SELF-DESTRUCTION.

79

he took up a newspaper in Richards's Coffee House, where he was at breakfast, and read in it a letter which, in his disordered state of mind, seemed to him a libel intended for himself, and written by one acquainted with his circumstances, on purpose to hurry him on to the suicide he was contemplating. In reality this delusion, itself sufficient proof that already he was insane, had that effect; and after several ineffectual attempts, he arose the next morning, hearing the clock strike seven, and knowing that no more time was to be lost, bolted the inner door of his chamber, as he thought, and proceeded deliberately to the work of hanging himself by means of a garter made of a broad piece of scarlet binding with sliding buckles. He strained the noose tightly around his neck, and fastened it to the top of the bed-frame, but the iron bent and let him down. A second time he fastened it, but the frame broke short, and he fell again. A third time he fastened it on an angle of the door, and pushing away the chair with his feet, hung at his whole length, till he lost all consciousness of existence, and knew nothing, till a feeling like that produced by a flash of lightning passed over his whole body, and he found himself fallen on his face upon the floor. The blood had stagnated under his eye, but by the mercy of God the cord broke before the strangulation was completed, and Cowper was saved.

80

CONVICTIONS

OF

GUILT.

And now ensued the most overwhelming conviction of guilt, though up to this time he had felt no anxiety of a spiritual kind; the attempt at self-murder harrowed up his conscience, and a sense of God's wrath, and a deep despair of escaping it, instantly succeeded. The terrors of the Lord and his own iniquities set themselves in array against him. Every approach to the Scriptures was but an increase of his anguish, and as in the case of Bunyan, the sword of the Spirit seemed to guard the tree of life from his touch, and flamed against him in every avenue of access. He was scared with visions and terrified with dreams, and by day and by night experienced a continual agony of soul. In every book that he took up he found something that struck him to the heart, and if he went into the street, he thought the people stared and laughed at him, and it seemed as if the voice of his own conscience was so loud that others must hear it. He bought a ballad of a person who was singing it in the street, because he thought it was written on himself. He now began to imagine that he had committed the unpardonable sin, and in this conviction gave himself up anew to despair. He says that he felt a sense of burning in his heart like that of real fire, and concluded it was an earnest of those eternal flames which would soon receive him. In this condition he remembered the kindness and piety of his friend the Rev. Martin

INTERVIEW W.THI MR. MADAN. 81

Madan, and sent for him; for though he used to think him an enthusiast, yet in this extremity of spiritual distress he felt that if any one could lead and comfort him, it must be he. The good man brought him to the all-atoning blood of Christ, and presented the way of salvation in a manner so simple, scriptural and affecting, that Cowper wept freely with a sense of his ingratitude, and deplored his want of faith.

Cowper's brother from Cambridge was with him during that interview with Mr. Madan. Most affectionately had Cowper's brother tried to comfort him, but in vain, though pierced to the heart at the sight of such anguish and despair as he found him in. Mr. Madan and Cowper sat on the bed-side together, and he affectionately presented the Gospel to the gloomy sufferer, beginning with the lost condition of the sinner against God, as presented in his Word. In this Cowper says he began to feel something like hope dawning in his heart, for since the condition of all mankind was the same, it seemed to make his own state appear less desperate. Then, when presenting the all-atoning efficacy of the blood of Christ and his righteousness for our justification, from the same precious Scriptures, Cowper's heart began to burn within him, and his tears flowed freely. It was only when Mr. Madan came to the necessity, on Cowper's own part, of a personal faith in the Lord Jesus, such as would

82

ABSOLUTE INSANITY

embrace Christ as Paul had done, and say, 'Who loved me, and gave Himself for me,' that Cowper found his heart failing, and deplored his want of such a faith, and could only sigh forth the prayer that God, whose gift it was, might bestow it upon him.

It was under the impression from this interview, and in the exercise of this sincere desire for faith, that Cowper seems to have passed from such an interval of light into thick darkness, darkness that might be felt. He slept, he says, three hours, but awoke in greater terror and agony than ever. The pains of hell got hold upon him, and the sorrows of death encompassed him. The malady manifested its physical power, and showed that it was winding up his nervous system rapidly to delirium. His hands and feet became cold and stiff; he was in a cold-sweat; life seemed retreating; and he thought he was about to die. Notwithstanding the relief his wounded spirit had seemed to receive from its anguish, this paroxysm of nervous depression (extreme depression and extreme excitement apparently combined) increased upon him, till, after some hours of horrible and unspeakable anguish and dismay, a strange and dreadful darkness fell suddenly upon him. The sensation, as Cowper described it in his own Memoir, was as if a heavy blow had suddenly fallen on the brain, without touching the skull; so in

DEVELOPED.

83

tensely painful, that Cowper clapped his hand to his forehead, and cried aloud. At every blow his thoughts and expressions became more wild and incoherent, till manifestly it was absolute and unmistakable insanity. From that moment, through the whole interval of madness, all that remained clear to him, he says, was the sense of sin, and the expectation of punishment. His mind was a profound chaos, brooded over by despair.

His brother instantly perceived this decisive change when it commenced, and, on consultation with his friends, it was determined that he should be carried, not to any retreat in London (for which resolution Cowper afterward praised God, deeming it a particular providence of His mercy), but to St. Albans, and placed under the care of that humane, experienced, and excellent physician, and man of letters and of piety, Dr. Cotton, with whom Cowper already had some acquaintance.

A few days before Cowper left London, his cousin Lady Hesketh, and Sir Thomas, visited him at his chambers in the Temple. It was just before the fearful paroxysm which has been described, and of which the signs were being developed in his deepening gloom. He neither looked at Lady Hesketh nor spoke to her during that interview, and he said in his heart, when she went out of the door, "Farewell! There will be no more inter