; but the short respite was followed by the gloom of
madness. Owing to his ungovernable fear of a public examination, which
was necessary to secure the position offered by an uncle, Cowper
underwent days and nights of agony, during which he tried in many ways
to end his miserable life. The frightful ordeal unsettled his reason,
and he spent eighteen months in an insane asylum.

Upon his recovery, he was taken into the house of a Rev. Mr. Unwin,
whose wife tended Cowper as a son during the rest of her life. He was
never supremely happy, and he was sometimes again thrown into madness
by the terrible thought of God's wrath; but his life was passed in a
quiet manner in the villages of Weston and Olney, where he was loved
by every one. The simple pursuits of gardening, carpentering, visiting
the sick, caring for his numerous pets, rambling through the lanes,
studying nature, and writing verse, occupied his sane moments when he
was not at prayer.

Works.--Cowper's first works were the _Olney Hymns_. His religious
nature is manifest again in the volume which consists of didactic
poems upon such subjects as _The Progress of Error, Truth, Charity,
Table Talk_, and _Conversation_. These are in the spirit of the formal
classical poets, and contain sententious couplets such as

"An idler is a watch that wants both hands,
As useless if it goes as when it stands."[8]

"Vociferated logic kills me quite;
A noisy man is always in the right."[9]

[Illustration: COWPER'S COTTAGE AT WESTON.]

The bare didacticism of these poems is softened and sweetened by the
gentle, devout nature of the poet, and is enlivened by a vein of pure
humor.

He is one of England's most delightful letter writers because of his
humor, which ripples occasionally over the stream of his
constitutional melancholy. _The Diverting History of John Gilpin_ is
extremely humorous. The poet seems to have forgotten himself in this
ballad and to have given full expression to his sense of the
ludicrous.

[Illustration: JOHN GILPIN'S RIDE. _From a drawing by R.
Caldecott_.]

The work that has made his name famous is _The Task_. He gave it this
title half humorously because his friend, Lady Austen, had bidden him
write a poem in blank verse upon some subject or other, the sofa, for
instance; and he called the first book of the poem _The Sofa_. _The
Task_ is chiefly remarkable because it turns from the artificial and
conventional subjects which had been popul