Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/231

Rh far as earthly matters were involved, it was a life of very small things; its mundane interests were few and trivial, and sprang for the most part out of pursuits that belong usually either to the domain of childhood or of invalidism. This is not said disparagingly, but with due regard to the fact that for the larger part of his career Cowper's condition was such that his attention had to be distracted and his mind amused, as is the case with children or invalids. In his later years the composition of verses became one mode of such diversion, and was undertaken practically as a sanitary measure; and thus his larger interests, involving conceptions of the eternal world and sympathy with his fellow-men, were extended to his hours of recreation. These larger interests, as they must be called, were from the first peculiar. When he was not attending to his hares or his vegetables, or versifying, or taking rural walks, he was engaged in devotional exercises of one kind or another. In 1766, for example, every day the time from breakfast until eleven o'clock was spent in reading the Bible or sermons, or in religious conversation; the hour from eleven to twelve was passed in church at service; in the course of