We have said that Cooper _overdid_ the work of study. Like Kirke-White, he was so completely absorbed with the passion for learning, that he set all the laws of health at defiance, and had to pay the penalty. Having a stronger constitution than the Nottingham youth, Cooper managed to escape with his life, and, after a period of bodily and mental prostration, with all his old vigor restored to him; but it was a narrow escape. These excessive labors, coupled with the effects of scanty fare, brought him to a state of extreme weakness. He says, "I not unfrequently swooned away and fell all along the floor when I tried to take my cup of oatmeal gruel at the end of my day's labor. Next morning, of course, I was not able to rise at an early hour; and then very likely the next day's study had to be stinted. I needed better food than we could afford to buy, and often had to contend with the sense of faintness, while I still plodded on with my double task of mind and body."[64] At length, after many premonitory symptoms, came a crisis. One night he had to be carried to bed in a dead faint, and for nine weeks he left his bed but for a short time each day. The greatest fears were felt for his safety; the doctor had little hope, and once he was so prostrate, that a friend who was called in sadly told his mother that the pulse had ceased to beat, and _he was dead_! This was at the end of 1827; by the spring of the following year he had recovered sufficiently to begin to think of going to work again. A brief spell at his old occupation was enough to satisfy him that it would not suit him in his altered state of health; and, after a short rest and more complete recovery, he took the welcome advice of two friends and agreed to _open a school_. He had now done forever with the trade of a shoemaker, after giving to it eight years of the best part of his early life. These he confesses to have been, on the whole, most happy years, and of the last four he says with enthusiasm, "What glorious years were those years of self-denial and earnest mental toil, from the age of nearly nineteen to nearly three-and-twenty, that I sat and worked in that corner of my poor mother's lowly home!" He had certainly made wondrous progress as a self-taught scholar, and now he was prepared to enter the world and make his own way in it, with such a stock of learning and culture as few young men in England, in his position, could boast of. We scarcely dare venture to estimate his acquirements at this time. The reader can easily judge from our account of his studies how considerable they must have been. In English literature, from Spenser and Shakespeare to the essayists and poets, such as De Quincey, Hazlitt, and Charles Lamb, or Byron, Campbell, and Moore, he was well versed. He had read extensively in history, philosophy, theology, and Christian evidences. As to mathematics, he had gone pretty deeply into algebra and geometry; and in the languages,