he said, "The grinners at 'John Gilpin' little think what its writer sometimes suffers. How I hated myself last night for having written it!
It is grievous to read the quiet matter-of-fact way in which he puts aside all attempts at consolation. "Your arguments [against his belief in his final perdition] are quite reasonable," he says quietly to Newton, "but the event will prove them false." And in the same way he treated Mrs. Unwin's reasonings. Sometimes he would make her no answer, at others would sharply tell her she was wrong. "It was no use reasoning in this case," he said; "reasoning might say one thing, but fact said another." And all this while his letters are expressed as vigorously and strongly as ever, his humour and clearness of thinking are as unclouded. His madness has such method in it that his destruction is clear before his eyes; he contemplates it ab extra as if he were looking at the ruin of a building, or a falling tree. "You will think me mad," he says, in one most gloomy letter; "but I am not mad, most noble Festus, I am only in despair."
Meanwhile he had made fresh acquaintances, not without influence on his life. Bull we have already mentioned. Before "The Task" was begun he had given Cowper the Poems of Madame Guyon, that he might amuse himself in his sad hours with translating them. He did it in a month, copying them into a "Lilliputian book," as he called it, and then gave the little volume to his friend. Bull some time after suggested that he should publish them, and he consented, but the idea was not carried out during his lifetime.
Another acquaintance, made about the time of the separation from Lady Austen, was with the Throckmortons. They lived at Weston Underwood, a village about two miles from Olney. Cowper had always been allowed a key of their park, but no intercourse had taken place with the family, who were Roman I Catholics. The possessor dying in 1782, a younger brother came to live at Weston,[1] and Cowper sent his card and asked for a continuance of the favour, which was readily granted. The Throckmortons had been grossly affronted on account of their religion by some of their neighbours, and were naturally shy of seeking acquaintance. However, in May 1784, they invited Cowper and Mrs. Unwin to see an attempt to send up a balloon from Weston.[2] The gentle, refined poet found himself the object of his host's special attention, and acquaintance soon ripened into intimacy. From this time the Throckmortons appear among his correspondents—he addresses them as "Mr. and Mrs. Frog"—and several of his smaller poems relate to incidents connected with them. We have seen how Cowper, on the publication of his first volume, concealed his intention from his friend Unwin. He acted in the same way with Newton on the publication of his second. Though in constant correspondence with him he
- ↑ John Throckmorton: he was the son of Sir Robert, who was 84 years old, living in Oxfordshire. The old baronet lived till 1791, and Cowper's friend then succeeded to the title.
- ↑ Balloons were all the rage just then. Montgolfier made his in 1783. The first aeronaut in England, Lunardi, ascended from Moorfields, September 15, 1784.
