and the grandeur connected with it, more of gentleness, mysticism, and religious love.  Even Quietism, or something like it, prevailed, especially among the Evangelicals, who were not like the Methodists, engaged in framing a new organization or in wrestling with the barbarous vices of the lower orders.  No movement of the kind has ever been exempt from drawbacks and follies, from extravagance, exaggeration, breaches of good taste in religious matters, unctuousness, and cant—­from chimerical attempts to get rid of the flesh and live an angelic life on earth—­from delusions about special providences and miracles—­from a tendency to over-value doctrine and undervalue duty—­from arrogant assumption of spiritual authority by leaders and preachers—­from the self-righteousness which fancies itself the object of a divine election, and looks out with a sort of religious complacency from the Ark of Salvation in which it fancies itself securely placed, upon the drowning of an unregenerate world.  Still it will hardly be doubted that in the effects produced by Evangelicism and Methodism the good has outweighed the evil.  Had Jansenism 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,