صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

THEORETIC SPECULATION.

THE attention of philosophers and naturalists was at a certain period long and ardently excited by a number of fossil skeletons discovered in a marsh on the banks of the Ohio. These were considered at the time, as bones of elephants, but afterwards proved by an eminent and indefatigable anatomist, not to be remains of that animal, but of a species of the carnivorous kind, more enormous in bulk, and now wholly extinct or unknown.

The subject has been scientifically investigated by an ingenious German and well-informed mineralogist, Mr. Raspe, who has resided long in England; he controverts some of the positions of the learned professor, and others he apparently confirms: but the difficulty of accounting for animals, no longer existing in countries where they seem at a certain time to have been numerous, still remains unexplained; it has escaped the sagacity of Gmelin, the genius of Buffon, and the minute research of Daubenton.

A modern theorist of a lively and eccentric cast has, in his own opinion, easily solved the mystery, by supposing that the bones in question are the remains of certain angelic beings, the original tenants of this our terrestrial globe in its primitive state; till for the transgressions both were involved in ruin; after which, this shattered planet was refitted for the accommodation of its present inhabitants !!!

But romance out of the question, is it not possible to account for such an assemblage of creatures, in a country where they no longer exist, by supposing that at some remote period, the place in which they were found, might have laid in the tract of a conqueror, unknown to the historians of Europe; that it might have been the scene of a battle, and the animals in question, part of the baggage train, destroyed by slaughter or disease, and left in the hurry of flight, or of pursuit, to puzzle and set at defiance generations then unborn: chronology so remote is a terra incognita, to the philosopher as well as the historian.

REFORM.

"IT is better," says a modern writer," that refor mation should be difficult, or even unattainable, than that laws should be uncertain, and the enjoyment of life and property precarious."

Being asked, if reform was never to be risked? he

almost confessed as much, for a reason, personal, and not at all applicable to the subject," because the promoters of it, will, in every instance, be sacrificed, as the bulk of mankind always think enough has not been done.” Another of his reasons for delay is, "that abuse should become decrepid, hoary, and in its dotage, before you attack it; any institution, law, or custom, generally despised and ridiculed, however colossal, must, in a given time, tumble to the ground unsupported; its removal then will not endanger public tranquillity.

"I consider every evil as trifling, when compared to rouzing the vengeance, and exciting the energies of that omnipotent sovereign, the people; in a word, 1 prefer the leprosy, the itch, and a thousand little nasty teazing diseases, which fret a man dismally, I confess, to the plague, to pestilence, and famine. I would rather pay a government of my own countrymen, ten, or even twenty per cent, of all I possess, than be stripped by a Gallic pro-consul."

THE POET COWPER.

FROM CECIL'S MEMOIRS OF THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

THERE has gone forth an unfounded report, that the deplorable melancholy of Cowper, was, in part, derived from his residence and connections at Olney. The fact, however, is the reverse of this; which is attested by living witnesses, and confirmed by a MS. of the poet; with the perusal of which I was favoured by Mr. N.

[ocr errors]

It most evidently appears, that symptoms of Mr. Cowper's morbid state began to discover themselves in his earliest youth. He seems to have been at all times disordered, in a greater or less degree. He was sent to Westminster school at the age of nine years, and long endured the tyranny of an elder boy, of which he gives a shocking account in the paper above mentioned; and which produced,' as one of his biographers observes, who had long intimacy with him, an indelible effect upon his mind through life.'-A person so naturally bashful and depressed as Cowper, must needs find the profession of a barrister a farther occasion of anxiety: the post obtained for him by his friends in the house of Lords overwhelmed him; and the remonstrances which those friends made against his relinquishing so honourable and lucrative an appointment, (but which soon after actually took place,] greatly increased the anguish of a mind already incapacitated for business. To all this were

added events, which of themselves have been found suf ficient to overset the minds of the strongest; namely, the decease of his particular friend and intimate Sir William Russel; and his meeting with a disappointment in obtain ing a lady, upon whom his affections were placed.

But the state of a person, torn and depressed (not by his religious connections, but) by adverse circumstances, and these meeting naturally morbid sensibility, long before he knew Olney, or had formed any connection with its inhabitants, will best appear from some verses which he had sent at this time to one of his female relations, and for the communication of which, we are indebted to Mr. Hayley:

"Doom'd as I am, in solitude to waste

The present moments, and regret the past;
Depriv'd of every joy I valued most,

My friend torn from me, and my mistress lost;
Call not this gloom I wear, this anxious mein,
The dull effect of humour or of spleen!
Still, still I mourn with each returning day,
Him---snatch'd by fate in early youth, away;
And her---through tedious years of doubt and pain,
Fix'd in her choice, and faithful---but in vain.
See me---ere yet my destin'd course half done,
Cast forth a wand'rer on a wild unknown!
See me, neglected on the world's rude coast,
Each dear companion of my voyage lost!
Nor ask, why clouds of sorrow shade my brow,
And ready tears wait only leave to flow;

Why all that soothes a heart, from anguish free,
All that delights the happy---palls with me?"

That any man, under such pressures, should at first turn his mind to those resources which religion alone can afford, is both natural and rational. But Mr. Cowper was like a person looking from a high tower, who perceives only the danger of falling, but neither the security nor prospect it presents; and therefore it is no wonder, with so melancholy, morbid, and susceptible a mind, that his unhappiness should be increased.--And yet this very mind of Cowper, when put under the care of Dr. Cotton, of St. Albans (a physician as capable of administering to the spiritual, as to the natural maladies of his patients) received the first consolation it ever tasted, and that from evangelical truths. It was under the care of this physician, that Mr. C. first obtained a clear view of those sublime and animating truths, which so distinguished and exalted his future strains as a poet.

Here also he received the settled tranquillity and peace which he enjoyed for several years afterwards. So far, therefore, was his constitutional malady from being produced or increased by his evangelical connections, either at St. Albans or at Olney, that he seems never to have had any settled peace but from the truths he learned in these societies. It appears that among them alone he found the only sunshine he ever enjoyed, through the cloudy day of his afflicted life.

It appears also that, while at Dr. Cotton's, Mr. Cowper's distress was, for a long time, entirely removed, by marking that passage in Rom. iii. 25. "Him hath God set forth as a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past." In this scripture he saw the remedy, which God provides for the relief of a guilty conscience, with such clearness, that for several years after, his heart was filled with love, and his life occupied with prayer, praise, and doing good to his needy fellow-creatures.

Mr. N. told me, that, from Mr. Cowper's first coming to Olney, it was observed he had studied his Bible with such advantage, and was so well acquainted with its design, that not only his troubles were removed, but that, to the end of his life, he never had clearer views of the ресиliar doctrines of the Gospel than when he first became an attendant upon them; that (short intervals excepted) Mr. Cowper enjoyed a course of peace for several successive years; that, during this period, the inseparable attendants of a lively faith appeared, by Mr. Cowper's exerting himself to the utmost of his power in every benevolent service he could render to his poor neighbours; and that Mr. N. used to consider him as a sort of curate, from his constant attendance upon the sick and afflicted in that large and necessitous parish.

But the malady, which seemed to be subdued by the strong consolations of the Gospel, was still latent, and only required some occasion of irritation to break out again, and overwhelm the patient. Any object of constant attention that shall occupy a mind previously disordered, whether fear, or love, or science, or religion, will not be so much the cause of the disease as the accidental occasion of exciting it. Cowper's letters will shew us how much his mind was occupied at one time by the truths of the Bible, and at another time by the fictions of Homer; but his melancholy was originally a constitutional disease

[blocks in formation]

-a physical disorder, which, indeed, could be affected either by the Bible or by Homer, but was utterly distinct in its nature from the mere matter of either. And here I cannot but mark this necessary distinction; having often been witness to cases where religion has been assigned as the proper cause of insanity, when it has been only an accidental occasion, in the case of one already affected*. Thus Cowper's malady, like a strong current, breaking down the banks which had hitherto sustained the pressure and obliquity of its course, prevailed against the supports he had received, and precipitated him again into his former distress.

I inquired of Mr. N. as to the manner in which Mr. Cowper's disorder returned, after an apparent recovery of nearly nine years continuance; and was informed, that the first symptoms were discovered one morning in his discourse, soon after he had undertaken a new engagement in composition.

As a general and full account of this extraordinary genius is already before the public, such particulars would not have occupied so much room in these memoirs, but. with a view of removing the false statements that have been made.

I have been an eye witness of several instances of this kind of misrepresentation, but will detain the reader with mentioning only one. I was called to visit a woman whose mind was disordered, and, on my observing that it was a case which required the assistance of a physician, rather than that of a clergyman, her husband replied; Sir, we sent to you, because it is a religious case---her mind has been injured by constantly reading the Bible." I have known many instances, said I, of persons brought to their senses by reading the Bible; but it is possible, that too intense an application to that, as well as to any other subject, may have disordered your wife. "There is every proof of it," said he; and was proceeding to multiply his proofs, till his brother interrupted him by thus addressing me:

"Sir, I have no longer patience to stand by and see you imposed on. The truth of the matter is this; my brother has forsaken his wife, and been long connected with a loose woman. He had the best of wives in her, and one who was strongly attached to him: but she has seen his heart and property given to another, and in her solitude and distress, went to the Bible, as the only consolation left her. Her health and spirits at length sunk under her troubles; and there she lies distracted, not from reading her Bible, but from the infidelity and cruelty of her husband."--- Does the reader wish to know what reply the husband made to this? He made no reply at all, but left the room with confusion of face!

« السابقةمتابعة »