ism prospered as
well, France might have had more of reform and less of revolution. The
poet of the movement will not be condemned on account of his connexion
with it, any more than Milton is condemned on account of his connexion
with Puritanism, provided it be found that he also served art well.

Cowper, as we have seen, was already converted. In a letter written at
this time to Lady Hesketh, he speaks of himself with great humility "as
a convert made in Bedlam, who is more likely to be a stumblingblock to
others, than to advance their faith," though he adds, with reason
enough, "that he who can ascribe an amendment of life and manners, and
a reformation of the heart itself, to madness is guilty of an
absurdity, that in any other case would fasten the imputation of
madness upon himself." It is hence to be presumed that he traced his
conversion to his spiritual intercourse with the Evangelical physician
of St. Albans, though the seed sown by Martin Madan may perhaps also
have sprung up in his heart when the more propitious season arrived.
However that may have been, the two great factors of Cowper's life were
the malady which consigned him to poetic seclusion and the conversion
to Evangelicism, which gave him his inspiration and his theme.

At Huntingdon dwelt the Rev. William Unwin, a clergyman, taking pupils,
his wife, much younger than himself, and their son and daughter. It
was a typical family of the Revival. Old Mr. Unwin is described by
Cowper as a Parson Adams. The son, William Unwin, was preparing for
holy orders. He was a man of some mark, and received tokens of
intellectual respect from Paley, though he is best known as the friend
to whom many of Cowper's letters are addressed. He it was who, struck
by the appearance of the stranger, sought an opportunity of making his
acquaintance. He found one, after morning church, when Cowper was
taking his solitary walk beneath the trees. Under the influence of
religious sympathy the acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship;
Cowper at once became one of the Unwin circle, and soon afterwards, a
vacancy being made by the departure of one of the pupils, he became a
boarder in the house. This position he had passionately desired on
religious grounds; but in truth he might well have desired it on
economical grounds also, for he had begun to experience the difficulty
and expensiveness, as well as the loneliness, of bachelor housekeeping,
and financial deficit wa