In other respects they behaved admirably.

Mrs.Unwin, shut up for sixteen months with her unhappy partner, tended him with unfailing love; alone she did it, for he could bear no one else about him; though to make her part more trying he had conceived the insane idea that she hated him.

Seldom has a stronger proof been given of the sustaining power of affection.
Assuredly of whatever Cowper may have afterwards done for his kind, a great part must be set down to the credit of Mrs.Unwin.
Mary! I want a lyre with other strings, Such aid from heaven as some have feigned they drew, An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new And undebased by praise of meaner things, That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings, I may record thy worth with honour due, In verse as musical as thou art true, And that immortalizes whom it sings.
But thou hast little need.

There is a book By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light, On which the eyes of God not rarely look, A chronicle of actions just and bright; There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary shine, And, since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine.
Newton's friendship too was sorely tried.

In the midst of the malady the lunatic took it into his head to transfer himself from his own house to the Vicarage, which, he obstinately refused to leave; and Newton bore this infliction for several months without repining, though, he might well pray earnestly for his friend's deliverance.
"The Lord has numbered the days in which I am appointed to wait on him in this dark valley, and he has given us such a love to him, both as a believer and a friend, that I am not weary; but to be sure his deliverance would be to me one of the greatest blessings my thoughts can conceive." Dr.Cotton was at last called in, and under his treatment, evidently directed against a bodily disease, Cowper was at length restored to sanity.
Newton once compared his own walk in the world to that of a physician going through Bedlam.