too restless and migratory for companionship
or even for acquaintance, was sociable in an unrefined way. There were
assemblies, dances, races, card-parties, and a bowling-green, at which
the little world met and enjoyed itself. From these the new convert, in
his spiritual ecstasy, of course turned away as mere modes of
murdering time. Three families received him with civility, two of them
with cordiality; but the chief acquaintances he made were with "odd
scrambling fellows like himself;" an eccentric water-drinker and
vegetarian who was to be met by early risers and walkers every
morning at six o'clock by his favourite spring; a char-parson, of the
class common in those days of sinecurism and non-residence, who
walked sixteen miles every Sunday to serve two churches, besides
reading daily prayers at Huntingdon, and who regaled his friend with
ale brewed by his own hands. In his attached servant the recluse
boasted that he had a friend; a friend he might have, but hardly a
companion.
For the first days and even weeks, however, Huntingdon seemed a
paradise. The heart of its new inhabitant was full of the unspeakable
happiness that comes with calm after storm, with health after the most
terrible of maladies, with repose after the burning fever of the brain.
When first he went to church he was in a spiritual ecstasy; it was with
difficulty that he restrained his emotions, though his voice was silent,
being stopped by the intensity of his feelings, his heart within him sang
for joy; and when the Gospel for the day was read, the sound of it was
more than he could well bear. This brightness of his mind

communicated itself to all the objects round him, to the sluggish waters