Life.--Cowper's life is a tale of almost continual sadness, caused by his morbid timidity. He was born at Great Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, in 1731. At the age of six, he lost his mother and was placed in a boarding school. Here his sufferings began. The child was so especially terrified by one rough boy that he could never raise his eyes to the bully's face, but knew him unmistakably by his shoe buckles. There was some happiness for Cowper at his next school, the Westminster School, and also during the twelve succeeding years, when he studied law; 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_.]