At the time of Cowper's
birth, John Wesley was twenty-eight and Whitefield was seventeen. With
them the revival of religion was at hand. Johnson, the moral reformer,
was twenty-two. Howard was born, and in less than a generation
Wilberforce was to come.
When Cowper was six years old his mother died; and seldom has a child,
even such a child, lost more, even in a mother. Fifty years after her
death he still thinks of her, he says, with love and tenderness every
day. Late in his life his cousin Mrs. Anne Bodham recalled herself to
his remembrance by sending him his mother's picture. "Every creature,"
he writes, "that has any affinity to my mother is dear to me, and you,
the daughter of her brother, are but one remove distant from her, I
love you therefore, and love you much, both for her sake and for your
own. The world could not have furnished you with a present so
acceptable to me as the picture which you have so kindly sent me. I
received it the night before last, and received it with a trepidation
of nerves and spirits somewhat akin to what I should have felt had its
dear original presented herself to my embraces.
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