In 1763 Cowper was appointed to the lucrative office of reading clerk, and clerk of the private committees of the House of Lords. The fairest prospect of happiness now lay before him, for his union with one of his cousins, it is said, had only been deferred until he should obtain a satisfactory establishment. But the idea of reading in public was intolerable to him; and he gave up this office for the less valuable one of clerk of the journals, in which it was hoped that his personal appearance before the House would not be required. Unfortunately it did prove necessary that he should appear at the bar to qualify himself for the post. “They whose spirits are formed like mine,” he thus expressed himself in after-life, “to whom a public exhibition of themselves is mortal poison, may have some ideas of the horrors of my situation: others can have none.” He fought hard against this morbid feeling; but, when the day arrived for entering upon his duties, such was his terror and distress, that even his friends acquiesced in his abandoning the attempt. But his mind had been disordered in the struggle, and he shortly sank into deep religious despondency; so that it was found necessary, in December, 1763, to place him in a lunatic asylum at St. Albans, under the care of Dr. Cotton.
Cowper’s insanity at this period, and the grievous dejection of the last twenty-seven years of his life, have been imputed to the so-called gloominess of his religious tenets. From that opinion we entirely dissent. No sense of religious abasement can be conceived able to drive a sane man to distraction at the thought of having to appear in a public capacity before Parliament; and Cowper’s struggles and mental distress on that occasion were anterior to his receiving any serious impressions of religion. Moreover, it appears certain that his recovery was due to more encouraging views of the doctrines of the Gospel, assisted by the kind and judicious mental, as well as bodily, treatment of Dr. Cotton. For eight years his religion was the source of unfailing cheerfulness and active benevolence; and after he ceased to derive pleasure from it in his own person, he was still mild and charitable in his conduct towards others, and his opinions concerning them. The extent of Cowper’s mental wandering on subjects unconnected with his own spiritual state is not perhaps generally known. A remarkable instance of it occurs in a letter to his esteemed friend, Mr. Newton, dated October 2, 1787, from which it appears that, during thirteen years, Cowper had entertained doubts of Mr. Newton’s personal identity. At this latter period, therefore, there was hallucination of mind, as well as religious gloom. Cowper’s recovery from his first illness is dated in July, 1764; but he remained with his friendly and beloved physician nearly a year more, after which he took lodgings at Huntingdon, directed by the wish of being within easy reach of his brother, who was a resident Fellow of Benet College, Cambridge.