Wahr The Canada Lancet and Practitioner Incorporating "The Canadian Practitioner," "National Hygiene" VOL. LXVIII and " THE CANADA LANCET, VOL. LXII., NO. 4 TORONTO, JANUARY, 1927 Editorial The Insanity of Cowper No. 1 One wonders as he reads the life of Cowper whether his mental alienation was due to physical or to mental causes. Cowper was an exceedingly sensitive child, and whether his mental and emotional makeup were affected through heredity, we cannot state. He lost his mother when he was a lad of six, which caused him sorrow, and, no doubt, was the incentive to that most beautiful poem which he wrote in memory of her. Later, the boy suffered much from being bullied at both of the public schools he attended, and which he recorded in his Tirocinium-a poem castigating public schools, written to fill out the volume of which "The Task" was the principal contribution. Cowper belonged to a good London family, studied law, flirted with his cousins, falling deeply in love with one of them, whom he could not marry for finan |