The Argosy — page 292: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

William Cowper. 271 drew him irresistibly towards a country life. His native reserve kept him from forming any very special friends among the many compara- tive strangers with whom he had intercourse. ‘Therefore so much the more close and intimate became his relations with the family of an uncle who was living at that time in town, and who received him almost as a son. But though an uncle might stand almost in a father’s place, that uncle’s daughters might not, perhaps, stand exactly in the light of sisters to a young poet. The uncle, however, forgot this fact, and the cousins were allowed the most familiar, unrestrained intimacy together. The result was that young Cowper became half engaged to his cousin Theodora; not wholly engaged, because the young lady’s father, when he found out how matters stood, put a most uncom- promising spoke into the swift-rolling wheel of theiryoung love. He liked his nephew very much as a nephew, but it was quite another thing with the old gentleman when he appeared before him in the character of a would-be son-in-law. His parental fears for Theodora’s future were most uncomfortably aroused as he noticed the morbid sensitiveness which daily developed more and more in the young man’s nature. ‘This was not the sort of stuff to produce a satisfactory son-in-law of whom a man might be proud. No; Miss Theodora must decidedly not be permitted to bind herself by any fixed promise to such a suitor as this. | The disappointment was no doubt a great one for Cowper. Had Theodora married him, and her bright, healthy influence been brought to bear fully and constantly upon him, it is very likely that the balance of his mind would never have given way, as it afterwards did. As it was, his connection with her only served to produce his first fit of thorough hopeless depression. Young Cowper’s friends, who were always peculiarly anxious and ready to make him happy in their way, without waiting to inquire whether it was his own way as well, now took it into their heads that the best thing they could do for him under present circumstances would be to get him some new employment which would fill up his mind and thrust out of it his unlucky love. They did not pause to ask for what sort of work he was most suited, but they endeavoured to pro- cure him some post which they themselves regarded as honourable and respectable. After using, for some little time, all the influence they possessed with government, they at length contrived to have him made Commis- sioner of the Court of Bankruptcy. This office was, however, only worth 460 a-year; so his cousin, Major Cowper, contrived also to obtain for him the post of Clerk of the Journals of the House of Commons, The announcement of the good news of the honours intended him had, however, a strangely different effect from that they had expected connicloooks (C(O)