Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/128

 58 NOTES BY THE WAY.

shutter in the bedroom occupied by Cowper may still be seen faintly pencilled :

Farewell, dear scene, for ever closed to me ;

Oh ! for what sorrows must I now exchange you ?

Contributions I have taken advantage of the Olney celebration to make a

on Cowper in selection from the contributions on Cowper in Notes and Queries, Note* and which I hope may prove acceptable. The memoir in the ' Dic- yve ies. tionary of National Biography ' contains many references to Notes and Queries and a complete bibliography. This includes the Aldine Canon Ben- edition, edited by John Bruce, who, before publishing, sought the ham's Memoir assistance of our pages. Mention is also made of the memoir by in Globe that old friend of Notes and Queries, the Rev. Canon Benham, on - prefixed to the Globe edition. This, up to the time the article was written in 1887, included all the latest information. In 1892 appeared Thomas Wright's ' Life of Cowper,' which contained several new and important facts. The rpfe Athenaeum in its review of Mr. Wright's book on the 3rd

��of November > 1892 > states that "Cowper's secret, as it has been

��Wright's called, has not been elucidated so clearly as Mr. Wright may book. imagine. Many who have read about Cowper, and all who have intently followed his career, have been somewhat puzzled with regard to the delusion which marred and embittered it." Prof. Gold win Smith in his monograph on Cowper in the " English Men of Letters " considers the truth as to Cowper's malady to be that " it was simple hypochondria, having its source in delicacy of constitution and weakness of digestion, combined with the influence of melancholy surroundings."

Looking carefully through all the information we now possess,

it would seem to be a matter of deep thankfulness that the memory

Cowper's ^ * ne poet of the Christian revival is not clouded by a catastrophe.

sensitive A child of highly sensitive temperament, Cowper was, at the early

temperament, age of six just after the death of his devoted mother, when he

lost that

Constant flow of love that knew no fall

sent to a large boarding school of older and rougher boys, where, although he experienced most cruel treatment, he was allowed to remain two years, and was only removed on account of a serious inflammation in the eyes. At the age of ten he was entered to Westminster, where, according to his own forcible expression, " he dared not raise his eye above the shoe-buckle of the elder boys." When the boy was only eleven his father gave him a treatise in favour of suicide, and requested him to pronounce his opinion upon it. Canon Benham well remarks on this, " It does not seem a high proof of parental wisdom."

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