Neot's, near Eaton, afforded as convenient a resting place for the party as could have been devised; and the peaceful moon-light scenery of the spot, as Cowper walked with his kinsman up and down the churchyard, had so favourable an effect on his spirits, that he conversed with him, with much composure, on the subject of Thomson's Seasons, and the circumstances under which they were probably written." . In August, 1795, the two invalids, together with Dr. Johnson, went to the village of Mundsley, on the Norfolk Coast; having previously resided, for a very short time, at North Tuddenham, in that county." However," the effect of air and exercise on the dejected poet being by Bo means such as his friends had hoped, change of scene was resorted to as the next expedient:" Ivii. "About six miles to the south of Munds ley, and also on the coast, is a village called Happisburgh, or Hasboro', which. in the days of his youth Cowper had visited from Catfield, the residence of his mother's brother. An excursion therefore to this place was projected, and happily ac complished, by sea; a mode of conveyance which had at least novelty to recommend it; but a gale of wind having sprung up soon after his arrival there, the return by water was unexpectedly precluded, and he was under the necessity of effecting it on foot through the neighbouring villages To the agreeable surprise of his conductor this very considerable walk was performed with scarcely any fatigue to the invalid." The party afterwards took up their residence at Dunham Lodge, in the vicinity of Swaffham. Here (lix), "As the season advanced, the amusement of walking being rendered impracticable, and his spirits being by no means sufficiently recovered to admit of his resuming either his pen or his books, the only resource which was left to the poet, was to listen incessantly to the reading of his companion. The kind of books that appeared most, and indeed solely to attract him, were works of fiction; and so happy was the influence of these in rivetting his attention, and abstracting him, of course, from the contemplation of his miseries, that he discovered a peculiar satisfaction when a production of fancy of more than ordinary length, was introduced by his kinsman. This was no sooner perceived, than he was furnished with the voluminous pages of Richardson, to which he listened with the greater interest, as he had been personally acquainted with that ingenious writer." "At this time, the tender spirit of Cow per clung exceedingly to those about him, and seemed to be haunted with a continual dread that they would leave him alone in his solitary mansion. Sunday, therefore, was a day of more than ordinary apprehension to him; as the furthest of his kinsman's churches being fifteen miles, from the Lodge, he was necessarily abseut during the whole of the Sabbath. Ou these occasions, it was the constant prac ly on the steps of the hall-door, for the tice of the dejected poet to listen frequentbarking of dogs at a farm house, which in the stillness of the night, though at nearly the distance of two miles, invariably announced the approach of his companion.' lx. We cannot resist the temptation of making a few more extracts: "-in the month of April [1796] Mrs. Unwin received a visit from her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Powley. The tender and even filial attention which the compassionate invalid had never ceased to exercise towards his aged and infirm companion, was now shared by her áffectionate relatives; to whom it could not but be a gratifying spectacle to see their venerable parent so assiduously watched over by Cowper, even in his darkest periods of depression. The visit of these exadvantage to their friends, as their saluemplary persons was productive also of tary custom of reading a chapter in the fore she rose, was continued by the writer Bible to their mother, every morning beof this Memoir, who, as the dejected poet always visited the chamber of his poor old friend, the moment he had finished his breakfast, took care to read the chapter at that time." lxi. "-Being encouraged by the result of the above experiment, the conductor of the devotions of this retired family ventured in the course of a few days, to let the members of it meet for prayers in the room where Cowper was, instead of assem bling in another apartment, as they hitherto had done, under the influence, as it proved, of a misconception, with regard to his ability to attend the service. On the first occurrence of this new arrangement, of which no intimation had been previously given him, he was preparing to leave the room, but was prevailed on to resume his seat, by a word of soothing and whispered entreaty." lxii. We pass over the narrative of the occasion of Cowper's engaging in a revisal of his Homer: the account is deeply interesting, but has long been in possession of the public.* Preface to the 2nd ed. of Cowper's Translation of the Iliad, the following anecdote? Review-Cowper's Poems. -as a faithful servant of his dying friend [Mrs. Unwin] and himself was opening the window of his chamber on the morning of the day of her decease, he said to her, in a tone of voice at once plaintive, and full of anxiety as to what might be the situation of his aged companion, Sally, is there life above stairs?" lxv. 165 Who can be unaffected in reading further from the truth. On the contrary, all those alleviations of sorrow, those dethose healing consolations to a wounded lightful anticipations of heavenly rest, spirit,, of which he was permitted to taste resumed its sway, were unequivocally to at the periods when uninterrupted reason be ascribed to the operation of those very principles and views of religion, which, in the instance before us, have been charged with producing so opposite an effect. The primary aberrations of his mental faculties were wholly to be attributed to other causes. But the time was tion of a gracious Providence, he was to at hand, when, by the happy interposibe the favoured subject of a double emancipation. The captivity of his reason was about to terminate; and a bondage, though hitherto unmentioned, yet of a much longer standing, was on the point of being exchanged for the most delightful of all freedom." Of the last moments of Cowper his kinsman has left a record, from which we make a single extract: lxxvii. "In the course of the night [of Thursday, April 24th, 1800], when he appeared to be exceedingly exhausted, some refreshment was presented to him by Miss Browne. From a persuasion, however, that nothing could ameliorate his feelings, though without any apparent impression that the hand of death was already upon him, he rejected the cordial with these words, the very last that he was heard to utter, What can it signify?" "At five in the morning, of Friday the 25th, a deadly change in his features was observed to take place. He remained in an insensible state from that time till about five minutes before five in the afternoon, when he ceased to breathe." The assiduity, the wisdom, the affection and the tenderness with which Dr. Johnson soothed the dejected spirits of his relative, do much honour to his principles and feelings, and claim the gratitude of the numerous admirers of Cowper, as a poet and a man. Though he is solely desirous of directing our regard to his kinsman, yet we cannot be insensible to the illustration of his own excellencies presented in this sketch. His theological creed appears to be that of his relation. This creed, however, is not obtruded on the reader: nor is it defended with bitterness and rancour; and we can respect the motives which dictated the following paragraphs and the spirit which breathes in themthough we may not fully assent to the reasoning they contain: xvii. "A most erroneous and unhappy idea has occupied the minds of some persons, that those views of Christianity which Cowper adopted, and of which, when enjoying the intervals of reason, he was so bright an ornament,* had actually contributed to excite the malady with which he was afflicted. It is capable of the clearest demonstration that nothing was The event to which the biographer of Cowper alludes, took place on July 25th, 1764: xix. "-Before he left the room in which he had breakfasted, he observed a Bible lying in the window-seat. He took it up. Except in a single instance, and that two months before, he had not ventured to open one, since the early days of his abode at St. Alban's. But the time was now come when he might do it to purpose. The profitable perusal of that divine book had been provided for in the most effectual manner, by the restoration at once of the powers of his understanding, and the suUnder these favourable circumstances, he peradded gift of a spiritual discernment. opened the sacred volume at that passage of the epistle to the Romans where the apostle says, that Jesus Christ is set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.' To use the expression employed by Cowper himself in a writhis history is extracted, he received ten document, from which this portion of strength to believe it to see the suitableness of the atonement to his own necessity, and to embrace the gospel with gratitude and joy." xx. We doubt not that "the primary aberrations of" this poet's "mental faculties were wholly to be attributed to other causes" than any theological sentiments whatever. But the return and the continuance of his disorder seem to have been owing, in some + It appears that Cowper was prepared There is an incongruity between the for the impression by previous trains of words views and ornament. REV. thought and feeling. REY. degree at least, to the peculiarities of his religious creed. What is the testimony of his last original composition in this volume-The Cast-Away? 329. We leave the decision with our present time. With an Appendix on the Origin, Progress and Present State of Christianity in Britain. Svo. 4 vols. Portraits. Button and Son. 1808-1814. NOME of our periodical critics affect readers; only remarking, in the lan- mife at the application of the guage of Dr. Johnson, that Cowper's malady, "while for many subsequent years [after 1770] it admitted of his exhibiting the most masterly and delightful display of poetical, epistolary, and conversational ability, on the greatest variety of subjects, it constrained him from that period, both in his conversation and letters, studiously to abstain from every allusion of a religious nature." xxvii. Our own acquaintance with Cowper's poetry, was occasioned by the publication of his Task: our admiration of it has been cherished and increased by a repeated perusal of his volumes. That as a writer he has some defects, it were useless to dis pute these however are of little account, when weighed against his excellencies. It is seldom, after all, that we meet with so much taste and genius united with a spirit so devotional, benevolent and pure. On this ground we recommend Cowper's pages to our younger readers in particular, and entreat them, in estimating his merits, to make just allowances for the occasional influence of a melancholy imagination and of what we humbly think an unscriptural theology. The improvement of the mental powers as well as of the heart, can scarcely fail to be the consequence of familiarity with a writer who is at once simple and correct, lively and energetic, moral and pious. In the present age we have no abundance of models of good composition, either in poetry or prose. Gaudiness is often substituted for ornament: and in many instances metaphors are pronounced fine merely on account of their being extravagant, unnatural and confused. Propter hoc ipsum, quod sunt prava, laudantur. ART. II.-The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting-Houses, in London, Westminster and Southwark; including the Lives of their Ministers from the Rise of Nonconformity to the ✦ Quinet. Izstit. L. ii. Sect. 5. term "Antiquities" to Meeting-houses. Dr. Milner would be equally amused with its being bestowed on any thing belonging to the Protestant Church of England. Some meetinghouses are ancient compared with others that are modern. Protestant Episcopal Churches are of a little greyer age; but for autiquity in its most venerable sense we must go to periods before the Reformation, and even before Christianity if not before Judaism itself. Westminster Abbey is of yesterday compared with the altars of Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt. In point of age as well as of architecture, meeting-houses are indeed mean subjects of history; and in this view, no one will condescend to regard them: but there is a light in which they are exceedingly interesting, and invite and will reward the historian: they have been places of voluntary assembly to such Christians as have followed the guidings of conscience, disdained and scorned the slavery of the mind, and asserted religious liberty, in the midst of perils and by the severest sacrifices. In such places have been found men of eminent biblical learning, of powerful eloquence and of unsullied lives; the best advo cates of divine revelation, the most successful expositors of evangelical truth, the truest benefactors of their species; reformers, confessors, martyrs and saints. Their history is the history of the Bible, of sound faith and real virtue, and is in our judgment more abundant in all that awakens, purifies and exalts the mind than the history of churches spread over empires and ages in which implicit faith on the one part and ecclesiastical tyranny on the other have bound down the human mind in igthe heart, and thus prevented the norance, and cramped and fettered and the most kindly operation of the highest exercises of the understanding affections. The human mind awake and active, in the humblest condition of our nature, is a far nobler sight than it can present when laid asleep Review.-Wilson's Dissenting Churches. even in the soft and stately repose of palaces. With this unfashionable associa tion of ideas with meeting-houses, where the mind fashions the church and not the church the mind, we have been from the first not a little anxious for the success of Mr. Wilson's design. No history of "Dissenting Churches" was ever before drawn up, and it is evident that in a very little time all traces of some of them would have been worn out! All that could be collected by diligence is here recorded with regard to the churches in the cities of London and Westminster and the Borough of Southwark. The author's design extended farther; he had planned and prepared materials for a history of all the Dissenting places of worship in the Metropolis and the circumjacent villages, which would have filled another volume; but a scanty subscription-list, of scarcely three hundred persons, afforded not encouragement enough for the undertaking. This fact is by no means creditable to the Dissenters. It is not perhaps too late to repair the neglect, and we take up these volumes with some faint hope of exciting such attention to the work as may dispose the author to pursue and complete his design. Mr. Wilson, we understand, is now pursuing a learned profession, but was engaged at the period of the commencement of his work in a considerable book-trade in London, which we mention only to shew that he had opportunities rarely enjoyed by authors of collecting materials for his history, which lay scattered in numberless single sermons and pamphlets. These authorities are carefully acknowledged, and of themselves form an index to the literary history of the Dissenters. The first qualification of the historian of Dissenting Churches is a spirit of religious impartiality. Of the value of this, our author is fully aware, and remarks very justly (Pref. p. v.), that " to arrive at truth, we must divest ourselves of sectarian prejudices, weigh well the opinions of others and be diffident of our own judgment," and that "true wisdom is always allied to modesty, and whilst it be comes us to be decided in our own ●pinions, a recollection of human fal 167 libility will teach us a lesson of candour to others." We shall have occasion, hereafter, to point out instances in which Mr. Wilson appears to us to have lost sight of these Christian sentiments; but it is only justice to him to observe, that there is a grow. ing liberality in the work as it advances, which we take as a pledge that should the public patronage ever induce the author to revise his volumes, he would correct some passages which in their present form of fend such readers as consider History degraded when, instead of being the handmaid of truth, it is made the servant of a party. At the same time we are willing to make allowances for prepossessions which spring from a sense of religion and a zeal for its promotion; and we applaud that strong attachment to the common principles of dissent which our historian every where manifests. Without such an attachment, he could not have been expected to qualify himself for his labourious task or to accomplish it with credit. His own ardour, however, leads him to form an unfavourable, and we hope an unjust estimate of the temper of his fel low-dissenters. The compliment which in the following passage is paid to one denomination to the prejudice of the others is a hasty and censorious reflection: "A spirit of inquiry as to the distinguishing features of nonconformity, has, with the exception of the Baptists, wholly fled from the different sects. The Presbyterians have either deserted to the world or sunk under the influence of a lukewarm ministry; and the Independents have gone over in a body to the Methodists. Indif ference and enthusiasm have thinned the ranks of the old stoek, and those who re main behind are lost in the crowd of mo dern religionists." Pref. pp. xi, xii. We have no wish to disparage the Baptists as Dissenters, but we fear that there are striking examples a mongst them of an attempt to gain popularity by sinking the principles of nonconformity. They have not certainly been accustomed to take the lead in the assertion and defence of religious liberty; nor do the Presbyterians and Independents of the present day yield to any generation of their fathers in zeal on behalf of the rights of conscience. And may it not be said that the Dissenters and Methodists have met each other half way, and that if Dissenters have seemed to become Methodists, the Methodists have really become Dissenters ? Mr. Wilson's plan is to trace the history of every particular place of worship, according to its situation, in the Metropolis, and then to give sketches of the lives of the ministers who have successively officiated in its puipit, allotting of course the largest space to such as were distinguished by their activity or are still known by their writings. Where the same minister has been placed at different times over several congregations, reference is made from page to page, in the manner of a dictionary. This method is attended with incouveniences, but they were unavoidable. A work like this can be viewed only in detail; and as we deem it worthy of particular notice we shall go through it carefully, extracting passages which are peculiarly interesting, and making such remarks as appear to us to be subservient to the cause of truth and liberty. Our review will extend through several numbers, but we do not fear that we shall try the patience of our readers, since every article will be complete in itself, or rather, every extract and every remark will be intelligible with out further reference, and independent of what may go before and come after. The first section of the History is on the "Rise of the first Nonconforming Churches:" it begins with an account of the Protestant congregation in London in the reign of Queen Mary, of persecuting memory. This church consisted of about two hundred members. Their meetings were held alternately near Aldgate and Blackfriars, in Thames Street, and in ships upon the river. Sometimes they assembled in the villages about London, and especially at Islington, that they might the more easily elude the bishop's officers and spies. For the same reason they often met in the night. A credulous martyrologist, Clark, has recorded some of their providential deliverances. Their ministers appear to have been, Dr. Edmund Scambler, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, a Mr. Fowler, John Rough,* a Scotchman, Augustine Bernher, a foreigner, and Dr. Bentham, of whom we have (pp. 6, 7.) the following interesting account : Under "THOMAS BENTHAM, D. D., born at Sherbourne, in Yorkshire, and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford. Upon Queen Mary's accession, he was deprived of his Fellowship; when he retired to Zurich, and then to Bazil, where be became preacher to the English exiles. Afterwards, being recalled by his Protestant brethren, he was made superintendant of their congregation in London. In this situation he continued till the death of the Queen, encouraging and confirming his people in their faith by his pious discipline, constant preaching, and resolute behaviour in the Protestant cause. his care and direction, they often met by hundreds for divine worship, without discovery, notwithstanding they were under the nose of the vigilant and cruel Bonner.t Upon the accession of Elizabeth, he was nominated to the bishoprick of Litchfield and Coventry, which he filled with great moderation till his death, Feb. 21, 1578, 9.1 Dr. Bentham was held in great repute for learning and piety. It was with considerable reluctance that he complied with the Queen's injunctions for suppressing the prophecyings. His letter to his archdeacon upon this subject,¶ bears strong marks of a pious mind; but at the same time shews the extent to which the Queen carried her prerogative, and the blind obedience she exacted from her subjects. The Prophecyings were religious meetings instituted by the clergy, for explaining the scriptures and promoting knowledge and piety. One very important benefit arising from them was, that they occasioned a familiar intercourse between the clergy and their people, and excited a laudable emulation in watching over their respective flocks. The Queen complained of them to the Archbishop, as nurseries of Puritanism; she said that the laity neglected their secular affairs by repairing to these meetings, which filled their heads with notions and might occasion disputes and seditions in the state. She moreover told him that it was good for the church |