Order yourself, my cousin, to the Swan at Newport, and there you
shall find me ready to conduct you to Olney.
"My dear, I have told Homer what you say about casks and urns, and have
asked him whether he is sure that it is a cask in which Jupiter keeps
his wine. He swears that it is a cask, and that it will never be
anything better than a cask to eternity. So if the god is content with
it, we must even wonder at his taste, and be so too.
"Adieu! my dearest, dearest cousin.
W. C."
Here, by way of contrast, is a letter written in the lowest spirits
possible to Mr. Newton. It displays literary grace inalienable even in
the depths of hypochondria. It also shows plainly the connexion of
hypochondria with the weather. January was a month to the return of
which the sufferer always looked forward with dread as a mysterious
season of evil. It was a season, especially at Olney, of thick fog
combined with bitter frosts. To Cowper this state of the atmosphere
appeared the emblem of his mental state; we see in it the cause.
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