For studying, I actually have a list of close to one hundred names of famous novelists, poets, essayists, and critics in the history of British literature, and I briefly researched each one of those names, highlighting a few biographical details about them. I sat at my computer, typing name after crisp British name into Google search, clicking Wikipedia article after Wikipedia article. Walter Landor, Thomas Peacock, George Darley, George Meredith, Oliver Goldsmith. And then I typed in William Cowper. And I didn't click the Wikipedia article.
Just a few glowing blue links below it, a resource from Desiring God sat. So I clicked on that. It took me to a biographical sermon on William Cowper that John Piper preached at the 1992 Desiring God Pastor's Conference. It shed light on Cowper in a way that no Wikipedia article could. And by the time I had finished reading, I had discovered a few poems (now put to music and arranged in some hymnals) that truly struck me in a way that no poems I had read in my English Lit study had before. So for the next few posts, I want explore some of these poems, and the themes and doctrinal richness found in them.
But in this post I'm simply going to introduce you to Cowper the man. Cowper had always been a poet. He wasn't always a Christian, but he had always been a poet. That's why if you search through the thousands of poems Cowper wrote, not all of them are Christ-centred. Many of these pre-conversion poems are weaved with the threads of hopeless depression. And Cowper knew what that was like.
He was struck with his first mental breakdown and plunge into severe depression in 1752, when he was 21 years old. He had just started studying for a career in law, and depression came on him quickly and suddenly. In his own words,
(I was struck) with such a dejection of spirits, as none but they who have felt the same, can have the least conception of. Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in horror, and rising up in despair. I presently lost all relish for those studies, to which before I had been closely attached; the classics had no longer any charms for me; I had need of something more salutary than amusement, but I had not one to direct me where to find it.
He was able to cheer up, though, through the naturalistic poetry of George Herbert and a fresh change of scenery. But this was only a cheap bandaid to his problems. In later years, he suffered bouts of manic depression again and again, attempting suicide on multiple occasions, and eventually being committed to St. Alban's Insane Asylum in 1763.
Cowper was convinced that he was damned to eternal torment, but it was a doctor at St. Alban's, Dr. Cotton, who was "somewhat of a poet, but most of all, by God's wonderful design, an evangelical believer and lover of God and the gospel. He loved Cowper and held out hope to him repeatedly in spite of his insistence that he was damned and beyond hope. Six months into his stay Cowper found a Bible lying (not by accident) on a bench in the garden." (Piper) He opened the book to John 11 and the story of Lazarus and then he turned to Romans 3:23.
"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
And as they say, the rest is history. God saved Cowper's soul that day, and he began to live for Him. He was released from St. Alban's in early 1765 and moved in with the Unwin family in Huntington. It was here that he began attending a church in Olney, a short way away from Huntington. This church in Olney was pastored by a man you might recognize, John Newton - former slave trader and writer of Amazing Grace. Newton would be Cowper's pastor, mentor, friend, and fellow poetry writer for thirteen years.
Cowper lived to be 69 and died in 1800. His battle with depression didn't magically disappear with a puff of smoke. He still fought sin, but it was now with the hope of the gospel. His poems changed drastically, from despair to joy, an outpouring of a life redeemed. I'm going to reflect on these three poems over the next week:
God Moves in a Mysterious Way
Abuse of the Gospel
Afflictions Sanctified by the Word
Read and meditate on the glorious grace of our God.