Word: cowper
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...clear-edged characters appear: Christabel Cowper, the hard-minded, powermongering Prioress of Marrick; Lord Darcy, a subtle old nobleman who holds kings cheap and honor dear; July Savage, the unhappy sister of a famous whore; Robert Aske, squire and barrister, a young man who lives in a straight line, and so cannot avoid trouble when it comes...
Died. Dr. Andrew Cowper Lawson, 91, professor emeritus (of geology and mineralogy) at the University of California; after long illness; in San Leandro, Calif. An authority on earthquakes, Scottish-born Dr. Lawson attracted nationwide attention in 1949, when, at the age of 87, he became the father of a son ("It's nothing, it happens all the time. I don't see why old men should be debarred from having families...
Deeps Unvisited. Sometimes the infinite prospect of God's "desertion" was too much for even Cowper's "passive valor." "I now see a long winter before me," he wrote bleakly in September 1783, "and am to get through it as I can. I know the ground before I tread upon it; it is hollow, it is agitated, it suffers shocks in every direction; it is like the soil of Calabria, all whirlpool and undulation; but I must reel through it-at least if I be not swallowed...
...winter of 1786-87, Cowper was utterly swallowed up by the way. After each attack he was left with less strength to support his despair. Yet somehow, in the decade 1780-90 Cowper managed to produce his finest poems (John Gilpin, The Task) and some of his most winsome letters. After 1790, however, the doomed man felt himself "plunged in deeps, unvisited, I am convinced, by any human soul but mine...
From these deeps Cowper never rose again. A "secret negative" forbade him even to pray. He walked the cliff edges, hoping against hope that he would fall; but such easy exit was denied him. "Oh wretch!" he groaned, "to whom death and life are alike impossible!" In April of 1800 his sturdy physique mercifully collapsed at last, and the release of death came to William Cowper...