Southey has pointed to some passages on which the shadow of the advancing malady falls; but in the main there is a predominance of religious joy and hope.

The most despondent hymn of the series is _Temptation_, the thought of which resembles that of _The Castaway_.
Cowper's melancholy may have been aggravated by the loss of his only brother, who died about this time, and at whose death-bed he was present; though in the narrative which he wrote, joy at John's conversion and the religious happiness of his end seems to exclude the feelings by which hypochondria was likely to be fed.

But his mode of life under Newton was enough to account for the return of his disease, which in this sense may be fairly laid to the charge of religion.

He again went mad, fancied as before that he was rejected of heaven, ceased to pray as one helplessly doomed, and again attempted suicide.
Newton and Mrs.Unwin at first treated the disease as a diabolical visitation, and "with deplorable consistency," to borrow the phrase used by one of their friends in the case of Cowper's desperate abstinence from prayer, abstained from calling in a physician.

Of this again their religion must bear the reproach.