e foot of Inner Temple
Lane. It was in 1763 that Boswell first made the acquaintance of the
"Great Bear" and called on him in his Temple chambers.

Cowper the poet, as the reader doubtless remembers, at first embraced the
law as his profession. He was duly articled to a solicitor of some
eminence; but with how little ardor he devoted himself to the study may be
inferred from the following candid confession: "I did actually live three
years with Mr. Chapman, a solicitor,--that is to say, I slept three years
in his house, but I lived, I spent my days, in Southampton Row. Here was I
and the future Lord Chancellor [Thurlow] constantly employed from morning
till night in giggling and making giggle instead of studying law." It is
not surprising, as one of his biographers remarks, that when, at the age
of twenty-one, he proudly became the occupant of a set of chambers in the
Middle Temple, "he neither sought business nor business sought him."

While domiciled here, the hideous malady which darkened his manhood began
to cast its gloomy pall on his mind. In the year 1759 he removed from the
Middle Temple to better quarters in the Inner Temple. For a time the
change seemed beneficial, but in 1763 what had hitherto been mere morbid
melancholy became something very near the dreaded insanity. "I was struck,
" he says, "not long after my settlement in the Temple, with such
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." His residence at the Temple extended in
all through eleven years. The year above mentioned, the last of that term,
found the poet in straitened circumstances. The twin offices of
reading-clerk and clerk of committees in the House of Lords became vacant
at this juncture, and both were at the disposal of a cousin of Cowper's.
They were duly conferred on the poet. But the duties of these positions
necessitated frequent attendance before the Peers, and to one who suffered
from a morbid nervousness this prospect was most distasteful. Hence,
almost immediately after having accepted them, Cowper resigned these posts
and took instead that of clerk of the journals. Now another difficulty
intervened. It was necessary, in order to qualify for this place, that he
should undergo an examination at the bar of the House of Peers; and thus
"the evil from which he seemed to have escaped again met him."

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