This uncle had two daughters, to one of whom this young gentleman said tender things;--too tender to be altogether cousinly--in which regard she proved as over-cousinly as he. But the Papa stamped out that little fire of love before it had grown into great flame. There is reason, however, to believe that the smouldering of it had its influences upon Miss Theodora all through her life; and who shall say that it did not touch the great melancholy of the future poet with a sting of tenderness? There was, however, no outspoken lamentation; the feminine nature of the man accepted the decision of the uncle as a decree of fate; {241} there was never any great capacity in him for struggle or for controversy, either with men, or with untoward circumstance. Meantime, the expected preferment came to young Cowper--a place, or places of value and of permanence, which he had need only to take with a bold hand and purpose; but the bold hand was lacking; and his hesitancy multiplied difficulties which could only be met by examination for fitness before the Lords; that examination stares him awfully in the face; he wilts under the bare prospect; is hedged by doubts; palters with his weakness; falls into a wretched state of melancholy, and--buys laudanum to make an end of it all;--then, he has flashes of light, and waves of a redeeming firmness chase over his mind; but finally, on the very day on which the examination was to take place, he makes a miserable effort at self-destruction. Was ever a man, before or since, who would commit suicide to avoid lucrative office? William Cowper, with only an ordinary share of average common sense, and unhampered by the trappings of genius that belonged to him, would have "gone on" for this place; secured it; {242} made his easy fortune; lived a good humdrum life; died lamented, and never heard of. The poet's fine brain, however--which had been exercised already in musical verse--built up mountains of difficulty; he told in after years, with a curious sincerity, all the details of his struggle--how he held the phial of laudanum to his lips and how he flung it away; how he held a knife at his heart; and finally, how he threw his garter, which served for a gallows-rope, over the chamber door, and hung "till the bitterness of temporal death was past." Righteously enough, after all these weakly resolves, which a man of energy would have made strong, he falls into utter distraction; religious doubts and fears racking him, and lunacy throttling him; and so this young Templar of the bright prospects goes away to the care of a mad-doctor. But long curative processes are needful; and he emerges at last--the blush of his youth all gone, and he lighted up and a-flame with tempestuous religious exhilaration. He would go into orders, but he can never face a congregation; so he plants himself, by the advice of friends, who prop up his waning income, in the flats of Huntingdon, {243} where the