Hope and Despair in the Writings of William Cowper

Social Research, Summer, 1999 by Barbara Packer

One day after a visit from his brother Cowper felt his mood unaccountably lighten, just as it had ten years earlier on the cliffs of Freemantle. "While I sat at table, the cloud of horror, which had so long hung over me, was every moment passing away; and every moment came fraught with hope." The Bible, in which he had formerly been able to read only curses, now offered him verses of comfort and mercy. "My eyes filled with tears, and my voice choked with transport ... For many succeeding weeks, tears were ready to flow, if I did but speak of the gospel, or mention the name of Jesus. To rejoice day and night, was all my employment. Too happy to sleep much, I thought it was but lost time that was spent in slumber." Dr. Cotton was understandably worried by this "sudden transition from despair to joy," fearful that it might terminate in a "fatal frenzy." He kept Cowper with him for another year before declaring him cured.

After his discharge from the hospital Cowper's sense of exultation persisted. He moved to the little village of Huntingdon, near Cambridge, to be near his brother. There Cowper attended church for the first time since his illness began. "Throughout the whole service, I had much to do to restrain my emotions, so fully did I see the beauty and the glory of the Lord. My heart was full of love to all the congregation, especially to them, in whom I observed an air of sober attention ... Such was the goodness of the Lord to me, that he gave me `the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; and though my voice was silent, being stoppt by the intenseness of what I felt, yet my soul sung within me, and even leapt for joy."

This sense of joyous merging with--others what John Custance, a twentieth-century chronicler of mania and depression, calls a "breach in the barriers of individuality"--is so regular a feature of manic excitement that Custance lists it as one of the three main features of the manic state. "The experience partakes of the nature of the good-fellowship produced by alcohol; it also constitutes in some degree a regression to the childish faith and confidence in the benevolence, the "akinnness," of the surrounding world ... It is actually a sense of communion, in the first place with God, and in the second place with all mankind, indeed with all creation" (Custance, 1951).(3)

Cowper's new sense of communion with God and with mankind found expression in remarkable hymn entitled "A Song of Mercy and Judgment" (Cowper, 1967), composed during the Huntingdon period (1765-67) but never published during his lifetime. The hymn begins as a conventional song of praise, contrasting the current happiness of the redeemed sinner with the despair of the sinner yet unredeemed:

   Lord, I love the habitation
   Where the Savior's honour dwells;
   At the sound of thy salvation
   With delight my bosom swells.
   Grace Divine, how sweet the sound,
   Sweet the grace that I have found.

   Me thro' waves of deep affliction,
   Dearest Savior! thou hast brought,
   Fiery deeps of sharp conviction
   Hard to bear and passing thought.
   Sweet the sound of Grace Divine,
   Sweet the grace which makes me thine.