ant of resolution, but by mere accident. He had become
insensible, when the garter by which he was suspended broke, and his
fall brought in the laundress, who supposed him to be in a fit. He
sent her to a friend, to whom he related all that had passed, and
despatched him to his kinsman. His kinsman arrived, listened with
horror to the story, made more vivid by the sight of the broken garter,
saw at once that all thought of the appointment was at end, and carried
away the instrument of nomination. Let those whom despondency assails
read this passage of Cowper's life, and remember that he lived to write
_John Gilpin_ and _The Task_.

Cowper tells us that "to this moment he had felt no concern of a
spiritual kind;" that "ignorant of original sin, insensible of the
guilt of actual transgression, he understood neither the Law nor the
Gospel, the condemning nature of the one, nor the restoring mercies of
the other." But after attempting suicide he was seized, as he well
might be, with religious horrors. Now it was that he began to ask
himself whether he had been guilty of the unpardonable sin, and was
presently persuaded that he had, though it would be vain to inquire
what he imagined the unpardonable sin to be. In this mood, he fancied
that if there was any balm for him in Gilead, it would be found in the
ministrations of his friend Martin Madan, an Evangelical clergyman of
high repute, whom he had been wont to regard as an enthusiast. His
Cambridge brother, John, the translator of the _Henriade_, seems to
have had some philosophic doubts as to the efficacy of the proposed
remedy; but, like a philosopher, he consented to the experiment. Mr.
Madan came and ministered, but in that distempered soul his balm turned
to poison; his religious conversations only fed the horrible illusion.
A set of English Sapphics, written by Cowper at this time, and
expressing his despair, were unfortunately preserved; they are a
ghastly play of the poetic faculty in a mind utterly deprived of
self-control, and amidst the horrors of inrushing madness. Diabolical,
they might be termed more truly than religious.

There was nothing for it but a madhouse. The sufferer was consigned to
the private asylum of Dr. Cotton, at St. Alban's. An ill-chosen
physician Dr. Cotton would have been, if the malady had really had its
source in religion; for he was himself a pious man, a writer of hymns,
and was in the habit of holding religious intercourse