remedy; but, like a philosopher, he consented to the experiment. Mr.
Madan came and ministered, but in that distempered soul his balm turned
to poison; his religious conversations only fed the horrible illusion.
A set of English Sapphics, written by Cowper at this time, and
expressing his despair, were unfortunately preserved; they are a
ghastly play of the poetic faculty in a mind utterly deprived of
self-control, and amidst the horrors of inrushing madness. Diabolical,
they might be termed more truly than religious.

There was nothing for it but a madhouse. The sufferer was consigned to
the private asylum of Dr. Cotton, at St. Alban's. An ill-chosen
physician Dr. Cotton would have been, if the malady had really had its
source in religion; for he was himself a pious man, a writer of hymns,
and was in the habit of holding religious intercourse with his
patients. Cowper, after his recovery, speaks of that intercourse with
the keenest pleasure and gratitude; so that in the opinion of the two
persons best qualified to judge, religion in this case was not the
bane. Cowper has given us a full account of his recovery. It was
brought about, as we can plainly see, by medical treatment wisely
applied; but it came in the form of a burst of religious faith and
hope. He rises one morning feeling better; grows cheerful over his
breakfast, takes up the Bible, which in his fits of madness he always
threw aside, and turns to a verse in the Epistle to the Romans.
"Immediately I received strength to believe, and the full beams of the
Sun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of the
atonement He had made, my pardon in His blood, and the fulness and
completeness of His justification. In a moment I believed and received
the Gospel." Cotton at first mistrusted the sudden change, but he was
at length satisfied, pronounced his patient cured, and discharged him
from the asylum, after a detention of eighteen months. Cowper hymned