COWPER

BY

GOLDWIN SMITH

London, 1880

 CONTENTS. 

 CHAPTER I. Early Life

 CHAPTER II. At Huntingdon--The Unwins

 CHAPTER III. At Olney--Mr. Newton

 CHAPTER IV. Authorship--The Moral Satires

 CHAPTER V. The Task

 CHAPTER VI. Short Poems and Translations

 CHAPTER VII. The Letters

 CHAPTER VIII. Close of Life

COWPER. 

CHAPTER I. 

EARLY LIFE. 

Cowper is the most important English poet of the period between Popeand the illustrious group headed by Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley, which arose out of the intellectual ferment of the European Revolution. As a reformer of poetry, who called it back from conventionality tonature, and at the same time as the teacher of a new school ofsentiment which acted as a solvent upon the existing moral and socialsystem, he may perhaps himself be numbered among the precursors of therevolution, though he was certainly the mildest of them all. As asentimentalist he presents a faint analogy to Rousseau, whom in naturaltemperament he somewhat resembled. He was also the great poet of thereligious revival which marked the latter part of the eighteenthcentury in England, and which was called Evangelicism within theestablishment and Methodism without. In this way he is associated withWesley and Whitefield, as well as with the philanthropists of themovement, such as Wilberforce, Thornton, and Clarkson. As a poet hetouches, on different sides of his character, Goldsmith, Crabbe, andBurns. With Goldsmith and Crabbe he shares the honour of improvingEnglish taste in the sense of truthfulness and simplicity. To Burns hefelt his affinity, across a gulf of social circumstance, and in spiteof a dialect not yet made fashionable by Scott. Besides his poetry, heholds a high, perhaps the highest place, among English letter writers:and the collection of his letters appended to Southey's biographyforms, with the biographical portions of his poetry, the materials fora sketch of his life. Southey's biography itself is very helpful, though too prolix and too much filled out with dissertations for commonreaders. Had its author only done for Cowper what he did for Nelson![Our acknowledgments are also due to Mr. Benham, the writer of theMemoir prefixed to the Globe Edition of Cowper. ]

William Cowper came of the Whig nobility of the robe. His great-uncle, after whom he was named, was the Whig Lord Chancellor of Anne andGeorge I. His grandfather was that Spencer Cowper, judge of the CommonPleas, for love of whom the pretty Quakeress drowned herself, and who, by the rancour of party, was indicted for her murder. His father, theRev. John Cowper, D. D. , was chaplain to George II. His mother was aDonne, of the race of the poet, and descended by several lines fromHenry III. A Whig and a gentleman he was by birth, a Whig and agentleman he remained to the end. He was born on the 15th November(old style), 1731, in his father's rectory of Berkhampstead. Fromnature he received, with a large measure of the gifts of genius, astill larger measure of its painful sensibilities. In his portrait; byRomney the brow bespeaks intellect, the features feeling andrefinement, the eye madness. The stronger parts of character, thecombative and propelling forces he evidently lacked from the beginning. For the battle of life he was totally unfit. His judgment in itshealthy state was, even on practical questions, sound enough, as hisletters abundantly prove; but his sensibility not only rendered himincapable of wrestling with a rough world, but kept him always on theverge of madness, and frequently plunged him into it. To the maladywhich threw him out of active life we owe not the meanest of Englishpoets. 

At the age of thirty-two, writing of himself, he says, "I am of a verysingular temper, and very unlike all the men that I have ever conversedwith. Certainly I am not an absolute fool, but I have more weaknessthan the greatest of all the fools I can recollect at present. Inshort, if I was as fit for the next world as I am unfit for this--andGod forbid I should speak it in vanity--I would not change conditionswith any saint, in Christendom. " Folly produces nothing good, and ifCowper had been an absolute fool, he would not have written goodpoetry. But he does not exaggerate his own weakness, and that heshould have become a power among men is a remarkable triumph of theinfluences which have given birth to Christian civilization. 

The world into which the child came was one very adverse to him, and atthe same time very much in need of him. It was a world from which thespirit of poetry seemed to have fled. There could be no stronger proofof this than the occupation of the throne of Spenser, Shakespeare, andMilton by the arch-versifier Pope. The Revolution of 1688 wasglorious, but unlike the Puritan Revolution which it followed, and inthe political sphere partly ratified, it was profoundly prosaic. Spiritual religion, the source of Puritan grandeur and of the poetry ofMilton, was almost extinct; there was not much more of it among theNonconformists, who had now become to a great extent mere Whigs, with adecided Unitarian tendency. The Church was little better than apolitical force, cultivated and manipulated by political leaders fortheir own purposes. The Bishops were either politicians or theologicalpolemics collecting trophies of victory over free-thinkers as titles tohigher preferment. The inferior clergy as a body were far nearer incharacter to Trulliber than to Dr. Primrose; coarse, sordid, neglectfulof their duties, shamelessly addicted to sinecurism and pluralities, fanatics in their Toryism and in attachment to their corporateprivileges, cold, rationalistic and almost heathen in their preachings, if they preached at all. The society of the day is mirrored in thepictures of Hogarth, in the works of Fielding and Smollett; hard andheartless polish was the best of it; and not a little of it was_Marriage a la Mode_. Chesterfield, with his soulless culture, hiscourt graces, and his fashionable immoralities, was about the highesttype of an English gentleman; but the Wilkeses, Potters, andSandwiches, whose mania for vice culminated in the Hell-fire Club, weremore numerous than the Chesterfields. Among the country squires, forone Allworthy or Sir Roger de Coverley there were many Westerns. Amongthe common people religion was almost extinct, and assuredly no newmorality or sentiment, such as Positivists now promise, had taken itsplace. Sometimes the rustic thought for himself, and scepticism tookformal possession of his mind; but, as we see from one of Cowper'sletters, it was a coarse scepticism which desired to be buried with itshounds. Ignorance and brutality reigned in the cottage. Drunkennessreigned in palace and cottage alike. Gambling, cockfighting, andbullfighting were the amusements of the people. Political life, which, if it had been pure and vigorous, might have made up for the absence ofspiritual influences, was corrupt from the top of the scale to thebottom: its effect on national character is pourtrayed in Hogarth's_Election_. That property had its duties as well as its rights, nobodyhad yet ventured to say or think. The duty of a gentleman towards hisown class was to pay his debts of honour and to fight a duel wheneverhe was challenged by one of his own order; towards the lower class hisduty was none. Though the forms of government were elective, andCowper gives us a description of the candidate at election timeobsequiously soliciting votes, society was intensely aristocratic, andeach rank was divided from that below it by a sharp line whichprecluded brotherhood or sympathy. Says the Duchess of Buckingham toLady Huntingdon, who had asked her to come and hear Whitefield, "Ithank your ladyship for the information concerning the Methodistpreachers; their doctrines are most repulsive, and strongly tincturedwith disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually endeavouring tolevel all ranks and do away with all distinctions. It is monstrous tobe told you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl onthe earth. This is highly offensive and insulting; and I cannot butwonder that your ladyship should relish any sentiments so much atvariance with high rank and good breeding. I shall be most happy tocome and hear your favourite preacher. " Her Grace's sentiments towardsthe common wretches that crawl on the earth were shared, we may besure, by her Grace's waiting-maid. Of humanity there was as little asthere was of religion. It was the age of the criminal law which hangedmen for petty thefts, of life-long imprisonment for debt, of the stocksand the pillory, of a Temple Bar garnished with the heads of traitors, of the unreformed prison system, of the press-gang, of unrestrainedtyranny and savagery at public schools. That the slave trade wasiniquitous hardly any one suspected; even men who deemed themselvesreligious took part in it without scruple. But a change was at hand, and a still mightier change was in prospect. At the time of Cowper'sbirth, John Wesley was twenty-eight and Whitefield was seventeen. Withthem the revival of religion was at hand. Johnson, the moral reformer, was twenty-two. Howard was born, and in less than a generationWilberforce was to come. 

When Cowper was six years old his mother died; and seldom has a child, even such a child, lost more, even in a mother. Fifty years after herdeath he still thinks of her, he says, with love and tenderness everyday. Late in his life his cousin Mrs. Anne Bodham recalled herself tohis remembrance by sending him his mother's picture. "Every creature, "he writes, "that has any affinity to my mother is dear to me, and you, the daughter of her brother, are but one remove distant from her, Ilove you therefore, and love you much, both for her sake and for yourown. The world could not have furnished you with a present soacceptable to me as the picture which you have so kindly sent me. Ireceived it the night before last, and received it with a trepidationof nerves and spirits somewhat akin to what I should have felt had itsdear original presented herself to my embraces. I kissed it and hungit where it is the last object which I see at night, and the first onwhich I open my eyes in the morning. She died when I completed mysixth year; yet I remember her well, and am an ocular witness of thegreat fidelity of the copy, I remember too a multitude of the maternaltendernesses which I received from her, and which have endeared hermemory to me beyond expression. There is in me, I believe, more of theDonne than of the Cowper, and though I love all of both names, and havea thousand reasons to love those of my own name, yet I feel the bond ofnature draw me vehemently to your side. " As Cowper never married, there was nothing to take the place in his heart which had been leftvacant by his mother. 

 My mother! when I learn'd that thou wast dead, Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed? Hover'd thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, Wretch even then, life's journey just begun? Perhaps thou gayest me, though unfelt, a kiss; Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss-- Ah, that maternal smile!--it answers--Yes. I heard the bell toll'd on thy burial day, I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away, And, turning from my nursery window, drew A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu! But was it such?--It was. --Where thou art gone Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, The parting word shall pass my lips no more! Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern, Oft gave me promise of thy quick return. What ardently I wish'd, I long believed, And disappointed still, was still deceived; By expectation every day beguiled, Dupe of to-morrow even from a child. Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went, Till, all my stock of infant sorrows spent, I learn'd at last submission to my lot, But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot. 

In the years that followed no doubt he remembered her too well. At sixyears of age this little mass of timid and quivering sensibility was, in accordance with the cruel custom of the time, sent to a largeboarding school. The change from home to a boarding school is badenough now; it was much worse in those days. 

"I had hardships, " says Cowper, "of various kinds to conflict with, which I felt more sensibly in proportion to the tenderness with which Ihad been treated at home. But my chief affliction consisted in mybeing singled out from all the other boys by a lad of about fifteenyears of age as a proper object upon whom he might let loose thecruelty of his temper. I choose to conceal a particular recital of themany acts of barbarity with which he made it his business continuallyto persecute me. It will be sufficient to say that his savagetreatment of me impressed such a dread of his figure upon my mind, thatI well remember being afraid to lift my eyes upon him higher than tohis knees, and that I knew him better by his shoe-buckles than by anyother part of his dress. May the Lord pardon him, and may we meet inglory!" Cowper charges himself, it may be in the exaggerated style ofa self-accusing saint, with having become at school an adept in the artof lying. Southey says this must be a mistake, since at English publicschools boys do not learn to lie. But the mistake is on Southey'spart; bullying, such as this child endured, while it makes the strongboys tyrants, makes the weak boys cowards, and teaches them to defendthemselves by deceit, the fist of the weak. The recollection of thisboarding school mainly it was that at a later day inspired the plea fora home education in _Tirocinium_. 

 Then why resign into a stranger's hand A task as much within your own command, That God and nature, and your interest too, Seem with one voice to delegate to you? Why hire a lodging in a house unknown For one whose tenderest thoughts all hover round your own? This second weaning, needless as it is, How does it lacerate both your heart and his The indented stick that loses day by day Notch after notch, till all are smooth'd away, Bears witness long ere his dismission come, With what intense desire he wants his home. But though the joys he hopes beneath your roof Bid fair enough to answer in the proof, Harmless, and safe, and natural as they are, A disappointment waits him even there: Arrived, he feels an unexpected change, He blushes, hangs his head, is shy and strange. No longer takes, as once, with fearless ease, His favourite stand between his father's knees, But seeks the corner of some distant seat, And eyes the door, and watches a retreat, And, least familiar where he should be most, Feels all his happiest privileges lost. Alas, poor boy!--the natural effect Of love by absence chill'd into respect. 

From the boarding school, the boy, his eyes being liable toinflammation, was sent to live with an oculist, in whose house he spenttwo years, enjoying at all events a respite from the sufferings and theevils of the boarding school. He was then sent to Westminster School, at that time in its glory. That Westminster in those days must havebeen a scene not merely of hardship, but of cruel suffering anddegradation to the younger and weaker boys, has been proved by theresearches of the Public Schools Commission. There was an establishedsystem and a regular vocabulary of bullying. Yet Cowper seems not tohave been so unhappy there as at the private school; he speaks ofhimself as having excelled at cricket and football; and excellence incricket and football at a public school generally carries with it, besides health and enjoyment, not merely immunity from bullying, buthigh social consideration. With all Cowper's delicacy andsensitiveness, he must have had a certain fund of physical strength, orhe could hardly have borne the literary labour of his later years, especially as he was subject to the medical treatment of a worse thanempirical era. At one time he says, while he was at Westminster, hisspirits were so buoyant that he fancied he should never die, till askull thrown out before him by a gravedigger as he was passing throughSt. Margaret's churchyard in the night recalled him to a sense of hismortality. 

The instruction at a public school in those days was exclusivelyclassical. Cowper was under Vincent Bourne, his portrait of whom is insome respects a picture not only of its immediate subject, but of theschoolmaster of the last century. "I love the memory of Vinny Bourne. I think him a better Latin poet than Tibullus, Propertius, Ausonius, orany of the writers in his way, except Ovid, and not at all inferior tohim. I love him too with a love of partiality, because he was usher ofthe fifth form at Westminster when I passed through it. He was sogood-natured and so indolent that I lost more than I got by him, for hemade me as idle as himself. He was such a sloven, as if he had trustedto his genius as a cloak for everything that could disgust you in hisperson; and indeed in his writings he has almost made amends for all. .. . . I remember seeing the Duke of Richmond set fire to his greasylocks and box his ears to put it out again. " Cowper learned, if not towrite Latin verses as well as Vinny Bourne himself, to write them verywell, as his Latin versions of some of his own short poems bearwitness. Not only so, but he evidently became a good classicalscholar, as classical scholarship was in those days, and acquired theliterary form of which the classics are the best school. Out of schoolhours he studied independently, as clever boys under the unexactingrule of the old public schools often did, and read through the whole ofthe _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ with a friend. He also probably picked up atWestminster much of the little knowledge of the world which he everpossessed. Among his schoolfellows was Warren Hastings, in whose guiltas proconsul he afterwards, for the sake of Auld Lang Syne, refused tobelieve, and Impey, whose character has had the ill-fortune to berequired as the shade in Macaulay's fancy picture of Hastings. 

On leaving Westminster, Cowper, at eighteen, went to live with Mr. Chapman, an attorney, to whom he was articled, being destined for theLaw. He chose that profession, he says, not of his own accord, but togratify an indulgent father, who may have been led into the error by arecollection of the legal honours of the family, as well as by the"silver pence" which his promising son had won by his Latin verses atWestminster School. The youth duly slept at the attorney's house inEly Place. His days were spent in "giggling and making giggle" withhis cousins, Theodora and Harriet, the daughters of Ashley Cowper, inthe neighbouring Southampton Row. Ashley Cowper was a very little manin a white hat lined with yellow, and his nephew used to say that hewould one day he picked by mistake for a mushroom. His fellow-clerk inthe office, and his accomplice in giggling and making giggle, was onestrangely mated with him; the strong, aspiring, and unscrupulousThurlow, who though fond of pleasure was at the same time preparinghimself to push his way to wealth and power. Cowper felt that Thurlowwould reach the summit of ambition, while he would himself remainbelow, and made his friend promise when he was Chancellor to give himsomething. When Thurlow was Chancellor, he gave Cowper his advice ontranslating Homer. 

At the end of his three years with the attorney, Cowper took chambersin the Middle, from which he afterwards removed to the Inner Temple. The Temple is now a pile of law offices. In those days it was still aSociety. One of Cowper's set says of it: "The Temple is the barrierthat divides the City and suburbs; and the gentlemen who reside thereseem influenced by the situation of the place they inhabit. Templarsare in general a kind of citizen courtiers. They aim at the air andthe mien of the drawing-room, but the holy-day smoothness of a'prentice, heightened with some additional touches of the rake orcoxcomb, betrays itself in everything they do. The Temple, however, isstocked with its peculiar beaux, wits, poets, critics, and everycharacter in the gay world; and it is a thousand pities that so prettya society should be disgraced with a few dull fellows, who can submitto puzzle themselves with cases and reports, and have not taste enoughto follow the genteel method of studying the law. " Cowper at all eventsstudied law by the genteel method; he read it almost as little in theTemple as he had in the attorney's office, though in due course of timehe was formally called to the Bar, and even managed in some way toacquire a reputation, which when he had entirely given up theprofession brought him a curious offer of a readership at Lyons Inn. His time was given to literature, and he became a member of a littlecircle of men of letters and journalists which had its social centre inthe Nonsense Club, consisting of seven Westminster men who dinedtogether every Thursday. In the set were Bonnell Thornton and Colman, twin wits, fellow-writers of the periodical essays which were the ragein that day, joint proprietors of the _St. James's Chronicle_, contributors both of them to the _Connoisseur_, and translators, Colmanof Terence, Bonnell Thornton of Plautus, Colman being a dramatistbesides. In the set was Lloyd, another wit and essayist and a poet, with a character not of the best. On the edge of the set, butapparently not in it, was Churchill, who was then running a coursewhich to many seemed meteoric, and of whose verse, sometimes strong butalways turbid, Cowper conceived and retained an extravagant admiration. Churchill was a link to Wilkes; Hogarth too was an ally of Colman, andhelped him in his exhibition of Signs. The set was strictly confinedto Westminsters. Gray and Mason, being Etonians, were objects of itsliterary hostility and butts of its satire. It is needless to say muchabout these literary companions of Cowper's youth: his intercourse withthem was totally broken off, and before he himself became a poet itseffects had been obliterated by madness, entire change of mind, and thelapse of twenty years. If a trace remained, it was in his admirationof Churchill's verses, and in the general results of literary society, and of early practice in composition. Cowper contributed to the_Connoiseur_ and the _St. James's Chronicle_. His papers in the_Connoisseur_ have been preserved; they are mainly imitations of thelighter papers of the _Spectator_ by a student who affects the man ofthe world. He also dallied with poetry, writing verses to "Delia, " andan epistle to Lloyd. He had translated an elegy of Tibullus when hewas fourteen, and at Westminster he had written an imitation ofPhillips's _Splendid Shilling_, which, Southey says, shows his mannerformed. He helped his Cambridge brother, John Cowper, in a translationof the _Henriade_. He kept up his classics, especially his Homer. Inhis letters there are proofs of his familiarity with Rousseau. Two orthree ballads which he wrote are lost, but he says they were popular, and we may believe him. Probably they were patriotic. "When poor BobWhite, " he says, "brought in the news of Boscawen's success off thecoast of Portugal, how did I leap for joy! When Hawke demolishedConflans, I was still more transported. But nothing could express myrapture when Wolfe made the conquest of Quebec. "

The "Delia" to whom Cowper wrote verses was his cousin Theodora, withwhom he had an unfortunate love affair. Her father, Ashley Cowper, forbade their marriage, nominally on the ground of consanguinity, really, as Southey thinks, because he saw Cowper's unfitness forbusiness and inability to maintain a wife. Cowper felt thedisappointment deeply at the time, as well he might do if Theodoraresembled her sister, Lady Hesketh. Theodora remained unmarried, and, as we shall see, did not forget her lover. His letters she preservedtill her death in extreme old age. 

In 1756 Cowper's father died. There does not seem to have been muchintercourse between them, nor does the son in after-years speak withany deep feeling of his loss: possibly his complaint in _Tirocinium_ ofthe effect of boarding-schools, in estranging children from theirparents, may have had some reference to his own case. His localaffections, however, were very strong, and he felt with unusualkeenness the final parting from his old home, and the pang of thinkingthat strangers usurp our dwelling and the familiar places will know usno more. 

 Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more, Children not thine have trod my nursery floor; And where the gardener Robin, day by day, Drew me to school along the public way, Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapp'd In scarlet mantle warm and velvet capp'd. 'Tis now become a history little known, That once we call'd the pastoral house our own. 

Before the rector's death, it seems, his pen had hardly realized thecruel frailty of the tenure by which a home in a parsonage is held. Ofthe family of Berkhampstead Rectory there was now left besides himselfonly his brother John Cowper, Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge, whosebirth had cost their mother's life. 

When Cowper was thirty-two and still living in the Temple, came the sadand decisive crisis of his life. He went mad and attempted suicide. What was the source of his madness? There is a vague tradition that itarose from licentiousness, which, no doubt is sometimes the cause ofinsanity. Hut in Cowper's case there is no proof of anything of thekind; his confessions, after his conversion, of his own past sinfulnesspoint to nothing worse than general ungodliness and occasional excessin wine; and the tradition derives a colour of probability only fromthe loose lives of one or two of the wits and Bohemians with whom hehad lived. His virtuous love of Theodora was scarcely compatible withlow and gross amours. Generally, his madness is said to have beenreligious, and the blame is laid on the same foe to human weal as thatof the sacrifice of Iphigenia. But when he first went mad, hisconversion to Evangelicism had not taken place; he had not led aparticularly religious life, nor been greatly given to religiouspractices, though as a clergyman's son he naturally believed inreligion, had at times felt religious emotions, and when he found hisheart sinking had tried devotional books and prayers. The truth is hismalady was simple hypochondria, having its source in delicacy ofconstitution and weakness of digestion, combined with the influence ofmelancholy surroundings. It had begun to attack him soon after hissettlement in his lonely chambers in the Temple, when his pursuits andassociations, as we have seen, were far from Evangelical. When itscrisis arrived, he was living by himself without any society of thekind that suited him (for the excitement of the Nonsense Club was sureto be followed by reaction); he had lost hiss love, his father, hishome, and as it happened also a dear friend; his little patrimony wasfast dwindling away; he must have despaired of success in hisprofession; and his outlook was altogether dark. It yielded to theremedies to which hypochondria usually yields, air, exercise, sunshine, cheerful society, congenial occupation. It came with January and wentwith May. Its gathering gloom was dispelled for a time by a stroll infine weather on the hills above Southampton Water, and Cowper said thathe was never unhappy for a whole day in the company of Lady Hesketh. When he had become a Methodist, his hypochondria took a religious form, but so did his recovery from hypochondria; both must be set down to theaccount of his faith, or neither. This double aspect of the matterwill plainly appear further on. A votary of wealth when his braingives way under disease or age fancies that he is a beggar. AMethodist when his brain gives way under the same influences fanciesthat he is forsaken of God. In both cases the root of the malady isphysical, In the lines which Cowper sent on his disappointment to Theodora'ssister, and which record the sources of his despondency, there is not atouch of religious despair, or of anything connected with religion. The catastrophe was brought on by an incident with which religion hadnothing to do. The office of clerk of the Journals in the House ofLords fell vacant, and was in the gift of Cowper's kinsman MajorCowper, as patentee. Cowper received the nomination. He had longedfor the office, sinfully as he afterwards fancied; it would exactlyhave suited him and made him comfortable for life. But his mind had bythis time succumbed to his malady. His fancy conjured up visions ofopposition to the appointment in the House of Lords; of hostility inthe office where he had to study the Journals; of the terrors of anexamination to be undergone before the frowning peers. Afterhopelessly poring over the Journals for some months he became quitemad, and his madness took a suicidal form. He has told with unsparingexactness the story of his attempts to kill himself. In his youth hisfather had unwisely given him a treatise in favour of suicide to read, and when he argued against it, had listened to his reasonings in asilence which he construed as sympathy with the writer, though it seemsto have been only unwillingness to think too badly of the state of adeparted friend. This now recurred to his mind, and talk with casualcompanions in taverns and chophouses was enough in his presentcondition to confirm him in his belief that self-destruction waslawful. Evidently he was perfectly insane, for he could not take up anewspaper without reading in it a fancied libel on himself. First hebought laudanum, and had gone out into the fields with the intention ofswallowing it, when the love of life suggested another way of escapingthe dreadful ordeal. He might sell all he had, fly to France, changehis religion, and bury himself in a monastery. He went home to packup; but while he was looking over his portmanteau, his mood changed, and he again resolved on self-destruction. Taking a coach he orderedthe coachman to drive to the Tower Wharf, intending to throw himselfinto the river. But the love of life once more interposed, under theguise of a low tide and a porter seated on the quay. Again in thecoach, and afterwards in his chambers, he tried to swallow thelaudanum; but his hand was paralysed by "the convincing Spirit, " aidedby seasonable interruptions from the presence of his laundress and herhusband, and at length he threw the laudanum away. On the night beforethe day appointed for the examination before the Lords, he lay sometime with the point of his penknife pressed against his heart, butwithout courage to drive it home. Lastly he tried to hang himself; andon this occasion he seems to have been saved not by the love of life, or by want of resolution, but by mere accident. He had becomeinsensible, when the garter by which he was suspended broke, and hisfall brought in the laundress, who supposed him to be in a fit. Hesent her to a friend, to whom he related all that had passed, anddespatched him to his kinsman. His kinsman arrived, listened withhorror to the story, made more vivid by the sight of the broken garter, saw at once that all thought of the appointment was at end, and carriedaway the instrument of nomination. Let those whom despondency assailsread this passage of Cowper's life, and remember that he lived to write_John Gilpin_ and _The Task_. 

Cowper tells us that "to this moment he had felt no concern of aspiritual kind;" that "ignorant of original sin, insensible of theguilt of actual transgression, he understood neither the Law nor theGospel, the condemning nature of the one, nor the restoring mercies ofthe other. " But after attempting suicide he was seized, as he wellmight be, with religious horrors. Now it was that he began to askhimself whether he had been guilty of the unpardonable sin, and waspresently persuaded that he had, though it would be vain to inquirewhat he imagined the unpardonable sin to be. In this mood, he fanciedthat if there was any balm for him in Gilead, it would be found in theministrations of his friend Martin Madan, an Evangelical clergyman ofhigh repute, whom he had been wont to regard as an enthusiast. HisCambridge brother, John, the translator of the _Henriade_, seems tohave had some philosophic doubts as to the efficacy of the proposedremedy; but, like a philosopher, he consented to the experiment. Mr. Madan came and ministered, but in that distempered soul his balm turnedto poison; his religious conversations only fed the horrible illusion. A set of English Sapphics, written by Cowper at this time, andexpressing his despair, were unfortunately preserved; they are aghastly play of the poetic faculty in a mind utterly deprived ofself-control, and amidst the horrors of inrushing madness. Diabolical, they might be termed more truly than religious. 

There was nothing for it but a madhouse. The sufferer was consigned tothe private asylum of Dr. Cotton, at St. Alban's. An ill-chosenphysician Dr. Cotton would have been, if the malady had really had itssource in religion; for he was himself a pious man, a writer of hymns, and was in the habit of holding religious intercourse with hispatients. Cowper, after his recovery, speaks of that intercourse withthe keenest pleasure and gratitude; so that in the opinion of the twopersons best qualified to judge, religion in this case was not thebane. Cowper has given us a full account of his recovery. It wasbrought about, as we can plainly see, by medical treatment wiselyapplied; but it came in the form of a burst of religious faith andhope. He rises one morning feeling better; grows cheerful over hisbreakfast, takes up the Bible, which in his fits of madness he alwaysthrew aside, and turns to a verse in the Epistle to the Romans. "Immediately I received strength to believe, and the full beams of theSun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of theatonement He had made, my pardon in His blood, and the fulness andcompleteness of His justification. In a moment I believed and receivedthe Gospel. " Cotton at first mistrusted the sudden change, but he wasat length satisfied, pronounced his patient cured, and discharged himfrom the asylum, after a detention of eighteen months. Cowper hymnedhis deliverance in _The Happy Change_, as in the hideous Sapphics hehad given religious utterance to his despair. 

 The soul, a dreary province once Of Satan's dark domain, Feels a new empire form'd within, And owns a heavenly reign. 

 The glorious orb whose golden beams The fruitful year control, Since first obedient to Thy word, He started from the goal, Has cheer'd the nations with the joys His orient rays impart; But', Jesus, 'tis Thy light alone Can shine upon the heart. 

Once for all, the reader of Cowper's life must make up his mind toacquiesce in religious forms of expression. If he does not sympathizewith them, he will recognize them as phenomena of opinion, and bearthem like a philosopher. He can easily translate them into thelanguage of psychology, or even of physiology, if he thinks fit. 

CHAPTER II. 

AT HUNTINGDON--THE UNWINS. 

The storm was over; but it had swept away a great part of Cowper'sscanty fortune, and almost all his friends. At thirty-five he wasstranded and desolate. He was obliged to resign a Commissionership ofBankruptcy which he held, and little seems to have remained to him butthe rent of his chambers in the Temple. A return to his professionwas, of course, out of the question. His relations, however, combinedto make up a little income for him, though from a hope of his family, he had become a melancholy disappointment; even the Major contributing, in spite of the rather trying incident of the nomination. His brotherwas kind and did a brother's duty, but there does not seem to have beenmuch sympathy between them; John Cowper did not become a convert toEvangelical doctrine till he was near his end, and he was incapable ofsharing William's spiritual emotions. Of his brilliant companions, theBonnell Thorntons and the Colmans, the quondam members of the NonsenseClub, he heard no more, till he had himself become famous. But hestill had a staunch friend in a less brilliant member of the Club, Joseph Hill, the lawyer, evidently a man who united strong sense anddepth of character with literary tastes and love of fun, and who wasthroughout Cowper's life his Mentor in matters of business, with regardto which he was himself a child. He had brought with him from theasylum at St. Albans the servant who had attended him there, and whohad been drawn by the singular talisman of personal attraction whichpartly made up to this frail and helpless being for his entire lack offorce. He had also brought from the same place an outcast boy whosecase bad excited his interest, and for whom he afterwards provided byputting him to a trade. The maintenance of these two retainers wasexpensive and led to grumbling among the subscribers to the familysubsidy, the Major especially threatening to withdraw his contribution. While the matter was in agitation, Cowper received an anonymous lettercouched in the kindest terms, bidding him not distress himself, forthat whatever deduction from his income might be made, the loss wouldbe supplied by one who loved him tenderly and approved his conduct. Ina letter to Lady Hesketh, he says that he wishes he knew who dictatedthis letter, and that he had seen not long before a style excessivelylike it. He can scarcely have failed to guess that it came fromTheodora. 

It is due to Cowper to say that he accepts the assistance of hisrelatives and all acts of kindness done to him with sweet and becomingthankfulness; and that whatever dark fancies he may have had about hisreligious state, when the evil spirit was upon him, he always speakswith contentment and cheerfulness of his earthly lot. Nothingsplenetic, no element of suspicions and irritable self-love, enteredinto the composition of his character. 

On his release from the asylum he was taken in hand by his brotherJohn, who first tried to find lodgings for him at or near Cambridge, and failing in this, placed him at Huntingdon, within a long ride, sothat William becoming a horseman for the purpose, the brothers couldmeet once a week. Huntingdon was a quiet little town with less thantwo thousand inhabitants, in a dull country, the best part of which wasthe Ouse, especially to Cowper, who was fond of bathing. Life there, as in other English country towns in those days, and indeed tillrailroads made people everywhere too restless and migratory forcompanionship or even for acquaintance, was sociable in an unrefinedway. There were assemblies, dances, races, card-parties, and abowling-green, at which the little world met and enjoyed itself. Fromthese the new convert, in his spiritual ecstasy, of course turned awayas mere modes of murdering time. Three families received him withcivility, two of them with cordiality; but the chief acquaintances hemade were with "odd scrambling fellows like himself;" an eccentricwater-drinker and vegetarian who was to be met by early risers andwalkers every morning at six o'clock by his favourite spring; achar-parson, of the class common in those days of sinecurism andnon-residence, who walked sixteen miles every Sunday to serve twochurches, besides reading daily prayers at Huntingdon, and who regaledhis friend with ale brewed by his own hands. In his attached servantthe recluse boasted that he had a friend; a friend he might have, buthardly a companion. 

For the first days and even weeks, however, Huntingdon seemed aparadise. The heart of its new inhabitant was full of the unspeakablehappiness that comes with calm after storm, with health after the mostterrible of maladies, with repose after the burning fever of the brain. When first he went to church he was in a spiritual ecstasy; it was withdifficulty that he restrained his emotions, though his voice wassilent, being stopped by the intensity of his feelings, his heartwithin him sang for joy; and when the Gospel for the day was read, thesound of it was more than he could well bear. This brightness of hismind communicated itself to all the objects round him, to the sluggishwaters of the Ouse, to dull, fenny Huntingdon, and to its commonplaceinhabitants. 

For about three months his cheerfulness lasted, and with the help ofbooks, and his rides to meet his brother, he got on pretty well; butthen "the communion which he had so long been able to maintain with theLord was suddenly interrupted. " This is his theological version of thecase; the rationalistic version immediately follows: "I began todislike my solitary situation, and to fear I should never be able toweather out the winter in so lonely a dwelling. " No man could be lessfitted to bear a lonely life; persistence in the attempt would soonhave brought back his madness. He was longing for a home; and a homewas at hand to receive him. It was not perhaps one of the happiestkind; but the influence which detracted from its advantages was the onewhich rendered it hospitable to the wanderer. If Christian piety wascarried to a morbid excess beneath its roof, Christian charity openedits door. 

The religious revival was now in full career, with Wesley for its chiefapostle, organizer, and dictator, Whitefield for its great preacher, Fletcher of Madeley for its typical saint, Lady Huntingdon for itspatroness among the aristocracy and the chief of its "devout women. "From the pulpit, but still more from the stand of the field-preacherand through a well-trained army of social propagandists, it wasassailing the scepticism, the coldness, the frivolity, the vices of theage. English society was deeply stirred; multitudes were converted, while among those who were not converted violent and sometimes cruelantagonism was aroused. The party had two wings, the Evangelicals, people of the wealthier class or clergymen of the Church of England, who remained within the Establishment; and the Methodists, people ofthe lower middle class or peasants, the personal converts and followersof Wesley and Whitefield, who, like their leaders, without a positivesecession, soon found themselves organizing a separate spiritual lifein the freedom of Dissent. In the early stages of the movement theEvangelicals were to be counted at most by hundreds, the Methodists byhundreds of thousands. So far as the masses were concerned, it was infact a preaching of Christianity anew. There was a cross division ofthe party into the Calvinists and those whom the Calvinists calledArminians; Wesley belonging to the latter section, while the mostpronounced and vehement of the Calvinists was "the fierce Toplady. " Asa rule, the darker and sterner element, that which delighted inreligious terrors and threatenings was Calvinist, the milder andgentler, that which preached a gospel of love and hope, continued tolook up to Wesley, and to bear with him the reproach of being Arminian, It is needless to enter into a minute description of Evangelicism andMethodism; they are not things of the past. If Evangelicism has nowbeen reduced to a narrow domain by the advancing forces of Ritualism onone side and of nationalism on the other, Methodism is still the greatProtestant Church, especially beyond the Atlantic. The spiritual firewhich they have kindled, the character which they have produced, themoral reforms which they have wrought, the works of charity andphilanthropy to which they have given birth, are matters not only ofrecent memory, but of present experience. Like the great Protestantrevivals which had preceded them in England, like the Moravian revivalon the Continent, to which they were closely related, they sought tobring the soul into direct communion with its Maker, rejecting theintervention of a priesthood or a sacramental system. Unlike theprevious revivals in England, they warred not against the rulers of theChurch or State, but only against vice or irreligion. Consequently inthe characters which they produced, as compared with those produced byWycliffism, by the Reformation, and notably by Puritanism, there wasless of force and the grandeur connected with it, more of gentleness, mysticism, and religious love. Even Quietism, or something like it, prevailed, especially among the Evangelicals, who were not like theMethodists, engaged in framing a new organization or in wrestling withthe barbarous vices of the lower orders. No movement of the kind hasever been exempt from drawbacks and follies, from extravagance, exaggeration, breaches of good taste in religious matters, unctuousness, and cant--from chimerical attempts to get rid of theflesh and live an angelic life on earth--from delusions about specialprovidences and miracles--from a tendency to over-value doctrine andundervalue duty--from arrogant assumption of spiritual authority byleaders and preachers--from the self-righteousness which fancies itselfthe object of a divine election, and looks out with a sort of religiouscomplacency from the Ark of Salvation in which it fancies itselfsecurely placed, upon the drowning of an unregenerate world. Still itwill hardly be doubted that in the effects produced by Evangelicism andMethodism the good has outweighed the evil. Had Jansenism prospered aswell, France might have had more of reform and less of revolution. Thepoet of the movement will not be condemned on account of his connexionwith it, any more than Milton is condemned on account of his connexionwith Puritanism, provided it be found that he also served art well. 

Cowper, as we have seen, was already converted. In a letter written atthis time to Lady Hesketh, he speaks of himself with great humility "asa convert made in Bedlam, who is more likely to be a stumblingblock toothers, than to advance their faith, " though he adds, with reasonenough, "that he who can ascribe an amendment of life and manners, anda reformation of the heart itself, to madness is guilty of anabsurdity, that in any other case would fasten the imputation ofmadness upon himself. " It is hence to be presumed that he traced hisconversion to his spiritual intercourse with the Evangelical physicianof St. Albans, though the seed sown by Martin Madan may perhaps alsohave sprung up in his heart when the more propitious season arrived. However that may have been, the two great factors of Cowper's life werethe malady which consigned him to poetic seclusion and the conversionto Evangelicism, which gave him his inspiration and his theme. 

At Huntingdon dwelt the Rev. William Unwin, a clergyman, taking pupils, his wife, much younger than himself, and their son and daughter. Itwas a typical family of the Revival. Old Mr. Unwin is described byCowper as a Parson Adams. The son, William Unwin, was preparing forholy orders. He was a man of some mark, and received tokens ofintellectual respect from Paley, though he is best known as the friendto whom many of Cowper's letters are addressed. He it was who, struckby the appearance of the stranger, sought an opportunity of making hisacquaintance. He found one, after morning church, when Cowper wastaking his solitary walk beneath the trees. Under the influence ofreligious sympathy the acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship;Cowper at once became one of the Unwin circle, and soon afterwards, avacancy being made by the departure of one of the pupils, he became aboarder in the house. This position he had passionately desired onreligious grounds; but in truth he might well have desired it oneconomical grounds also, for he had begun to experience the difficultyand expensiveness, as well as the loneliness, of bachelor housekeeping, and financial deficit was evidently before him. To Mrs. Unwin he wasfrom the first strongly drawn. "I met Mrs. Unwin in the street, " hesays, "and went home with her. She and I walked together near twohours in the garden, and had a conversation which did me more good thanI should have received from an audience with the first prince inEurope. That woman is a blessing to me, and I never see her withoutbeing the better for her company. " Mrs. Unwin's character is written inher portrait with its prim but pleasant features; a Puritan and aprecisian she was, but she was not morose or sour, and she had aboundless capacity for affection. Lady Hesketh, a woman of the world, and a good judge in every respect, says of her at a later period, whenshe had passed with Cowper through many sad and trying years: "She isvery far from grave; on the contrary, she is cheerful and gay, andlaughs _de bon coeur_ upon the smallest provocation. Amidst all thelittle puritanical words which fall from her _de temps en temps_, sheseems to have by nature a quiet fund of gaiety; great indeed must ithave been, not to have been wholly overcome by the close confinement inwhich she has lived, and the anxiety she must have undergone for onewhom she certainly loves as well as one human being can love another. I will not say she idolizes him, because that she would think wrong;but she certainly seems to possess the truest regard and affection forthis excellent creature, and, as I said before, has in the most literalsense of those words, no will or shadow of inclination but what is his. My account of Mrs. Unwin may seem perhaps to you, on comparing myletters, contradictory; but when you consider that I began to write atthe first moment that I saw her, you will not wonder. Her characterdevelops itself by degrees; and though I might lead you to suppose hergrave and melancholy, she is not so by any means. When she speaks upongrave subjects, she does express herself with a puritanical tone, andin puritanical expressions, but on all subjects she seems to have agreat disposition to cheerfulness and mirth; and indeed had she not, she could not have gone through all she has. I must say, too, that sheseems to be very well read in the English poets, as appears by severallittle quotations, which she makes from time to time, and has a truetaste for what is excellent in that way. "

When Cowper became an author he paid the highest respect to Mrs. Unwinas an instinctive critic, and called her his Lord Chamberlain, whoseapprobation was his sufficient licence for publication. 

Life in the Unwin family is thus described by the new inmate;--"As toamusements, I mean what the world calls such, we have none. The placeindeed swarms with them; and cards and dancing are the professedbusiness of almost all the gentle inhabitants of Huntingdon. We refuseto take part in them, or to be accessories to this way of murdering ourtime, and by so doing have acquired the name of Methodists. Havingtold you how we do not spend our time, I will next say how we do. Webreakfast commonly between eight and nine; till eleven, we read eitherthe scripture, or the sermons of some faithful preacher of those holymysteries; at eleven we attend divine service, which is performed heretwice every day, and from twelve to three we separate, and amuseourselves as we please. During that interval, I either read in my ownapartment, or walk or ride, or work in the garden. We seldom sit anhour after dinner, but, if the weather permits, adjourn to the garden, where, with Mrs. Unwin and her son, I have generally the pleasure ofreligious conversation till tea-time. If it rains, or is too windy forwalking, we either converse within doors or sing some hymns of Martin'scollection, and by the help of Mrs. Unwin's harpsichord, make up atolerable concert, in which our hearts, I hope are the best performers. After tea we sally forth to walk in good earnest. Mrs. Unwin is a goodwalker, and we have generally travelled about four miles before we seehome again. When the days are short we make this excursion in theformer part of the day, between church-time and dinner. At night weread and converse as before till supper, and commonly finish theevening either with hymns or a sermon, and last of all the family arecalled to prayers. I need not tell you that such a life as this isconsistent with the utmost cheerfulness, accordingly we are all happy, and dwell together in unity as brethren. "

Mrs. Cowper, the wife of Major (now Colonel) Cowper, to whom this waswritten, was herself strongly Evangelical; Cowper had, in fact, unfortunately for him, turned from his other relations and friends toher on that account. She, therefore, would have no difficulty inthinking that such a life was consistent with cheerfulness, butordinary readers will ask how it could fail to bring on another fit ofhypochondria. The answer is probably to be found in the last words ofthe passage. Overstrained and ascetic piety found an antidote inaffection. The Unwins were Puritans and enthusiasts, but theirhousehold was a picture of domestic love. 

With the name of Mrs. Cowper is connected an incident which, occurredat this time, and which illustrates the propensity to self-inspectionand self-revelation which Cowper had in common with Rousseau. Huntingdon, like other little towns, was all eyes and gossip; the newcomer was a mysterious stranger who kept himself aloof from the generalsociety, and he naturally became the mark for a little stone-throwing. Young Unwin happening to be passing near "the Park" on his way fromLondon to Huntingdon, Cowper gave him an introduction to its lady, in aletter to whom he afterwards disclosed his secret motive. "My dearCousin, --You sent my friend Unwin home to us charmed, with your kindreception of him, and with everything he saw at the Park. Shall I oncemore give you a peep into my vile and deceitful heart? What motive doyou think lay at the bottom of my conduct when I desired him to callupon you? I did not suspect, at first, that pride and vainglory hadany share in it, but quickly after I had recommended the visit to him, I discovered, in that fruitful soil, the very root of the matter. Youknow I am a stranger here; all such are suspected characters, unlessthey bring their credentials with them. To this moment, I believe, itis a matter of speculation in the place, whence I came, and to whom Ibelong. Though my friend, you may suppose, before I was admitted aninmate here, was satisfied that I was not a mere vagabond, and has, since that time, received more convincing proofs of my _sponsibility_;yet I could not resist the opportunity of furnishing him with oculardemonstration of it, by introducing him to one of my most splendidconnexions; that when he hears me called 'that fellow Cowper, ' whichhas happened heretofore, he may be able, upon unquestionable evidence, to assert my gentlemanhood, and relieve me from the weight of thatopprobrious appellation. Oh pride! pride! it deceives with thesubtlety of a serpent, and seems to walk erect, though it crawls uponthe earth. How will it twist and twine itself about to get from underthe Cross, which it is the glory of our Christian calling to be able tobear with patience and goodwill. They who can guess at the heart of astranger, --and you especially, who are of a compassionate temper, --willbe more ready, perhaps, to excuse me, in this instance, than I can beto excuse myself. But, in good truth, it was abominable pride ofheart, indignation, and vanity, and deserves no better name. "

Once more, however obsolete Cowper's belief, and the language in whichhe expresses it may have become for many of us, we must take it as hisphilosophy of life. At this time, at all events, it was a source ofhappiness. "The storm being passed, a quiet and peaceful serenity ofsoul succeeded, " and the serenity in this case was unquestionablyproduced in part by the faith. 

 I was a stricken deer that left the herd Long since; with many an arrow deep infixed My panting side was charged, when I withdrew To seek a tranquil death in distant shades, There was I found by one who had himself Been hurt by the archers. In his side he bore And in his hands and feet the cruel scars, With gentle force soliciting the darts, He drew them forth and healed and bade me live. 

Cowper thought for a moment of taking orders, but his dread ofappearing in public conspired with the good sense which lay beneath hisexcessive sensibility to put a veto on the design. He, however, exercised the zeal of a neophyte in proselytism to a greater extentthan his own judgment and good taste approved when his enthusiasm hadcalmed down. 

CHAPTER III. 

AT OLNEY--MR. NEWTON. 

Cowper had not been two years with the Unwins when Mr. Unwin, thefather, was killed by a fall from his horse; this broke up thehousehold. But between Cowper and Mrs. Unwin an indissoluble tie hadbeen formed. It seems clear, notwithstanding Southey's assertion tothe contrary, that they at one time meditated marriage, possibly as apropitiation to the evil tongues which did not spare even this mostinnocent connexion; but they were prevented from fulfilling theirintention by a return of Cowper's malady. They became companions forlife. Cowper says they were as mother and son to each other; but Mrs. Unwin was only seven years older than he. To label their connexion isimpossible, and to try to do it would be a platitude. In his poemsCowper calls Mrs. Unwin Mary; she seems always to have called him Mr. Cowper. It is evident that her son, a strictly virtuous and religiousman, never had the slightest misgiving about his mother's position. 

The pair had to choose a dwelling-place; they chose Olney inBuckinghamshire, on the Ouse. The Ouse was "a slow winding river, "watering low meadows, from which crept pestilential fogs. Olney was adull town, or rather village, inhabited by a population of lace-makers, ill-paid, fever-stricken, and for the most part as brutal as they werepoor. There was not a woman in the place excepting Mrs. Newton withwhom Mrs. Unwin could associate, or to whom she could look for help insickness or other need. The house in which the pair took up theirabode was dismal, prison-like, and tumble-down; when they left it, thecompetitors for the succession were a cobbler and a publican. Itlooked upon the Market Place, but it was in the close neighbourhood ofSilver End, the worst part of Olney. In winter the cellars were fullof water. There were no pleasant walks within easy reach, and inwinter Cowper's only exercise was pacing thirty yards of gravel, withthe dreary supplement of dumb-bells. What was the attraction to this"well, " this "abyss, " as Cowper himself called it, and as, physicallyand socially, it was?

The attraction was the presence of the Rev. John Newton, then curate ofOlney. The vicar was Moses Brown, an Evangelical and a religiouswriter, who has even deserved a place among the worthies of therevival; but a family of thirteen children, some of whom it appears tooclosely resembled the sons of Eli, had compelled him to take advantageof the indulgent character of the ecclesiastical polity of those daysby becoming a pluralist and a non-resident, so that the curate hadOlney to himself. The patron was the Lord Dartmouth, who, as Cowpersays, "wore a coronet and prayed. " John Newton was one of the shininglights and foremost leaders and preachers of the revival. His name wasgreat both in the Evangelical churches within the pale of theEstablishment, and in the Methodist churches without it. He was abrand plucked from the very heart of the burning. We have a memoir ofhis life, partly written by himself, in the form of letters, andcompleted under his superintendence. It is a monument of the age ofSmollett and Wesley, not less characteristic than is Cellini's memoirof the times in which he lived. His father was master of a vessel, andtook him to sea when he was eleven. His mother was a pious Dissenter, who was at great pains to store his mind with religious thoughts andpieces. She died when he was young, and his stepmother was not pious. He began to drag his religious anchor, and at length, having readShaftesbury, left his theological moorings altogether, and drifted intoa wide sea of ungodliness, blasphemy, and recklessness of living. Suchat least is the picture drawn by the sinner saved of his own earlieryears. While still but a stripling he fell desperately in love with agirl of thirteen; his affection for her was as constant as it wasromantic; through all his wanderings and sufferings he never ceased tothink of her, and after seven years she became his wife. His fatherfrowned on the engagement, and he became estranged from home. He wasimpressed; narrowly escaped shipwreck, deserted, and was arrested andflogged as a deserter. Released from the navy, he was taken into theservice of a slave-dealer on the coast of Africa, at whose hands, andthose of the man's negro mistress, he endured every sort ofill-treatment and contumely, being so starved that he was fainsometimes to devour raw roots to stay his hunger. His constitutionmust have been of iron to carry him through all that he endured. Inthe meantime his indomitable mind was engaged in attempts atself-culture; he studied a Euclid which he had brought with him, drawing his diagrams on the sand, and he afterwards managed to teachhimself Latin by means of a Horace and a Latin Bible, aided by someslight vestiges of the education which he had received at a grammarschool. His conversion was brought about by the continued influencesof Thomas a Kempis, of a very narrow escape, after terrible sufferings, from shipwreck, of the impression made by the sights of the mighty deepon a soul which, in its weather-beaten casing, had retained its nativesensibility, and, we may safely add, of the disregarded but notforgotten teachings of his pious mother. Providence was now kind tohim; he became captain of a slave ship, and made several voyages on thebusiness of the trade. That it was a wicked trade he seems to have hadno idea; he says he never knew sweeter or more frequent hours of divinecommunion than on his two last voyages to Guinea. Afterwards itoccurred to him that though his employment was genteel and profitable, it made him a sort of gaoler, unpleasantly conversant with both chainsand shackles; and he besought Providence to fix him in a more humanecalling, In answer to his prayer came a fit of apoplexy, which made it dangerousfor him to go to sea again. He obtained an office in the port ofLiverpool, but soon he set his heart on becoming a minister of theChurch of England. He applied for ordination to the Archbishop ofYork, but not having the degree required by the rules of theEstablishment, he received through his Grace's secretary "the softestrefusal imaginable. " The Archbishop had not had the advantage ofperusing Lord Macaulay's remarks on the difference between the policyof the Church of England and that of the Church of Rome, with regard tothe utilization of religious enthusiasts. In the end Newton wasordained by the Bishop of Lincoln, and threw himself with the energy ofa newborn apostle upon the irreligion and brutality of Olney. NoCarthusian's breast could glow more intensely with the zeal which isthe offspring of remorse. Newton was a Calvinist of course, though itseems not an extreme one, otherwise he would probably have confirmedCowper in the darkest of hallucinations. His religion was one ofmystery and miracle, full of sudden conversions, special providencesand satanic visitations. He himself says that "his name was up aboutthe country for preaching people mad:" it is true that in the eyes ofthe profane Methodism itself was madness; but he goes on to say"whether it is owing to the sedentary life the women live here, poringover their (lace) pillows for ten or twelve hours every day, andbreathing confined air in their crowded little rooms, or whatever maybe the immediate cause, I suppose we have near a dozen in differentdegrees disordered in their heads, and most of them I believe trulygracious people. " He surmises that "these things are permitted injudgment, that they who seek occasion for cavilling and stumbling mayhave what they want. " Nevertheless there were in him not only force, courage, burning zeal for doing good, but great kindness, and eventenderness of heart. "I see in this world, " he said, "two heaps ofhuman happiness and misery; now if I can take but the smallest bit fromone heap and add it to the other I carry a point--if, as I go home, achild has dropped a half-penny, and by giving it another I can wipeaway its tears, I feel I have done something. " There was even in him astrain, if not of humour, of a shrewdness which was akin to it, andexpressed itself in many pithy sayings. "If two angels came down fromheaven to execute a divine command, and one was appointed to conduct anempire and the other to sweep a street in it, they would feel noinclination to change employments. " "A Christian should never pleadspirituality for being a sloven; if he be but a shoe-cleaner, he shouldbe the best in the parish. " "My principal method for defeating heresyis by establishing truth. One proposes to fill a bushel with tares;now if I can fill it first with wheat, I shall defy his attempts. " Thathis Calvinism was not very dark or sulphureous, seems to be shown fromhis repeating with gusto the saying of one of the old women of Olneywhen some preacher dwelt on the doctrine of predestination--"Ah, I havelong settled that point; for if God had not chosen me before I wasborn, I am sure he would have seen nothing to have chosen me forafterwards. " That he had too much sense to take mere profession forreligion appears from his describing the Calvinists of Olney as of twosorts, which reminded him of the two baskets of Jeremiah's figs. Theiron constitution which had carried him through so many hardships, enabled him to continue in his ministry to extreme old age. A friendat length counselled him to stop before he found himself stopped bybeing able to speak no longer. "I cannot stop, " he said, raising hisvoice. "What! shall the old African blasphemer stop while he canspeak?"

At the instance of a common friend, Newton had paid Mrs. Unwin a visitat Huntingdon, after her husband's death, and had at once establishedthe ascendancy of a powerful character over her and Cowper. He nowbeckoned the pair to his side, placed them in the house adjoining hisown, and opened a private door between the two gardens, so as to havehis spiritual children always beneath his eye. Under this, in the mostessential respect, unhappy influence, Cowper and Mrs. Unwin togetherentered on "a decided course of Christian happiness. " That is to saythey spent all their days in a round of religious exercises withoutrelaxation or relief. On fine summer evenings, as the sensible LadyHesketh saw with dismay, instead of a walk, there was a prayer-meeting. Cowper himself was made to do violence to his intense shyness byleading in prayer. He was also made to visit the poor at once onspiritual missions, and on that of almsgiving, for which Thornton, thereligious philanthropist, supplied Newton and his disciples with means. This, which Southey appears to think about the worst part of Newton'sregimen, was probably its redeeming feature. The effect of doing goodto others on any mind was sure to be good; and the sight of realsuffering was likely to banish fancied ills. Cowper in this way gainedat all events a practical knowledge of the poor, and learned to do themjustice, though from a rather too theological point of view. Seclusionfrom the sinful world was as much a part of the system of Mr. Newton, as it was of the system of Saint Benedict. Cowper was almost entirelycut off from intercourse with his friends and people of his own class. He dropped his correspondence even with his beloved cousin, LadyHesketh, and would probably have dropped his correspondence with Hill, had not Hill's assistance in money matters been indispensable. Tocomplete his mental isolation it appears that having sold his libraryhe had scarcely any books. Such a course of Christian happiness asthis could only end in one way; and Newton himself seems to have hadthe sense to see that a storm was brewing, and that there was no way ofconjuring it but by contriving some more congenial occupation. So thedisciple was commanded to employ his poetical gifts in contributing toa hymnbook which Newton was compiling. Cowper's Olney hymns have notany serious value as poetry. Hymns rarely have. The relations of manwith Deity transcend and repel poetical treatment. There is nothing inthem on which the creative imagination can be exercised. Hymns can belittle more than incense of the worshipping soul. Those of the Latinchurch are the best; not because they are better poetry than the rest(for they are not), but because their language is the most sonorous. Cowper's hymns were accepted by the religious body for which they werewritten, as expressions of its spiritual feeling and desires; so farthey were successful. They are the work of a religious man of culture, and free from anything wild, erotic, or unctuous. But on the otherhand there is nothing in them suited to be the vehicle of loftydevotion, nothing, that we can conceive a multitude or even aprayer-meeting uplifting to heaven with voice and heart. Southey haspointed to some passages on which the shadow of the advancing maladyfalls; but in the main there is a predominance of religious joy andhope. The most despondent hymn of the series is _Temptation_, thethought of which resembles that of _The Castaway_. 

Cowper's melancholy may have been aggravated by the loss of his onlybrother, who died about this time, and at whose death-bed he waspresent; though in the narrative which he wrote, joy at John'sconversion and the religious happiness of his end seems to exclude thefeelings by which hypochondria was likely to be fed. But his mode oflife 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. Heagain 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 diabolicalvisitation, and "with deplorable consistency, " to borrow the phraseused by one of their friends in the case of Cowper's desperateabstinence from prayer, abstained from calling in a physician. Of thisagain their religion must bear the reproach. In other respects theybehaved admirably. Mrs. Unwin, shut up for sixteen months with herunhappy partner, tended him with unfailing love; alone she did it, forhe could bear no one else about him; though to make her part moretrying he had conceived the insane idea that she hated him. Seldom hasa stronger proof been given of the sustaining power of affection. Assuredly of whatever Cowper may have afterwards done for his kind, agreat 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 maladythe lunatic took it into his head to transfer himself from his ownhouse to the Vicarage, which, he obstinately refused to leave; andNewton 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 himin this dark valley, and he has given us such a love to him, both as abeliever and a friend, that I am not weary; but to be sure hisdeliverance would be to me one of the greatest blessings my thoughtscan conceive. " Dr. Cotton was at last called in, and under histreatment, evidently directed against a bodily disease, Cowper was atlength restored to sanity. 

Newton once compared his own walk in the world to that of a physiciangoing through Bedlam. But he was not skilful in his treatment of theliterally insane. He thought to cajole Cowper out of his cherishedhorrors by calling his attention to a case resembling his own. Thecase was that of Simon Browne, a Dissenter, who had conceived the ideathat, being under the displeasure of Heaven, he had been entirelydeprived of his rational being and left with merely his animal nature. He had accordingly resigned his ministry, and employed, himself incompiling a dictionary, which, he said, was doing nothing that couldrequire a reasonable soul. He seems to have thought that theology fellunder the same category, for he proceeded to write some theologicaltreatises, which he dedicated to Queen Caroline, calling her Majesty'sattention to the singularity of the authorship as the most remarkablephenomenon of her reign. Cowper, however, instead of falling into thedesired train of reasoning, and being led to suspect the existence of asimilar illusion in himself, merely rejected the claim of the pretendedrival in spiritual affliction, declaring his own case to be far themore deplorable of the two. 

Before the decided course of Christian happiness had time again toculminate in madness, fortunately for Cowper, Newton left Olney for St. Mary Woolnoth. He was driven away at last by a quarrel with hisbarbarous parishioners, the cause of which did him credit. A firebroke out at Olney, and burnt a good many of its straw-thatchedcottages. Newton ascribed the extinction of the fire rather to prayerthan water, but he took the lead in practical measures of relief, andtried to remove the earthly cause of such visitations by putting an endto bonfires and illuminations on the 5th of November. Threatened withthe loss of their Guy Fawkes, the barbarians rose upon him, and he hada narrow escape from their violence. We are reminded of the case ofCotton Mather, who, after being a leader in witch-burning, nearlysacrificed his life in combatting the fanaticism which opposed itselfto the introduction of inoculation. Let it always be remembered thatbesides its theological side, the Revival had its philanthropic andmoral side; that it abolished the slave trade, and at last slavery;that it waged war, and effective war, under the standard of the gospel, upon masses of vice and brutality, which had been totally neglected bythe torpor of the Establishment; that among large classes of the peopleit was the great civilizing agency of the time. 

Newton was succeeded as curate of Olney by his disciple, and a man ofsomewhat the same cast of mind and character, Thomas Scott the writerof the _Commentary on the Bible_ and _The Force of Truth_. To ScottCowper seems not to have greatly taken. He complains that, as apreacher, he is always scolding the congregation. Perhaps Newton hadforeseen that it would be so, for he specially commended the spiritualson whom he was leaving, to the care of the Rev. William Bull, of theneighbouring town of Newport Pagnell, a dissenting minister, but amember of a spiritual connexion which did not stop at the line ofdemarcation between Nonconformity and the Establishment. To BullCowper did greatly take, he extols him as "a Dissenter, but a liberalone, " a man of letters and of genius, master of a fine imagination--or, rather, not master of it--and addresses him as _Carissime Taurorum_. It is rather singular that Newton should have given himself such asuccessor. Bull was a great smoker, and had made himself a cozy andsecluded nook in his garden for the enjoyment of his pipe. He wasprobably something of a spiritual as well as of a physical Quietist, for he set Cowper to translate the poetry of the great exponent ofQuietism, Madame Guyon. The theme of all the pieces which Cowper hastranslated is the same--Divine Love and the raptures of the heart thatenjoys it--the blissful union of the drop with the Ocean--theEvangelical Nirvana. If this line of thought was not altogetherhealthy, or conducive to the vigorous performance of practical duty, itwas at all events better than the dark fancy of Reprobation. In hisadmiration of Madame Guyon, her translator showed his affinity, andthat of Protestants of the same school, to Fenelon and the Evangelicalelement which has lurked in the Roman Catholic church since the days ofThomas a Kempis. 

CHAPTER IV. 

AUTHORSHIP. THE MORAL SATIRES. 

Since his recovery, Cowper had been looking out for what he mostneeded, a pleasant occupation. He tried drawing, carpentering, gardening. Of gardening he had always been fond; and he understood itas shown by the loving though somewhat "stercoraceous" minuteness ofsome passages in _The Task_. A little greenhouse, used as a parlour insummer, where he sat surrounded by beauty and fragrance, and lulled bypleasant sounds, was another product of the same pursuit, and seemsalmost Elysian in that dull dark life. He also found amusement inkeeping tame hares, and he fancied that he had reconciled the hare toman and dog. His three tame hares are among the canonized pets ofliterature, and they were to his genius what "Sailor" was to the geniusof Byron. But Mrs. Unwin, who had terrible reason for studying hiscase, saw that the thing most wanted was congenial employment for themind, and she incited him to try his hand at poetry on a larger scale. He listened to her advice, and when he was nearly fifty years of agebecame a poet. He had acquired the faculty of verse-writing, as wehave seen; he had even to some extent formed his manner when he wasyoung. Age must by this time have quenched his fire, and tamed hisimagination, so that the didactic style would suit him best. In thelength of the interval between his early poems and his great work heresembles Milton; but widely different in the two cases had been thecurrent of the intervening years. Poetry written late in life is ofcourse free from youthful crudity and extravagance. It also escapesthe youthful tendency to imitation. Cowper's authorship is ushered inby Southey with a history of English poetry; but this is hardly inplace; Cowper had little connexion with anything before him. Even hisknowledge of poetry was not great. In his youth he had read the greatpoets, and had studied Milton especially with the ardour of intenseadmiration. Nothing ever made him so angry as Johnson's Life ofMilton. "Oh!" he cries, "I could thrash his old jacket till I made hispension jingle in his pocket. " Churchill had made a great--far toogreat--an impression on him, when he was a Templar. Of Churchill, ifof anybody, he must be regarded as a follower, though only in hisearlier and less successful poems. In expression he always regarded asa model the neat and gay simplicity of Prior. But so little had hekept up his reading of anything but sermons and hymns, that he learnedfor the first time from Johnson's Lives the existence of Collins. Heis the offspring of the Religious Revival rather than of any school ofart. His most important relation to any of his predecessors is, infact, one of antagonism to the hard glitter of Pope. 

In urging her companion to write poetry, Mrs. Unwin was on the rightpath, her puritanism led her astray in the choice of a theme. Shesuggested _The Progress of Error_ as a subject for a "Moral Satire. " Itwas unhappily adopted, and _The Progress of Error_ was followed by_Truth_, _Table Talk_, _Expostulation_, _Hope_, _Charity_, _Conversation_, and _Retirement_. When the series was published, _Table Talk_ was put first, being supposed to be the lightest and themost attractive to an unregenerate world. The judgment passed uponthis set of poems at the time by the _Critical Review_ seemsblasphemous to the fond biographer, and is so devoid of modernsmartness as to be almost interesting as a literary fossil. But itmust be deemed essentially just, though the reviewer errs, as manyreviewers have erred, in measuring the writer's capacity by thestandard of his first performance. "These poems, " said the _CriticalReview_, "are written, as we learn from the title-page, by Mr. Cowperof the Inner Temple, who seems to be a man of a sober and religiousturn of mind, with a benevolent heart, and a serious wish to inculcatethe precepts of morality; he is not, however, possessed of any superiorabilities or the power of genius requisite for so arduous anundertaking. . . . . He says what is incontrovertible and what hasbeen said over and over again with much gravity, but says nothing new, sprightly or entertaining; travelling on a plain level flat road, withgreat composure almost through the whole long and tedious volume, whichis little better than a dull sermon in very indifferent verse on Truth, the Progress of Error, Charity, and some other grave subjects. If thisauthor had followed the advice given by Caraccioli, and which he haschosen for one of the mottoes prefixed to these poems, he would haveclothed his indisputable truths in some more becoming disguise, andrendered his work much more agreeable. In its present shape we cannotcompliment him on its beauty; for as this bard himself sweetly sings:--

 "The clear harangue, and cold as it is clear, Falls soporific on the listless ear. "

In justice to the bard it ought to be said that he wrote under the eyeof the Rev. John Newton, to whom the design had been duly submitted, and who had given his _imprimatur_ in the shape of a preface which tookJohnson the publisher aback by its gravity. Newton would not havesanctioned any poetry which had not a distinctly religious object, andhe received an assurance from the poet that the lively passages wereintroduced only as honey on the rim of the medicinal cup, to commendits healing contents to the lips of a giddy world. The Rev. JohnNewton must have been exceedingly austere if he thought that thequantity of honey used was excessive. 

A genuine desire to make society better is always present in thesepoems, and its presence lends them the only interest which they possessexcept as historical monuments of a religious movement. Of satiricalvigour they have scarcely a semblance. There are three kinds ofsatire, corresponding to as many different views of humanity and life, the Stoical, the Cynical, and the Epicurean. Of Stoical satire, withits strenuous hatred of vice and wrong, the type is Juvenal. OfCynical satire, springing from bitter contempt of humanity, the type isSwift's Gulliver, while its quintessence is embodied in his lines onthe Day of Judgment. Of Epicurean satire, flowing from a contempt ofhumanity which is not bitter, and lightly playing with the weakness andvanities of mankind, Horace is the classical example. To the first twokinds, Cowper's nature was totally alien, and when he attempts anythingin either of those lines, the only result is a querulous and censoriousacerbity, in which his real feelings had no part, and which on maturereflection offended his own better taste. In the Horatian kind hemight have excelled, as the episode of the _Retired Statesman_ in oneof these poems shows. He might have excelled, that is, if like Horacehe had known the world. But he did not know the world. He saw the"great Babel" only "through the loopholes of retreat, " and in thecolumns of his weekly newspaper. Even during the years, long past, which he spent in the world, his experience had been confined to asmall literary circle. Society was to him an abstraction on which hediscoursed like a pulpiteer. His satiric whip not only has no lash, itis brandished in the air. 

No man was ever less qualified for the office of a censor; his judgmentis at once disarmed, and a breach in his principles is at once made bythe slightest personal influence. Bishops are bad, they are like theCretans, evil beasts and slow bellies; but the bishop whose brotherCowper knows is a blessing to the Church. Deans and Canons are lazysinecurists, but there is a bright exception in the case of the Cowperwho held a golden stall at Durham. Grinding India is criminal, butWarren Hastings is acquitted, because he was with Cowper atWestminster. Discipline was deplorably relaxed in all colleges exceptthat of which Cowper's brother was a fellow. Pluralities andresignation bonds, the grossest abuses of the Church, were perfectlydefensible in the case of any friend or acquaintance of this ChurchReformer. Bitter lines against Popery inserted in _The Task_ werestruck out, because the writer had made the acquaintance of Mr. AndMrs. Throckmorton, who were Roman Catholics. Smoking was detestable, except when practised by dear Mr. Bull. Even gambling, the blackestsin of fashionable society, is not to prevent Fox, the great Whig, frombeing a ruler in Israel. Besides, in all his social judgments, Cowperis at a wrong point of view. He is always deluded by the idol of hiscave. He writes perpetually on the twofold assumption that a life ofretirement is more favourable to virtue than a life of action, and that"God made the country, while man made the town. " Both parts of theassumption are untrue. A life of action is more favourable to virtue, as a rule, than a life of retirement, and the development of humanityis higher and richer, as a rule, in the town than in the country. IfCowper's retirement was virtuous, it was so because he was activelyemployed in the exercise of his highest faculties: had he been a mereidler, secluded from his kind, his retirement would not have beenvirtuous at all. His flight from the world was rendered necessary byhis malady, and respectable by his literary work; but it was a flightand not a victory. His misconception was fostered and partly producedby a religion which was essentially ascetic, and which, while it gavebirth to characters of the highest and most energetic beneficence, represented salvation too little as the reward of effort, too much asthe reward of passive belief and of spiritual emotion. 

The most readable of the Moral Satires is _Retirement_, in which thewriter is on his own ground expressing his genuine feelings, and whichis, in fact, a foretaste of _The Task_. _Expostulation_, a warning toEngland from the example of the Jews, is the best constructed: the restare totally wanting in unity, and even in connexion. In all there areflashes of epigrammatic smartness. 

 How shall I speak thee, or thy power address, Thou God of our idolatry, the press? By thee, religion, liberty, and laws Exert their influence, and advance their cause; By thee, worse plagues than Pharaoh's land befel, Diffused, make earth the vestibule of hell: Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise, Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies, Like Eden's dread probationary tree, Knowledge of good and evil is from thee. 

Occasionally there are passages of higher merit. The episode ofstatesmen in _Retirement_ has been already mentioned. The lines on thetwo disciples going to Emmaus in _Conversation_, though little morethan a paraphrase of the Gospel narrative, convey pleasantly theEvangelical idea of the Divine Friend. Cowper says in one of hisletters that he had been intimate with a man of fine taste who hadconfessed to him that though he could not subscribe to the truth ofChristianity itself, he could never read this passage of St. Lukewithout being deeply affected by it, and feeling that if the stamp ofdivinity was impressed upon anything in the Scriptures, it was uponthat passage. 

 It happen'd on a solemn eventide, Soon after He that was our surety died, Two bosom friends, each pensively inclined, The scene of all those sorrows left behind, Sought their own village, busied as they went In musings worthy of the great event: They spake of him they loved, of him whose life, Though blameless, had incurr'd perpetual strife, Whose deeds had left, in spite of hostile arts, A deep memorial graven on their hearts. The recollection, like a vein of ore, The farther traced enrich'd them still the more;

 They thought him, and they justly thought him, one Sent to do more than he appear'd to have done, To exalt a people, and to place them high Above all else, and wonder'd he should die. Ere yet they brought their journey to an end, A stranger join'd them, courteous as a friend, And ask'd them with a kind engaging air What their affliction was, and begg'd a share. Inform'd, he gathered up the broken thread, And truth and wisdom gracing all he said, Explain'd, illustrated, and search'd so well The tender theme on which they chose to dwell, That reaching home, the night, they said is near, We must not now be parted, sojourn here. -- The new acquaintance soon became a guest, And made so welcome at their simple feast, He bless'd the bread, but vanish'd at the word, And left them both exclaiming, 'Twas the Lord! Did not our hearts feel all he deign'd to say, Did they not burn within us by the way?

The prude going to morning church in _Truth_ is a good rendering ofHogarth's picture:--

 Yon ancient prude, whose wither'd features show She might, be young some forty years ago, Her elbows pinion'd close upon her hips, Her head erect, her fan upon her lips, Her eyebrows arch'd, her eyes both gone astray To watch yon amorous couple in their play, With bony and unkerchief'd neck defies The rude inclemency of wintry skies, And sails with lappet-head and mincing airs Daily at clink of hell, to morning prayers. To thrift and parsimony much inclined, She yet allows herself that boy behind; The shivering urchin, bending as he goes, With slipshod heels, and dew-drop at his nose, His predecessor's coat advanced to wear, Which future pages are yet doom'd to share, Carries her Bible tuck'd beneath his arm, And hides his hands to keep his fingers warm. 

Of personal allusions there are a few; if the satirist had not beenprevented from indulging in them by his taste, he would have beendebarred by his ignorance. Lord Chesterfield, as the incarnation ofthe world and the most brilliant servant of the arch-enemy, comes infor a lashing under the name of Petronius. 

 Petronius! all the muses weep for thee, But every tear shall scald thy memory. The graces too, while virtue at their shrine Lay bleeding under that soft hand of thine, Felt each a mortal stab in her own breast, Abhorr'd the sacrifice, and cursed the priest. Thou polish'd and high-finish'd foe to truth, Gray-beard corruptor of our listening youth, To purge and skim away the filth of vice, That so refined it might the more entice, Then pour it on the morals of thy son To taint _his_ heart, was worthy of _thine own_. 

This is about the nearest approach to Juvenal that the Evangelicalsatirist ever makes. In _Hope_ there is a vehement vindication of thememory of Whitefield. It is rather remarkable that there is no mentionof Wesley. But Cowper belonged to the Evangelical rather than to theMethodist section. It may be doubted whether the living Whitefieldwould have been much to his taste. 

In the versification of the moral satires there are frequent faults, especially in the earlier poems of the series, though Cowper's power ofwriting musical verse is attested both by the occasional poems and by_The Task_. 

With the Moral Satires may be coupled, though written later, _Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools_. Here Cowper has the advantage oftreating a subject which he understood, about which he felt strongly, and desired for a practical purpose to stir the feelings of hisreaders. He set to work in bitter earnest. "There is a sting, " hesays, "in verse that prose neither has nor can have; and I do not knowthat schools in the gross, and especially public schools, have everbeen so pointedly condemned before. But they are become a nuisance, apest, an abomination, and it is fit that the eyes and noses of mankindshould be opened if possible to perceive it. " His descriptions of themiseries which children in his day endured, and, in spite of all ourimprovements, must still to some extent endure in boarding schools, andof the effects of the system in estranging boys from their parents anddeadening home affections, are vivid and true. Of course the PublicSchool system was not to be overturned by rhyming, but the author of_Tirocinium_ awakened attention to its faults, and probably didsomething towards amending them. The best lines, perhaps, have beenalready quoted in connexion with the history of the writer's boyhood. There are, however, other telling passages such as that on theindiscriminate use of emulation as a stimulus:--

 Our public hives of puerile resort That are of chief and most approved report, To such base hopes in many a sordid soul Owe their repute in part, but not the whole. A principle, whose proud pretensions pass Unquestion'd, though the jewel be but glass, That with a world not often over-nice Ranks as a virtue, and is yet a vice, Or rather a gross compound, justly tried, Of envy, hatred, jealousy, and pride, Contributes moat perhaps to enhance their fame, And Emulation is its precious name. Boys once on fire with that contentious zeal Feel all the rage that female rivals feel; The prize of beauty in a woman's eyes Not brighter than in theirs the scholar's prize. The spirit of that competition burns With all varieties of ill by turns, Each vainly magnifies his own success, Resents his fellow's, wishes it were less, Exults in his miscarriage if he fail, Deems his reward too great if he prevail, And labours to surpass him day and night, Less for improvement, than to tickle spite. The spur is powerful, and I grant its force; It pricks the genius forward in its course, Allows short time for play, and none for sloth, And felt alike by each, advances both, But judge where so much evil intervenes, The end, though plausible, not worth the means. Weigh, for a moment, classical desert Against a heart depraved, and temper hurt, Hurt, too, perhaps for life, for early wrong Done to the nobler part, affects it long, And you are staunch indeed in learning's cause, If you can crown a discipline that draws Such mischiefs after it, with much applause. 

He might have done more, if he had been able to point to thealternative of a good day school, as a combination of home affectionswith the superior teaching hardly to be found, except in a largeschool, and which Cowper, in drawing his comparison between the twosystems, fails to take into account. 

To the same general class of poems belongs _Anti-Thelypthora_, which itis due to Cowper's memory to say was not published in his lifetime. Itis an angry pasquinade on an absurd book advocating polygamy onBiblical grounds, by the Rev. Martin Madan, Cowper's quondam spiritualcounsellor. Alone among Cowper's works it has a taint of coarseness. 

The Moral Satires pleased Franklin, to whom their social philosophy wascongenial, as at a later day, in common with all Cowper's works, theypleased Cobden, who no doubt specially relished the passage in_Charity_, embodying the philanthropic sentiment of Free Trade. Therewas a trembling consultation as to the expediency of bringing thevolume under the notice of Johnson. "One of his pointed sarcasms, ifhe should happen to be displeased, would soon find its way into allcompanies and spoil the sale. " "I think it would be well to send inour joint names, accompanied with a handsome card, such an one as youwill know how to fabricate, and such as may predispose him to afavourable perusal of the book, by coaxing him into a good temper, forhe is a great bear, with all his learning and penetration. " Fearprevailed; but it seems that the book found its way into the dictator'shands, that his judgment on it was kind, and that he even did somethingto temper the wind of adverse criticism to the shorn lamb. Yet partsof it were likely to incur his displeasure as a Tory, as a Churchman, and as one who greatly preferred Fleet Street to the beauties ofnature; while with the sentimental misery of the writer, he could havehad no sympathy whatever. Of the incompleteness of Johnson's view ofcharacter there could be no better instance than the charming weaknessof Cowper. Thurlow and Colman did not even acknowledge their copies, and were lashed for their breach of friendship with rather more vigourthan the Moral Satires display, in _The Valedictory_, which unluckilysurvived for posthumous publication, when the culprits had made theirpeace. 

Cowper certainly misread himself if he believed that ambition, evenliterary ambition, was a large element in his character. But havingpublished, he felt a keen interest in the success of his publication. Yet he took its failure and the adverse criticism very calmly. Withall his sensitiveness, from irritable and suspicious egotism, such asis the most common cause of moral madness, he was singularly free. Inthis respect his philosophy served him well. 

It may safely be said that the Moral Satires would have sunk intooblivion if they had not been buoyed up by _The Task_. 

CHAPTER V. 

THE TASK. 

Mrs. Unwin's influence produced the Moral Satires. _The Task_ was bornof a more potent inspiration. One day Mrs. Jones, the wife of aneighbouring clergyman, came into Olney to shop, and with her came hersister, Lady Austen, the widow of a Baronet, a woman of the world, whohad lived much in France, gay, sparkling and vivacious, but at the sametime full of feeling even to overflowing. The apparition acted likemagic on the recluse. He desired Mrs. Unwin to ask the two ladies tostay to tea, then shrank from joining the party which he had himselfinvited, ended by joining it, and, his shyness giving way with a rush, engaged in animated conversation with Lady Austen, and walked with herpart of the way home. On her an equally great effect appears to havebeen produced. A warm friendship at once sprang up, and before longLady Austen had verses addressed to her as Sister Anne. Her ladyship, on her part, was smitten with a great love of retirement, and at thesame time with great admiration for Mr. Scott, the curate of Olney, asa preacher, and she resolved to fit up for herself "that part of ourgreat building which is at present occupied by Dick Coleman, his wifeand child, and a thousand rats. " That a woman of fashion, accustomed toFrench salons, should choose such an abode, with a pair of Puritans forher only society, seems to show that one of the Puritans at least musthave possessed great powers of attraction. Better quarters were foundfor her in the Vicarage; and the private way between the gardens, whichapparently had been closed since Newton's departure, was opened again. 

Lady Austen's presence evidently wrought on Cowper like an elixir:"From a scene of the most uninterrupted retirement, " he writes to Mrs. Unwin, "we have passed at once into a state of constant engagement. Not that our society is much multiplied; the addition of an individualhas made all this difference. Lady Austen and we pass our daysalternately at each other's Chateau. In the morning I walk with one orother of the ladies, and in the evening wind thread. Thus didHercules, and thus probably did Samson, and thus do I; and were boththose heroes living, I should not fear to challenge them to a trial ofskill in that business, or doubt to beat them both. " It was perhapswhile he was winding thread that Lady Austen told him the story of JohnGilpin. He lay awake at night laughing over it, and next morningproduced the ballad. It soon became famous, and was recited byHenderson, a popular actor, on the stage, though, as its gentility wasdoubtful, its author withheld his name. He afterwards fancied thatthis wonderful piece of humour had been written in a mood of thedeepest depression. Probably he had written it in an interval of highspirits between two such moods. Moreover he sometimes exaggerated hisown misery. He will begin a letter with a _de profundis_, and towardsthe end forget his sorrows, glide into commonplace topics, and writeabout them in the ordinary strain. Lady Austen inspired _John Gilpin_. She inspired, it seems, the lines on the loss of the Royal George. Shedid more: she invited Cowper to try his hand at something considerablein blank verse. When he asked her for a subject, she was happier inher choice than the lady who had suggested the _Progress of Error_. 8he bade him take the sofa on which she was reclining, and which, sofasbeing then uncommon, was a more striking and suggestive object than itwould be now. The right chord was struck; the subject was accepted;and _The Sofa_ grew into _The Task_; the title of the song reminding usthat it was "commanded by the fair. " As _Paradise Lost_ is to militantPuritanism, so is _The Task_ to the religious movement of its author'stime. To its character as the poem of a sect it no doubt owed andstill owes much of its popularity. Not only did it give beautiful andeffective expression to the sentiments of a large religious party, butit was about the only poetry that a strict Methodist or Evangelicalcould read; while to those whose worship was unritualistic and who weredebarred by their principles from the theatre and the concert, anythingin the way of art that was not illicit must have been eminentlywelcome. But _The Task_ has merits of a more universal and enduringkind. Its author himself says of it:--"If the work cannot boast aregular plan (in which respect, however, I do not think it altogetherindefensible), it may yet boast, that the reflections are naturallysuggested always by the preceding passage, and that, except the fifthbook, which is rather of a political aspect, the whole has onetendency, to discountenance the modern enthusiasm after a London life, and to recommend rural ease and leisure as friendly to the cause ofpiety and virtue. " A regular plan, assuredly, _The Task_ has not. Itrambles through a vast variety of subjects, religious, political, social, philosophical, and horticultural, with as little of method asits author used in taking his morning walks. Nor as Mr. Benham hasshown, are the reflections, as a rule, naturally suggested by thepreceding passage. From the use of a sofa by the gouty to those, whobeing free from gout, do not need sofas, --and so to country walks andcountry life is hardly a natural transition. It is hardly a naturaltransition from the ice palace built by a Russian despot, to despotismand politics in general. But if Cowper deceives himself in fancyingthat there is a plan or a close connexion of parts, he is right as tothe existence of a pervading tendency. The praise of retirement and ofcountry life as most friendly to piety and virtue, is the perpetualrefrain of The Task, if not its definite theme. From this ideaimmediately now the best and the most popular passages: those whichplease apart from anything peculiar to a religious school; those whichkeep the poem alive; those which have found their way into the heart ofthe nation, and intensified the taste for rural and domestic happiness, to which they most winningly appeal. In these Cowper pours out hisinmost feelings, with the liveliness of exhilaration, enhanced bycontrast with previous misery. The pleasures of the country and ofhome, the walk, the garden, but above all the "intimate delights" ofthe winter evening, the snug parlour, with its close-drawn curtainsshutting out the stormy night, the steaming and bubbling tea-urn, thecheerful circle, the book read aloud, the newspaper through which welook out into the unquiet world, are painted by the writer with aheartfelt enjoyment, which infects the reader. These are not the joysof a hero, nor are they the joys of an Alcaeus "singing amidst theclash of arms, or when he had moored on the wet shore his storm-tostbarque. " But they are pure joys, and they present themselves incompetition with those of Ranelagh and the Basset Table, which are notheroic or even masculine, any more than they are pure. 

The well-known passages at the opening of _The Winter Evening_, are theself-portraiture of a soul in bliss--such bliss as that soul couldknow--and the poet would have found it very difficult to depict tohimself by the utmost effort of his religious imagination any paradisewhich he would really have enjoyed more. 

 Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in. 

 * * * *

 This folio of four pages, happy work! Which not even critics criticise, that holds Inquisitive attention while I read Fast bound in chains of silence, which the fair, Though eloquent themselves, yet fear to break, What is it but a map of busy life, Its fluctuations and its vast concerns?

 * * * *

 'Tis pleasant through the loop-holes of retreat To peep at such a world. To see the stir Of the great Babel and not feel the crowd. To hear the roar she sends through all her gates At a safe distance, where the dying sound Falls a soft murmur on the injured ear. Thus sitting and surveying thus at ease The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced To some secure and more than mortal height, That liberates and exempts me from them all. It turns submitted to my view, turns round With all its generations; I behold The tumult and am still. The sound of war Has lost its terrors ere it reaches me, Grieves but alarms me not. I mourn the pride And avarice that make man a wolf to man, Hear the faint echo of those brazen throats By which he speaks the language of his heart, And sigh, but never tremble at the sound. He travels and expatiates, as the bee From flower to flower, so he from land to land, The manners, customs, policy of all Pay contribution to the store he gleans; He sucks intelligence in every clime, And spreads the honey of his deep research At his return, a rich repast for me, He travels, and I too. I tread his deck, Ascend his topmast, through his peering eyes Discover countries, with a kindred heart Suffer his woes and share in his escapes, While fancy, like the finger of a clock, Runs the great circuit, and is still at home. Oh winter! ruler of the inverted year, Thy scatter'd hair with sleet like ashes fill'd, Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks Fringed with a beard made white with other snows Than those of age; thy forehead wrapt in clouds, A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne A sliding car indebted to no wheels, And urged by storms along its slippery way; I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st, And dreaded as thou art. Thou hold'st the sun A prisoner in the yet undawning East, Shortening his journey between morn and noon, And hurrying him impatient of his stay Down to the rosy West. But kindly still Compensating his loss with added hours Of social converse and instructive ease, And gathering at short notice in one group The family dispersed by daylight and its cares. I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturb'd retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening know. 

The writer of _The Task_ also deserves the crown which he has himselfclaimed as a close observer and truthful painter of nature. In thisrespect, he challenges comparison with Thomson. The range of Thomsonis far wider, he paints nature in all her moods, Cowper only in a fewand those the gentlest, though he has said of himself that "he wasalways an admirer of thunderstorms, even before he knew whose voice beheard in them, but especially of thunder rolling over the greatwaters. " The great waters he had not seen for many years; he hadnever, so far as we know, seen mountains, hardly even high hills; hisonly landscape was the flat country watered by the Ouse. On the otherhand he is perfectly genuine, thoroughly English, entirely emancipatedfrom false Arcadianism, the yoke of which still sits heavily uponThomson, whose "muse" moreover is perpetually "wafting" him away fromthe country and the climate which he knows to countries and climateswhich he does not know, and which he describes in the style of a prizepoem. Cowper's landscapes, too, are peopled with the peasantry ofEngland; Thomson's, with Damons, Palaemons, and Musidoras, tricked outin the sentimental costume of the sham idyl. In Thomson, you alwaysfind the effort of the artist working up a description; in Cowper, youfind no effort; the scene is simply mirrored on a mind of greatsensibility and high pictorial power. 

 And witness, dear companion of my walks, Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceive Fast lock'd in mine, with pleasure such as love, Confirm'd by long experience of thy worth And well-tried virtues, could alone inspire-- Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long. Thou know'st my praise of nature most sincere, And that my raptures are not conjured up To serve occasions of poetic pomp, But genuine, and art partner of them all. How oft upon yon eminence our pace Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew, While Admiration, feeding at the eye, And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene! Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned The distant plough slow moving, and beside His labouring team that swerved not from the track, The sturdy swain diminish'd to a boy! Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain Of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er, Conducts the eye along his sinuous course Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank, Stand, never overlook'd, our favourite elms, That screen the herdsman's solitary hut; While far beyond, and overthwart the stream, That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale, The sloping land recedes into the clouds; Displaying on its varied side the grace Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower, Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells Just undulates upon the listening ear, Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote. Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily viewed, Please daily, and whose novelty survives Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years-- Praise justly due to those that I describe. 

This is evidently genuine and spontaneous. We stand with Cowper andMrs. Unwin on the hill in the ruffling wind, like them, scarcelyconscious that it blows, and feed admiration at the eye upon the richand thoroughly English champaign that is outspread below. 

 Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds, Exhilarate the spirit, and restore The tone of languid Nature. Mighty winds, _That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood Of ancient growth, make music not unlike The dash of Ocean on his winding shore_, And lull the spirit while they nil the mind; Unnumber'd branches waving in the blast, And all their leaves fast fluttering, all at once. Nor less composure waits upon the roar Of distant floods, or on the softer voice Of neighbouring fountain, or of _rills that slip Through the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length In matted grass that with a livelier green Betrays the secret of their silent course_. Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds, But animated nature sweeter still, To soothe and satisfy the human ear. Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one The livelong night: nor these alone, whose notes Nice-finger'd Art must emulate in vain, But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime In still-repeated circles, screaming loud, The jay, the pie, and e'en the boding owl That hails the rising moon, have charms for me. Sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh, Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns, And only there, please highly for their sake. 

Affection such as the last lines display for the inharmonious as wellas the harmonious, for the uncomely, as well as the comely parts ofnature has been made familiar by Wordsworth, but it was new in the timeof Cowper. Let us compare a landscape painted by Pope in his Windsorforest, with the lines just quoted, and we shall see the differencebetween the art of Cowper, and that of the Augustan age. 

 Here waving groves a checkered scene display, And part admit and part exclude the day, As some coy nymph her lover's warm address Not quite indulges, nor can quite repress. There interspersed in lawns and opening glades The trees arise that share each other's shades; Here in full light the russet plains extend, There wrapt in clouds, the bluish hills ascend, E'en the wild heath displays her purple dyes, And midst the desert fruitful fields arise, That crowned with tufted trees and springing corn. Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn. 

The low Berkshire hills wrapt in clouds on a sunny day; a sable desertin the neighbourhood of Windsor; fruitful fields arising in it, andcrowned with tufted trees and springing corn--evidently Pope saw allthis, not on an eminence, in the ruffling wind, but in his study withhis back to the window, and the Georgics or a translation of thembefore him. 

Here again is a little picture of rural life from the _Winter MorningWalk_. 

 The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence Screens them, and seem half-petrified to sleep In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait Their wonted fodder; not like hungering man, Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek, And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay. _He from the stack carves out the accustomed load Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft, His broad keen knife into the solid mass: Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands, With such undeviating and even force He severs it away_: no needless care, Lest storms should overset the leaning pile Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight. Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcern'd The cheerful haunts of man; to wield the axe And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear, from, morn to eve, his solitary task. Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears And tail cropp'd short, half lurcher and half cur, His dog attends him. Close behind his heel Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout; Then shakes his powder'd coat, and barks for joy. Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught But now and then with pressure of his thumb To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube, That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud Streams far behind him, scenting all the air. 

The minutely faithful description of the man carving the load of hayout of the stack, and again those of the gambolling dog, and thewoodman smoking his pipe with the stream of smoke trailing behind him, remind us of the touches of minute fidelity in Homer. The same may besaid of many other passages. 

 The sheepfold here Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe. _At first, progressive as a stream they seek The middle field: but, scatter'd by degrees, Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land_. There from the sun-burnt hay-field homeward creeps _The loaded wain: while lighten'd of its charge, The wain that meets it passes swiftly by_; The boorish driver leaning o'er his team Vociferous and impatient of delay. 

A specimen of more imaginative and distinctly poetical description isthe well-known passage on evening, in writing which Cowper would seemto have had Collins in his mind. 

 Come, Evening, once again, season of peace, Return, sweet Evening, and continue long! Methinks I see thee in the streaky west, With matron-step slow-moving, while the Night Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employed In letting fall the curtain of repose On bird and beast, the other charged for man With sweet oblivion of the cares of day: Not sumptuously adorn'd, nor needing aid, Like homely-featured Night, of clustering gems! A star or two just twinkling on thy brow Suffices thee; save that the moon is thine No less than hers, not worn indeed on high With ostentatious pageantry, but set. With modest grandeur in thy purple zone, Resplendent less, but of an ampler round. 

Beyond this line Cowper does not go, and had no idea of going; he neverthinks of lending a soul to material nature as Wordsworth and Shelleydo. He is the poetic counterpart of Gainsborough, as the greatdescriptive poets of a later and more spiritual day are thecounterparts of Turner. We have said that Cowper's peasants aregenuine as well as his landscape; he might have been a more exquisiteCrabbe if he had turned his mind that way, instead of writing sermonsabout a world which to him was little more than an abstraction, distorted moreover, and discoloured by his religious asceticism. 

 Poor, yet industrious, modest, quiet, neat, Such claim compassion in a night like this, And have a friend in every feeling heart. Warm'd, while it lasts, by labour, all day long They brave the season, and yet find at eve, Ill clad, and fed but sparely, time to cool. The frugal housewife trembles when she lights Her scanty stock of brushwood, blazing clear, But dying soon, like all terrestrial joys. The few small embers left, she nurses well; And, while her infant race, with outspread hands And crowded knees sit cowering o'er the sparks, Retires, content to quake, so they be warm'd. The man feels least, as more inured than she To winter, and the current in his veins More briskly moved by his severer toil; Yet he too finds his own distress in theirs, The taper soon extinguish'd, which I saw Dangled along at the cold finger's end Just when the day declined; and the brown loaf Lodged on the shelf, half eaten without sauce Of savoury cheese, or batter, costlier still: Sleep seems their only refuge: for, alas' Where penury is felt the thought is chained, And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few! With all this thrift they thrive not. All the care Ingenious Parsimony takes, but just Saves the small inventory, bed and stool, Skillet, and old carved chest, from public sale. They live, and live without extorted alms from grudging hands: but other boast have none To soothe their honest pride that scorns to beg, Nor comfort else, but in their mutual love. 

Here we have the plain, unvarnished record of visitings among the poorof Olney. The last two lines are simple truth as well as the rest. 

"In some passages, especially in the second book, you will observe mevery satirical. " In the second book of _The Task_, there are somebitter things about the clergy, and in the passage pourtraying afashionable preacher, there is a touch of satiric vigour, or rather ofthat power of comic description which was one of the writer's gifts. But of Cowper as a satirist enough has been said. 

"What there is of a religious cast in the volume I have thrown towardsthe end of it, for two reasons; first, that I might not revolt thereader at his entrance, and secondly, that my best impressions might bemade last. Were I to write as many volumes as Lope de Vega orVoltaire, not one of them would be without this tincture. If the worldlike it not, so much the worse for them. I make all the concessions Ican, that I may please them, but I will not please them at the expenseof conscience. " The passages of _The Task_ penned by conscience, takentogether, form a lamentably large proportion of the poem. An ordinaryreader can be carried through them, if at all, only by his interest inthe history of opinion, or by the companionship of the writer, who isalways present, as Walton is in his Angler, as White is in hisSelbourne. Cowper, however, even at his worst, is a highly cultivatedmethodist; if he is sometimes enthusiastic, and possibly superstitious, he is never coarse or unctuous. He speaks with contempt of "the twangof the conventicle. " Even his enthusiasm had by this time beensomewhat tempered. Just after his conversion he used to preach toeverybody. He had found out, as he tells us himself, that this was amistake, that "the pulpit was for preaching; the garden, the parlour, and the walk abroad were for friendly and agreeable conversation. " Itmay have been his consciousness of a certain change in himself thatdeterred him from taking Newton into his confidence when he was engagedupon _The Task_. The worst passages are those which betray a fanaticalantipathy to natural science, especially that in the third book(150--190). The episode of the judgment of heaven on the young atheistMisagathus, in the sixth book, is also fanatical and repulsive. 

Puritanism had come into violent collision with the temporal power, andhad contracted a character fiercely political and revolutionary. Methodism fought only against unbelief, vice, and the coldness of theestablishment; it was in no way political, much less revolutionary; bythe recoil from the atheism of the French Revolution its leaders, including Wesley himself, were drawn rather to the Tory side. Cowper, we have said, always remained in principle what he had been born, aWhig, an unrevolutionary Whig, an "Old Whig" to adopt the phrase madecanonical by Burke. 

 'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume, And we are weeds without it. All constraint Except what wisdom lays on evil men Is evil. 

The sentiment of these lines, which were familiar and dear to Cobden, is tempered by judicious professions of loyalty to a king who rules inaccordance with the law. At one time Cowper was inclined to regard thegovernment of George III as a repetition of that of Charles I, absolutist in the State and reactionary in the Church; but the progressof revolutionary opinions evidently increased his loyalty, as it didthat of many other Whigs, to the good Tory king. We shall presentlysee, however, that the views of the French Revolution, itself expressedin his letters are wonderfully rational, calm, and free from thepolitical panic and the apocalyptic hallucination, both of which weshould rather have expected to find in him. He describes himself toNewton as having been, since his second attack of madness, "anextramundane character with reference to this globe, and though not anative of the moon, not made of the dust of this planet. " TheEvangelical party has remained down to the present day non-political, and in its own estimation extramundane, taking part in the affairs ofthe nation only when some religious object was directly in view. Inspeaking of the family of nations, an Evangelical poet is of course apreacher of peace and human brotherhood. He has even in some lines of_Charity, _ which also were dear to Cobden, remarkably anticipated thesentiment of modern economists respecting the influence of free tradein making one nation of mankind. The passage is defaced by anatrociously bad simile:--

 Again--the band of commerce was design'd, To associate all the branches of mankind, And if a boundless plenty be the robe, Trade is the golden girdle of the globe. Wise to promote whatever end he means, God opens fruitful Nature's various scenes, Each climate needs what other climes produce, And offers something to the general use; No land but listens to the common call, And in return receives supply from all. This genial intercourse and mutual aid Cheers what were else an universal shade, Calls Nature from her ivy-mantled den, And softens human rock-work into men. 

Now and then, however, in reading _The Task_, we come across a dash ofwarlike patriotism which, amidst the general philanthropy, surprisesand offends the reader's palate, like the taste of garlic in our butter. 

An innocent Epicurism, tempered by religious asceticism of a mildkind--such is the philosophy of _The Task_, and such the ideal embodiedin the portrait of the happy man with which it concludes. Whatever maybe said of the religious asceticism, the Epicurism required acorrective to redeem it from selfishness and guard it againstself-deceit. This solitary was serving humanity in the best way hecould, not by his prayers, as in one rather fanatical passage hesuggests, but by his literary work; he had need also to remember thathumanity was serving him. The newspaper through which he looks out socomplacently into the great "Babel, " has been printed in the greatBabel itself, and brought by the poor postman, with his "spatteredboots, strapped waist, and frozen locks, " to the recluse sittingcomfortably by his fireside. The "fragrant lymph" poured by "the fair"for their companion in his cosy seclusion, has been brought over thesea by the trader, who must encounter the moral dangers of a trader'slife, as well as the perils of the stormy wave. It is delivered at thedoor by

 The waggoner who bears The pelting brunt of the tempestuous night, With half-shut eyes and puckered cheeks and teeth Presented bare against the storm;

and whose coarseness and callousness, as he whips his team, are theconsequences of the hard calling in which he ministers to the recluse'spleasure and refinement. If town life has its evils, from the citycomes all that makes retirement comfortable and civilized. Retirementwithout the city-would have been bookless and have fed on acorns. 

Rousseau is conscious of the necessity of some such institution asslavery, by way of basis for his beautiful life according to nature. The celestial purity and felicity of St. Pierre's _Paul and Virginia_are sustained by the labour of two faithful slaves. A weak point ofCowper's philosophy, taken apart from his own saving activity as apoet, betrays itself in a somewhat similar way. 

 Or if the garden with its many cares All well repaid demand him, he attends The welcome call, conscious how much the hand Of lubbard labour, needs his watchful eye, Oft loitering lazily if not o'er seen; Or misapplying his unskilful strength But much performs himself, _no works indeed That ask robust tough sinews bred to toil, Servile employ_, but such as may amuse Not tire, demanding rather skill than force. 

We are told in _The Task_ that there is no sin in allowing our ownhappiness to be enhanced by contrast with the less happy condition ofothers: if we are doing our best to increase the happiness of others, there is none. Cowper, as we have said before, was doing this to theutmost of his limited capacity. 

Both in the Moral Satires and in _The Task_, there are sweepingdenunciations of amusements which we now justly deem innocent, andwithout which or something equivalent to them, the wrinkles on the browof care could not be smoothed, nor life preserved from dulness andmoroseness. There is fanaticism in this no doubt: but in justice tothe Methodist as well as to the Puritan, let it be remembered that thestage, card parties, and even dancing once had in them something fromwhich even the most liberal morality might recoil. 

In his writings generally, but especially in _The Task_, Cowper, besides being an apostle of virtuous retirement and evangelical piety, is, by his general tone, an apostle of sensibility. _The Task_, is aperpetual protest not only against the fashionable vices and theirreligion, but against the hardness of the world; and in a world whichworshipped Chesterfield the protest was not needless, nor was itineffective. Among the most tangible characteristics of this specialsensibility is the tendency of its brimming love of humankind tooverflow upon animals, and of this there are marked instances in somepassages of _The Task_. 

 I would not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. 

Of Cowper's sentimentalism (to use the word in a neutral sense), partflowed from his own temperament, part was Evangelical, but partbelonged to an element which was European, which produced the _NouvelleHeloise_ and the _Sorrows of Werther_, and which was found among theJacobins in sinister companionship with the cruel frenzy of theRevolution. Cowper shows us several times that he had been a reader ofRousseau, nor did he fail to produce in his time a measure of the sameeffect which Rousseau produced; though there have been so manysentimentalists since, and the vein has been so much worked, that it isdifficult to carry ourselves back in imagination to the day in whichParisian ladies could forego balls to read the _Nouvelle Heloise_, orthe stony heart of people of the world could be melted by _The Task_. 

In his versification, as in his descriptions, Cowper flattered himselfthat he imitated no one. But he manifestly imitates the softerpassages of Milton, whose music he compares in a rapturous passage ofone of his letters to that of a fine organ. To produce melody andvariety, he, like Milton, avails himself fully of all the resources ofa composite language. Blank verse confined to short Anglo-Saxon wordsis apt to strike the ear, not like the swell of an organ, but like thetinkle of a musical-box. 

_The Task_ made Cowper famous. He was told that he had sixty readersat the Hague alone. The interest of his relations and friends in himrevived, and those of whom he had heard nothing for many yearsemulously renewed their connexion. Colman and Thurlow reopened theircorrespondence with him, Colman writing to him "like a brother. "Disciples, young Mr. Rose, for instance, came to sit at his feet. Complimentary letters were sent to him, and poems submitted to hisjudgment. His portrait was taken by famous painters. Literarylion-hunters began to fix their eyes upon him. His renown spread evento Olney. The clerk of All Saints', Northampton, came over to ask himto write the verses annually appended to the bill of mortality for thatparish. Cowper suggested that "there were several men of genius inNorthampton, particularly Mr. Cox, the statuary, who, as everybodyknew, was a first-rate maker of verses. " "Alas!" replied the clerk, "Ihave heretofore borrowed help from him, but he is a gentleman of somuch reading that the people of our town cannot understand him. " Thecompliment was irresistible, and for seven years the author of The Taskwrote the mortuary verses for All Saints', Northampton. Amusement, notprofit, was Cowper's aim; he rather rashly gave away his copyright tohis publisher, and his success does not seem to have brought him moneyin a direct way, but it brought him a pension of 300 pounds in the end. In the meantime it brought him presents, and among them an annual giftof 50 pounds from an anonymous hand, the first instalment beingaccompanied by a pretty snuff-box ornamented with a picture of thethree hares. From the gracefulness of the gift, Southey infers that itcame from a woman, and he conjectures that the woman was Theodora. 

CHAPTER VI. 

SHORT POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS. 

The task was not quite finished when the influence which had inspiredit was withdrawn. Among the little mysteries and scandals of literaryhistory is the rupture between Cowper and Lady Austen. Soon after thecommencement of their friendship there had been a "fracas, " of whichCowper gives an account in a letter to William Unwin. "My letters havealready apprised you of that close and intimate connexion, that tookplace between the lady you visited in Queen Anne Street and us. Nothing could be more promising, though sudden in the commencement. She treated us with as much unreservedness of communication, as if wehad been born in the same house and educated together. At herdeparture, she herself proposed a correspondence, and, because writingdoes not agree with your mother, proposed a correspondence with me. This sort of intercourse had not been long maintained before Idiscovered, by some slight intimations of it, that she had conceiveddispleasure at somewhat I had written, though I cannot now recollectit; conscious of none but the most upright, inoffensive intentions, Iyet apologized for the passage in question, and the flaw was healedagain. Our correspondence after this proceeded smoothly for aconsiderable time, but at length, having had repeated occasion toobserve that she expressed a sort of romantic idea of our merits, andbuilt such expectations of felicity upon our friendship, as we weresure that nothing human could possibly answer, I wrote to remind herthat we were mortal, to recommend her not to think more highly of usthan the subject would warrant, and intimating that when we embellish acreature with colours taken from our own fancy, and so adorned, admireand praise it beyond its real merits, we make it an idol, and havenothing to expect in the end but that it will deceive our hopes, andthat we shall derive nothing from it but a painful conviction of ourerror. Your mother heard me read the letter, she read it herself, andhonoured it with her warm approbation. But it gave mortal offence; itreceived, indeed, an answer, but such an one as I could by no meansreply to; and there ended (for it was impossible it should ever berenewed) a friendship that bid fair to be lasting; being formed with awoman whose seeming stability of temper, whose knowledge of the worldand great experience of its folly, but, above all, whose sense ofreligion and seriousness of mind (for with all that gaiety she is agreat thinker) induced us both, in spite of that cautious reserve thatmarked our characters, to trust her, to love and value her, and to openour hearts for her reception. It may be necessary to add that by herown desire, I wrote to her under the assumed relation of a brother, andshe to me as my sister. _Ceu fumus in auras_. " It is impossible toread this without suspecting that there was more of "romance" on oneside, than there was either of romance or of consciousness of thesituation on the other. On that occasion the reconciliation, though"impossible, " took place, the lady sending, by way of olive branch, apair of ruffles, which it was known she had begun to work before thequarrel. The second rupture was final. Hayley, who treats the matterwith sad solemnity, tells us that Cowper's letter of farewell to LadyAusten, as she assured him herself, was admirable, though unluckily, not being gratified by it at the time, she had thrown it into the fire. Cowper has himself given us, in a letter to Lady Hesketh, withreference to the final rupture, a version of the whole affair:--"Therecame a lady into this country, by name and title Lady Austen, the widowof the late Sir Robert Austen. At first she lived with her sisterabout a mile from Olney; but in a few weeks took lodgings at thevicarage here. Between the vicarage and the back of our house areinterposed our garden, an orchard, and the garden belonging to thevicarage. She had lived much in France, was very sensible, and hadinfinite vivacity. She took a great liking to us, and we to her. Shehad been used to a great deal of company, and we, fearing that shewould feel such a transition into silent retirement irksome, contrivedto give her our agreeable company often. Becoming continually more andmore intimate, a practice at length obtained of our dining with eachother alternately every day, Sundays excepted. In order to facilitateour communication, we made doors in the two garden-walls aforesaid, bywhich means we considerably shortened the way from one house to theother, and could meet when we pleased without entering the town at all;a measure the rather expedient, because the town is abominably dirty, and she kept no carriage. On her first settlement in ourneighbourhood, I made it my own particular business (for at that time Iwas not employed in writing, having published my first volume and notbegun my second) to pay my _devoirs_ to her ladyship every morning ateleven. Customs very soon became laws. I began _The Task_, for shewas the lady who gave me the _Sofa_ for a subject. Being once engagedin the work, I began to feel the inconvenience of my morningattendance. We had seldom breakfasted ourselves till ten; and theintervening hour was all the time I could find in the whole day forwriting, and occasionally it would happen that the half of that hourwas all that I could secure for the purpose. But there was no remedy. Long usage had made that which was at first optional a point of goodmanners, and consequently of necessity, and I was forced to neglect_The Task_ to attend upon the Muse who had inspired the subject. Butshe had ill-health, and before I had quite finished the work wasobliged to repair to Bristol. " Evidently this was not the wholeaccount of the matter, or there would have been no need for a formalletter of farewell. We are very sorry to find the revered Mr. Alexander Knox saying, in his correspondence with Bishop Jebb, that hehad a severer idea of Lady Austen than he should wish to put intowriting for publication, and that he almost suspected she was a veryartful woman. On the other hand, the unsentimental Mr. Scott isreported to have said, "Who can be surprised that two women should becontinually in the society of one man and quarrel, sooner or later, with each other?" Considering what Mrs. Unwin had been to Cowper, andwhat he had been to her, a little jealousy on her part would not havebeen highly criminal. But, as Southey observes, we shall soon see twowomen continually in the society of this very man without quarrellingwith each other. That Lady Austen's behaviour to Mrs. Unwin was in thehighest degree affectionate, Cowper has himself assured us. Whateverthe cause may have been, this bird of paradise, having alighted for amoment in Olney, took wing and was seen no more. 

Her place, as a companion, was supplied, and more than supplied, byLady Hesketh, like her a woman of the world, and almost as bright andvivacious, but with more sense and stability of character, and who, moreover, could be treated as a sister without any danger of, misunderstanding. The renewal of the intercourse between Cowper andthe merry and affectionate play-fellow of his early days, had been oneof the best fruits borne to him by _The Task_, or perhaps we shouldrather say by _John Gilpin_, for on reading that ballad she firstbecame aware that her cousin had emerged from the dark seclusion of histruly Christian happiness, and might again be capable of intercoursewith her sunny nature. Full of real happiness for Cowper were hervisits to Olney; the announcement of her coming threw him into atrepidation of delight. And how was this new rival received by Mrs. Unwin. "There is something, " says Lady Hesketh in a letter which hasbeen already quoted, "truly affectionate and sincere in Mrs. Unwin'smanner. No one can express more heartily than she does her joy to haveme at Olney; and as this must be for his sake it is an additional proofof her regard and esteem for him. " She could even cheerfully yieldprecedence in trifles, which is the greatest trial of all. "Ourfriend, " says Lady Hesketh, "delights in a large table and a largechair. There are two of the latter comforts in my parlour. I am sorryto say that he and I always spread ourselves out in them, leaving poorMrs. Unwin to find all the comfort she can in a small one, half as highagain as ours, and considerably harder than marble. However, sheprotests it is what she likes, that she prefers a high chair to a lowone, and a hard to a soft one; and I hope she is sincere; indeed, I ampersuaded she is. " She never gave the slightest reason for doubtingher sincerity; so Mr. Scott's coarse theory of the "two women" falls tothe ground, though, as Lady Hesketh was not Lady Austen, room is stillleft for the more delicate and interesting hypothesis. 

By Lady Hesketh's care Cowper was at last taken out of the "well" atOlney and transferred with his partner to a house at Weston, a place inthe neighbourhood, but on higher ground, more cheerful, and in betterair. The house at Weston belonged to Mr. Throckmorton of Weston Hall, with whom and Mrs. Throckmorton, Cowper had become so intimate thatthey were already his Mr. And Mrs. Frog. It is a proof of his freedomfrom fanatical bitterness that he was rather drawn to them by theirbeing Roman Catholics, and having suffered rude treatment from theProtestant boors of the neighbourhood. Weston Hall had its grounds, with the colonnade of chestnuts, the "sportive light" of which still"dances" on the pages of _The Task_; with the Wilderness, --

 Whose well-rolled walks, With curvature of slow and easy sweep, Deception innocent, give ample space To narrow bounds--

with the Grove, --

 Between the upright shafts of whose tall elms We may discern the thresher at his task, Thump after thump resounds the constant flail That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls Full on the destined ear. Wide flies the chaff, The rustling straw sends up a fragrant mist Of atoms, sparkling in the noonday beam. 

A pretty little vignette, which the threshing-machine has now madeantique. There were ramblings, picnics, and little dinner-parties. Lady Hesketh kept a carriage. Gayhurst, the seat of Mr. Wright, wasvisited as well as Weston Hall; the life of the lonely pair was fastbecoming social. The Rev. John Newton was absent in the flesh, but hewas present in the spirit, thanks to the tattle of Olney. To show thathe was, he addressed to Mrs. Unwin a letter of remonstrance on theserious change which had taken place in the habits of his spiritualchildren. It was answered by her companion, who in repelling thecensure mingles the dignity of self-respect with a just appreciation ofthe censor's motives, in a style which showed that although he wassometimes mad, he was not a fool. 

Having succeeded in one great poem, Cowper thought of writing another, and several subjects were started--_The Mediterranean_, _The Four Agesof Man_, _Yardley Oak_. _The Mediterranean_ would not have suited himwell if it was to be treated historically, for of history he was evenmore ignorant than most of those who have had the benefit of aclassical education, being capable of believing that the Latin elementof our language had come in with the Roman conquest. Of the _FourAges_ he wrote a fragment. Of _Yardley Oak_ he wrote the opening; itwas apparently to have been a survey of the countries in connexion withan immemorial oak which stood in a neighbouring chace. But he wasforced to say that the mind of man was not a fountain but a cistern, and his was a broken one. He had expended his stock of materials for along poem in _The Task_. 

These, the sunniest days of Cowper's life, however, gave birth to manyof those short poems which are perhaps his best, certainly his mostpopular works, and which will probably keep his name alive when _TheTask_ is read only in extracts. _The Loss of the Royal George_, _TheSolitude of Alexander Selkirk_, _The Poplar Field_, _The Shrubbery_, the _Lines on a Young Lady_, and those _To Mary, will hold their placesfor ever in the treasury of English Lyrics. In its humble way _TheNeedless Alarm_ is one of the most perfect of human compositions. Cowper had reason to complain of Aesop for having written his fablesbefore him. One great charm of these little pieces is their perfectspontaneity. Many of them were never published, and generally theyhave the air of being the simple effusions of the moment, gay or sad. When Cowper was in good spirits his joy, intensified by sensibility andpast suffering, played like a fountain of light on all the littleincidents of his quiet life. An ink-glass, a flatting mill, a halibutserved up for dinner, the killing of a snake in the garden, the arrivalof a friend wet after a Journey, a cat shut up in a drawer, sufficed toelicit a little jet of poetical delight, the highest and brightest jetof all being _John Gilpin_. Lady Austen's voice and touch stillfaintly live in two or three pieces which were written for herharpsichord. Some of the short poems on the other hand are poured fromthe darker urn, and the finest of them all is the saddest. There is noneed of illustrations unless it be to call attention to a secondaryquality less noticed, than those of more importance. That which usedto be specially called "wit, " the faculty of ingenious and unexpectedcombination, such as is shown in the similes of _Hudibras_, waspossessed by Cowper in large measure. 

 A friendship that in frequent fits Of controversial rage emits The sparks of disputation, Like hand-in-hand insurance plates, Most unavoidably creates The thought of conflagration. 

 Some fickle creatures boast a soul True as a needle to the pole, Their humour yet so various-- They manifest their whole life through The needle's deviations too, Their love is so precarious. 

 The great and small but rarely meet On terms of amity complete; Plebeians must surrender, And yield so much to noble folk, It is combining fire with smoke, Obscurity with splendour. 

 Some are so placid and serene (As Irish bogs are always green) They sleep secure from waking; And are indeed a bog, that bears Your unparticipated cares Unmoved and without quaking. 

 Courtier and patriot cannot mix Their heterogeneous politics Without an effervescence, Like that of salts with lemon juice, Which does not yet like that produce A friendly coalescence. 

Faint presages of Byron are heard in such a poem as _The Shrubbery_, and of Wordsworth in such a poem as that _To a Young Lady_. But of thelyrical depth and passion of the great Revolution poets Cowper iswholly devoid. His soul was stirred by no movement so mighty, if itwere even capable of the impulse. Tenderness he has, and pathos aswell as playfulness; he has unfailing grace and ease; he has clearnesslike that of a trout-stream. Fashions, even our fashions, change. Themore metaphysical poetry of our time has indeed too much in it, besidesthe metaphysics, to be in any danger of being ever laid on the shelfwith the once admired conceits of Cowley; yet it may one day in partlose, while the easier and more limpid kind of poetry may in partregain, its charm. 

The opponents of the Slave Trade tried to enlist this winning voice inthe service of their cause. Cowper disliked the task, but he wrote twoor three anti-Slave-Trade ballads. _The Slave Trader in the Dumps_, with its ghastly array of horrors dancing a jig to a ballad metre, justifies the shrinking of an artist from a subject hardly fit for art. 

If the cistern which had supplied _The Task_ was exhausted, the rill ofoccasional poems still ran freely, fed by a spring which, so long aslife presented the most trivial object or incident could not fail. Whydid not Cowper go on writing these charming pieces which he evidentlyproduced with the greatest facility? Instead of this, he took, underan evil star, to translating Homer. The translation of Homer intoverse is the Polar Expedition of literature, always failing, yet stilldesperately renewed. Homer defies modern reproduction. His primevalsimplicity is a dew of the dawn which can never be re-distilled. Hisprimeval savagery is almost equally unpresentable. What civilized poetcan don the barbarian sufficiently to revel, or seem to revel, in theghastly details of carnage, in hideous wounds described with surgicalgusto, in the butchery of captives in cold blood, or even in thoseparticulars of the shambles and the spit which to the troubadour ofbarbarism seem as delightful as the images of the harvest and thevintage? Poetry can be translated into poetry only by taking up theideas of the original into the mind of the translator, which is verydifficult when the translator and the original are separated by a gulfof thought and feeling, and when the gulf is very wide, becomesimpossible. There is nothing for it in the case of Homer but a prosetranslation. Even in prose to find perfect equivalents for some of theHomeric phrases is not easy. Whatever the chronological date of theHomeric poems may be, their political and psychological date may bepretty well fixed. Politically they belong, as the episode ofThersites shows, to the rise of democracy and to its first collisionwith aristocracy, which Homer regards with the feelings of a bard whosang in aristocratic halls. Psychologically they belong to the timewhen in ideas and language, the moral was just disengaging itself fromthe physical. In the wail of Andromache for instance, _adinon epos_, which Pope improves into "sadly dear, " and Cowper, with better taste atall events, renders "precious, " is really semi-physical, and scarcelycapable of exact translation. It belongs to an unreproducible past, like the fierce joy which, in the same wail, bursts from the savagewoman in the midst of her desolation at the thought of the numbers whomher husband's hands had slain. Cowper had studied the Homeric poemsthoroughly in his youth, he knew them so well that he was able totranslate them, not very incorrectly with only the help of a Clavis; heunderstood their peculiar qualities as well as it was possible for areader without the historic sense to do; he had compared Pope'stranslation carefully with the original, and had decisively noted thedefects which make it not a version of Homer, but a periwigged epic ofthe Augustan age. In his own translation he avoids Pope's faults, andhe preserves at least the dignity of the original, while his command oflanguage could never fail him, nor could he ever lack the guidance ofgood taste. But we well know where he will be at his best. We turn atonce to such passages as the description of Calypso's Isle, Alighting on Pieria, down he (Hermes) stooped. To Ocean, and the billows lightly skimmed In form a sea-mew, such as in the bays Tremendous of the barren deep her food Seeking, dips oft in brine her ample wing. In such disguise o'er many a wave he rode, But reaching, now, that isle remote, forsook The azure deep, and at the spacious grove Where dwelt the amber-tressed nymph arrived Found her within. A fire on all the hearth Blazed sprightly, and, afar diffused, the scent Of smooth-split cedar and of cypress-wood Odorous, burning cheered the happy isle. She, busied at the loom and plying fast Her golden shuttle, with melodious voice Sat chanting there; a grove on either side, Alder and poplar, and the redolent branch Wide-spread of cypress, skirted dark the cave Where many a bird of broadest pinion built Secure her nest, the owl, the kite, and daw, Long-tongued frequenters of the sandy shores. A garden vine luxuriant on all sides Mantled the spacious cavern, cluster-hung Profuse; four fountains of serenest lymph, Their sinuous course pursuing side by side, Strayed, all around, and everywhere appeared Meadows of softest verdure purpled o'er With violets; it was a scene to fill A God from heaven with wonder and delight. 

There are faults in this and even blunders, notably in the naturalhistory; and "serenest lymph" is a sad departure from Homericsimplicity. Still on the whole the passage in the translation charms, and its charm is tolerably identical with that of the original. Inmore martial and stirring passages the failure is more signal, and hereespecially we feel that if Pope's rhyming couplets are sorryequivalents for the Homeric hexameter, blank verse is superior to themonly in a negative way. The real equivalent, if any, is the romancemetre of Scott, parts of whose poems, notably the last canto of_Marmion_ and some passages in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, areabout the most Homeric things in our language. Cowper brought suchpoetic gifts to his work that his failure might have deterred othersfrom making the same hopeless attempt. But a failure his work is; thetranslation is no more a counterpart of the original, than the Ousecreeping through its meadows is the counterpart of the Aegean rollingbefore a fresh wind and under a bright sun. Pope delights school-boys;Cowper delights nobody, though on the rare occasions when he is takenfrom the shelf, he commends himself, in a certain measure, to the tasteand judgment of cultivated men. 

In his translations of Horace, both those from the Satires and thosefrom the Odes, Cowper succeeds far better. Horace requires in histranslator little of the fire which Cowper lacked. In the Odes herequires grace, in the Satires urbanity and playfulness, all of whichCowper had in abundance. Moreover, Horace is separated from us by nointellectual gulf. He belongs to what Dr. Arnold called the modernperiod of ancient history. Nor is Cowper's translation of part of theeighth book of Virgil's Aeneid bad, in spite of the heaviness of theblank verse. Virgil, like Horace, is within his intellectual range. 

As though a translation of the whole of the Homeric poems had not beenenough to bury his finer faculty, and prevent him from giving us anymore of the minor poems, the publishers seduced him into undertaking anedition of Milton, which was to eclipse all its predecessors insplendour. Perhaps he may have been partly entrapped by a chivalrousdesire to rescue his idol from the disparagement cast on it by thetasteless and illiberal Johnson. The project after weighing on hismind and spirits for some time was abandoned, leaving as its tracesonly translations of Milton's Latin poems, and a few notes on _ParadiseLost, _ in which there is too much of religion, too little of art. 

Lady Hesketh had her eye on the Laureateship, and probably with thatview persuaded her cousin to write loyal verses on the recovery ofGeorge III. He wrote the verses, but to the hint of the Laureateshiphe said, "Heaven guard my brows from the wreath you mention, whateverwreaths beside may hereafter adorn them. It would be a leadenextinguisher clapt on my genius, and I should never more produce a lineworth reading. " Besides, was he not already the mortuary poet of AllSaints, Northampton?

CHAPTER VII. 

THE LETTERS. 

Southey, no mean judge in such a matter, calls Cowper the best ofEnglish, letter-writers. If the first place is shared with him by anyone it is by Byron, rather than by Gray, whose letters are pieces offine writing, addressed to literary men, or Horace Walpole, whoseletters are memoirs, the English counterpart of St. Simon. Theletters both of Gray and Walpole are manifestly written forpublication. Those of Cowper have the true epistolary charm. They areconversation, perfectly artless, and at the same time autobiography, perfectly genuine, whereas all formal autobiography is cooked. Theyare the vehicles of the writer's thoughts and feelings, and the mirrorof his life. We have the strongest proofs that they were not writtenfor publication. In many of them there are outpourings of wretchednesswhich could not possibly have been intended for any heart but that towhich they were addressed, while others contain medical details whichno one would have thought of presenting to the public eye. Some, weknow, were answers to letters received but a moment before; and Southeysays that the manuscripts are very free from erasures. Though Cowperkept a note-book for subjects, which no doubt were scarce with him, itis manifest that he did not premeditate. Grace of form he never lacks, but this was a part of his nature, improved by his classical training. The character and the thoughts presented are those of a recluse who wassometimes a hypochondriac; the life is life at Olney. But simpleself-revelation is always interesting, and a garrulous playfulness withgreat happiness of expression can lend a certain charm even to thingsmost trivial and commonplace. There is also a certain pleasure inbeing carried back to the quiet days before railways and telegraphs, when people passed their whole lives on the same spot, and life movedalways in the same tranquil round. In truth it is to such days thatletter-writing, as a species of literature belongs, telegrams andpostal cards have almost killed it now. 

The large collection of Cowper's letters is probably seldom taken fromthe shelf; and the "Elegant Extracts" select those letters which aremost sententious, and therefore least characteristic. Two or threespecimens of the other style may not be unwelcome or needless aselements of a biographical sketch; though specimens hardly do justiceto a series of which the charm, such as it is, is evenly diffused, notgathered, into centres of brilliancy like Madame de Sevigne's letter onthe Orleans Marriage. Here is a letter written, in the highest spiritsto Lady Hesketh. 

 "Olney, _Feb. 9th_, 1786. 

"MY DEAREST COUSIN, --I have been impatient to tell you that I amimpatient to see you again. Mrs. Unwin partakes with me in all myfeelings upon this subject, and longs also to see you. I should havetold you so by the last post, but have been so completely occupied bythis tormenting specimen, that it was impossible to do it. I sent theGeneral a letter on Monday, that would distress and alarm him; I senthim another yesterday, that will, I hope, quiet him again. Johnson hasapologized very civilly for the multitude of his friend's strictures;and his friend has promised to confine himself in future to acomparison of me with the original, so that, I doubt not, we shall jogon merrily together. And now, my dear, let me tell you once more, thatyour kindness in promising us a visit has charmed us both. I shall seeyou again. I shall hear your voice. We shall take walks together. Iwill show you my prospects, the hovel, the alcove, the Ouse and itsbanks, everything that I have described. I anticipate the pleasure ofthose days not very far distant, and feel a part of it at this moment. Talk not of an inn! Mention it not for your life! We have never hadso many visitors, but we could easily accommodate them all; though wehave received Unwin, and his wife, and his sister, and his son all atonce. My dear, I will not let you come till the end of May, orbeginning of June, because before that time my greenhouse will not beready to receive us, and it is the only pleasant room belonging to us. When the plants go out, we go in. I line it with mats, and spread thefloor with mats; and there you shall sit with a bed of mignonette atyour side, and a hedge of honeysuckles, roses, and jasmine; and I willmake you a bouquet of myrtle every day. Sooner than the time I mentionthe country will not be in complete beauty. 

"And I will tell you what you shall find at your first entrance. Imprimis, as soon as you have entered the vestibule, if you cast a lookon either side of you, you shall see on the right hand a box of mymaking. It is the box in which have been lodged all my hares, and inwhich lodges Puss at present; but he, poor fellow, is worn out withage, and promises to die before you can see him. On the right handstands a cupboard, the work of the same author, it was once adove-cage, but I transformed it. Opposite to you stands a table, whichI also made; but a merciless servant having scrubbed it until it becameparalytic, it serves no purpose now but of ornament; and all my cleanshoes stand under it. On the left hand, at the further end of thissuperb vestibule, you will find the door of the parlour, into which Iwill conduct you, and where I will introduce you to Mrs. Unwin, unlesswe should meet her before, and where we will be as happy as the day islong. Order yourself, my cousin, to the Swan at Newport, and there youshall find me ready to conduct you to Olney. 

"My dear, I have told Homer what you say about casks and urns, and haveasked him whether he is sure that it is a cask in which Jupiter keepshis wine. He swears that it is a cask, and that it will never beanything better than a cask to eternity. So if the god is content withit, we must even wonder at his taste, and be so too. 

 "Adieu! my dearest, dearest cousin. W. C. "

Here, by way of contrast, is a letter written in the lowest spiritspossible to Mr. Newton. It displays literary grace inalienable even inthe depths of hypochondria. It also shows plainly the connexion ofhypochondria with the weather. January was a month to the return ofwhich the sufferer always looked forward with dread as a mysteriousseason of evil. It was a season, especially at Olney, of thick fogcombined with bitter frosts. To Cowper this state of the atmosphereappeared the emblem of his mental state; we see in it the cause. Atthe close the letter slides from spiritual despair to theworsted-merchant, showing that, as we remarked before, the language ofdespondency had become habitual, and does not always flow from a soulreally in the depths of woe. 

 TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. 

 "_Jan. 13th_, 1784. 

"MY DEAR FRIEND, --I too have taken leave of the old year, and partedwith it just when you did, but with very different sentiments andfeelings upon the occasion. I looked back upon all the passages andoccurrences of it, as a traveller looks back upon a wilderness throughwhich he has passed with weariness, and sorrow of heart, reaping noother fruit, of his labour, than the poor consolation that, dreary asthe desert was, he has left it all behind him. The traveller wouldfind even this comfort considerably lessened, if, as soon as he hadpassed one wilderness, another of equal length, and equally desolate, should expect him. In this particular, his experience and mine wouldexactly tally. I should rejoice, indeed, that the old year is over andgone, if I had not every reason to prophesy a new one similar to it. 

"The new year is already old in my account, I am not, indeed, sufficiently second-sighted to be able to boast by anticipation anacquaintance with the events of it yet unborn, but rest convinced that, be they what they may, not one of them comes a messenger of good to me. If even death itself should be of the number, he is no friend of mine. It is an alleviation of the woes even of an unenlightened man, that hecan wish for death, and indulge a hope, at least, that in death heshall find deliverance. But, loaded as my life is with despair, I haveno such comfort as would result from a supposed probability of betterthings to come, were it once ended. For, more unhappy than thetraveller with whom I set out, pass through what difficulties I may, through whatever dangers and afflictions, I am not a whit nearer thehome, unless a dungeon may be called so. This is no very agreeabletheme; but in so great a dearth of subjects to write upon, andespecially impressed as I am at this moment with a sense of my owncondition, I could choose no other. The weather is an exact emblem ofmy mind in its present state. A thick fog envelopes everything, and atthe same time it freezes intensely. You will tell me that this coldgloom will be succeeded by a cheerful spring, and endeavour toencourage me to hope for a spiritual change resembling it;--but it willbe lost labour. Nature revives again; but a soul once slain lives nomore. The hedge that has been apparently dead, is not so; it willburst into leaf and blossom at the appointed time; but no such time isappointed for the stake that stands in it. It is as dead as it seems, and will prove itself no dissembler. The latter end of next month willcomplete a period of eleven years in which I have spoken no otherlanguage. It is a long time for a man whose eyes were once opened, tospend in darkness; long enough to make despair an inveterate habit; andsuch it is in me. My friends, I know, expect that I shall see yetagain. They think it necessary to the existence of divine truth, thathe who once had possession of it should never finally lose it. I admitthe solidity of this reasoning in every case but my own. And why notin my own? For causes which to them it appears madness to allege, butwhich rest upon my mind with a weight of immovable conviction. If I amrecoverable, why am I thus?--why crippled and made useless in theChurch, just at that time of life when, my judgment and experiencebeing matured, I might be most useful?--why cashiered and turned out ofservice, till, according to the course of nature, there is not lifeenough left in me to make amends for the years I have lost, --till thereis no reasonable hope left that the fruit can ever pay the expense ofthe fallow? I forestall the answer:--God's ways are mysterious, and Hegiveth no account of His matters--an answer that would serve my purposeas well as theirs to use it. There is a mystery in my destruction, andin time it shall be explained. 

"I am glad you have found so much hidden treasure; and Mrs. Unwindesires me to tell you that you did her no more than justice inbelieving that she would rejoice in it. It is not easy to surmise thereason why the reverend doctor, your predecessor, concealed it. Beinga subject of a free government, and I suppose fall of the divinity mostin fashion, he could not fear lest his riches should expose him topersecution. Nor can I suppose that he held it any disgrace for adignitary of the church to be wealthy, at a time when churchmen ingeneral spare no pains to become so. But the wisdom of some men has adroll sort of knavishness in it, much like that of a magpie, who hideswhat he finds with a deal of contrivance, merely for the pleasure ofdoing it. 

"Mrs. Unwin is tolerably well. She wishes me to add that she shall beobliged to Mrs. Newton, if, when an opportunity offers, she will givethe worsted-merchant a jog. We congratulate you that Eliza does notgrow worse, which I know you expected would be the case in the courseof the winter. Present our love to her. Remember us to Sally Johnson, and assure yourself that we remain as warmly as ever, "Yours, W. C. M. U. "

In the next specimen we shall see the faculty of imparting interest tothe most trivial incident by the way of telling it. The incident inthis case is one which also forms the subject of the little poem called_The Colubriad_. 

 To THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. 

 "_Aug. 3rd_, 1782. 

"MY DEAR FRIEND, --Entertaining some hope that Mr. Newton's next letterwould furnish me with the means of satisfying your inquiry on thesubject of Dr. Johnson's opinion, I have till now delayed my answer toyour last; but the information is not yet come, Mr. Newton havingintermitted a week more than usual since his last writing. When Ireceive it, favourable or not, it shall be communicated to you; but Iam not very sanguine in my expectations from that quarter. Verylearned and very critical heads are hard to please. He may perhapstreat me with levity for the sake of my subject and design, but thecomposition, I think, will hardly escape his censure. Though alldoctors may not be of the same mind, there is one doctor at least, whomI have lately discovered, my professed admirer. He too, like Johnson, was with difficulty persuaded to read, having an aversion to allpoetry, except the _Night Thoughts_; which, on a certain occasion, whenbeing confined on board a ship he had no other employment, he got byheart. He was, however, prevailed upon, and read me several timesover; so that if my volume had sailed with him, instead of Dr. Young's, I might perhaps have occupied that shelf in his memory which he thenallotted to the Doctor; his name is Renny, and he lives at NewportPagnel. 

"It is a sort of paradox, but it is true: we are never more in dangerthan when we think ourselves most secure, nor in reality more securethan when we seem to be most in danger. Both sides of this apparentcontradiction were lately verified in my experience. Passing from thegreenhouse to the barn, I saw three kittens (for we have so many in ourretinue) looking with fixed attention at something, which lay on thethreshold of a door, coiled up. I took but little notice of them atfirst, but a loud hiss engaged me to attend more closely, whenbehold--a viper! the largest I remember to have seen, rearing itself, darting its forked tongue, and ejaculating the afore-mentioned hiss atthe nose of a kitten, almost in contact with his lips. I ran into thehall for a hoe with a long handle, with which I intended to assail him, and returning in a few seconds missed him: he was gone, and I fearedhad escaped me. Still, however, the kitten sat watching immovably uponthe same spot. I concluded, therefore, that, sliding between the doorand the threshold, he had found his way out of the garden into theyard. I went round immediately, and there found him in closeconversation with the old cat, whose curiosity being excited by sonovel an appearance, inclined her to pat his head repeatedly with herfore foot; with her claws, however, sheathed, and not in anger, but inthe way of philosophical inquiry and examination. To prevent herfalling a victim to so laudable an exercise of her talents, Iinterposed in a moment with the hoe, and performed an act ofdecapitation, which though not immediately mortal proved so in the end. Had he slid into the passages, where it is dark, or had he, when in theyard, met with no interruption from the cat, and secreted himself inany of the outhouses, it is hardly possible but that some of the familymust have been bitten; he might have been trodden upon without beingperceived, and have slipped away before the sufferer could have welldistinguished what foe had wounded him. Three years ago we discoveredone in the same place, which the barber slew with a trowel. 

"Our proposed removal to Mr. Small's was, as you suppose, a jest, orrather a joco-serious matter. We never looked upon it as entirelyfeasible, yet we saw in it something so like practicability, that wedid not esteem it altogether unworthy of our attention. It was one ofthose projects which people of lively imaginations play with, andadmire for a few days, and then break in pieces. Lady Austen returnedon Thursday from London, where she spent the last fortnight, andwhither she was called by an unexpected opportunity to dispose of theremainder of her lease. She has now, therefore, no longer anyconnexion with the great city, she has none on earth whom she callsfriends but us, and no house but at Olney. Her abode is to be at thevicarage, where she has hired as much room as she wants, which she willembellish with her own furniture, and which she will occupy, as soon asthe minister's wife has produced another child, which is expected tomake its entry in October. 

"Mr. Bull, a dissenting minister of Newport, a learned, ingenious, good-natured, pious friend of ours, who sometimes visits us, and whomwe visited last week, has put into my hands three volumes of Frenchpoetry, composed by Madame Guyon;--a quietist, say you, and a fanatic, I will have nothing to do with her. It is very well, you are welcometo have nothing to do with her, but in the meantime her verse is theonly French verse I ever read that I found agreeable; there is aneatness in it equal to that which we applaud with so much reason inthe compositions of Prior. I have translated several of them, andshall proceed in my translations, till I have filled a Lilliputianpaper-book I happen to have by me, which, when filled, I shall presentto Mr. Bull. He is her passionate admirer, rode twenty miles to seeher picture in the house of a stranger, which stranger politelyinsisted on his acceptance of it, and it now hangs over his parlourchimney. It is a striking portrait, too characteristic not to be astrong resemblance, and were it encompassed with a glory, instead ofbeing dressed, in a nun's hood, might pass for the face of an angel. 

"Our meadows are covered with a winter-flood in August; the rushes withwhich our bottomless chairs were to have been bottomed, and much hay, which was not carried, are gone down the river on a voyage to Ely, andit is even uncertain whether they will ever return. Sic transit gloriamundi!

"I am glad you have found a curate, may he answer! Am happy in Mrs. Bouverie's continued approbation; it is worth while to write for such areader. Yours, "W. C. "

The power of imparting interest to commonplace incidents is so greatthat we read with a sort of excitement a minute account of theconversion of an old card-table into a writing and dining-table, withthe causes and consequences of that momentous event, curiosity havingbeen first cunningly aroused by the suggestion that the clerical friendto whom the letter is addressed might, if the mystery were notexplained, be haunted by it when he was getting into his pulpit, atwhich time, as he had told Cowper, perplexing questions were apt tocome into his mind. 

A man who lived by himself could have little but himself to writeabout. Yet in these letters there is hardly a touch of offensiveegotism. Nor is there any querulousness, except that of religiousdespondency. From those weaknesses Cowper was free. Of his pronenessto self-revelation we have had a specimen already. 

The minor antiquities of the generations immediately preceding ours arebecoming rare, as compared with those of remote ages, because nobodythinks it worth while to preserve them. It is almost as easy to get apersonal memento of Priam or Nimrod as it is to get a harpsichord, aspinning-wheel, a tinder-box, or a scratch-back. An Egyptian wig isattainable, a wig of the Georgian era is hardly so, much less a tie ofthe Regency. So it is with the scenes of common life a century or twoago. They are being lost, because they were familiar. Here are two ofthem, however, which have limned themselves with the distinctness ofthe camera obscura on the page of a chronicler of trifles. 

 TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. 

 "_Nov. 17th_, 1783. 

"MY DEAR FRIEND, --The country around is much alarmed with apprehensionsof fire. Two have happened since that of Olney. One at Hitchin, wherethe damage is said to amount to eleven thousand pounds; and another, ata place not far from Hitchin, of which I have not yet learnt the name. Letters have been dropped at Bedford, threatening to burn the town; andthe inhabitants have been so intimidated as to have placed a guard inmany parts of it, several nights past. Since our conflagration here, we have sent two women and a boy to the justice, for depredation, S. R. For stealing a piece of beef, which, in her excuse, she said sheintended to take care of. This lady, whom you well remember, escapedfor want of evidence; not that evidence was wanting, but our men ofGotham judged it unnecessary to send it. With her went the woman Imentioned before, who, it seems, has made some sort of profession, butupon this occasion allowed, herself a latitude of conduct ratherinconsistent with it, having filled her apron with wearing-apparel, which she likewise intended to take care of. She would have gone tothe county gaol, had William Raban, the baker's son, who prosecuted, insisted upon it; but he, good-naturedly, though I think weakly, interposed in her favour, and begged her off. The young gentleman whoaccompanied these fair ones is the junior son of Molly Boswell. He hadstolen some iron-work, the property of Griggs the butcher. Beingconvicted, he was ordered to be whipped, which operation he underwentat the cart's tail, from the stone-house to the high arch, and backagain. He seemed to show great fortitude, but it was all an impositionupon the public. The beadle, who performed it, had filled his lefthand with yellow ochre, through which, after every stroke, he drew thelash of his whip, leaving the appearance of a wound upon the skin, butin reality not hurting him at all. This being perceived by Mr. Constable H. , who followed the beadle, he applied his cane, without anysuch management or precaution, to the shoulders of the too mercifulexecutioner. The scene immediately became more interesting. Thebeadle could by no means be prevailed upon to strike hard, whichprovoked the constable to strike harder, and this double floggingcontinued, till a lass of Silver-End, pitying the pitiful beadle thussuffering under the hands of the pitiless constable, joined theprocession, and placing herself immediately behind the latter, seizedhim by his capillary club, and pulling him backwards by the same, slapped his face with a most Amazon fury. This concatenation of eventshas taken up more of my paper than I intended it should, but I couldnot forbear to inform you how the beadle thrashed the thief, theconstable the beadle, and the lady the constable, and how the thief wasthe only person concerned who suffered nothing. Mr. Teedon has beenhere, and is gone again. He came to thank me for some left-offclothes. In answer to our inquiries after his health, he replied thathe had a slow fever, which made him take all possible care not toinflame his blood. I admitted his prudence, but in his particularinstance, could not very clearly discern the need of it. Pump waterwill not heat him much, and, to speak a little in his own style, moreinebriating fluids are to him, I fancy, not very attainable. Hobrought us news, the truth of which, however, I do not vouch for, thatthe town of Bedford was actually on fire yesterday, and the flames notextinguished when the bearer of the tidings left it. 

"Swift observes, when he is giving his reasons why the preacher iselevated always above his hearers, that let the crowd be as great as itwill below, there is always room enough overhead. If the Frenchphilosophers can carry their art of flying to the perfection theydesire, the observation may be reversed, the crowd will be overhead, and they will have most room who stay below. I can assure you, however, upon my own experience, that this way of travelling is verydelightful. I dreamt a night or two since that I drove myself throughthe upper regions in a balloon and pair, with the greatest ease andsecurity. Having finished the tour I intended, I made a short turn, and, with one flourish of my whip, descended; my horses prancing andcurvetting with an infinite share of spirit, but without the leastdanger, either to me or my vehicle. The time, we may suppose, is athand, and seems to be prognosticated by my dream, when these airyexcursions will be universal, when judges will fly the circuit, andbishops their visitations; and when the tour of Europe will beperformed with much greater speed, and with equal advantage, by all whotravel merely for the sake of having it to say, that they have made it. 

"I beg you will accept for yourself and yours our unfeigned love, andremember me affectionately to Mr. Bacon, when you see him. 

 "Yours, my dear friend, WM. COWPER. "

 TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. 

 "_March 29th_, 1784. 

"MY DEAR FRIEND, --It being his Majesty's pleasure, that I should yethave another opportunity to write before he dissolves the Parliament, Iavail myself of it with all possible alacrity. I thank you for yourlast, which was not the less welcome for coming, like an extraordinarygazette, at a time when it was not expected. 

"As when the sea is uncommonly agitated, the water finds its way intocreeks and holes of rocks, which in its calmer state it never reaches, in like manner the effect of these turbulent times is felt even atOrchard Side, where in general we live as undisturbed by the politicalelement as shrimps or cockles that have been accidentally deposited insome hollow beyond the water-mark, by the usual dashing of the waves. We were sitting yesterday after dinner, the two ladies and myself, verycomposedly, and without the least apprehension of any such intrusion inour snug parlour, one lady knitting, the other netting, and thegentleman winding worsted, when to our unspeakable surprise a mobappeared before the window; a smart rap was heard at the door, the boysbellowed, and the maid announced Mr. Grenville. Puss was unfortunatelylet out of her box, so that the candidate, with all his good friends athis heels, was refused admittance at the grand entry, and referred tothe back door, as the only possible way of approach. 

"Candidates are creatures not very susceptible of affronts, and wouldrather, I suppose, climb in at the window, than be absolutely excluded. In a minute, the yard, the kitchen, and the parlour, were filled. Mr. Grenville, advancing toward me, shook me by the hand with a degree ofcordiality that was extremely seducing. As soon as he, and as manymore as could find chairs, were seated, he began to open the intent ofhis visit. I told him I had no vote, for which he readily gave mecredit. I assured him I had no influence, which he was not equallyinclined to believe, and the less, no doubt, because Mr. Ashburner, thedraper, addressing himself to me at this moment, informed me that I hada great deal. Supposing that I could not be possessed of such atreasure without knowing it, I ventured to confirm my first assertion, by saying, that if I had any I was utterly at a loss to imagine whereit could be, or wherein it consisted. Thus ended the conference. Mr. Grenville squeezed me by the hand again, kissed the ladies, andwithdrew. He kissed likewise the maid in the kitchen, and seemed uponthe whole a most loving, kissing, kind-hearted gentleman. He is veryyoung, genteel, and handsome. He has a pair of very good eyes in hishead, which not being sufficient as it should seem for the many niceand difficult purposes of a senator, he has a third also, which hesuspended from his buttonhole. The boys halloo'd, the dogs barked, puss scampered, the hero, with his long train of obsequious followers, withdrew. We made ourselves very merry with the adventure, and in ashort time settled into our former tranquillity, never probably to bethus interrupted more. I thought myself, however, happy in being ableto affirm truly that I had not that influence for which he sued; andwhich, had I been possessed of it, with my present views of the disputebetween the Crown and the Commons, I must have refused him, for he ison the side of the former. It is comfortable to be of no consequencein a world where one cannot exercise any without disobliging somebody. The town, however, seems to be much at his service, and if he beequally successful throughout the country, he will undoubtedly gain hiselection. Mr. Ashburner, perhaps, was a little mortified, because itwas evident that I owed the honour of this visit to hismisrepresentation of my importance. But had he thought proper toassure Mr. Grenville that I had three heads, I should not, I suppose, have been bound to produce them. 

"Mr. Scott, who you say was so much admired in your pulpit, would beequally admired in his own, at least by all capable judges, were he notso apt to be angry with his congregation. This hurt him, and had hethe understanding and eloquence of Paul himself, would still hurt him. He seldom, hardly ever indeed, preaches a gentler well-tempered sermon, but I hear it highly commended; but warmth of temper, indulged to adegree that may he called scolding, defeats the end of preaching. Itis a misapplication of his powers, which it also cripples, and tearsaway his hearers. But he is a good man, and may perhaps outgrow it. 

"Many thanks for the worsted, which is excellent. We are as well as aspring hardly less severe than the severest winter will give us leaveto be. With our united love, we conclude ourselves yours and Mrs. Newton's affectionate and faithful, "W. C. M. U. "

In 1789 the French Revolution advancing with thunder-tread makes eventhe hermit of Weston look up for a moment from his translation ofHomer, though he little dreamed that he with his gentle philanthropyand sentimentalism had anything to do with the great overturn of thesocial and political systems of the past. From time to time some crashof especial magnitude awakens a faint echo in the letters. 

 TO LADY HESKETH. 

 "_July 7th_, 1790. 

"Instead of beginning with the saffron-vested mourning to which Homerinvites me, on a morning that has no saffron vest to boast, I shallbegin with you. It is irksome to us both to wait so long as we mustfor you, but we are willing to hope that by a longer stay you will makeus amends for all this tedious procrastination. 

"Mrs. Unwin has made known her whole case to Mr. Gregson, whose opinionof it has been very consolatory to me; he says indeed it is a caseperfectly out of the reach of all physical aid, but at the same timenot at all dangerous. Constant pain is a sad grievance, whatever partis affected, and she is hardly ever free from an aching head, as wellas an uneasy side, but patience is an anodyne of God's own preparation, and of that He gives her largely. 

"The French who, like all lively folks, are extreme in everything, aresuch in their zeal for freedom; and if it were possible to make sonoble a cause ridiculous, their manner of promoting it could not failto do so. Princes and peers reduced to plain gentlemanship, andgentles reduced to a level with their own lackeys, are excesses ofwhich they will repent hereafter. Differences of rank andsubordination are, I believe, of God's appointment, and consequentlyessential to the well-being of society; but what we mean by fanaticismin religion is exactly that which animates their politics; and unlesstime should sober them, they will, after all, be an unhappy people. Perhaps it deserves not much to be wondered at, that at their firstescape from tyrannic shackles they should act extravagantly, and treattheir kings as they have sometimes treated their idol. To these, however, they are reconciled in due time again, but their respect formonarchy is at an end. They want nothing now but a little Englishsobriety, and that they want extremely. I heartily wish them some witin their anger, for it were great pity that so many millions should bemiserable for want of it. "

This, it will he admitted, is very moderate and unapocalyptic. Presently Monarchical Europe takes arms against the Revolution. Butthere are two political observers at least who see that MonarchicalEurope is making a mistake--Kaunitz and Cowper. "The French, " observesCowper to Lady Hesketh in December, 1792, "are a vain and childishpeople, and conduct themselves on this grand occasion with a levity andextravagance nearly akin to madness; but it would have been better forAustria and Prussia to let them alone. All nations have a right tochoose their own form of government, and the sovereignty of the peopleis a doctrine that evinces itself; for whenever the people choose to bemasters, they always are so, and none can hinder them. God grant thatwe may have no revolution here, but unless we have reform, we certainlyshall. Depend upon it, my dear, the hour has come when power foundedon patronage and corrupt majorities must govern this land no longer. Concessions, too, must he made to Dissenters of every denomination. They have a right to them--a right to all the privileges of Englishmen, and sooner or later, by fair means or by foul, they will have them. "Even in 1793, though he expresses, as he well might, a cordialabhorrence of the doings of the French, he calls them not fiends, but"madcaps. " He expresses the strongest indignation against the Tory mobwhich sacked Priestley's house at Birmingham, as he does, in justice beit said, against all manifestations of fanaticism. We cannot helpsometimes wishing, as we read these passages in the letters, thattheir calmness and reasonableness could have been communicated toanother "Old Whig, " who was setting the world on fire with hisanti-revolutionary rhetoric. 

It is true, as has already been said, that Cowper was "extramundane, "and that his political reasonableness was in part the result of thefancy that he and his fellow-saints had nothing to do with the worldbut to keep themselves clear of it, and let it go its own way todestruction. But it must also be admitted that while the wealth ofEstablishments, of which Burke was the ardent defender, is necessarilyreactionary in the highest degree, the tendency of religion itself, where it is genuine and sincere, must be to repress any selfish feelingabout class or position, and to make men, in temporal matters, morewilling to sacrifice the present to the future, especially where thehope is held out of moral as well as of material improvement. Thus ithas come to pass that men who professed and imagined themselves to haveno interest in this world, have practically been its great reformersand improvers in the political and material as well as in the moralsphere. 

The last specimen shall be one in the more sententious style, and onewhich proves that Cowper was capable of writing in a judicious manneron a difficult and delicate question--even a question so difficult andso delicate as that of the propriety of painting the face. 

 TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. 

 "May 3rd, 1784. 

"MY DEAR FRIEND, --The subject of face painting may be considered, Ithink, in two points of view. First, there is room for dispute withrespect to the consistency of the practice with good morals; andsecondly, whether it be on the whole convenient or not, may be a matterworthy of agitation. I set out with all the formality of logicaldisquisition, but do not promise to observe the same regularity anyfurther than it may comport with my purpose of writing as fast as I can. 

"As to the immorality of the custom, were I in France, I should seenone. On the contrary, it seems in that country to be a symptom ofmodest consciousness, and a tacit confession of what all know to betrue, that French faces have in fact neither red nor white of theirown. This humble acknowledgment of a defect looks the more like avirtue, being found among a people not remarkable for humility. Again, before we can prove the practice to be immoral, we must proveimmorality in the design of those who use it; either that they intend adeception, or to kindle unlawful desires in the beholders. But theFrench ladies, so far as their purpose comes in question, must beacquitted of both these charges. Nobody supposes their colour to benatural for a moment, any more than he would if it were blue or green:and this unambiguous judgment of the matter is owing to two causes;first, to the universal knowledge we have, that French women arenaturally either brown or yellow, with very few exceptions; andsecondly, to the inartificial manner in which they paint; for they donot, as I am most satisfactorily informed, even attempt an imitation ofnature, but besmear themselves hastily, and at a venture, anxious onlyto lay on enough. Where therefore there is no wanton intention, nor awish to deceive, I can discover no immorality. But in England, I amafraid, our painted ladies are not clearly entitled to the sameapology. They even imitate nature with such exactness that the wholepublic is sometimes divided into parties, who litigate with greatwarmth the question whether painted or not? This was remarkably thecase with a Miss E----, whom I well remember. Her roses and lilieswere never discovered to be spurious, till she attained an age thatmade the supposition of their being natural impossible. This anxietyto be not merely red and white, which is all they aim at in France, butto be thought very beautiful, and much more beautiful than Nature hasmade them, is a symptom not very favourable to the idea we would wishto entertain of the chastity, purity, and modesty of our countrywomen. That they are guilty of a design to deceive is certain. Otherwise whyso much art? and if to deceive, wherefore and with what purpose?Certainly either to gratify vanity of the silliest kind, or, which isstill more criminal, to decoy and inveigle, and carry on moresuccessfully the business of temptation. Here, therefore, my opinionsplits itself into two opposite sides upon the same question. I cansuppose a French woman, though painted an inch deep, to be a virtuous, discreet, excellent character; and in no instance should I think theworse of one because she was painted. But an English belle must pardonme if I have not the same charity for her. She is at least animpostor, whether she cheats me or not, because she means to do so; andit is well if that be all the censure she deserves. 

"This brings me to my second class of ideas upon this topic, and here Ifeel that I should be fearfully puzzled, were I called upon torecommend the practice on the score of convenience. If a husband chosethat his wife should paint, perhaps it might be her duty, as well asher interest, to comply. But I think he would not much consult hisown, for reasons that will follow. In the first place, she wouldadmire herself the more; and in the next, if she managed the matterwell, she might he more admired by others; an acquisition that mightbring her virtue under trials, to which otherwise it might never havebeen exposed. In no other case, however, can I imagine the practice inthis country to be either expedient or convenient. As a general one itcertainly is not expedient, because in general English women have nooccasion for it. A swarthy complexion is a rarity here; and the sex, especially since inoculation has been so much in use, have very littlecause to complain that nature has not been kind to them in the articleof complexion. They may hide and spoil a good one, but they cannot, atleast they hardly can, give themselves a better. But even if theycould, there is yet a tragedy in the sequel, which, should make themtremble. 

"I understand that in France, though the use of rouge be general, theuse of white paint is far from being so. In England, she that usesone, commonly uses both. Now all white paints, or lotions, or whateverthey may be called, are mercurial, consequently poisonous, consequentlyruinous in time to the constitution. The Miss B---- above mentionedwas a miserable witness of this truth, it being certain that her fleshfell from her bones before she died. Lady Coventry was hardly a lessmelancholy proof of it; and a London physician perhaps, were he atliberty to blab, could publish a bill of female mortality, of a lengththat would astonish us. 

"For these reasons I utterly condemn the practice, as it obtains inEngland; and for a reason superior to all these I must disapprove it. I cannot, indeed, discover that Scripture forbids it in so many words. But that anxious solicitude about the person, which such an artificeevidently betrays, is, I am sure, contrary to the tenor and spirit ofit throughout. Show me a woman with a painted face, and I will showyou a woman whose heart is set on things of the earth, and not onthings above. 

"But this observation of mine applies to it only when it is animitative art. For in the use of French women, I think it is asinnocent as in the use of a wild Indian, who draws a circle round herface, and makes two spots, perhaps blue, perhaps white, in the middleof it. Such are my thoughts upon the matter. 

 "_Vive valeque_, Yours ever, W. C. "

These letters have been chosen as illustrations of Cowper's epistolarystyle, and for that purpose they have been given entire. But they arealso the best pictures of his character; and his character iseverything. The events of his life worthy of record might all becomprised in a dozen pages. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

CLOSE OF LIFE. 

Cowper says there could not have been a happier trio on earth than LadyHesketh, Mrs. Unwin, and himself. Nevertheless, after his removal toWeston, he again went mad, and once more attempted self-destruction. His malady was constitutional, and it settled down upon him as hisyears increased, and his strength failed. He was now sixty. The Olneyphysicians, instead of husbanding his vital power, had wasted it away_secundum artem_ by purging, bleeding, and emetics. He had overworkedhimself on his fatal translation of Homer, under the burden of which hemoved, as he says himself, like an ass over-laden with sand-bags. Hehad been getting up to work at six, and not breakfasting till eleven. And now the life from which his had for so many years been fed, itselfbegan to fail. Mrs. Unwin was stricken with paralysis; the stroke wasslight, but of its nature there was no doubt. Her days of bodily lifewere numbered; of mental life there remained to her a still shorterspan. Her excellent son, William Unwin, had died of a fever soon afterthe removal of the pair to Weston. He had been engaged in the work ofhis profession as a clergyman, and we do not hear of his being often atOlney. But he was in constant correspondence with Cowper, in whoseheart as well as in that of Mrs. Unwin his death must have left a greatvoid, and his support was withdrawn just at the moment when it wasabout to become most necessary. 

Happily just at this juncture a new and a good friend appeared. Hayleywas a mediocre poet, who had for a time obtained distinction above hismerits. Afterwards his star had declined, but having an excellentheart, he had not been in the least soured by the downfall of hisreputation. He was addicted to a pompous rotundity of style, perhapshe was rather absurd; but he was thoroughly good-natured, very anxiousto make himself useful, and devoted to Cowper, to whom, as a poet, helooked up with an admiration unalloyed by any other feeling. Both ofthem, as it happened, were engaged on Milton, and an attempt had beenmade to set them by the ears; but Hayley took advantage of it tointroduce himself to Cowper with an effusion of the warmest esteem. Hewas at Weston when Mrs. Unwin was attacked with paralysis, anddisplayed his resource by trying to cure her with an electric-machine. At Eartham, on the coast of Sussex, he had, by an expenditure beyondhis means, made for himself a little paradise, where it was his delightto gather a distinguished circle. To this place he gave the pair apressing invitation, which was accepted in the vain hope that a changemight do Mrs. Unwin good. 

From Weston to Eartham was a three days' journey, an enterprise notundertaken without much trepidation and earnest prayer. It was safelyaccomplished, however, the enthusiastic Mr. Rose walking to meet hispoet and philosopher on the way. Hayley had tried to get Thurlow tomeet Cowper. A sojourn in a country house with the tremendous Thurlow, the only talker for whom Johnson condescended to prepare himself, wouldhave been rather an overpowering pleasure; and perhaps, after all, itwas as well that Hayley could only get Cowper's disciple, Hurdis, afterwards professor of poetry at Oxford, and Charlotte Smith. 

At Eartham, Cowper's portrait was painted by Romney. 

 Romney, expert infallibly to trace On chart or canvas not the form alone And semblance, but, however faintly shown The mind's impression too on every face, With strokes that time ought never to erase, Thou hast so pencilled mine that though I own The subject worthless, I have never known The artist shining with superior grace; But this I mark, that symptoms none of woe In thy incomparable work appear: Well: I am satisfied it should be so Since on maturer thought the cause is clear; For in my looks what sorrow could'st thou see When I was Hayley's guest and sat to thee. 

Southey observes that it was likely enough there would be no melancholyin the portrait, but that Hayley and Romney fell into a singular errorin mistaking for "the light of genius" what Leigh Hunt calls "a firefiercer than that either of intellect or fancy, gleaming from theraised and protruded eye. "

Hayley evidently did his utmost to make his guest happy. They spentthe hours in literary chat, and compared notes about Milton. The firstdays were days of enjoyment. But soon the recluse began to long forhis nook at Weston. Even the extensiveness of the view at Eartham madehis mind ache, and increased his melancholy. To Weston the pairreturned; the paralytic, of course, none the better for her journey. Her mind as well as her body was now rapidly giving way. We quote asbiography that which is too well known to be quoted as poetry. 

 TO MARY. 

 The twentieth year is well nigh past. Since first our sky was overcast:-- Ah, would that this might be the last! My Mary!

 Thy spirits have a fainter flow, I see thee daily weaker grow:-- 'Twas my distress that brought thee low, My Mary!

 Thy needles, once a shining store, For my sake restless heretofore, Now rust disused, and shine no more, My Mary!

 For though thou gladly wouldst fulfil The same kind office for me still, Thy sight now seconds not thy will, My Mary!

 But well thou play'dst the housewife's part, And all thy threads with magic art, Have wound themselves about this heart, My Mary!

 Thy indistinct expressions seem Like language utter'd in a dream: Yet me they charm, whate'er the theme, My Mary!

 Thy silver locks, once auburn bright, Are still more lovely in my sight Than golden, beams of orient light, My Mary!

 For could I view nor them nor thee, What sight worth seeing could I see P The sun would rise in vain for me, My Mary!

 Partakers of thy sad decline, Thy hands their little force resign; Yet gently press'd, press gently mine, My Mary!

 Such feebleness of limbs thou provest, That now at every step thou movest, Upheld by two; yet still thou lovest, My Mary!

 And still to love, though press'd with ill, In wintry age to feel no chill, With me is to be lovely still, My Mary!

 But ah! by constant heed I know, How oft the sadness that I show Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe, My Mary!

 And should my future lot be cast With much resemblance of the past, Thy worn-out heart will break at last, My Mary!

Even love, at least the power of manifesting love, began to betray itsmortality. She who had been so devoted, became, as her mind failed, exacting, and instead of supporting her partner, drew him down. Hesank again into the depth of hypochondria. As usual, his malady tookthe form of religious horrors, and he fancied that he was ordained toundergo severe penance for his sins. Six days he sat motionless andsilent, almost refusing to take food. His physician suggested, as theonly chance of arousing him, that Mrs. Unwin should be induced, ifpossible, to invite him to go out with her; with difficulty she wasmade to understand what they wanted her to do; at last she said that itwas a fine morning, and she should like a walk. Her partner at oncerose and placed her arm in his. Almost unconsciously, she had rescuedhim from the evil spirit for the last time. The pair were in dolefulplight. When their minds failed they had fallen in a miserable mannerunder the influence of a man named Teedon, a schoolmaster crazed withself-conceit, at whom Cowper in his saner mood had laughed, but whom henow treated as a spiritual oracle, and a sort of medium ofcommunication with the spirit-world, writing down the nonsense whichthe charlatan talked. Mrs. Unwin, being no longer in a condition tocontrol the expenditure, the housekeeping, of course, went wrong; andat the same time her partner lost the protection of the love-inspiredtact by which she had always contrived to shield his weakness and tosecure for him, in spite of his eccentricities, respectful treatmentfrom his neighbours. Lady Hesketh's health had failed, and she hadbeen obliged to go to Bath. Hayley now proved himself no merelion-hunter, but a true friend. In conjunction with Cowper'srelatives, he managed the removal of the pair from Weston to Mundsley, on the coast of Norfolk, where Cowper seemed to be soothed by the soundof the sea, then to Dunham Lodge, near Swaffham, and finally (in 1796)to East Dereham, where, two months after their arrival, Mrs. Unwindied. Her partner was barely conscious of his loss. On the morning ofher death he asked the servant "whether there was life above stairs?"On being taken to see the corpse, he gazed at it for a moment, utteredone passionate cry of grief, and never spoke of Mrs. Unwin more. Hehad the misfortune to survive her three years and a half, during whichrelatives and friends were kind, and Miss Perowne partly filled, theplace of Mrs. Unwin. Now and then, there was a gleam of reason andfaint revival of literary faculty, but composition was confined toLatin verse or translation, with one memorable and almost awfulexception. The last original poem written by Cowper was _TheCastaway_, founded on an incident in Anson's Voyage. 

 Obscurest night involved the sky, The Atlantic billows roared, When such a destined, wretch as I, Wash'd headlong from on board, Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, His floating home for ever left. 

 No braver chief could Albion boast; Than he with whom he went, Nor ever ship left Albion's coast With warmer wishes sent. He loved them both, but both in vain; Nor him beheld, nor her again. 

 Not long beneath the whelming brine Expert to swim, he lay, Nor soon he felt his strength decline, Or courage die away; But waged with death a lasting strife, Supported by despair of life. 

 He shouted; nor his friends had fail'd To check the vessel's course, But so the furious blast prevail'd, That pitiless perforce They left their outcast mate behind, And scudded still before the wind. 

 Some succour yet they could afford, And, such as storms allow, The cask, the coop, the floated cord, Delay'd not to bestow; But he, they knew, nor ship nor shore, Whate'er they gave, should visit more. 

 Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he Their haste himself condemn, Aware that flight, in such a sea, Alone could rescue them; Yet bitter felt it still to die Deserted, and his friends so nigh. 

 He long survives, who lives an hour In ocean, self-upheld; And so long he, with unspent power, His destiny repelled: And ever, as the minutes flew, Entreated help, or cried--"Adieu!"

 At length, his transient respite past, His comrades, who before Had heard his voice in every blast, Could catch the sound no more: For then by toil subdued, he drank The stifling wave, and then he sank. 

 No poet wept him; but the page Of narrative sincere, That tells his name, his worth, his age, Is wet with Anson's tear; And tears by bards or heroes shed Alike immortalize the dead. 

 I therefore purpose not, or dream, Descanting on his fate, To give the melancholy theme A more enduring date: But misery still delights to trace Its semblance in another's case. 

 No voice divine the storm allay'd, No light propitious shone, When, snatch'd from all effectual aid, We perish'd, each alone: But I beneath a rougher sea, And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he. 

The despair which finds vent in verse is hardly despair. Poetry cannever be the direct expression of emotion; it must be the product ofreflection combined with an exercise of the faculty of compositionwhich in itself is pleasant. Still _The Castaway_ ought to be anantidote to religious depression, since it is the work of a man of whomit would be absurdity to think as realty estranged from the spirit ofgood, who had himself done good to the utmost of his powers. 

Cowper died very peacefully on the morning of April 25, 1800, and wasburied in Dereham Church, where there is a monument to him with aninscription by Hayley, which, if it is not good poetry, is a tribute ofsincere affection. 

Any one whose lot it is to write upon the life and works of Cowper mustfeel that there is an immense difference between the interest whichattaches to him, and that which attaches to any one among the fargreater poets of the succeeding age. Still there is something abouthim so attractive, his voice has such a silver tone, he retains, evenin his ashes, such a faculty of winning friends that his biographer andcritic may be easily beguiled into giving him too high a place. Hebelongs to a particular religious movement, with the vitality of whichthe interest of a great part of his works has departed or is departing. Still more emphatically and in a still more important sense does hebelong to Christianity. In no natural struggle for existence would hehave been the survivor, by no natural process of selection would heever have been picked out as a vessel of honour. If the shield whichfor eighteen centuries Christ by His teaching and His death has spreadover the weak things of this world should fail, and might should againbecome the title to existence and the measure of worth, Cowper will becast aside as a specimen of despicable infirmity, and all who have saidanything in his praise will be treated with the same scorn.