The catastrophe was brought on by an incident with which religion had
nothing to do. The office of clerk of the Journals in the House of
Lords fell vacant, and was in the gift of Cowper's kinsman Major
Cowper, as patentee. Cowper received the nomination. He had longed
for the office, sinfully as he afterwards fancied; it would exactly
have suited him and made him comfortable for life. But his mind had by
this time succumbed to his malady. His fancy conjured up visions of
opposition to the appointment in the House of Lords; of hostility in
the office where he had to study the Journals; of the terrors of an
examination to be undergone before the frowning peers. After
hopelessly poring over the Journals for some months he became quite
mad, and his madness took a suicidal form. He has told with unsparing
exactness the story of his attempts to kill himself. In his youth his
father had unwisely given him a treatise in favour of suicide to read,
and when he argued against it, had listened to his reasonings in a
silence which he construed as sympathy with the writer, though it seems
to have been only unwillingness to think too badly of the state of a
departed friend.
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