Nobody knows, to say truth, how much the great, modest Hooker was benefited by what appeared to his friends his calamitous marriage. "There is no great evil," said Publius Syrus, "which does not bring with it some advantage." Calamities, we know, have often proved blessings. There are cases where blows on the head have benefited the brain, and produced extraordinary changes for the better. Mabillon was almost an idiot at the age of twenty-six. He fell down a stone staircase, fractured his skull, and was trepanned. From that moment he became a genius. Dr. Prichard mentioned a case of three brothers, who were all nearly idiots. One of them was injured on the head, and from that time he brightened up, and became a successful barrister. Wallenstein, too, they say, was a mere fool, till he fell out of a window, and awoke with enlarged capabilities. Here is an instance noted by Robinson in his Diary: "After dinner called on the Flaxmans. Mrs. Flaxman--wife of the sculptor--admitted me to her room. She had about a fortnight before broken her leg, and sprained it besides, by falling down-stairs. This misfortune, however, instead of occasioning a repetition of the paralytic stroke which she had a year ago, seemed to have improved her health. She had actually recovered the use of her hand in some degree, and her friends expect that she will be benefited by the accident." There is Cowper. But for his mental malady the world would have had much less of good poetry and fewer perfect letters. The thought of a clerkship in the House of Lords made him insane! "Innocent, pious, and confiding, he lived in perpetual dread of everlasting punishment: he could only see between him and heaven a high wall which he despaired of ever being able to scale; yet his intellectual vigor was not subdued by affliction. What he wrote for amusement or relief in the midst of 'supreme distress,' surpasses the elaborate efforts of others made under the most favorable circumstances; and in the very winter of his days, his fancy was as fresh and blooming as in the spring and morning of his existence." The Diverting History of John Gilpin, the production of a single night, was, curious to say, written by a man who lived in perpetual dread of eternal punishment; and while it was being read by Henderson, the actor, to large audiences in London, "all through Lent, at high prices," its author was raving mad. The ballad, which had become the town talk, was reprinted from the newspaper, wherein it had lain three years dormant. Gilpin, passing at full stretch by the Bell at Edmonton, was to be seen at all print-shops. One print-seller sold six thousand. What had succeeded so well in London was repeated with inferior ability, but with equal success, on provincial stages, and the ballad became in the highest degree popular before the author's name became known. The last reading to which Cowper listened appears to have been that of his own works. Beginning with the first volume, Mr. Johnson