William Cowper was born at the rectory of Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, Nov. 26, 1731. He was nearly related to the noble family of that name, his great-uncle having been chancellor and first Earl Cowper: his grandfather, the brother of the chancellor, was a judge of the common pleas. Cowper’s mother died before he was six years old. Soon afterwards he was sent to a country school, from which, at the age of nine, he was removed to Westminster. It is probable that one cause among others of his future unhappiness was the early loss of that tender parent, whose “constant flow of love,” beautifully acknowledged in his verses on receiving her picture, and in many parts of his correspondence, made a deep and lasting impression on his infant mind. Cowper was exactly the boy to require a mother’s care. His constitution was delicate, his mind sensitive and timid; and he discovered a tendency to dejection, which was aggravated by the tyranny then practised at our public schools. Quitting Westminster at eighteen, with a good character for talent and scholarship, he went at once into an attorney’s office; where he spent three years, according to his own account, with very little profit. He then became a member of the Inner Temple, intending to practise at the bar. At this period of life he amused himself with composition, and showed a strong predilection for polite literature and agreeable society; but he had no taste for the law, and took no pains to qualify himself for his profession. Long afterwards he deeply lamented the loss of time during his early manhood, and earnestly warned his young friends against a similar error.

In 1763 Cowper was appointed to the lucrative office of reading clerk, and clerk of the private committees of the House of Lords. The fairest prospect of happiness now lay before him, for his union with one of his cousins, it is said, had only been deferred until he should obtain a satisfactory establishment. But the idea of reading in public was intolerable to him; and he gave up this office for the less valuable one of clerk of the journals, in which it was hoped that his personal appearance before the House would not be required. Unfortunately it did prove necessary that he should appear at the bar to qualify himself for the post. “They whose spirits are formed like mine,” he thus expressed himself in after-life, “to whom a public exhibition of themselves is mortal poison, may have some ideas of the horrors of my situation: others can have none.” He fought hard against this morbid feeling; but, when the day arrived for entering upon his duties, such was his terror and distress, that even his friends acquiesced in his abandoning the attempt. But his mind had been disordered in the struggle, and he shortly sank into deep religious despondency; so that it was found necessary, in December, 1763, to place him in a lunatic asylum at St. Albans, under the care of Dr. Cotton.

Cowper’s insanity at this period, and the grievous dejection of the last twenty-seven years of his life, have been imputed to the so-called gloominess of his religious tenets. From that opinion we entirely dissent. No sense of religious abasement can be conceived able to drive a sane man to distraction at the thought of having to appear in a public capacity before Parliament; and Cowper’s struggles and mental distress on that occasion were anterior to his receiving any serious impressions of religion. Moreover, it appears certain that his recovery was due to more encouraging views of the doctrines of the Gospel, assisted by the kind and judicious mental, as well as bodily, treatment of Dr. Cotton. For eight years his religion was the source of unfailing cheerfulness and active benevolence; and after he ceased to derive pleasure from it in his own person, he was still mild and charitable in his conduct towards others, and his opinions concerning them. The extent of Cowper’s mental wandering on subjects unconnected with his own spiritual state is not perhaps generally known. A remarkable instance of it occurs in a letter to his esteemed friend, Mr. Newton, dated October 2, 1787, from which it appears that, during thirteen years, Cowper had entertained doubts of Mr. Newton’s personal identity. At this latter period, therefore, there was hallucination of mind, as well as religious gloom. Cowper’s recovery from his first illness is dated in July, 1764; but he remained with his friendly and beloved physician nearly a year more, after which he took lodgings at Huntingdon, directed by the wish of being within easy reach of his brother, who was a resident Fellow of Benet College, Cambridge.

He soon became acquainted with a family, bearing the name of Unwin, consisting of a clergyman, his wife and daughter, and one son, an undergraduate of Cambridge. Struck by Cowper’s appearance, the latter threw himself into the stranger’s way; and a feeling of mutual regard and esteem led to Cowper’s establishing himself as a permanent inmate in Mr. Unwin’s family in November, 1765. After the lapse of nearly two years in tranquil happiness, the sudden death of Mr. Unwin led to the family’s departure from Huntingdon to Olney in Buckinghamshire, in October, 1767. But the foundation had been laid of a friendship which no misfortune or change of circumstance could destroy; and Cowper and Mrs. Unwin united their slender incomes, and continued to dwell under the same roof. The first six years of their abode at Olney were spent in domestic quiet and retirement almost unbroken, except by the society of Mr. Newton, an eminent and exemplary divine, who was then curate on the living. The well-known collection called the “Olney Hymns” were composed by Cowper and Newton, for the most part, during this period. But in 1773 Cowper’s mental disease returned in the dreadful shape of religious despondency. He conceived himself to be set apart for eternal misery: yet amid the deep gloom produced by the loss of that spiritual happiness which he had enjoyed since his recovery from his first illness, he was so entirely submissive that he was accustomed to say, “If holding up my finger would save me from endless torments, I would not do it against the will of God;” and in accordance with the belief that his own fate was sealed, he ceased to pray, and absented himself entirely from divine worship. The depth of his dejection was gradually cheered by the affectionate, watchful, and judicious care of his guardian friend, Mrs. Unwin. One of the first signs of improvement was a desire to tame some leverets. He was soon supplied with three, which have obtained celebrity in prose and verse, such as no other hares have enjoyed before or since. He tried at different times gardening, drawing, and a variety of trifling manual occupations, as methods of diverting his thoughts from his own miseries. “Many arts I have exercised with this view,” he says in a letter to Mrs. King, “for which nature never designed me, though among them were some in which I arrived at considerable proficiency, by mere dint of the most heroic perseverance. There is not a squire in all this country who can boast of having made better squirrel houses, hutches for rabbits, or bird-cages, than myself; and in the article of cabbage-nets I had no superior. But gardening was, of all employments, that in which I succeeded best, though even in this I did not suddenly attain perfection.” (Oct. 11, 1788.) At last he devoted himself to writing, “a whim,” he says elsewhere, “that has served me longest and best, and will probably be my latest.” His first volume of poems, containing “Table Talk,” &c. was published in the summer of 1781, having been written chiefly in the preceding winter. It was undertaken at the instance of Mrs. Unwin, who, on his recovery from a long fit of unusual dejection, urged him to devote his attention to a work of some extent, and such as should require a considerable share of application and attention. At the same time she suggested as a subject the “Progress of Error,” which is the second piece in the volume. Cowper had already written many of his lighter pieces, and that at the times when he was labouring under the severest depression. He accounts for this singular phenomenon with his peculiar and playful humour. “The mind, long wearied with the sameness of a dull, dreary prospect, will gladly fix its eyes on anything that may make a little variety in its contemplations, though it were but a kitten playing with its tail.”

Early in 1780, Cowper lost a valued friend, and almost his only associate, by the removal of Mr. Newton to London. In the following year he became acquainted with Lady Austen, who, for a short time, fills a prominent place in the poet’s history. We must refer to fuller memoirs for the tale of her introduction, and the gradual growth of that strict intimacy which ensued between herself, Mrs. Unwin, and Cowper. For some time the three friends spent a considerable portion of every day in each other’s society; and Cowper was indebted to Lady Austen’s liveliness in conversation and varied accomplishments for a great alleviation of his mental sufferings. The famous history of John Gilpin owes its birth to a story told by her one evening, to rouse the poet out of a fit of despondency; and it engaged his fancy so strongly, that in the course of the night, during which he was kept awake by fits of laughter, he turned it into verse. The ballad soon got abroad, and obtained unusual popularity: it was long before the author was known. “The Task” was composed at Lady Austen’s request. She saw the benefit which Cowper derived from earnest literary employment, and often urged him to try his strength in blank verse. After some pressing, he promised to comply, if she would furnish him with a subject. “Oh, you can write on anything,” she said; “write on this sofa.” The lively answer chimed in with his peculiar humour, and he adopted it literally: his sofa forms the subject of the poem; the first book of which is entitled “The Sofa,” and opens with a history of the invention and merits of that piece of furniture, which is unsurpassed in its peculiar vein of humour. But the author soon rises into a higher strain, and in his discursive range paints the beauty of the country with that fidelity and exquisite sense of natural beauty which constitutes his chief poetic merit; describes the peculiar appearances and occupations of the winter season; weighs the evils and advantages attendant on a high state of civilization; exhibits, in reproving the faults of the age, his power both in the lighter skirmishing of satire, and in the stern outpouring of an honest indignation; inculcates the doctrines of that religion of peace and love from which it was his own singular and melancholy lot to derive no peace; and all with a beauty and facility of versification, and power of illustration, sufficient to attract many whom the grave nature of the subjects to be discussed would rather deter. The scope and conduct of the work is well described in the following lines from the conclusion, in which, anticipating death, he says—

“The Task” was accompanied by a shorter poem, entitled “Tirocinium,” written expressly in dispraise of the existing system of public schools in England; and prompted by Cowper’s bitter recollection of his sufferings at Westminster. The volume was published in 1785.

As soon as this was completed, Cowper engaged in another more laborious undertaking, the translation of Homer. This also was suggested by Lady Austen; and it had a most beneficial effect in furnishing the poet with constant employment from this time forward to the end of his life, with the exception of those periods in which the pressure of disease was too severe to admit of any exertion. He spared no pains in the execution of this great work; and after his version was made, subjected it to a most careful revision, amounting nearly to a re-translation. It was published in 1791, and was preceded by a list of subscribers, whose number and individual eminence bear testimony to the high esteem in which Cowper was then held. His translation, however, has never been popular: he has avoided Pope’s errors, but he has failed in giving life and interest, and in catching the vital spirit of his author.

During the long period which the literary labours above-mentioned occupied, Cowper’s domestic history is characterized by the same general depression and the same seclusion as we have above described. In 1784 his friendship with Lady Austen was interrupted by a disagreement between her and Mrs. Unwin, who seems to have feared that the former might obtain an influence over the poet paramount to her own; and to have been justly hurt at the prospect of becoming second in the affections of him, to whom, for so many years, she had devoted herself with a zeal which merited the utmost return. Cowper felt this, and he himself broke off his intercourse with Lady Austen, in a way which was admitted by herself to do credit to his delicacy and judgment, no less than to his generosity. In about a year after the termination of this valuable friendship, he received the best amends that could be made, in the renewal of intercourse, after it had been interrupted for twenty-three years, with his cousin Lady Hesketh, to whom from childhood he had been strongly attached. She visited Olney in June, 1786; and from that time forwards her purse and her personal exertions were unsparingly bestowed to promote the comfort of her beloved cousin. At her instance his confined and ruinous abode at Olney was exchanged in November, 1786, for a commodious house in the pretty neighbouring village of Weston, which was especially recommended to Cowper as being the residence of his esteemed friends Mr. and Mrs. Throckmorton. Here Lady Hesketh commonly spent part of the year. The state of Cowper’s spirits during his residence at Weston was variable; but he made a few new acquaintance, and among them his correspondent, Mr. Rose, and his biographer, Mr. Hayley. He also enjoyed a vivid pleasure in the renewal of intercourse with his maternal relations, among whom his young cousin Johnson, who afterwards became his tender and devoted guardian, obtained an especial place in his affections. Still, however, his mental malady continued unabated; and a new cause of uneasiness beset him in the growing infirmities of Mrs. Unwin. In March, 1792, the disease which had been for some time sapping her strength, manifested itself in a paralytic attack, from which she never entirely recovered. From thenceforward Cowper’s time and attention were devoted, as his primary object, to contributing to her comfort and amusement. In her company he quitted his home, the first time for twenty-seven years, to visit Mr. Hayley’s seat at Eartham, in Sussex. Two important works had engaged his attention: one a poem on the four ages of man’s life, the other an edition of Milton. These, however, were successively laid aside; and such time as his weak spirits and melancholy occupation allowed him, be employed in revising his Homer for a second edition. But Mrs. Unwin became more and more enfeebled in mind and body; and in the beginning of 1794 Cowper relapsed into a gloom as deep as that which he had endured at the commencement of his malady. To watch over him in this melancholy Lady Hesketh made Weston her constant, instead of her occasional abode, until the middle of the following year, when her health gave way under the constant pressure of anxiety. Mr. Johnson, who had taken orders, and resided at East Dereham in Norfolk, then undertook the charge of his unhappy relation; removed him and Mrs. Unwin into his own neighbourhood, and watched over their decline with the most unwearied and judicious tenderness. But little could now be done to give Cowper pleasure. The pathetic poem, “To Mary,” is supposed by Mr. Hayley to have been the last thing written by him before quitting Weston; and the only original verses which he composed afterwards were some Latin lines, which he translated into English, on the appearance of some ice islands in the German Sea, and the touching poem called the “Cast-away,” founded on the loss of a man overboard in Anson’s voyage, and alluding in an affecting strain to his own unfortunate condition. After his departure from Weston, he who had been so diligent a correspondent only wrote three or four letters; nor could he be excited to converse by the visits even of his most intimate friends, as Mr. Rose and Sir John Throckmorton. In January, 1800, his final illness, which was dropsy, commenced. He died April 25th in the same year; nor to the last did one gleam of hope break through the darkness which had surrounded him for twenty-seven years.

It was Cowper’s especial merit as a poet to cultivate simplicity and nature. He set the example of throwing aside conventional affectations and unmeaning pomp of diction, and in consideration of this great service may well be pardoned for occasionally incurring the opposite fault of being tame and prosaic. His genius was truly original: all his writings, whether moral, satirical, or descriptive, bear the legible impress of his own peculiar constitution of mind and habits of thinking. His minor and occasional poems are very happy, for his imagination could extract a deep and beautiful moral from slight occurrences, which commonly pass unnoticed in the bustle of life. Many of his letters are published in Hayley’s Life of Cowper; and these are embodied with the Private Correspondence afterwards given to the world by Mr. Johnson, in the edition of Cowper’s works by Mr. Grimshawe now in the press. As a letter writer Cowper appears to us to be unequalled in the English language. His correspondence is the genuine intercourse of friend with friend; full of wit and humour, but a humour that never vents itself in the depreciation of others; and abounding in passages of graver beauty, expressed in the most easy, yet elegant and correct language. When once a man knows that his letters are admired, he is in great danger of writing for admiration. Cowper was aware of this, and occasionally alludes to the temptation in lively terms. “I love praise dearly, especially from the judicious, and those who have so much delicacy themselves as not to offend mine in giving it. But then I found this consequence attending, or likely to attend, the eulogium you bestowed. If my friend thought me witty before, he shall think me ten times more witty hereafter; where I joked once, I will joke five times; and for every sensible remark, I will send him a dozen. Now this foolish vanity would have spoiled me quite, and have made me as disgusting a letter writer as Pope, who seems to have thought that unless a sentence was well turned, and every sentence pointed with some conceit, it was not worth the carriage. I was willing therefore to wait until the impression that your commendation had made on the foolish part of me was worn off, that I might scribble away as usual, and write my uppermost thoughts, and those only.” (June 8, 1780. To the Rev. W. Unwin.) No one ever avoided this danger better. It is strange and wonderful that these compositions, which bear the stamp of so much cheerfulness and benevolence, should have been written, most of them, in his deepest gloom, and avowedly for the purpose of withdrawing his thoughts from his own misery.