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CHAPTER IX.

THE THIRD DERANGEMENT.

Jan., 1773-May, 1774.

53. The Fatal Dream.

END OF FEBRUARY, 1773.

UT though thus afflicted, Cowper nevertheless

still held firmly to the belief that God was thus

trying him only for the purpose to bring about good. Often Newton "heard him adore and submit to the sovereignty of God, and declare, though in the most agonizing and inconceivable distress, he was so perfectly satisfied of the wisdom and rectitude of the Lord's appointments, that if he was sure of relieving himself only by stretching out his hand, he would not do it, unless he was equally sure it was agreeable to His will that he should do it."

We have now come to that which to Cowper personally was the most pregnant moment in his existence, and yet, curious to say, this event, which so greatly concerned his personal comfort, has been entirely overlooked by all previous biographers. They have

recorded how he became acquainted with Newton, the story of the threefold cord, the origin of his great poem, and many things besides of great or less interest, but the incident of the Fatal Dream, the central point of his life, has never, so far as I am aware, been even alluded to. Hayley, Southey, Grimshawe, all are silent-a fact which I can explain only by assuming that not one of them was able to read, as it has been my privilege to do, the whole of Cowper's correspondence in consecutive order.

Hitherto, as before observed, despite the distressing state he had got into, Cowper still buoyed himself up with hope that God had not forsaken him; but one night, towards the end of February, he crossed the line that divided a life of hope from a life of despair. He had a Terrible Dream, in which "a Word" was spoken. What the dream was he does not tell us. Nor does he tell us "the word," though from his various references to it and to his malady we know its import. "Actum est de te, periisti "-" It is all over with thee, thou hast perished," was the thought ever uppermost in Cowper's mind. It is not impossible that that was the very "Word" (see to Newton, August 21, 1788), but whether it was so or not, the meaning must have been the same.

To this incident Cowper thus refers (October 16, 1785): "I had a dream twelve years ago, before the recollection of which all consolation vanishes, and, it seems to me, must always vanish. But I will neither trouble you with my dream nor with any comments upon it; for, if it were possible, I should do well to forget that, the remembrance of which is incom

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patible with my comfort." "Twelve years ago makes, of course, the year of the dream 1773, but in an earlier letter (January 13, 1784) Cowper is very much more definite. He says, " Nature revives again; but a soul once slain lives no more. . . The latter end of next month will complete a period of eleven years, in which I have spoken no other language. It is a long time for a man, whose eyes were once opened, to spend in darkness; long enough to make despair an inveterate habit; and such it is in me." Thus the date of the fatal dream was some time at the end of February, 1773, about a month after the day on which. he was seized.

There is at least one more reference in Cowper's letters to this fatal event. It was not many months before his death. Lady Hesketh had been describing some lovely scenery, and the poet observes (October 13, 1798): "The country that you have had in prospect has been always famed for its beauties; but the wretch who can derive no gratification from a view of Nature, even under the disadvantage of her most ordinary dress, will have no eyes to admire her in any.

"In one day, in one minute I should rather have said, she became a universal blank to me; and though from a different cause, yet with an effect as difficult to remove as blindness itself."

Henceforth Cowper was a doomed man. God had forsaken him for ever. And the fearful delusion never left him except for very brief intervals during the remainder of his life. These fatal propensities for believing in dreams of a certain kind (ordinary dreams he did not believe in), and for imagining that he heard

supernatural voices, which propensities we alluded to in the chapters on Huntingdon, proved his undoing. To the student of literature the chief point of interest in Cowper's career probably is the incident of the commencement of the "Task "-the story of Lady Austen suggesting a subject for his pen ; but to Cowper himself that fact was of infinitesimal consequence compared with that dread moment when it was revealed to him, as he thought, from heaven, that the God that made him had doomed him to everlasting torment; that God had even regretted that He had given existence to him. So deeply, indeed, was this engrained in his mind that for many years he never offered a prayer-did not even ask a blessing on his food; his argument being that he had no right to do so-that it was useless (see § 95); and on February 24, 1783, in a letter to Newton, we find him writing the affecting sentence, "We think of you often, and one of us prays for you; the other will, when he can pray for himself." Once, and once only, during the remainder of his life was the veil really raised, and that only for the brief space of three days, in the year 1785 (see § 112). Henceforward there was nothing to influence the fearful gloom save now and then a flash of momentary duration, the light that reached him at such times being comparable neither to that of the sun nor to that of the moon. It was "a flash in a dark night, during which the heavens opened only to shut again."

Cowper was now unwilling even to approach Newton's door, but on the 12th of April, in order to avoid the noise of the annual fair, he sought a retreat at the vicarage, and when there he resolved to stay. While