ood
to others on any mind was sure to be good; and the sight of real
suffering was likely to banish fancied ills. Cowper in this way gained
at all events a practical knowledge of the poor, and learned to do them
justice, though from a rather too theological point of view. Seclusion
from the sinful world was as much a part of the system of Mr. Newton,
as it was of the system of Saint Benedict. Cowper was almost entirely
cut off from intercourse with his friends and people of his own class.
He dropped his correspondence even with his beloved cousin, Lady
Hesketh, and would probably have dropped his correspondence with Hill,
had not Hill's assistance in money matters been indispensable. To
complete his mental isolation it appears that having sold his library
he had scarcely any books. Such a course of Christian happiness as
this could only end in one way; and Newton himself seems to have had
the sense to see that a storm was brewing, and that there was no way of
conjuring it but by contriving some more congenial occupation. So the
disciple was commanded to employ his poetical gifts in contributing to
a hymnbook which Newton was compiling. Cowper's Olney hymns have not
any serious value as poetry. Hymns rarely have. The relations of man
with Deity transcend and repel poetical treatment. There is nothing in
them on which the creative imagination can be exercised. Hymns can be
little more than incense of the worshipping soul. Those of the Latin
church are the best; not because they are better poetry than the rest
(for they are not), but because their language is the most sonorous.
Cowper's hymns were accepted by the religious body for which they were
written, as expressions of its spiritual feeling and desires; so far
they were successful. They are the work of a religious man of culture,
and free from anything wild, erotic, or unctuous. But on the other
hand there is nothing in them suited to be the vehicle of lofty
devotion, nothing, that we can conceive a multitude or even a
prayer-meeting uplifting to heaven with voice and heart. Southey has
pointed to some passages on which the shadow of the advancing malady
falls; but in the main there is a predominance of religious joy and
hope. The most despondent hymn of the series is _Temptation_, the
thought of which resembles that of _The Castaway_.

Cowper's melancholy may have been aggravated by the loss of his only
brother, who died about this time, and at whose