Mr. Black's Lecture.

Mr. Black lectured in Sever 11 last night on Cowper, before the usual large audience.

Cowper's life is a very sad and pathetic one. He was always troubled with melancholy, which resulted twice in complete insanity, and was always worried by a dread of everlasting punishment. There was for him a high wall between himself and heaven, which he could never scale. He was born in November 1731 in Hertfordshire. His mother died when he was six years old, leaving him a delicate, sensitive child. Soon his father sent him to school, and while there, at the age of nine, melancholy seized him, aggravated by natural tendencies. It was of the sort to leave him profoundly dejected. Later he went to Westminster School, and became a very good classical scholar. At eighteen he was appointed attorney in London, but soon deserted the law for literature and love.

He became very attached to his cousin Theodora Cowper, but her father would not consent to their marriage no matter how much the lovers urged. They parted never to meet again. She remained unmarried and the event had a lasting influence on Cowper perhaps tending to make him more somber. His father now died in 1756 and soon after his best friend Sir Russell drowned in the Thames, and Cowper felt that he was left alone in the world.

In 1763 came the first collapse of his intellect, it being precipitated by his fear of an examination for the position of Clerk of Journals to the House of Lords. He had first attempted suicide, but had failed in the effort. After eighteen months in an asylum he recovered and went to Huntington to see his brother. Here he met the Unwins and soon became an inmate of their home. On the death of Mr. Unwin the family went to Olney and Cowper with them. Due greatly to the bad influence of a Mr. Newton, curate of the parish, in 1773 his malady again returned and through his long illness of two years he was attended by Mrs. Unwin with the most affectionate care. To beguile the tedium of his recovery, he occupied himself with carpentry and gardening, and in domesticating his famous hares. Slowly his faculties became composed, and at the age of fifty they were back with all their grace. He recommenced writing letters to his friends, and their publication has given to us some most beautiful English prose, in their thousand graces of style and meaning.

Cowper was not inventive in the way of choosing subjects for his own works. His friends always suggested them, as was the way with Fontaine, who required a guide to direct his course. In 1782 appeared his Table Talk, which attracted some attention. His Moral Satires, although they have little of satire about them, are remarkable for the exact correspondence of phrase and meaning. In them his zeal often carries him higher than in any other of his works.

In 1781 he met Lady Austen, and soon there grew up a close friendship. Her lively spirits drove the melancholy from him. In one of his fits of depression, she related to him the story of John Gilpin, which amused him so much that during the night he wrote it in poetry and repeated it at breakfast. At the suggestion of his new friend, he began "The Task", which was published in 1785, immediately ensuring his reputation. It illustrates the light of religious yearning of the time, but is famous because of the beautiful and truthful descriptions of nature and of domestic scenes. Cowper broke away more completely than Wadsworth from the old poetic diction, but he did not realize he was doing something new. Later he took to translating Homer but met with no success.

Cowper lived for five years after the publication of the Task, dying in the year 1800, just one hundred years after Dryden.