r/: 
 
 REESE LIBRARY 
 
 **:> 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Received — ^:~!y.^c<^i'i^T88/_ 
 
 Accessions No. _ /4^^SL4^. _ _ Shelf No. _ . 
 
 08* 
 
 
CMiglisI) iHcit of Ccttcvs 
 
 EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY 
 
c o^v^^PE: n 
 
 GOLDWIN SMITH 
 
 Xj J i:> 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 nARPKIl & BIIOTIIKRS, PUBLISHERS 
 
 F n A N K r- 1 >f SQUARE 
 
 18S0 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. PAOF. 
 
 E.vrLY LiFK 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 At Huntingdon — The Unwins 22 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 At Oln-ey — Mr. Newton 35 
 
 CHAPTER ly. 
 AuTiiOKSUip — The Mor.vl Satires 47 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The Task 60 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 SuoRT Poems and Tr.vnslations 81 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 The Letters 95 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Close of Life 119 
 
1 ' V I \- 1. 
 
 COWPER. 
 
 CIIArTEU I. 
 
 EARLY LIFE, 
 
 CowPER is tlic most important English poet of the period 
 between Tope and the ilhistrions group headed by Words- 
 worth, Byron, and Shelley, which arose out of the intel- 
 lectual ferment of the European Revolution. As a re- 
 former of poetry, who called it back from conventionality 
 to nature, and at the same time as the teacher of a new 
 school of sentiment which acted as a solvent upon the 
 existing moral and social system, he may perhaps himself 
 be numbered among the precursors of the Revolution, 
 though ho was certainly the mildest of them all. As a 
 sentimentalist he presents a faint analogy to Rousseau, 
 whom in natural temperament he somewhat resembled. 
 He was also the great poet of the religious revival which 
 marked the latter part of the eighteenth century in Eng- 
 land, and which was called Evangelicism within the estab- 
 lishment, and Methodism without. In this way he is as- 
 sociated with Wesley and Whitefield, as well as with the 
 philanfhropists of the movement, such as Wilberforcc, 
 Thornton, and Clarkson. As a poet he touches, on dif- 
 ferent sides of his character, Goldsmith, Crabbc, and 
 
2 COWrEU. [chap. 
 
 Burns. With Goklsmitli and Crabbc lie shares the hon- 
 our of improving English taste in the sense of truthful- 
 ness and shnplicity. To Burns he felt his affinity, across 
 a gulf of social circumstance, and in spite of a dialect not 
 yet made fashionable by Scott. Besides his poetry, ho 
 holds a high, perhaps the highest place, among English 
 letter-writers ; and the collection of his letters appended 
 to Southey's biography forms, with the biographical por- 
 tions of his poetry, the materials for a sketch of his life. 
 Southey's biography itself is very helpful, though too 
 prolix and too much filled out with dissertations for com- 
 mon readers. Had its author only done for Cowper what 
 lie did for Nelson !^ 
 
 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 and George I. His grandfather 
 was that Spencer Cowper, judge of the Common Pleas, 
 for love of whom the pretty Quakeress drowned herself, 
 and who, by the rancour of party, was indicted for her 
 murder. His father, the Rev. John Cowper, D.D., was 
 chaplain to George H. His mother was a Donne, of the 
 race of the poet, and descended by several lines from 
 Henry IH. A Whig and a gentleman he w'as by birth, 
 a Whig and a gentleman he remained to the end. He 
 was born on the 15th November (old style), 1731, in his 
 
 ^father's rectory of Berkhampstead. From nature he re- 
 ceived, with a large measure of the gifts of genius, a still 
 larger measure of its painful sensibilities. In his portrait 
 by Romney the brow bespeaks intellect, the features feel- 
 
 ' ing and refinement, the eye madness. The stronger parts 
 of character, the combative and propelling forces, he evi- 
 ' Our acknowledgments are also due to Mr. Bcnham, the writer 
 of tlie Memoir prefixed to the Globe Edition oi' Cowper. 
 
1.] EARLY LIFE. 
 
 (Icntly lacked from the beginning. For tlic battle of life 
 lie was totally unfit. Ilis judgment in its healthy state 
 was, even on practical questions, sound enough, as his let- 
 ters abundantly prove; but his sensibility not only ren- 
 dered him incapable of wrestling with a rough world, but 
 kept him always on the verge of madness, and frequently 
 plunged him into it. To the malady which threw him 
 out of active life we owe not the meanest of I^nglish 
 >^ poets. 
 
 At the age of thirty-two, writing of himself, he says, " I 
 am of a very singular temper, and very unlike all the men 
 that I have ever conversed with. Certainly I am not an 
 absolute fool, but I have more weakness than the greatest 
 of all the fools I can recollect at present. In short, if I 
 was as fit for the next world as I am unfit for this — and 
 God forbid I should speak it in vanity — I woul4 not 
 change conditions with any saint in Christendom." Folly 
 produces nothing good, and if Cowper had been an abso- 
 lute fool, he would not have written good poetry. But he 
 does not exaggerate his own weakness, and that he should 
 have become a power among men is a remarkable triumph 
 of the influences which have given birth to Christian civil- 
 ization. 
 
 The world into which the child came was one very ad- 
 verse to him, and at the same time very much in need of 
 him. It was a world from which the spirit of poetry 
 seemed to have fled. There could be no stronger proof 
 of this than the occupation of the throne of Spenser, 
 Shakspoare, and Milton by the arch-versifier Pope. The 
 Revolution of 1G88 was glorious, but unlike the Puritan 
 Revolution which it followed, and in the political sphere 
 partly ratified, it was profoundly prosaic. Spiritual relig- 
 ion, the source of Puritan grandeur and of the poetry of 
 1* 
 
4 COWPEK. [cuAP. 
 
 Milton, was almost extinct ; tbcre ■svas not much more of 
 it among tlie Nonconformists, who liad now become to a 
 great extent mere Whigs, with a decided Unitarian ten- 
 dency. The Church was little better than a political 
 force, cultivated and manipulated by political leaders for 
 their own purposes. The Bishops were either politicians 
 or theological polemics collecting trophies of victory over 
 free-thinkers as titles to higher preferment. The inferior 
 clergy, as a body, were far nearer in character to Trulliber 
 than to Dr. Primrose ; coarse, sordid, neglectful of their 
 duties, shamelessly addicted to sinecurism and pluralities, 
 fanatics in their Toryism and in attachment to their cor- 
 porate privileges, cold, rationalistic and almost heathen in 
 their preachings, if they preached at all. The society of 
 the day is mirrored in the pictures of Hogarth, in the 
 works of Fielding and Smollett ; hard and heartless polish 
 was the best of it ; and not a little of it was Marriage a 
 la Mode. Chesterfield, with his soulless culture, his court 
 graces, and his fashionable immoralities, was about the 
 highest type of an English gentleman ; but the Wilkeses, 
 Potters, and Sandwiches, whose mania for vice culminated 
 in the Ilell-fire Club, were more numerous than the Ches- 
 terfields. Among the country squires, for one Allworthy 
 or Sir Roger de Coverley there were many Westerns. 
 /Among the common people religion was almost extinct, 
 and assuredly no new morality or sentiment, such as Posi- 
 tivists now promise, had taken its place. Sometimes the 
 rustic thought for himself, and scepticism took formal pos- 
 session of his mind ; but, as we see from one of Cowper's 
 letters, it was a coarse scepticism which desired to be bur- 
 ied with its hounds. Ignorance and brutality reigned in 
 the cottage. Drunkenness reigned in palace and cottage 
 alike. Gamblinir, cock-fiochtinof, and bull-fio-hting were the 
 
I.J EARLY LIFE. r, 
 
 amusements of the people, rolitical life, wliicli, if il had 
 been pure and vigorous, might have made up for the ab- 
 sence of spiritual influences, was corrupt from the top of 
 the scale to the bottom : its effect on national character is 
 \pourtraycd in Ilogarth's Election. That property had its 
 duties as well as its rights, nobody had yet ventured to 
 say or think. The duty of a gentleman towards his own 
 class was to pay his debts of honour and to fight a duel 
 whenever he was challenged by one of his own order ; to- 
 wards the lower class his duty was none. Though the 
 forms of government were elective, and Cowper gives us 
 a description of the candidate at election-time obsequious- 
 ly soliciting votes, society was intensely aristocratic, and 
 each rank was divided from that below it by a sharp line 
 which precluded brotherhood or sympathy. Says the 
 Duchess of Buckingham to Lady Huntingdon, who had 
 asked her to come and licar Whitcfield, " I thank your 
 ladyship for the information concerning the Methodi-st 
 preachers ; their doctrines arc most repulsive, and strong- 
 ly tinctured with disrespect towards their superiors, in per- 
 petually endeavouring to level all ranks and do away with 
 all distinctions. It is monstrous to be told you have a 
 heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the 
 earth. This is highly offensive and insulting ; and I can- 
 not but wonder that your ladyship should relish any senti- 
 ments so much at variance with high rank and good breed- 
 ing. I shall be most happy to come and hear your favour- 
 ite preacher." Her Grace's sentiments towards the com- 
 mon wretches that crawl on the earth were shared, we may 
 be sure, by her Grace's waiting-maid. Of humanity there 
 / was as little as there was of religion. It was the age of 
 the criminal law which hanged men for petty thefts, of 
 life-long imprisonment for debt, of the stocks and the pil- 
 
6 COWrER. [chap. 
 
 lory, of a Temple Bar garnished witli the heads of traitors, 
 of the unreforined prison system, of the press-gang, of unrc- 
 \ strained tyranny and savagery at public schools. That the 
 slave-trade was iniquitous, hardly any one suspected ; even 
 men Avho deemed themselves religious took part in it with- 
 out scruple. But a change was at hand, and a still mighti- 
 er change was in prospect. At the time of Cowper s birth, 
 John "Wesley was twenty-eight, and Whitefield was seven- 
 teen. With them the revival of religion was at hand. John- 
 son, the moral reformer, was twenty-two. Howard was born, 
 and in less than a generation Wilberforce 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 her death he still thinks of her, 
 lie says, with love and tenderness every day. Late in his 
 life his cousin, Mrs. Anne Bodham, recalled herself to his 
 remembrance by sending him his mother's picture. " Ev- 
 ery creature," he writes, "that has any affinity to my moth- 
 er is dear to me, and you, the daughter of her brother, are 
 but one remove distant from her ; I love you therefore, and 
 love you much, both for her sake and for your own. The 
 world could not have furnished you with a present so ac- 
 ceptable to me as the picture which you have so kindly 
 sent me. I received it the night before last, and received 
 it with a trepidation of nerves and spirits somewhat akin 
 to what I should have felt had its dear original presented 
 herself to my embrac-3s. I kissed it, and hung it where it 
 is the last object which I see at night, and the first on 
 which I open my eyes in the morning. She died when 
 I completed my sixth year; yet I remember her well, 
 and am an ocular witness of the great fidelity of the copy. 
 I remember, too, a multitude of the maternal tendernesses 
 which I received from her, and which have endeared her 
 
I.] EARLY LIFE. 7 
 
 memory to mc beyond expression. There is in me, I be- 
 lieve, more of the Donne than of tlie Cowper, and tliongh 
 I love all of both names, and have a thousand reasons to 
 love those of my own name, yet I feel the bond of nature 
 draw me vehemently to your side." As Cowper never 
 married, there was nothinf^ to take the place in his heart 
 which had been left vacant by his mother. 
 
 " My mother ! when I learn'd that thou wast dead, 
 Say, wast thou conscious of tho tears I shed ? 
 Hover'd thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, 
 AYrctch even then, life's jouruey just begun ? 
 Perhaps thou gav'st me,thougli uufelt, a kiss; 
 Perbaps a tear, if souls can Avcep iu bliss — 
 Ah, that maternal smile ! — it answers — Yes. 
 I heard the bell toll'd ou 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. — AYhere 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 uo more ! 
 Thy maideus, 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 eveu 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 si.K years of age this little mass of timid and 
 
8 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 quivering sensibility was, in accordance -with the cruel cus- 
 tom of the time, sent to a large boarding - school. The 
 change from home to a boarding-school is bad enough 
 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 I had been treated at home. 
 But my chief affliction consisted in my being singled out 
 from all the other boys by a lad of about fifteen years of 
 age as a proper object upon whom he might let loose the 
 cruelty of his temper. I choose to conceal a particular 
 recital of the many acts of barbarity with which he made 
 it his business continually to persecute me. It will be suf- 
 ficient to say that his savage treatment of me impressed 
 such a dread of his figure upon my mind, that I well re- 
 member being afraid to lift my eyes upon him higher than 
 to his knees, and that I knew him better by his shoe-buc- 
 kles than by any other part of his dress. May the Lord 
 pardon him, and may we meet in glory !" Cowper charges 
 himself, it may be in the exaggerated style of a self-accus- 
 ing saint, with having become at school an adept in the 
 art of lying. Southey says this must be a mistake, since 
 at English public schools boys do not learn to lie. But 
 the mistake is on Southey's part ; bullying, such as this 
 child endured, while it makes the strong boys tyrants, 
 makes the weak boys cowards, and teaches them to defend 
 themselves by deceit, the fist of the weak. The recollec- 
 tion of this boarding-school mainly it was that at a later 
 day inspired the plea for a home education in Tirocinium. 
 
 " Then why resign into a stranger's Laud 
 A task as much within your own command, 
 That God and nature, and your interest too, 
 Seem with one vf)ice to delegate to yon ? 
 
i] EARLY LIFE. 9 
 
 Why hire a lodgLug in a bouso unknown 
 For ouo whoso teudcrest thoughts all liovor round your 
 own? 
 ■ This secoud weauiug, needless as it is, 
 How docs it lacerate both your heart and his! 
 The indented stick that loses day by day 
 Notch after notch, till all arc smooth'd away. 
 Bears witness long ere bis dismission come, 
 AVitb what intense desire ho wants bis home. 
 But though the joys bo hopes beneath your roof 
 Bid fair enough to answer in tho proof. 
 Harmless, and safe, and natural as they are, 
 A disappointment waits bim even there: 
 Arrived, be feels an unexpected change. 
 Ho blushes, bangs his bead, is shy and sti'ange. 
 No longer takes, as once, with fearless ease, 
 His fiivourito stand between bis father's knees, 
 But seeks the corner of some distant seat, 
 And eyes the door, and watches a retreat, 
 And, least familiar where ho should be most, 
 Feels all bis happiest privileges lost. 
 Alas, poor boy ! — the natural effect 
 Of love by absence cbill'd into respect." 
 
 From the boarding-school, the boy, his eyes being liable 
 to inflamnaation, was sent to live with an oculist, in whose 
 house he spent two years, enjoying at all events a respite 
 from the sufferings and the evils of the boarding-school. 
 lie was then sent to Westminster School, at that time in 
 its glory. That "Westminster in those days must have 
 been a scene not merely of hardship, but of cruel suffer- 
 ing and degradation to the younger and weaker boys, has 
 been proved by the researches of the Public Schools Com- 
 mission. There was an established system and a regular 
 vocabulary of bullying. Yet Cowper seems not to have 
 
10 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 been so unhappy there as at the private school ; he spcalcs 
 of hunself as having excelled at cricket and football ; and 
 excellence in cricket and football at a public school gen- 
 erally carries with it, besides health and enjoyment, not 
 merely immunity from bullying, but high social consider- 
 ation. With all Cowper's delicacy and sensitiveness, he 
 must have had a certain fund of physical strength, or he 
 could hardly have borne the literary labour of his later 
 years, especially as he was subject to the medical treat- 
 ment of a worse than empirical era. At one time he says, 
 while he was at Westminster, his spirits were so buoyant 
 that he fancied he should never die, till a skull thrown out 
 before him by a grave-digger as he was passing through 
 St. Margaret's churchyard in the night recalled him to a 
 sense of his mortality. 
 
 The instruction at a public school in those days was 
 exclnsively classical. Cowper was under Vincent Bourne, 
 his portrait of whom is in some respects a picture not 
 only of its immediate subject, but of the school-master of 
 the last century. " I love the memory of Vinny Bourne, 
 I think him a better Latin poet than Tibullus, Propertius, 
 Ausonius, or any of the writers in his way, except Ovid, 
 and not at all inferior to him. I love him too with a love 
 of partiality, because he was usher of the fifth form at 
 Westminster when I passed through it. lie was so good- 
 natured and so indolent that I lost more than I got by him, 
 for he made me as idle as himself. He was such a sloven, 
 as if he had trusted to his genius as a cloak for every- 
 thing that could disgust you in his person ; and indeed in 
 his writings he has almost made amends for all. ... I re- 
 member seeing the Duke of Richmond set fire to his 
 greasy locks, and box his ears to put it out again." Cow- 
 per learned, if not to write Latin verses as Avell as Vinny 
 
I.] EARLY LIFE. 11 
 
 Bonrnc himself, to write them very well, as his Latin ver- 
 sions of some of his own short poems bear witness. Not 
 only so, but he evidently became a good classical scholar, 
 as classical scholarship was in those days, and acquired 
 the literary form of which the classics are the best school. 
 Out of school hours he studied independently, as clever 
 boys under the uncxacting rule of the old public schools 
 often did, and read through the whole of the Iliad and 
 Odyssey with a friend. lie also, probably, picked up at 
 "Westminster much of the little knowledge of the world 
 which he ever possessed. Among his school-fellows was 
 "Warren Hastings, in whose guilt as proconsul he after- 
 wards, for the sake of Auld Lang Syne, refused to believe, 
 and Impey, whose character has had the ill-fortune to be 
 required as the shade in Macaulay's fancy picture of Hast- 
 ings. 
 
 On leaving "Westminster, Cowper, at eighteen, went to 
 live with Mr. Chapman, an attorney, to whom he was arti- 
 cled, being destined for the Law. lie chose that profes- 
 sion, he says, not of his own accord, but to gratify an in- 
 dulgent father, who may have been led into the error by a 
 recollection of the legal honours of the family, as well as 
 by the " silver pence " which his promising son had won 
 by his Latin verses at Westminster School. The youth 
 duly slept at the attorney's house in Ely Place. His 
 days were spent in "giggling and making giggle" with 
 his cousins, Theodora and Harriet, the daughters of Ash- 
 ley Cowper, in the neighbouring Southampton Row. Ash- 
 ley Cowper was a very little man, in a white hat lined with 
 yellow, and his nephew used to say that he would one day 
 be picked by mistake for a mushroom. His fellow-clerk 
 in the office, and his accomplice in giggling and making 
 giggle, was one strangely mated with him ; the strong, as- 
 
12 COWrER. [chap. 
 
 piring, and nnscrupulous Thuilow, avIio, thougli fond of 
 pleasure, was at the same time preparing Limself to push 
 his way to wealth and power. Cowper felt that Thurlow 
 would reach the summit of ambition, while he would him- 
 self remain below, and made his friend promise when lie 
 was Chancellor to give him something. When Thurlow 
 Avas Chancellor, he gave Cowper his advice on translating 
 Homer. 
 
 At the end of his three years with the attorney, Cowper 
 took chambers in 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 a Society. One 
 of Cowper's set says of it : " The Temple is the barrier 
 that divides the City and Suburbs; and the gentlemen 
 who reside there seem influenced by the situation of the 
 place they inhabit. Templars are in general a kind of 
 citizen courtiers. They aim at the air and the mien of 
 the drawing-room ; but the holy -day smoothness of a 
 'prentice, heightened with some additional touches of the 
 rake or coxcomb, betrays itself in everything they do. 
 The Temple, however, is stocked Avith its peculiar beaux, 
 wits, poets, critics, and every character in the gay Avorld ; 
 and it is a thousand pities that so pretty a society should 
 be disgraced with a few dull fellows, who can submit to 
 puzzle themselves with cases and reports, and have not 
 taste enough to follow the genteel method of studying the 
 law." Cowper, at all events, studied law by the genteel 
 method; he read it almost as little in the Temple as he 
 had in the attorney's office, though in due course of time 
 he was formally called to the Bar, and even managed in 
 some way to acquire a reputation which, when he had en- 
 tirely given up the profession, brought him a curious offer 
 of a readership at Lyons Inn. His time was given to lit- 
 
I.] EAKLY LIFE. 18 
 
 eratiu'C, and he became a member of a little circle of men 
 of letters and journalists Avhicli liad its social centre in the 
 Nonsense Club, consisting of seven "Westminster men who 
 dined together every Thursday. \ In the set were Bonnell 
 Thornton and Colman, twin wits ; fellow-writers of the pe- 
 riodical essays wliich Avere the rage in that day ; joint pro- 
 prietors of the St. James's Chronicle; contributors both of 
 them to the Connoisseur ; and translators, Colman of Ter- 
 ence, Bonnell Thornton of Plautus, Colman being a drama- 
 tist besides. In the set was Lloyd, another wit and essay- 
 ist and a poet, with a character not of the best. On the 
 edge of the set, but apparently not in it, was Churchill, 
 who was then running a course which to many seemed 
 meteoric, and of whose verse, sometimes strong but always 
 turbid, Cowper conceived and retained an extravagant ad- 
 miration, Churchill was a link to Wilkes ; Hogarth, too, 
 was an ally of Colman, and helped him in his exhibition 
 of Signs. The set was strictly confined to Westminsters. 
 Gray and Mason, being Etonians, were objects of its litera- 
 ry hostility, and butts of its satire. It is needless to say 
 much about these literary companions of Cowper's youth ; 
 his intercourse with them was totally broken off ; and be- 
 fore he himself became a poet its effects had been obliter- 
 ated by madness, entire change of mind, and the lapse of 
 twenty years. If a trace remained, it was in his admira- 
 tion of Churchill's verses, and in the general results of lit- 
 erary society, and of early practice in composition. Cow- 
 per contributed to the Connoisseur and the St. James's 
 Chronicle. His papers in the Connoisseur have been pre- 
 served ; they are mainly imitations of the lighter papers 
 of the Spectator by a student who affects the man of the 
 world. He also dallied with poetry, writing verses to 
 *' Delia," and an epistle to Lloyd. lie had translated an 
 
14 COWPER. [CUAP. 
 
 elegy of Tibullns >vlicn lie was fourteen, and at AVestmin- 
 ster ho Lad written an imitation of Phillips's Sj^lcndid 
 Shilling, which, Southey says, shows his manner formed. 
 He helped his Cambridge brother, John Cowper, in a 
 translation of the Henriade. lie kept up his classics, es- 
 pecially his Homer. In his letters there are proofs of his 
 
 ^ familiarity Avith Rousseau. Two or three ballads Avhich 
 he wrote are lost, but he says they were popular, and we 
 may believe him. Probably they w^ere patriotic. " When 
 poor Bob White," he says, " brought in the news of Bos- 
 cawen's success off the coast of Portugal, how did I leap 
 for joy ! When Hawke demolished Conflans, I was still 
 more transported. But nothing could express my rapture 
 when Wolfe made the conquest of Quebec." 
 
 / The "Delia" to whom Cowper wrote verses was his 
 cousin Theodora, with whom he had an unfortunate love 
 affair. Her father, Ashley Cowper, forbade their mar- 
 riage, nominally on the ground of consanguinity ; really, 
 as Southey thinks, because he saw Cowper's unfitness for 
 business, and inability to maintain a wife. Cowper felt 
 the disappointment deeply at the time, as well he might 
 do if Theodora resembled her sister, Lady Hesketh. The- 
 odora remained unmarried, and, as we shall see, did not 
 forget her lover. His letters she preserved till her death 
 in extreme old age. 
 
 In 1756 Cowper's father died. There does not seem to 
 have been much intercourse between them, nor does the 
 son in after-years speak with any deep feeling of his loss : 
 possibly his complaint in Tirocinium of the effect of board- 
 ing-schools, in estranging children from their parents, may 
 have had some reference to his own case. His local affec- 
 tions, how'ever, were very strong, and he felt with unusual 
 keenness the final parting from his old home, and the pang 
 
i] EARLY LIFE. 15 
 
 of tbinking that strangers usurp our ^1 welling and the fa- 
 miliar places will know us no more. 
 
 " Wlioro once wo dwelt our name is licarcl no more, 
 C'liikheu not thine have trod my nursery floor; 
 And wboro the gardener Kobin, day by day, 
 Drew nie to school along the public way, 
 Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapp'd 
 In scarlet mautle Avarm 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 secras, his pen had hardly 
 realized the cruel frailty of the tenure by which a home iu 
 a parsonage is held. Of the family of Burkbampstead 
 Rectory there was now left besides himself only liis broth- 
 er John Cowper, Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge, whose 
 birth had cost their mother's life. 
 
 When Cowper was thirty -two, and still living in the 
 Temple, came the sad and decisive crisis of bis life, lie 
 went mad, and attempted suicide. "What was the source of 
 his madness ? There is a vague tradition that it arose from 
 licentiousness, which, no doubt, is sometimes the cause of 
 insanity. But in Cowper's case there is no proof of any- 
 thing of the kind : liis confessions, after his conversion, of 
 bis own past sinfulness point to nothing worse than gen- 
 eral ungodliness and occasional excess in wine ; and the tra- 
 dition derives a colour of probability only from the loose 
 lives of one or two of the wits and Bohemians with whom 
 he had lived. His virtuous love of Theodora was scarce- 
 ly compatible with low and gross amours. Generall}', his 
 madness is said to have been religious, and the blame is 
 laid on the same foe to human weal as that of the sacrifice 
 of Iphigcnia. But when be first went mad, his conversion 
 
16 COWrEK. [Cflvvp. 
 
 to Evangclicism had not taken place ; he liad not led a par- 
 ticularly religious life, nor been greatly given to religious 
 practices, though as a clergyman's son he naturally be- 
 lieved in religion, had at times felt religious emotions, 
 ?md when he found his heart sinking had tried devotional 
 books and prayers. The truth is, his malady was simple 
 liypochondria, having its source in delicacy of constitution 
 and weakness of digestion, combined with the influence of 
 melancholy surroundings. It had begun to attack him 
 soon after his settlement in his lonely chambers in the 
 Temple, when his pursuits and associations, as we have 
 seen, were far from Evangelical. When its crisis arrived, 
 he was living by himself without any society of the kind 
 that suited him (for the excitement of the Nonsense Club 
 was sure to be followed by reaction) ; he had lost his love, 
 ' his father, his home, and, as it happened, also a dear friend ; 
 his little patrimony was fast dwindling away; he must 
 have despaired of success in his profession ; and his out- 
 look was altogether dark. It yielded to the remedies to 
 which hypochondria usually yields — air, exercise, sunshine, 
 cheerful society, congenial occupation. It came with Jan- 
 uary and went with May. Its gathering gloom was dis- 
 pelled for a time by a stroll in fine weather on the hills 
 above Southampton Water, and Cowper said that he was 
 never unhappy for a whole day in the company of Lady 
 Hesketh. When he had become a Methodist, his hypo- 
 chondria took a religious form, but so did his recovery 
 from hypochondria; both must be set down to the ac- 
 count of his faith, or neither. This double aspect of the 
 matter will plainly appear further on. A votary of wealth, 
 when his brain gives way under disease or age, fancies ' 
 that he is a beggar. A Methodist, when his brain gives 
 way under the same influences, fancies that he is for- 
 
I.] EARLY LIFE. 17 
 
 sakcn of God. In both cases the root of the malady is 
 physicaL 
 
 In the lines which Cowper sent on his disappointment 
 to Theodora's sister, and which record the sources of his 
 despondency, there is not a touch of religious despair, or 
 of anything connected with religion. The catastrophe was 
 brought on by an incident with Avhich religion had noth- 
 ing to do. The office of cleric of the Journals in the House 
 of Lords fell vacant, and was in the gift of Cowper's kins- 
 man. Major Cowper, as patentee. Cowper received the 
 nomination, lie had longed for the office sinfully, as he 
 afterwards fancied ; it would exactly have suited him, and 
 made him comfortable for life. But his mind had by this 
 time succumbed to his malady. Ilis fancy conjured up 
 visions of opposition to the appointment in the House of 
 Lords ; of hostility in the office where he had to study the 
 Journals; of the terrors of an examination to be under- 
 gone before the frowning peers. After hopelessly poring 
 over the Journals for some months he becanie quite mad, 
 and his madness took a suicidal form. He has told with 
 unsparing exactness the story of his attempts to kill him- 
 self. In his youth his father had unwisely given him a 
 treatise in favour of suicide to read, and when he argued 
 against it, had listened to his reasonings in a silence which 
 he construed as sympathy with the writer, though it seems 
 to have been only unwillingness to think too badly of the 
 state of a departed friend. This now recurred to his mind, 
 and talk with casual companions in taverns and chop- 
 houses was enough in his present condition to confirm liim 
 in his belief that self-destruction was lawful. Evidently 
 he was perfectly insane, for he could not take up a news- 
 paper Avithout reading in it a fancied libel on liimself. 
 First he bought laudanum, and had gone out into the 
 
18 COWrEK. [chap. 
 
 fields with tlie intention of swallowing it, wlicn tlie love of 
 life suggested another way of escaping the dreadful ordeal. 
 He might sell all he had, fly to France, change his religion, 
 and bury himself in a monastery. He went home to pack 
 up ; but while he was looking over his portmanteau, liis 
 mood changed, and he again resolved on self-destruction. 
 Taking a coach, he ordered the coachman to drive to the 
 Tower Wharf, intending to throw himself into the river. 
 But the love of life once more interposed, nnder the guise 
 of a low tide and a porter seated on the quay. Again in 
 the coach, and afterwards in his chambers, he tried to swal- 
 low the laudanum; but his hand was paralysed by "the 
 convincing Spirit," aided by seasonable interruptions from 
 the presence of his laundress and her husband, and at 
 length he threw the laudanum away. On the night before 
 the day appointed for the examination before the Lords, 
 he lay some time with the point of his penknife pressed 
 against his heart, but without courage to drive it home. 
 Lastly, he tried to hang himself; and on this occasion he 
 seems to have been saved not by the love of life, or by 
 want of resolution, but by mere accident. lie had become 
 insensible, when the garter by which he was suspended 
 broke, and his fall brought in the laundress, who supposed 
 him to be in a fit. He sent her to a friend, to whom he 
 related all that had passed, and despatched him to his kins- 
 man. His kinsman arrived, listened with horror 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 carried away the instrument of nomination. Let 
 those whom despondency assails read this passage of Cow- 
 per's life, and remember that he lived to write John Gil- 
 pin and The Task. 
 
 Cowper tells us that " to this moment he had felt no 
 
I.] EARLY LIFE. 19 
 
 concern of a spiritual kind ;" that " ignorant of original 
 sin, insensible of tlie guilt of actual transgression, be un- 
 derstood neitber tbc Law nor tbc Gospel; the condem- 
 ning nature of the one, nor the restoring mercies of tbe 
 other." But after attempting suicide he was seized, as ho 
 well might bo, Avitb religious horrors. Now it was that he 
 began to ask himself whether he had been guilty of the 
 unpardonable sin, and was presently persuaded that ho 
 had, though it would be vain to inquire what he imagined 
 the unpardonable sin to be. In this mood, he fancied that 
 if there was any balm for him in Gilcad, it would be found 
 in the ministrations of his friend Martin Madan, an Evan- 
 gelical clergyman of high repute, whom he had been wont 
 to regard as an enthusiast. His Cambridge brother, John, 
 the translator of the IlenriadCjUQcms to have had some phil- 
 osophic doubts as to the efficacy of the proposed remedy ; 
 but, like a philosopher, ho consented to the experiment. 
 Mr. Madan came and ministered, but in that distempered 
 soul his balm turned to poison ; his religious conversations 
 only fed the horrible illusion. A set of English Sapphics, 
 written by Cowper at this time, and expressing his despair, 
 were unfortunately preserved ; they are a ghastly play of 
 the poetic faculty in a mind utterly deprived of self-con- 
 trol, and amidst the horrors of inrushing madness. Dia- 
 bolical they might be termed more truly than religious. 
 
 There was nothing for it but a madhouse. The sufferer 
 was consigned to the private asylum of Dr. Cotton, at St. ' 
 Alban's. An ill-choscn physician Dr. Cotton would have 
 been, if the malady had really had its source in religion ; 
 for he was himself a pious man, a writer of hymns, and 
 was in the habit of holding religious intercourse with his 
 patients. Cowper, after his recovery, speaks of that inter- 
 course with the keenest pleasure and gratitude ; so that. 
 
20 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 in the opinion of the two persons best qualified to judge, 
 religion in this case was not the bane. Cowper has given 
 lis a full account of his recovery. It was brought about, 
 as we can plainly see, by medical treatment wisely applied ; 
 but it came in the form of a burst of religious faith and 
 hope. He rises one morning feeling better ; grows cheer- 
 ful over his breakfast, takes up the Bible, which in his 
 fits of madness he always threw aside, and turns to a verse 
 in the Epistle to the Romans. " Immediately I received 
 strength to believe, and the full beams of the Sun of 
 Eighteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of 
 the atonement He had made, my pardon in His blood, and 
 the fulness and completeness of His justification. In a 
 moment I believed and received the Gospel." Cotton at 
 first mistrusted the sudden change ; but he w^as at length 
 satisfied, pronounced his patient cured, and discharged him 
 from the asylum, after a detention of eighteen months. 
 Cowper hymned his deliverance in The Happy Change, as 
 in the hideous Sapphics he had given religious utterance 
 to his despair. 
 
 " The sonl, a dreary province once 
 Of Satan's dark domain, 
 Feels a new empire form'd witliiu, 
 And owns a heavenly reigu. 
 
 " Tlie 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 ; 
 Bat, Jesus, 'tis Thy light alone 
 Can shine upon the heart." 
 
I.] EARLY LIFE. 21 
 
 Once for all, the reader of Cowpcr's life must make up 
 his mind to acquiesce in religious forms of expression. If 
 he does not sympathize with them, he will recognize them 
 as phenomena of opinion, and bear them like a philosopher. 
 lie can easily translate them into the language of psychol- 
 ogy, or even of physiology, if he thinks fit. 
 
 f 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 AT HUNTINGDON THE UNWINS. 
 
 The storm was over ; but it had swept away a great part 
 of Cowper's scanty fortune, and almost all his friends. At 
 thirty-five he was stranded and desolate. He was obliged 
 to resign a Commissionership of Bankruptcy which he held, 
 and little seems to have remained to him but the rent of 
 his chambers in the Temple. A return to his profession 
 Avas, of course, out of the question. His relations, how- 
 ever, combined to 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 brother 
 was kind, and did a brother's duty, but there does not seem 
 to have been much sympathy between them ; John Cow- 
 pcr did not become a convert to Evangelical doctrine till 
 he was near his end, and he was incapable of sharing Wil- 
 liam's spiritual emotions. Of his brilliant companions, the 
 Bonnell Thorntons and the Colmans, the quondam mem- 
 bers of the Nonsense Club, he heard no more, till he had 
 himself become famous. But he still had a staunch friend 
 in a less brilliant member of the club, Joseph Hill, the law- 
 yer, evidently a man who united strong sense and depth of 
 character with literary tastes and love of fun, and who was 
 throughout Cowper's life his Mentor in matters of busi- 
 
CHAP. II.] AT IIUXTINGDOX-TIIE UXWINS. 23 
 
 ncss, with regard to ■which he was liimsclf a cliild. lie 
 had brought with him from the asyhini at St. Alban's the 
 servant who had attended him there, and Avho had been 
 drawn by the singular talisman of personal attraction which 
 partly made up to this frail and helpless being for his en- 
 tire lack of force, lie had also brought from the same 
 place an outcast boy whose case had excited his interest, 
 and for whom he afterwards provided by putting him to a 
 trade. The maintenance of these two retainers was expen- 
 sive, and led to grumbling among the subscribers to the 
 family subsidy, the Major especially threatening to with- 
 draw his contribution. "While the matter was in agitation, 
 Cowper received an anonymous letter couched in the kind- 
 est terms, bidding him not distress himself, for that what- 
 ever deduction from his income might be made, the loss 
 would be supplied by one who loved him tenderly and ap- 
 proved his conduct. In a letter to Lady Ilesketh, he says 
 that he wishes he knew who dictated this letter, and that 
 he had seen not long before a style excessively like it. 
 lie can scarcely have failed to guess that it came from 
 Theodora. 
 
 It is due to Cowper to say that he accepts the assistance 
 of his relatives, and all acts of kindness done to him, with 
 sweet and becoming thankfulness ; and that whatever dark 
 fancies he may have had about his religious state, when 
 the evil spirit was upon him, he always speaks witli con- 
 tentment and cheerfulness of his earthly lot. Nothing 
 splenetic, no element of suspicious and irritable self-love 
 entered into the composition of his character. 
 
 On his release from the asylum he was taken in hand 
 by his brother John, who first tried to find lodgings for 
 him at or near Cambridge, and, failing in this, placed him 
 at Iluntingdon, within a long ride, so that William becom- 
 
24 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 ing a horseman for the purpose, the brothers could meet 
 once a week. Huntingdon was a quiet little town with 
 less than two thousand inhabitants, in a dull country, the 
 best part of which was the Ouse, especially to Cowper, 
 who was fond of bathing. Life there, as in other English 
 country towns in those days, and, indeed, till railroads made 
 people everywhere too restless and migratory for compan- 
 ionship, or even for acquaintance, was sociable in an unre- 
 fined way. There were assemblies, dances, races, card-parties, 
 and a bowling-green, at which the little world met and en- 
 joyed itself. From these the new convert, in his spiritual 
 e_cstasy, of course turned away as mere modes of murdering 
 time. Three families received him with civility, two of 
 them with cordiality ; but the chief acquaintances he made 
 were with " odd scrambling fellows like himself ;" an ec- 
 centric water-drinker and vegetarian who was to be met 
 by early risers and walkers every morning at six o'clock 
 by his favourite spring ; a char-parson, of the class com- 
 mon in those days of sinecurism and non-residence, who 
 walked sixteen miles every Sunday to serve two churches, 
 besides reading daily prayers at Huntingdon, and who re- 
 galed his friend with ale brewed by his own hands. In 
 his attached servant the recluse boasted that he had a 
 friend ; a friend he might have, but hardly a companion. 
 
 For the first days, and even weeks, however, Huntingdon 
 seemed a paradise. The heart of its new inhabitant was 
 full of the unspeakable happiness that comes with calm 
 after storm, with health after the most terrible of mala- 
 dies, with repose after the burning fever of the brain. 
 When first he went to church, he was in a spiritual ec- 
 stasy ; it was with difliculty that he restrained his emo- 
 tions ; though his voice was silent, being stopped by the 
 intensity of his feelings, his heart within him sang for joy ; 
 
II.] AT IIUNTINGDOX— TnE UNWINS. 25 
 
 aucl Avlicn the Gospel for tlic day Avas read, the sound of it 
 was more than he could well bear. This hrightncss of his 
 mind communicated itself to all the objects round him — 
 to the sluggish waters of the Ouse, to dull, fenny Hunting- 
 don, and to its commonplace inhabitants. 
 
 For about three months his cheerfulness lasted, and 
 with the help of books, and his rides to meet his brother, 
 he got on pretty well ; but then " the communion which 
 he had so long been able to maintain with the Lord was 
 suddenly interrupted." This is his theological version of 
 the case ; the rationalistic version immediately follows : 
 " I began to dislike my solitary situation, and to fear I 
 should never be able to weather out the winter in so lone- 
 ly a dwelling." No man could be less fitted to bear a 
 lonely life ; persistence in the attempt would soon have 
 brought back his madness. He was longing for a home ; 
 and a home was at hand to receive him. It was not, per- 
 haps, one of the happiest kind ; but the influence which 
 detracted from its advantages was the one which rendered 
 it hospitable to the wanderer. If Christian piety was car- 
 ried to a morbid excess beneath its roof, Christian charity 
 opened its door. 
 
 The religious revival was now in full career, with Wes- 
 ley for its chief apostle, organizer, and dictator ; "Whitcfield 
 for its great preacher ; Fletcher of Madeley for its typical 
 saint; Lady Huntingdon for its patroness among the aris- 
 tocracy, and the chief of its " devout women." From the 
 pulpit, but still more from the stand of the field-preacher 
 and through a well-trained army of social propagandists, it 
 waa assailing the scepticism, the coldness, the frivolity, the 
 vices of the ago. English society was deeply stirred ; mul- 
 titudes were converted, while among those who were not 
 converted violent and sometimes cruel antagonism Avas 
 
26 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 aroused. The party Lad two wings — tlie Evangelicals, 
 people of the wealthier class or clergymen of the Church 
 of England, "who remained within the Establishment ; and 
 the Methodists, people of the lower middle class or peas- 
 ants, the personal converts and followers of AVesley and 
 Whitefield, who, like their leaders, without a positive se- 
 cession, soon found themselves organizing a separate spir- 
 itual life in the freedom of Dissent. In the early stages 
 of the movement the Evangelicals were to be counted at 
 most by hundreds, the Methodists by hundreds of thou- 
 sands. So far as the masses were concerned, it was, in fact, 
 a preaching of Christianity anew. There was a cross divi- 
 sion of the party into the Calvinists and those whom the 
 Calvinists called Arminians ; Wesley belonging to the lat- 
 ter section, while the most pronounced and vehement of 
 the Calvinists was " the fierce Toplady." As a rule, the 
 darker and sterner element, that which delighted in relig- 
 ious terrors and threatenings was Calvinist, the milder and 
 gentler, that which preached a gospel of love and hope 
 continued to look up to Wesley, and to bear with him the 
 reproach of being Arminian. 
 
 It is needless to enter into a minute description of 
 Evangelicism and Methodism ; they are not things of the 
 past. If Evangelicism has now been reduced to a narrow 
 domain by the advancing forces of Kitualism on one side 
 and of Rationalism on the other, Methodism is still the 
 great Protestant Church, especially beyond the Atlantic. 
 The spiritual fire which they have kindled, the character 
 which they have produced, the moral reforms Avhich they 
 have wrought, the w'orks of charity and philanthropy to 
 which they have given birth, are matters not only of re- 
 cent memory, but of present experience. Like the great 
 Protestant revivals which had preceded them in England, 
 
II.] AT IIUXTIXGDOX— THE UNWINS. 27 
 
 like the Moravian revival on the Continent, to wliicli tlicy 
 were closely related, they songht to bring the soul into 
 direct communion with its Maker, rejecting the interven- 
 tion of a priesthood or a sacramental system. Unlike tlie 
 previous revivals in Enghxnd, they warred not against the 
 rulers of the Church or State, but only against vice or irre- 
 ligion. Consequently, in the characters which they pro- 
 duced, as compared with those produced by Wycliffism, 
 by the Reformation, and notably by Puritanism, there 
 was less 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 the Methodists, en- 
 gaged in framing a new organization or in wrestling with 
 the barbarous vices of the lower orders. No movement 
 of the kind has ever been exempt from draAvbacks and 
 follies, from extravagance, exaggeration, breaches of good 
 taste in religious matters, iinctuousness, and cant — from 
 chimerical attempts to get rid of the flesh and live an 
 angelic life on earth — from delusions about special provi- 
 dences and miracles — from a tendency to overvalue doc- 
 trine and undervalue duty — fj;om arrogant assumption of 
 spiritual authority by leaders 'and preachers — from the 
 self-righteousness which fSticies itself the object of a di- 
 vine election, and looks out with a sort of religious com- 
 placency from the Ark of Salvation in which it fancies 
 itself securely placed, upon the drowning of an unrcgener- 
 ate world. Still, it will hardly be doubted that in the ef- 
 fects produced by Evangelicism and Methodism the good 
 has outweighed the evil. Ilad Jansenism prospered as 
 well, France might have had more of reform and less of 
 revolution. The poet of the movement will not be con- 
 demned on account of his connexion with it, any more 
 2* 
 
28 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 than Milton is condemned on account of Lis connexion 
 with Puritanism, provided it be found that he also served 
 art well. 
 
 Cowper, as we have seen, was already converted. In a 
 letter written at this time to Lady Hesketh, he speaks of 
 himself with great humility " as a convert made in Bed- 
 lam, who is more likely to be a stumbling-block to others 
 than to advance their faith," though he adds, Avith reason 
 enough, " that he who can ascribe an amendment of life 
 and manners, and a reformation of the heart itself, to 
 madness, is guilty of an absurdity that in any other case 
 would fasten the imputation of madness upon himself." 
 It is hence to be presumed that he traced his conversion 
 to his spiritual intercourse with the Evangelical physician 
 of St. Alban's, though the seed sown by Martin Madan may, 
 perhaps, also have sprung up in his heart when the more 
 propitious season arrived. However that may have been, 
 the two great factors of Cowper's life were the malady 
 which consigned him to poetic seclusion and the convei*- 
 sion to Evangelicism, which gave him his inspiration and 
 his theme. 
 
 At Huntingdon dwelt the Rev. William Unwin, a cler- 
 gyman, taking pupils, his wife, much younger than him- 
 self, and their son and daughter. It was a typical family 
 of the Eevival. Old Mr. TJnwin is described by Cowper 
 as a Parson Adams. The son, William Unwin, was pre- 
 paring for holy orders. He was a man of some mark, and 
 received tokens of intellectual respect from Paley, though 
 he is best known as the friend to whom many of Cowper's 
 letters are addressed. He it was who, struck by the ap- 
 pearance of the stranger, sought an opportunity of making 
 his acquaintance. He found one, after morning church, 
 when Cowper was taking his solitary walk beneath the 
 
II. J AT IIUXTIXdDOX— THE UN^YIXS. 29 
 
 trees. Under the influence of religious sympathy tlic ac- 
 quaintance quickly ripened into friendship ; Cowper at 
 once became one of the Unwin circle, and soon afterward, 
 a vacancy being made by tlic departure of one of the pu- 
 pils, he became a boarder in the house. This position he 
 had passionately desired on religious grounds ; but, in truth, 
 he might well have desired it on economical grounds also, 
 for he liad begun to experience the difficulty and expcn- 
 sivcncss, as -well as the loneliness, of bachelor housekeep- 
 ing, and financial deficit was evidently before him. To 
 Mrs. Unwin he was from the first strongly drawn. "I 
 met Mrs. Un win in the street," he says, "and went home 
 Avitli her. Slie and I walked together near two hours in 
 the garden, and had a conversation which did me more 
 good than I should have received from an audience with 
 the first prince in Europe. That woman is a blessing to 
 me, and I never see her without being the better for her 
 company." Mrs. Unwin's character is written in her por- 
 trait with its prim but pleasant features ; a Puritan and a 
 precisian she was ; but she was not morose or sour, and 
 she had a boundless capacity for affection. Lady Hesketh, 
 a woman of the world, and a good judge in every respect, 
 says of her at a later period, when she had passed with 
 Cowper through many sad and trying years : " She is very 
 far from grave ; on the contrary, she is cheerful and gay, 
 and laughs de hon coeur upon the smallest provocation. 
 Amidst all the little puritanical words which fall from her 
 de tem2)s en temps, she seems to have by nature a quiet 
 fund of gaiety ; great indeed must it have been, not to 
 have been wholly overcome by the close confinement in 
 which she has lived, and the anxiety she must have under- 
 gone for one whom she certainly loves as well as one hu- 
 man being can love another. I will not say she idolizes 
 
so COWPER. [chap. 
 
 liim, because that slic Avould tliinlc Avrong ; but she cer- 
 tainly seems to possess the truest regard and affection for 
 this excellent creature, and, as I said before, has in the 
 most literal sense of those words, no Avill or shadow of 
 inclination but what is his. My account of Mrs. Unwin 
 may seem, perhaps, to you, on comparing my letters, con- 
 tradictory ; but when you consider that I began to write 
 at the first moment that I saw her, you will not wonder. 
 Her character develops itself by degrees ; and though I 
 might lead you to suppose her grave and melancholy, she 
 is not so by any means. When she speats upon grave 
 subjects, she does express herself with a puritanical tone, 
 and in puritanical expressions, but on all subjects she 
 seems to have a great disposition to cheerfulness and 
 mirth ; and, indeed, had she not, she could not have gone 
 through all she has. I must say, too, that she seems to be 
 very well read in the English poets, as appears by several 
 little quotations, which she makes from time to time, and 
 has a true taste for what is excellent in that way." 
 
 When Cowper became an author he paid the highest 
 respect to Mrs, Unwin as an instinctive critic, and called 
 her his Lord Chamberlain, whose approbation was his suf- 
 ficient licence for publication. 
 
 Life in the Unwin family is thus described by the new 
 inmate: — "As to amusements — I mean what the world 
 calls such — we have none. The place, indeed, swarms with 
 them ; and cards and dancing are the professed business 
 of almost all the gentle inhabitants of Huntingdon. We 
 refuse to take part in them, or to be accessories to this 
 Avay of murdering our time, and by so doing have acquired 
 the name of Methodists. Having told you how we do not 
 spend our time, I will next say how we do. We breakfast 
 commonly between eight and nine ; till eleven, Ave read 
 
II.] AT HUNTIXGDOX— THE UNWIXS. ;J1 
 
 citlici' the Scripture, or the sermons of some faithful 
 preacher of those holy mysteries; at eleven ■vvc attend 
 divine service, which is performed here twice every day ; 
 and from twelve to three we separate, and amuse our- 
 selves as we please. During that interval, I cither read in 
 my own apartment, or walk, or ride, or work in the garden. 
 Wc seldom sit an hour after dinner, but, if the weather 
 permits, adjourn to the garden, where, with Mrs. Unwin 
 and her son, I have generally the pleasure of religious con- 
 versation till tea-time. If it rains, or is too windy for 
 walking, we either converse within doors or sing some 
 hymns of Martin's collection, and by the help of Mrs. Un- 
 wun's harpsichord make up a tolerable 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 good 
 walker, and we have generally travelled about four miles 
 before we see home again. "When the days are short we 
 make this excursion in the former part of the day, between 
 church-time and dinner. At night we road and converse 
 as before till supper, and commonly finish the evening 
 cither with hymns or a sermon, and last of all the family 
 are called to prayers. I need not tell you that such a life 
 as this is consistent with the utmost cheerfulness ; accord- 
 ingly, we are all happy, and dwell together in unity as 
 brethren." 
 
 Mrs. Cowper, the wife of Major (now Colonel) Cowpcr, 
 to whom this was written, was herself strongly Evangeli- 
 cal ; Cowper had, in fact, unfortunately for him, turned 
 from his other relations and friends to her on that account. 
 She, therefore, would have no difficulty in thinking that 
 such a life was consistent Avith cheerfulness, but ordinary 
 readers will ask how it could fail to bring on another fit 
 of hypochondria. The answer is probably to be found in 
 
32 COWPER. [chap, 
 
 the last "words of the passage. Os^erstrained and ascetic 
 piety found an antidote in affection. The TJnwins were 
 Puritans and enthusiasts, but their household was a picture 
 of domestic love. 
 
 With the name of Mrs. Cpwper is connected an incident 
 which occurred at this time, and which illustrates the pro- 
 pensity to self-inspection and self-revelation which Cowper 
 had in common with Rousseau. Huntingdon, like other 
 little towns, was all eyes and gossip ; the new-comer was a 
 mysterious stranger who kept himself aloof from the gen- 
 eral society, and he naturally became the mark for a little 
 stone-throwing. Young Unwin happening to be passing 
 near " the Park " on his way from London to Huntingdon, 
 Cowper gave him an introduction to its lad}', in a letter 
 to whom he afterwards disclosed his secret motive. "^ly 
 dear Cousin, — You sent my friend Unwin home to us 
 charmed with your kind reception of him, and with every- 
 thing he saw at the Park. Shall I once more give you a 
 peep into my vile and deceitful heart? What motive do 
 you think lay at the bottom of my conduct when I de- 
 sired him to call upon you? I did not suspect, at first, 
 that pride and vainglory had any 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. You know 
 I am a stranger here; all such are suspected characters, 
 unless they bring their credentials with them. To this 
 moment, I believe, it is a matter of speculation in the 
 place, whence I came, and to whom I belong. Thougli 
 my friend, you may suppose, before I was admitted an in- 
 mate here, was satisfied that I was not a mere vagabond, 
 and has, since that time, received more convincing proofs 
 of my sponsihiUty; yet I could not resist the opportunity 
 of furnishing him with ocular demonstration of it, by in- 
 
u.] AT IIUXTIXGDOX— THE VWVIXS. 33 
 
 troducing him to one of my most splcndiJ connexions; 
 that when he hoars me called ' that fellow Cowpev,' wliich 
 has happened heretofore, he may be able, upon unquestion- 
 able evidence, to assert my gentlemanhood, and relieve me 
 from the weight of that opprobrious appellation. Oh, 
 pride! pride! it deceives with the subtlety of a serpent, 
 and seems to walk erect, though it crawls upon the earth. 
 How will it twist and twine itself about to get from under 
 the Cross, which it is the glory of our Christian calling to 
 be able to bear with patience and good-will. They who 
 can guess at the heart of a stranger, — and you especially, 
 who are of a compassionate temper, — will be more ready, 
 perhaps, to excuse me, in this instance, than I can be to 
 excuse myself. But, in good truth, it was abominable 
 pride of heart, indignation, and vanity, and deserves no 
 better name." 
 
 Once more, however obsolete Cowpcr's belief, and the 
 language in which he expresses it may have become for 
 many of us, we must take it as his philosophy of life. At 
 this time, at all events, it was a source of happiness. " The 
 stojm being passed, a quiet and peaceful serenity of soul 
 succeeded ;" and the serenity in this case was unquestion- 
 ably produced 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 iu distant shades. 
 There was I found by one who had himself 
 Been hurt by the archers. In his side he Lore, 
 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." 
 
34 COWPER. [chap. ii. 
 
 Cowper thougLt for a moment of taking orders, but Ins 
 dread of appearing in public conspired witli the good 
 sense wliicli lay beneath his excessive sensibility to put a 
 veto on the design. He, however, exercised the zeal of a 
 neophyte in proselytism to a greater extent than his own 
 judgment and good taste approved when his enthusiasm 
 had calmed down. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 AT OLNEY MR. NEWTON. 
 
 CowPER head not been two years Avitli the Unwins when 
 Mr. Unwin, the father, was killed by a fall from his horse ; 
 this broke up the household. But between Cowpcr and 
 Mrs. Unwin an indissoluble tie had been formed. It seems 
 clear, notwithstanding Southey's assertion to the contra- 
 ry that they at one time meditated marriage, possibly as a 
 propitiation to the evil tongues Avhich did not spare even 
 this most innocent connexion ; but they were prevented 
 from fulfilling their intention by a return of Cowpcr's mal- 
 ady. They became companions for life. Cowper says 
 they were as mother and son to each other ; but Mrs. Un- 
 win was only seven years older than he. To label their 
 connexion is impossible, and to try to do it would be a 
 platitude. In his poems Cowper calls Mrs. Unwin Mary ; 
 she seems always to have called him Mr. Cowper. It is 
 evident that lier son, a strictly virtuous and religious man, 
 never had the slightest misgiving about his mother's po- 
 sition. 
 
 The pair had to choose a dwelling-place; they chose 
 Olney, in Buckinghamshire, on the Ousc. The Ouse was 
 " a slow winding river," watering low meadows, from 
 which crept pestilential fogs. Olncy Avas a dull town, or 
 rather village, inhabited by a population of lace -makers, 
 
86 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 ill-paid, fever-stricken, and for the most part as brutal as 
 they were poor. There was not a woman in the place, ex- 
 cepting Mrs. Newton, with whom Mrs. Unwin could asso- 
 ciate, or to whom she could look for help in sickness or 
 other need. The house in which the pair took up their 
 abode was dismal, prison-like, and tumble-down ; when they 
 left it, the competitors for the succession were a cobbler 
 and a publican. It looked upon the Market-place, but it 
 was in the close neighbourhood of Silver End, the Avorst 
 part of Olney. In winter the cellars were full of water. 
 There were no pleasant walks within easy reach, and in 
 winter Cowper's only exercise was pacing thirty yards of 
 gravel, with the dreary supplement of dumb-bells. What 
 was the attraction to this " well," this " abyss," as Cowper 
 himself called it, and as, physically and socially, it wasf 
 
 The attraction was the presence of the Rev. John New- 
 ton, then curate of Olney. The vicar was Moses Brown, an 
 Evangelical and a religious writer, who has even deserved 
 a place among the Avorthies of the revival ; but a family 
 of thirteen children, some of whom it appears too closely 
 resembled the sons of Eli, had compelled him to take ad- 
 vantage of the indulgent character of the ecclesiastical pol- 
 ity of those days by becoming a pluralist and a non-resi- 
 dent, so that the curate had Olney to himself. The patron 
 Avas the Lord Dartmouth, Avho, as Cowper says, "av ore a 
 coronet and prayed." John Newton was one of the shin- 
 ing lights and foremost leaders and preachers of the re- 
 vival. Ilis name Avas great both in the Evangelical church- 
 es within the pale of the Establishment, and in the INIeth- 
 odist churches without it. He Avas a brand plucked from 
 the very heart of the burning. We have a memoir of his 
 life, partly Avritten by himself, in the form of letters, and 
 completed under his superintendence. It is a monument 
 
in.] AT OLXEV— MK. KEWTOX. 37 
 
 of tbc age of Smollett and Wesley, not less cliaracteristic 
 than is Cellini's memoir of the times in which he lived. 
 His father was master of a vessel, and took him to sea 
 when he was eleven, llis mother was a pious Dissenter, 
 who was at great pains to store his mind with religious 
 thoughts and pieces. She died when he Avas young, and 
 his step-mother w\as not pious. He began to drag his re- 
 ligious anchor, and at length, having read Shaftesbury, left 
 his theological moorings altogether, and drifted into a wide 
 sea of ungodliness, blasphemy, and recklessness of living. 
 Such at least is the picture drawn by the sinner saved of 
 llis own earlier years. "While still but a strippling he fell 
 desperately in love with a girl of thirteen ; his affection 
 for Iicr was as constant as it was romantic ; through all 
 his wanderings and sufferings he never ceased to think of 
 lier, and after seven years she became his wife. His father 
 frowned on the engagement, and he became estranged from 
 home. He was impressed ; narrowly escaped shipwreck, 
 deserted, and was arrested and flogged as a deserter. Re- 
 leased from the navy, he was taken into the service of a 
 slave-dealer on the coast of Africa, at whose hands, and 
 those of the man's negro mistress, he endured every sort of 
 ill-treatment and contumely, being so starved that he was 
 fain sometimes to devour raw roots to stay his hunger. 
 His constitution must have been of iron to carry him 
 through all that he endured. In the meantime his indom- 
 itable mind was engaged in attempts at self-culture ; he 
 studied a Euclid which he had brought with him, drawing 
 his diagrams on the sand ; and he afterwards managed to 
 teach himself Latin by means of a Horace and a Latin Bi- 
 ble, aided by some slight vestiges of the education which 
 he had received at a grammar-school. His conversion was 
 brought about by the continued influences of Thomas a 
 
88 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 Kcmpis, of a very narrow escape, after terrible sufferings, 
 from shipwreck, of the impression made by the sights of 
 the mighty deep on a soul which, in its weather-beaten 
 casing, had retained its native sensibility, and, we may safe- 
 ly add, of the disregarded but not forgotten teachings of 
 his pious mother. Providence was now kind to him ; he 
 became captain of a slave-ship, and made several voyages 
 on the business of the trade. That it was a wicked trade 
 he seems to have had no idea ; he says he never knew 
 sweeter or more frequent hours of divine communion than 
 on his two last voyages to Guinea. Afterwards it occurred 
 to him that though his employment was genteel and profit- 
 able, it made him a sort of gaoler, unpleasantly conversant 
 with both chains and shackles ; and he besought Provi- 
 dence to fix him in a more humane calling. 
 
 In answer to his prayer came a fit of apoplexy, which 
 made it dangerous for him to go to sea again. He ob- 
 tained an office in the port of Liverpool, but soon he set 
 his heart on becoming a minister of the Church of Eng- 
 land. He applied for ordination to the Archbishop of 
 York, but not having the degree required by the rules of 
 the Establishment, he received through his Grace's secre- 
 tary "the softest refusal imaginable." The Archbishop 
 had not had the advantage of perusing Lord Macaulay's 
 remarks on the difference between the policy of the Church 
 of England and that of the Church of Eome, with regard 
 to the utilization of religious enthusiasts. In the end 
 Newton was ordained by the Bishop of Lincoln, and threw 
 himself with the energy of a new-born apostle upon the 
 irreligion and brutality of Olney. No Carthusian's breast 
 could glow more intensely with the zeal which is the off- 
 spring of remorse. Newton was a Calvinist, of course, 
 though it seems not an extreme one ; otherwise he would 
 
III.] AT OLXEY— MR. NEWTON. 39 
 
 probably have confirmed Cowpcr in tbc darkest of liallu- 
 cinations. His religion was one of mystery and miracle, 
 full of sudden conversions, special providences, and satanic 
 visitations. He himself says that " his name was up about 
 the country for preaching people mad ;" it is true that 
 in the eyes of the profane Methodism itself was madness ; 
 but he goes on to say " whether it is owing to the seden- 
 tary life the women live here, poring over their (lace) 
 pillows for ten or twelve hours every day, and breathing 
 confined air in their crowded little rooms, or whatever may 
 be the immediate cause, I suppose we have near a dozen 
 in different degrees disordered in their heads, and most of 
 them I believe truly gracious people." He surmises that 
 *' these things are permitted in judgment, that they Avho 
 seek occasion for cavilling and stumbling may have what 
 they want." Nevertheless there were in him not only 
 force, courage, burning zeal for doing good, but great 
 kindness, and even tenderness of heart. " I see in this 
 world," he said, "two heaps of human happiness and mis- 
 cry ; now, if I can take but the smallest bit from one heap 
 and add it to the other, I carry a point — if, as I go home, 
 a child has dropped a half-penny, and by giving it another 
 I can wipe away its tears, I feel I have done something." 
 There was even in him a strain, if not of humour, of a 
 shrewdness which was akin to it, and expressed itself in 
 many pithy sayings. " If two angels came down from 
 heaven to execute a divine command, and one was ap- 
 pointed to conduct an empire and the other to sweep a 
 street in it, they would feel no inclination to change em- 
 ployments." " A Christian should never plead spirituality 
 for being a sloven ; if he be but a shoe-cleaner, he should 
 be the best in the parish." " My principal method for de- 
 feating heresy is by establishing truth. One proposes to 
 
40 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 fill a buslicl with tares ; now if I can fill it first witli wlieat, 
 I shall defy his attempts." That his Calvinism was not 
 very dark or sulphureous, seems to be shown from his re- 
 peating with gusto the saying of one of the old Avomen of 
 Olney when some preacher dwelt on the doctrine of pre- 
 destination — "Ah, I have long settled that point; for if 
 God had not chosen me before I w^as born, I am sure he 
 would have seen nothing to have chosen me for after- 
 wards." That he had too much sense to take mere pro- 
 fession for religion appears from his describing the Cal- 
 vinists of Olney as of two sorts, which reminded him of 
 the two baskets of Jeremiah's figs. The iron constitution 
 which had carried him through so many hardships ena- 
 bled him to continue in his ministry to extreme old age. 
 A friend at length counselled him to stop before he found 
 himself stopped by being able to speak no longer. "I 
 cannot stop," he said, raising his voice. " "What ! shall 
 the old African blasphemer stop while he can speak ?" 
 
 At the instance of a common friend, Newton had paid 
 Mrs. TJnwin a visit at Huntingdon, after her husband's 
 death, and had at once established the ascendency of a 
 powerful character over her and Cowper. lie now beck- 
 oned the pair to his side, placed them in the house adjoin- 
 ing his own, and opened a private door between the two 
 gardens, so as to have his spiritual children always beneath 
 his eye. Under this, in the most essential respect, unhap- 
 py influence, Cowper and Mrs. Unwin together entered on 
 " a decided course of Christian happiness ;" that is to say, 
 they spent all their days in a round of religious exercises 
 without relaxation or relief. On fine summer evenings, as 
 the sensible Lady Hesketh saw with dismay, instead of a 
 walk, there was a prayer -meeting. Cowper himself was 
 made to do violence to his intense shyness by leading in 
 
III.] AT OLNEY— MK. NEWmX. 41 
 
 prayer, lie was also made to visit tlic poor at once on 
 spiritual missions, and on that of almsgiving, for -which 
 Thornton, the religious philanthropist, supplied Newton 
 and his disciples with means. This, which Southey appears 
 to think about the worst part of Newton's regimen, was 
 probably its redeeming feature. The effect of doing good 
 to others on any mind was sure to be good; and the sight 
 of real suffering was likely to banish fancied ills. Cowper 
 in this way gained, at all events, a practical knowledge of 
 the poor, and learned to do them justice, though from a 
 rather too theological point of view. Seclusion from the 
 sinful world was as much a part of the system of Mr. 
 Newton as it was of the system of Saint Benedict. Cow- 
 per was almost entirely cut off from intercourse with his 
 friends and people of his own class. He dropped his cor- 
 respondence even with his beloved cousin. Lady Ilesketh, 
 and would probably have dropped his correspondence with 
 Hill, had not Hill's assistance in money matters been in- 
 dispensable. To complete his mental isolation, it appears 
 that, having sold his library, he had scarcely any books. 
 Such a course of Christian happiness as this could only 
 end in one way ; and Newton himself seems to have had 
 the sense to see that a storm was brewing, and that there 
 was no way of conjuring it but by contriving some more 
 congenial occupation. So the disciple was commanded to 
 employ his poetical gifts in contributing to a hymn-book 
 which Newton vras compiling. Cowper's Olncy hymns 
 have not any serious value as poetry. Hymns rarely have. 
 The relations of man with Deity transcend and repel po- 
 etical treatment. There is nothing in them on which the 
 creative imagination can be exercised. Hymns can be lit- 
 tle more than incense of the worshipping soul. Those of 
 the Latin Church are the best ; not because they are better 
 
42 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 poetry than the rest (for they are not), but because their 
 language is the most sonorous. Cowper's hymns -were ac- 
 cepted by the religious body for -which they were written, 
 as expressions of its spiritual feeling and desires ; so far 
 they were successful. They are the work of a religious 
 man of culture, and free from anything wild, erotic, or 
 unctuous. But, on the other hand, there is nothing in 
 them suited to be the vehicle of lofty devotion ; nothing, 
 that we can conceive a multitude, or even a prayer-meeting, 
 uplifting to heaven with voice and heart. Southey has 
 pointed to some passages on which the shadow of the ad- 
 vancing malady falls ; but in the main there is a predom- 
 inance of religious joy and hope. The most despondent 
 hymn of the series is Temptation, the thought of which 
 resembles that of The Castaway. 
 
 Cowper's melancholy may have been aggravated by the 
 loss of his only brother, who died about this time, and at 
 whose death-bed he was present ; though in the narrative 
 which he wrote, joy at John's conversion and the religious 
 happiness of his end seems to exclude the feelings by 
 which hypochondria was likely to be fed. But his mode 
 of life under Newton was enough to account for the re- 
 turn of his disease, which in this sense may be fairly laid 
 to the charge of religion. He again went mad, fancied, as 
 before, that he was rejected of Heaven, ceased to pray 
 as one helplessly doomed, and again attempted suicide. 
 Newton and Mrs. Unwin at first treated the disease as a 
 diabolical visitation, and "with deplorable consistency," 
 to borrow the phrase used by one of their friends in the 
 case of Cowper's desperate abstinence from prayer, ab- 
 stained from calling in a physician. Of this, again, their 
 religion must bear the reproach. In other respects they 
 behaved admirably. Mrs. Unwin, shut up for sixteen 
 
III.] AT OLNEY— Mil. NEWTON. 43 
 
 niontlis with her unhappy partner, tended him with un- 
 failing love ; alone she did it, for he could hear no one 
 else about him ; though, to make her part more trying, ho 
 had conceived the insane idea that she hated him. Sel- 
 dom has a stronger proof been given of the sustaining 
 power of affection. Assuredly, of whatever Cowpcr may 
 have afterwards done for his kind, a great part must be 
 set down to the credit of Mrs. Unwin. 
 
 "Mary ! I want a Ij-ro with other strings, 
 
 Such aitl 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 ago or woe I shed ruy -svings, 
 
 I may record thy worth with honour due, 
 
 lu 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 fixithful Mary, shine. 
 And, since thou owu'st that praise, I spare thee mine." 
 
 Newton's friendship, too, was sorely tried. In the midst 
 of the malady the lunatic took it into his head to transfer 
 himself from his own house to the Vicarage, which he ob- 
 stinately refused to leave ; and Newton bore this infliction 
 for several months without repining, though he might well 
 pray earnestly for his friend's deliverance. "The Lord 
 has numbered the days in which I am appointed to wait 
 on him in this dark valley, and he has given us such a 
 love to him, both as a believer and a friend, that I am not 
 weary ; but to be sure his deliverance would be to me one 
 3 
 
44 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 of the greatest blessings my tbonglits can conceive." Dr. 
 Cotton was at last called in, and under his treatment, evi- 
 dently directed against a bodily disease, Cowper was at 
 length restored to sanity. 
 
 Newton once compared his own Avalk in the world to 
 that of a physician going through Bedlam. But he was 
 not skilful in his treatment of the literally insane. lie 
 thought to cajole Cowper out of his cherished horrors by 
 calling his attention to a case resembling his own. The 
 case was that of Simon Browne, a Dissenter, Avho had con- 
 ceived the idea that, being under the displeasure of Heav- 
 en, he had been entirely deprived of his rational being and 
 left with merely his animal nature. He had accordingly 
 resigned his ministry, and employed himself in compiling 
 a dictionary, which, he said, was doing nothing that could 
 require a reasonable soul. lie seems to have thought 
 that theology fell under the same category, for he pro- 
 ceeded to write some theological treatises, which he dedi- 
 cated to Queen Caroline, calling her Majesty's attention to 
 the singularity of the authorship as the most remarkable 
 phenomenon of her reign. Cowper, however, instead of 
 falling into the desired train of reasoning, and being led 
 to suspect the existence of a similar illusion in himself, 
 merely rejected the claim of the pretended rival in spir- 
 itual affliction, declaring his own case to be far the more 
 deplorable of the two. 
 
 Before the decided course of Christian happiness had 
 time again to culminate in madness, fortunately for Cow- 
 per, Newton left Olney for St. Mary Woolnoth. He was 
 driven away at last by a quarrel with his barbarous parish- 
 ioners, the cause of which did him credit. A fire broke 
 out at Olney, and burnt a good many of its straw-thatched 
 cottages. Newton ascribed the extinction of the fire rath- 
 
lU.] AT OLNEY— MR. NEWTON. 45 
 
 cr to prayer tLan ^Yatcr, but he took tlic lead in practical 
 measures of relief, and tried to remove the earthly cause 
 of sucli visitations by putting an end to bonfires and illu- 
 minations on the 5th of November. Threatened with the 
 loss of their Guy Fawkes, the barbarians rose upon him, 
 and he had a narrow escape from their violence. We arc 
 reminded of the case of Cotton Mather, who, after being a 
 leader in witch-burning, nearly sacrificed his life in com- 
 batting the fanaticism which opposed itself to the intro- 
 duction of inoculation. Let it always be remembered that 
 besides its theological side, the Revival had its philan- 
 thropic and moral 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 by the torpor 
 of the Establishment ; that among large classes of the peo- 
 ple it was the great civilizing agency of the time. 
 
 Newton was succeeded as curate of OIney by his dis- 
 ciple, and a man of somewhat the same cast of mind and 
 character, Thomas Scott, the writer of the Commentary 
 on the Bible and The Force of Truth. To Scott Cowpcr 
 seems not to have greatly taken. He complains that, as a 
 preacher, he is always scolding the congregation. Perhaps 
 Newton had foreseen that it would be so, for he specially 
 commended the spiritual son whom he was leaving to the 
 care of the Rev. AVilliam Bull, of the neighbouring town of 
 Newport Pagnell, a dissenting minister, but a member of a 
 spiritual connexion which did not stop at the line of de- 
 marcation between Nonconformity and the Establishment. 
 To Bull Cowpcr did greatly take; he extols him as "a 
 Dissenter, but a liberal one," a man of letters and of gen- 
 ius, master of a fine imagination — or, rather, not master of 
 it — and addresses him as Carissbne Taurorum. It is rath- 
 
46 COWPER. [chap. hi. 
 
 cr singular that Newton should have given himself such a 
 successor. Bull was a great smoker, and had made him- 
 self a cozy and secluded nook in his garden for the enjoy- 
 ment of his pipe. lie was probably something of a spir- 
 itual as well as of a physical Quietist, for he set Cowper to 
 translate the poetry of the great exponent of Quietism, 
 Madame Guyon. The theme of all the pieces which Cow- 
 per has translated is the same — Divine Love and the rapt- 
 ures of the lieart that enjoys it — the blissful union of the 
 drop with the Ocean — the Evangelical Nirvana. If this 
 line of thought was not altogether healthy, or conducive 
 to the vigorous performance of practical duty, it was, at all 
 events, better than the dark fancy of Reprobation. In his 
 admiration of Madame Guyon, her translator showed his 
 affinity, and that of Protestants of the same school, to 
 Fenelon and the Evangelical clement Avhich has lurked in 
 the Roman Catholic churcli since the days of Thomas a 
 Kempis. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AUTHORSHIP THE MORAL SATIRES. 
 
 Since Lis recovery, Cowpcr bad been looking out for -wbat 
 be most needed, a pleasant occupation, lie tried draw- 
 ing, carpentering, gardening. Of gardening be bad always 
 been fond ; and be understood it, as sbowu by tbe loving 
 tbougb somewbat " stercoraceous" minuteness of some 
 passages in The Task. A little greenbouse, used as a par- 
 lour in summer, wbere be sat surrounded by beauty and 
 fragrance, and lulled by pleasant sounds, was anotber prod- 
 uct of tbe same pursuit, and seems almost Elysian in tliat 
 dull, dark life, lie also found amusement in keeping tamo 
 liares, and be fancied tbat be liad reconciled tbe bare to 
 man and dog. Ilis tbrec tame bares are among tbe canon- 
 ized pets of literature, and tbey were to bis genius wbat 
 "Sailor" was to tbe genius of Byron. But Mrs. Unwin, 
 wbo bad terrible reason for studying bis case, saw tbat 
 tbe tbing most wanted was congenial employment for tbe 
 mind, and sbe incited bim to try bis band at poetry on a 
 larger scale. lie listened to ber advice, and wben be was 
 nearly fifty years of age became a poet. He bad acquired 
 tbe faculty of verse-writing, as we bave seen ; be bad even 
 to some extent formed bis manner wben be Avas young. 
 Age must by tbis time bave quencbed bis fire, and tamed 
 bis imagination, so tbat tbe didactic style would suit bim 
 
48 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 best. In the length of the interval between bis early- 
 poems and his great work be resembles Milton ; but wide- 
 ly-different in the two cases had been the current of the 
 intervening years. 
 
 Poetry written late in life is, of course, free from youth- 
 ful crudity and extravagance. It also escapes the youthful 
 tendency to imitation. Cowper's authorship is ushered in 
 by Southey with a history of English poetry ; but this is 
 hardly in place; Cowper had little connexion with any- 
 thing befoi'e him. Even his knowledge of poetry was not 
 great. In his youth he had read the great poets, and had 
 studied Milton especially with the ardour of intense admi- 
 ration. Nothing ever made him so angry as Johnson's 
 Life of Milton. " Oh !" he cries, " I could thrash his old 
 jacket till I made his pension jingle in his pocket." 
 Churchill had made a great — far too great — an impression 
 on him when he was a Templar. Of Churchill, if of any- 
 body, he must be regarded as a follower, though only in 
 his earlier and less successful poems. In expression he al- 
 ways regarded as a model the neat and gay simplicity of 
 Prior. But so little had he kept up his reading of any- 
 thing but sermons and hymns, that he learned for the first 
 time from Johnson's Lives the existence of Collins. He 
 is the offspring of the Eeligious Revival rather than of 
 any school of art. His most important relation to any of 
 his predecessors is, in fact, one of antagonism to the hard 
 glitter of Pope. / 
 
 In urging her companion to write poetry, Mrs. Unwin 
 was on the right path; her puritanism led her astray in 
 the choice of a theme. She suggested The Progress of 
 Error as a subject for a " Moral Satire." It was unhap- 
 pily adopted, and The Progress of Error was followed by 
 Truth, Table Talk, Expostulation, Hope, Charity, Conver- 
 
IV.] AUTHORSHIP. 4!) 
 
 sadon, and Retirement. AVhcn tlic scries was published, 
 Table Talk was put first, being supposed to be tlic lightest 
 and the most attractive to an unregenerate world. The 
 judgment passed upon this set of poems at tlic time by 
 the Critical Review seems blasphemous to the fond biog- 
 rapher, and is so devoid of modern smartness as to be al- 
 most interesting as a literary fossil. But it must be deem- 
 ed essentially just, though the reviewer errs, as many re- 
 viewers have erred, in measuring tlie writer's capacity by 
 the standard of his first performance. "These poems," 
 said the Critical Review, " are written, as we learn from the 
 title-page, by Mr. Cowper of the Inner Temple, who seems 
 to be a man of a sober and religious turn of mind, with a 
 benevolent heart, and a serious wish to inculcate the pre- 
 cepts of morality; /he is not, however, possessed of any 
 superior abilities or the powei of genius requisite for so 
 arduous an undertaking. ... He says what is incontro- 
 vertible, and what has been said over and over again with 
 much gravity, but says nothing new, sprightly, or enter- 
 taining ; travelling on a plain, level, flat road, with great 
 composure almost through the whole long and tedious vol- 
 ume, which is little better than a dull sermon in very in- 
 different verse on Truth, the Progress of Error, Charity, 
 and some other grave subjects.^ If this author had follow- 
 ed the advice given by Caraccioli, and Avhich he has chosen 
 for one of the mottoes prefixed to these poems, he would 
 have clothed his indisputable truths in some more becom- 
 ing disguise, and rendered his work much more agreeable. 
 ^1 its present shape we cannot compliment him on its 
 beauty ; for as this bard himself sweetly sings : — 
 
 " The clear harangue, and cold as it is clear, 
 Falls soporific ou the listless ear." J 
 
50 COWrER. [chap. 
 
 In justice to the bard it ouglit to be said that he wrote 
 under the eye of the Rev. John Newton, to whom the de- 
 sign had been duly submitted, and who had given his im- 
 primatur in the shape of a preface which took Johnson, 
 the publisher, aback by its gravity. Newton would not 
 have sanctioned any poetry which had not a distinctly re- 
 ligious object, and he received an assurance from the poet 
 that the lively passages were introduced only as honey on 
 the rim of the medicinal cup, to commend its healing con- 
 tents to the lips of a giddy world. The Rev. John New- 
 ton must have been exceedingly austere if he thought that 
 the quantity of honey used Avas excessive. 
 
 A genuine desire to make society better is always pres- 
 ent in these poems, and its presence lends them the only 
 interest which they possess except as historical monuments 
 of a religious movement. Of satirical vigour they have 
 scarcely a semblance. There are three kinds of satire, cor- 
 responding to as many different views of humanity and 
 life ; the Stoical, the Cynical, and the Epicurean. Of Sto- 
 ical satire, with its strenuous hatred of vice and wrong, the 
 type is Juvenal. Of Cynical satire, springing from bitter 
 contempt of humanity, the type is Swift's Gulliver, while 
 its quintessence is embodied in his lines on the Day of 
 Judgment. Of Epicurean satire, flowing from a contempt 
 of humanity which is not bitter, and lightly playing with 
 the weakness and vanities of mankind, Ilorace is the clas- 
 sical example. To the first two kinds, Cowper's nature 
 was totally alien, and when he attempts anything in either 
 of those lines, the only result is a querulous and censorious 
 acerbity, in which his real feelings had no part, and which 
 on mature reflection offended his own better taste. In 
 the Iloratian kind he might have excelled, as the episode 
 of the Retired Statesman in one of these poems shows. 
 
IV.] THE MORAL SATIRES. .^1 
 
 lie miglit have excelled, that is, if like Horace he had 
 known the world. But he did not know the world. Ho 
 saw the "great Babel" only "through the loopholes of 
 retreat," and in the columns of his weekly newspaper. 
 Even during the years, long past, which he spent in the 
 ■world, his experience had been confined to a small literary 
 circle. Society was to him an abstraction on which he 
 discoursed like a pulpiteer. Ilis satiric whip not only has 
 no lash, it is brandished in the air. 
 
 No man was ever less qualified for the office of a cen- 
 sor; his judgment is at once disarmed, and a breach in his 
 principles is at once made by the slightest personal influ- 
 ence. Bishops are bad ; they are like the Cretans, evil 
 beasts and slow bellies; but the bishop whose brother 
 Cowper knows is a blessing to the Church. Deans and 
 Canons are lazy sinecurists, but there is a bright exception 
 in the case of the Cowper wdio held a golden stall at Dur- 
 ham. Grinding India is criminal, but Warren Hastings is 
 acquitted, because he was with Cowper at AVestminster. 
 Discipline was deplorably relaxed in all colleges except 
 that of which Cowper's brother was a fellow. Pluralities 
 and resignation bonds, the grossest abuses of the Church, 
 ■were perfectly defensible in the case of any friend or ac- 
 quaintance of this Church Reformer. Bitter lines against 
 Popery inserted in The Task were struck out, because the 
 •writer had made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Throck- 
 morton, who were Roman Catholics. Smoking was de- 
 testable, except when practised by dear Mr. Bull. Even 
 gambling, the blackest sin of fashionable society, is not to 
 prevent Fox, the great Whig, from being a ruler in Israel. 
 Besides, in all his social judgments, Cowper is at a wrong 
 point of view. He is always deluded by the idol of his 
 cave. He ■writes perpetually on the twofold assumption 
 3* 
 
52 COWPEK. [chap. 
 
 that a life of retirement is more favourable to virtue than a 
 life of action, and that " God made the country, while man 
 made the town." Both parts of the assumption are un- 
 true. A life of action is more favourable to virtue, as a 
 rule, than a life of retirement, and the development of 
 humanity is higher and richer, as a rule, in the town than 
 in the country. If Cowper's retirement was virtuous, it 
 was so because he was actively employed in the exercise 
 of his highest faculties : had he been a mere idler, secluded 
 from his kind, his retirement would not have been virtuous 
 at all. His flight, from the world Avas rendered necessary 
 by his malady, and respectable by his literary work; but 
 it was a flight and not a victor3\ Ilis misconception was 
 fostered and partly produced by a religion which was es- 
 sentially ascetic, and which, while it gave birth to charac- 
 ters of the highest and most energetic beneficence, repre- 
 sented salvation too little as the reward of effort, too much 
 as the reward of passive belief and of spiritual emotion. 
 
 The most readable of the Moral Satires is Retirement, in 
 which the writer is on his own ground, expressing his gen- 
 uine feelings, and which is, in fact, a foretaste of The 
 Task. Expostulation, a warning to England from the ex- 
 ample of the Jews, is the best constructed; the rest are 
 totally wanting in unity, and even in connexion. In all 
 there are flashes of epigrammatic smartness. 
 
 " How shall I speak thee, or thy power address, 
 Thou God of our idolatry, the i)ress ? 
 By thee, religiou, liberty, and laws 
 Exert their iuiiiieuce, 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, 
 
IV ] THE MORAL SATIRES. 63 
 
 Liko Eden's drcail probatiouary tree, 
 Kuowlcdffo of good tiud evil is from tlico." 
 
 Occasionally there arc passages of liiglier merit. The 
 episode of statesmen in Retirement has been already men- 
 tioned. The lines on the two disciples going to Emraaus 
 in Conversation, though little more than a paraphrase of 
 the Gospel narrative, convey pleasantly the Evangelical 
 idea of the Divine Friend. Cowper says iu one of his let- 
 ters that he had been intimate with a man of fine taste 
 Avho had confessed to him that though he could not sub- 
 scribe to the truth of Christianity itself, he could never 
 read this passage of St. Luke without being deeply affected 
 by it, and feeling that if the stamp of divinity was im- 
 pressed upon anything in the Scriptures, it was upon that 
 passage, 
 
 " It Imppcu'd ou a solemn eventide, 
 Soon after lie that was our surety died, 
 Two bosom friends, each jieusively iucliued, 
 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 whoso life, 
 Thoiigli blameless, had iucurr'd perpetual strife, 
 Wliosc deeds had left, iu spite of hostile arts, 
 A deep memorial graven on their hearts. 
 The recollection, liko a vein of ore, 
 The farther traced eurich'd them still the more ; 
 They thought him, and they justly thought him, ouo 
 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 joiu'd them, courteous as a friend, 
 
54 COWPER. [ciiAP. 
 
 Aud ask'd them Tvitli a kind, engaging air 
 What their aiHiction -was, and begg'd a share. 
 Inform'd, he gather'd up the broken thread, 
 Aud truth and wisdom gracing all he said, 
 Explaiu'd, illustrated, aud 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 i^arted, 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, 
 Aud 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 f 
 
 The prude going to morning cLurcli in Truth is a good 
 rendering of Hogartli's picture : — 
 
 " You ancieut prude, whoso wither'd features show 
 She might be young some forty years ago, 
 Her elbows pinion'd close upon her hips. 
 Her head erect, her fau upon her lips, 
 Her eyebrows arch'd, her eyes both gone astray 
 To watch yon amorous couple in their play. 
 With bony aud unkerchief 'd neck defies 
 The rude inclemency of wintry skies. 
 And sails with lappet-head and miucing airs 
 Daily, at cliuk of bell, to morning prayers. 
 To thrift and parsimony much inclined, 
 She yet allows herself that boy behind; 
 Tlie shivering urchin, bending as he goes. 
 With slipshod heels, aud dew-drop at his nose, 
 His predecessor's coat advanced to wear, 
 Which future images are yet doom'd to share ; 
 Carries her Bible tuck'd beneath his arm, 
 Aud hides his hands to keep liis fingers warm," 
 
IV.] THE MORAL SATIRES. 55 
 
 . Of personal allusions there are a few ; if the satirist liad 
 not been prevented from indulging in them by his taste, 
 lie would have been debarred by his ignorance. Lord 
 Chesterfield, as the incarnation of the world and the nio.st 
 brilliant servant of the arch-enemy, comes iu for a lashing 
 under the name of Pctronius. 
 
 "Petrouius! all the musrs weep for tlico, 
 But every tear sluiU scaltl thy memory. 
 The graces too, while virtue at their shriue 
 Lay bleeding nucler that soft hand of thine, 
 Felt each a mortal stab iu her own breast, 
 Abhorr'd the sacrifice, and cursed the priest. 
 Thou polish'd and high-liuish'd foe to truth. 
 Gray-beard corrupter of our listening youth, 
 To j)urgo and skim away the filth of vice, 
 That so refined it might the more entice, 
 Then jiour it ou the morals of thy sou 
 To taiut 7iiS heart, was Avorthy of ihhie own." 
 
 This is about the nearest approach to Juvenal that the 
 Evangelical satirist ever makes. In Hojye there is a ve- 
 hement vindication of the memory of "Whitefield. It is 
 rather remarkable that there is no mention of Wesley. 
 But Cowper belonged to the Evangelical rather than to 
 the Methodist section. It may be doubted whether the 
 living Whitefield would have been much to his taste. 
 
 In the versification of the moral satires there arc fre- 
 quent faults, especially in the earlier poems of the series ; 
 though Cowper's power of writing musical verse is attested 
 both by the occasional poems and by The Task. 
 
 With the Moral Satires may be coupled, though written 
 later, Tirocbiium ; or, a JReview of Schools. Hero Cowper 
 has the advantage of treating a subject which he under- 
 
56 COWrER. [chap. 
 
 stood, about -wliicli be felt strongly, and desired for a prac- 
 tical purpose to stir tbe feelings of bis readers. He set to 
 work in bitter earnest. " Tbere is a sting," be says, " in 
 verse tbat prose neitber bas nor can bare ; and I do not 
 know tbat scbools in tbe gross, and especially public scbools, 
 bave ever been so pointedly condemned before. But tbey 
 are become a nuisance, a pest, an abomination, and it is fit 
 tbat tbe eyes and noses of mankind sbould be opened, if 
 possible, to perceive it." His descriptions of tbe miseries 
 wbicb cbildren in bis day endured, and, in spite of all our 
 improvements, must still to some extent endure, in board- 
 ing-scbools, and of tbe effects of tbe system in estranging 
 boys from tbeir parents and deadening bome affections, 
 are vivid and true. Of course, tbe Public Scbool system 
 was not to be overturned by rbyniing, but tbe aatbor of 
 Tirocinium awakened attention to its faults, and probably 
 did sometbing towards amending tbem. Tbe best lines, 
 perbaps, bave been already quoted in connexion witb tbe 
 bistory of tbe writer's boybood. Tbere are, bowever, otb- 
 er telling passages, sucb as tbat on tbe indiscriminate use 
 of emulation as a stimulus : — 
 
 " Our i^ublic hives of puerile resort 
 Tliat are of chief and. most approved report, 
 To sucli base hopes in many a sordid soul 
 Owe their repute in part, hut not the whole. 
 A principle, wliose pi'oud pretensions pass 
 Uuquestion'd, though the jewel he hut glass, 
 That with a world not ofteu over-nice 
 Eaulis as a virtue, and is yet a vice, 
 Or rather a gross compound, justly tried, 
 Of envy, hatred, jealousy, aud jiridc. 
 Contributes most perhaps to enhance their fame, 
 Aud Emulation is its jn-ecious name. 
 
IV.] THE MORAL SATIRES. 67 
 
 Bojs onco on firo ■with that contentious zeal 
 Feel all the rago that female rivals feel ; 
 The prize of beauty in a woman's eyes 
 Not brighter than iu theirs the scholar's inizc. 
 The spirit of that competition burns 
 With all varieties of ill 1)y turns, 
 Each vainly niagnilics his own success, 
 Kesents his fellow's, wishes it were less. 
 Exults in his miscarriage if ho fail. 
 Deems his reward too great if ho prevail. 
 And labours to surj)ass him day and night. 
 Less for improvement than to tickle spite. 
 The spur is powerful, and I grant its force ; 
 It i)ricks 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 cud, 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, aftccts it long, 
 And j-ou are staunch indeed in learning's cause, 
 If you can crown a discijilino that draws 
 Such mischiefs after it, with much applause." 
 
 lie might have clone more, if he had been able to point 
 to the alternative of a good day-school, as a combination 
 of home affections with the superior teachings hardly to 
 be found, except in a large school, and Avhich Cowper, in 
 drawing his comparison between the two systems, fails to 
 take into account. 
 
 To the same general class of poems belongs Antl-The- 
 bjiythora, which it is due to Cowper's memory to say was 
 not published in his lifetime. It is an angry pasquinade 
 
68 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 on an absurd book advocating polygamy on Biblical 
 grounds, by the Eev. Martin Madan, Cowper's quondam 
 spiritual counsellor. Alone among Cowper's works it has 
 a taint of coarseness. 
 
 The Moral Satires pleased Franklin, to whom their social 
 philosophy was congenial, as at a later day, in common 
 with all Cowper's works, they pleased Cobden, who no 
 doubt specially relished the passage in Charity, embody- 
 ing the philanthropic sentiment of Free Trade. There 
 was a trembling consultation as to the expediency of 
 bringing the volume under the notice of Johnson. " One 
 of his pointed sarcasms, if he should happen to be dis- 
 pleased, would soon find its way into all companies, and 
 spoil the sale." " I think it would be well to send in our 
 joint names, accompanied Avith a handsome card, such an 
 one as you will know how to fabricate, and such as may 
 predispose him to a favourable perusal of the book, by 
 coaxing him into a good temper ; for he is a great bear, 
 wdth all his learning and penetration." Fear prevailed; 
 but it seems that the book found its Avay into the dicta- 
 tor's hands, that his judgment on it was kind, and that he 
 even did something to temper the wind of adverse criti- 
 cism to the shorn lamb. Yet parts of it were likely to 
 incur his displeasure as a Tory, as a Churchman, and as 
 one who greatly preferred Fleet Street to the beauties of 
 nature ; while with the sentimental misery of the writer, 
 he could have had no sympathy whatever. Of the incom- 
 pleteness of Johnson's view of character there could be no 
 better instance than the charming weakness of Cowper. 
 Thurlow and Colraan did not even acknowledge their 
 copies, and were lashed for their breach of friendship 
 witli rather more vigour than the Moral Satires display, 
 in The Valedictory, which unluckily survived for post- 
 
IV.] THE MORAL SATIRES. C9 
 
 lumious publication when tlie culprits hail made tlicii" 
 peace. 
 
 Cowpcr certainly misread himself if he believed that 
 ambition, oven literary ambition, was a lari^e element in 
 his character. But having published, he felt a keen inter- 
 est in the success of his publication. Yet he took its fail- 
 ure and the adverse criticism very calmly. With all his 
 sensitiveness, from irritable and suspicious egotism, such 
 as is the most common cause of moral madness, he was 
 singularly free. In this respect his philosophy served him 
 well. 
 
 It may safely be said that the Moral Satires would have 
 sunk into oblivion if they had not been buoyed up by The 
 Task. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Mrs. TJnwin's influence producccl tlie Moral Satires. The 
 Task was born of a more potent inspiration. One day- 
 Mrs. Jones, the wife of a neiglibouring clergyman, came 
 into Olney to sliop, and with her came her sister, Lady^ 
 Austen, the widow of a Baronet, a woman of the world, 
 who had lived much in France, gay, sparkling and viva- 
 cious, but at the same time full of feeling even to over- 
 flowing. The apparition acted like magic on the recluse. 
 He desired Mrs. TJnwin to ask the two ladies to stay to 
 tea ; then shrank from joining the party which he had him- 
 self invited; ended by joining it, and, his shyness giving 
 way with a rush, engaged in animated conversation with 
 Lady Austen, and walked with her part of the w'ay home. 
 On her an equally great effect appears to have been pro- 
 duced. A wa;'ni friendship at once sprang np, and be- 
 fore long Lady Austen had verses addressed to her as Sis- 
 ter Anne. Her ladyship, on her part, was smitten with a 
 great love of retirement, and at the same time with great 
 admiration for Mr. Scott, the curate of Olney, as a preacher, 
 and she resolved to fit up for herself " that part of our great 
 building which is at present occupied by Dick Coleman, 
 his wife and child, and a thousand rats." That a woman 
 of fashion, accustomed to French salons, should choose 
 such an abode, with a pair of Puritans for her only soci- 
 
CHAP, v.] THE TASK. CI 
 
 cty, seems to show tliat one of the ruritans at least must 
 have possessed great powers of attraction. Better quar- 
 ters were found for her in the Vicarage ; and the private 
 way between the gardens, whicli apparently had been 
 closed since Xcwton's departure, was opened again. 
 
 Lady Austen's presence evidently wrought on Cowpcr 
 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 individual 
 has made all this difference. Lady Austen and we pass 
 our days alternately at each other's Chateau. In the 
 morning I walk with one or other of the ladies, and in the 
 evening wind thread. Thus did Hercules, and thus proba- 
 bly did Samson, and thus do I ; and, were both those he- 
 roes living, I should not fear to challenge them to a trial 
 of skill in that business, or doubt to beat them both." It 
 was, perhaps, while he was winding thread that Lady Aus- 
 ten told him the story of John Gilpin. He lay awake at 
 night laughing over it, and next morning produced the 
 ballad. It soon became famous, and was recited by Hen- 
 derson, a popular actor, on the stage, though, as its gentil- 
 ity was doubtful, its author withheld his name. lie af- 
 terwards fancied that this wonderful piece of humour had 
 been written in a mood of the deepest depression. Prob- 
 ably he had written it in an interval of high spirits be- 
 tween two such moods. Moreover, he sometimes exag- 
 gerated his own misery. He will begin a letter with a de 
 2)ro/undis, and towards the end forget his sorrows, glide 
 into commonplace topics, and write about them in the 
 ordinary strain. Lady Austen inspired John Gilpin. She 
 inspired, it seems, the lines on the loss of the Royal 
 George. She did more: she invited Cowper to try liis 
 
62 COWPER. [CHAP. 
 
 hand at sometliing consideraLle in blank verse. "When 
 he asked her for a subject, she was happier in her choice 
 than the lady who had suggested the Progress of Error. 
 She bade him take the sofa on which she was reclining, 
 and whicli, sofas being then uncommon, was a more strik- 
 ing and suggestive object than it would be now. The 
 right chord was struck ; the subject was accepted ; and 
 'The Sofa grew into The Task; the title of the song re- 
 minding us that it was *' commanded by the fair." As 
 Paradise Lost is to militant Puritanism, so is The Task to 
 the religious movement of its author's time. To its char- 
 acter as the poem of a sect it no doubt owed and still 
 owes much of its popularity. TNot only did it give beau- 
 tiful and effective expression to the sentiments of a large 
 religious party, but it was about the only poetry that a 
 strict Methodist or Evangelical could read ; while to those 
 whose worship was unritualistic, and who were debarred 
 by their principles from the theatre and the concert, any- 
 thing in the way of art that was not illicit must have been 
 eminently welcome. But The Task has merits of a more 
 universal and enduring kind. Its author himself says of 
 it ; — " If the work cannot boast a regular plan (in Avhich 
 respect, however, I do not think it altogether indefensi- 
 ble), it may yet boast that the reflections are naturally 
 suggested always by the preceding passage, and that, ex- 
 cept the fifth book, which is rather of a political aspect, 
 the whole has one tendency, to discountenance the mod- 
 ern enthusiasm after a London life, and to recommend 
 rural ease and leisure as friendly to the cause of piety and 
 virtue." A regular plan, assuredly. The Task has not. It 
 rambles through a vast variety of subjects, religious, politi- 
 cal, social, philosophical, and horticultural, with as little of 
 method as its author used in taking his morning walks. 1 
 
v.] THE TASK. 03 
 
 Nor, as Mr. Bcnliam lias shown, are the reflections, as a 
 rule, naturally suijgcstcd by the preceding passage. From 
 the use of a sofa by the gouty to those who, being free 
 from gout, do not need sofas — and so to country walks 
 and country life, is hardly a natural transition. It is hard- 
 ly a natural transition from the ice palace built by a Rus- 
 sian despot, to despotism and politics in general. (^But if 
 Cowper deceives himself in fancying that there is a plan 
 or a close connexion of parts, he is right as to the exist- 
 ence of a pervading tendency. The praise of retirement 
 and of country life as most friendly to piety and virtue, 
 is the perpetual refrain of The Task, if not its definite 
 theme. From this idea immediately flow the best and 
 the most popular passages : those which please apart from 
 anything peculiar to a religious school ; those which keep 
 the poem alive ; those which have found their way into 
 the heart of the nation, and intensified the taste for rural 
 and domestic happiness, to which they most wanningly 
 appeal. In these Cowper pours out his inmost feelings, 
 with the liveliness of exhilaration, enhanced by contrast 
 with previous misery. The pleasures of the country and 
 of home — the walk, the garden, but above all the " intimate 
 delights " of the winter evening, the snug parlour, with its 
 close-drawn curtains shutting out the stormy night, the 
 steaming and bubbling tea-urn, the cheerful circle, the 
 book read aloud, the newspaper through whicli we look 
 out into the unquiet world — arc painted by the writer with 
 a heartfelt enjoyment which infects the reader. These 
 are not the joys of a hero, nor are they the joys of an 
 Alcajus "singing amidst the clash of arms, or when he 
 had moored on the wet shore his storm-tost barque." But 
 they are pure joys, and they present themselves in compe- 
 tition with those of Ranclagh and the Basset Table, which 
 
64 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 arc not heroic or even masculine, any more than they are 
 pure. 
 
 The well-known passages at the opening of The Winter 
 Evening are the self-portraiture of a soul in bliss — such 
 bliss as that soul could know — and the poet would have 
 found it very difficult to depict to himself by the utmost 
 effort of his religious imagination any paradise which he 
 Avould 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. 
 
v.] THE TASK. 
 
 It turns subiuittcd to my view, turus round 
 
 With all its generations; I behold 
 
 Tho tumult and am still. The souud of war 
 
 Has lost its terrors cro it reaches me, 
 
 Grieves but alarms me not. I mourn tho prido 
 
 And avarice that make man a wolf to man, 
 
 Hear tho fiiint echo of those brazen throats 
 
 ]5y which ho speaks tho language of his heart, 
 
 And sigh, but never tremble at tho sound. 
 
 Ho travels and expatiates, as tho beo 
 
 From flower to flower, so he from lajid to land ; 
 
 Tlie manners, customs, policy of all 
 
 Fay contribution to tho store he gleans ; 
 
 He sucks intelligence in every clime, 
 
 And spreads tho honey of his deep research 
 
 At his return, a rich repast for me. 
 
 Ho travels, and I too. I tread his deck, 
 
 Ascend his topmast, through his peering eyes 
 
 Discover countries, with a kindred heart 
 
 Sutler his woes and share iu his escapes, 
 
 While fancy, like the finger of a clock, 
 
 Euns 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 tliy sceptre, and thy throno 
 A sliding car indebted to no wheels. 
 And urged by storms along its slippery way ; 
 I love thee, all unlovely as tliou 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. IJut kindly still 
 
G6 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 Compensatiug liis loss witli added hours 
 Of social couverse and instructive ease, 
 And gathering at short notice in cue group 
 The family dispersed by daylight and its cares. 
 I crown thee king of intimate delights, 
 Fireside enjoymeuts, home-born happiness, 
 And all the comforts that the lowly roof 
 Of undisturb'd retirement, and the hours 
 Of long uuiuterrupted evening know." 
 
 The writer of The Task also deserves tlic crown wliicli 
 lie lias liimself claimed as a close observer aud truthful 
 painter of nature. In this respect, he challenges compari- 
 son with Thomson. The range of Thomson is far wider ; 
 he paints nature in all her moods, Cowper only in a few, 
 and those the gentlest, though he has said of himself that 
 " he was always an admirer of thunder-storms, even before 
 he knew whose voice he heard in them, but especially of 
 thunder rolling over the great waters." The great waters 
 he had not seen for many years ; he had never, so far as 
 we know, seen mountains, hardly even high hills ; his only 
 landscape was the flat country w^atcred by the Ouse. On 
 the other hand, he is perfectly genuine, thoroughly Eng- 
 lish, entirely emancipated from false Arcadianism, the 
 yoke of which still sits heavily upon Thomson, whose 
 " muse," moreover, is perpetually " wafting " him away 
 from the country and the climate which he knows to coun- 
 tries and climates which lie does not know, and which he 
 describes in the style of a prize poem. Cowper's land- 
 scapes, too, are peopled with the peasantry of England ; 
 Thomson's, with Damons, Palsemons, and Musidoras, trick- 
 ed out in the sentimental costume of the sham idyl. In 
 Thomson, you always find the effort of the artist working 
 up a description ; in Cowper, you find no effort ; the scene 
 
v.] THE TASK. 07 
 
 is simply mirrored on a mind of groat sensibility and liiuli 
 pictorial power. 
 
 "And witness, dear companion of my walks, 
 "Whoso arm this twentieth winter I perceive 
 Fast lock'cl in mine, with pleasure such as love, 
 CoiifirmVl by loug experience of thy worth 
 Ami well-tried virtues, could alone inspire — / 
 
 AVitness 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 partuer of them all. 
 
 /How oft uxion yon eminence our pace 
 Has slacken'd to a i^ause, 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 wo just discerned 
 The distant plough slow moving, and beside 
 His labouring team that swerved not from the track, 
 The sturdy swain dimiuish'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 iu their bank, 
 Stand, never overlook'd, our favourite ehus, 
 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."] 
 4 
 
68 COWPEll. [chap. 
 
 Scenes must be beautiful, -wliicb, daily viewed, 
 Please daily, aud wliose 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 and Mrs. Unwin on the hill in the ruffling 
 wind, like them, scarcely conscious that it blows, and feed 
 admiration at the eye upon the rich and thoroughly Eng- 
 lish champaign that is outspread below. 
 
 "Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds, 
 Exhilarate the spirit, and restore 
 The tone of lauguid Nature. Mighty winds. 
 That sweej) the shirt of some far-spreading wood 
 Of ancient growth, make music not unlike 
 The dash of Ocean on his poinding shore, 
 Aud lull the s^iirit while they fill 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 
 Ujjon loose xyebbles, lose themselves at length 
 In matted grass that inith a livelier green 
 Betrays the secret of their silent course. 
 *' Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds. 
 But animated nature sweeter still, 
 To soothe aud 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 iu vain. 
 But cawing rooks, aud kites that swim sublime 
 In still-repeated circles, screaming loud. 
 The jay, the pie, aud e'en the boding owl 
 
^•] 
 
 THE TASK. 
 
 ^■ 
 
 ^ 
 
 That hails the rising moon, have charms for mc. 
 Sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh, 
 Yet heard in scenes ^Yherc peace forever reigns, 
 And only there, please highly for their sake." 
 
 Affection such as tlic last linos display for the inharmo- 
 nious as well as the harmonious, for the uncomely as well 
 as the comely parts of nature, has been made familiar by 
 ^^'ordsworth, but it was new in the time of Cowper. Let 
 us compare a Landscape painted by Pope in his AVindsor 
 forest, with tlie lines just quoted, and we shall see the dif- 
 ference between the art of Cowper and that of the Augus- 
 tan au'c. 
 
 ' Hero 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; 
 Hero in full light the russet plains extend, 
 Thei'e wra^it in clouds, the hluish hills ascend. 
 E'en the wild heath displays her purple dyes. 
 And midst the desert fruitful lields 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 desert in the neighbourhood of Windsor; 
 fruitful fields arising in it, and crowned with tufted trees 
 and springing corn — evidently Pope saw all this, not on 
 an eminence, in the ruffling wind, but in liis study with 
 his back to the window, and the Georgics or a translation 
 of them before him. 
 
 Here, again, is a little picture of rural life from the Win- 
 ter Morning Walk. 
 
10 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 "The cattle mourn in corners, \rhere the fence 
 Screens them, and seem half-petrified to sleexj 
 In unrccumicnt sadness. There they wait 
 Their Avonted fodder; not like himgeriug man, 
 Fretful if unsupplied ; but silent, meek, 
 And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay. 
 He from the stacJc carves out the accustomed load. 
 Deep-plunging, and again deep plunging oft, 
 His hroad keen Jcnife into the solid mass : 
 Smooth as a icall the upright remnant stands, 
 With such iindeviating and even force 
 He severs it awarj : 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 axo 
 And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear. 
 From morn to eve, his solitary task. 
 Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with poiuted 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 
 AVide-scampering, snatches uii the drifted snow 
 With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout ; 
 Then shakes his xiowder'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, sceutiug all the air." 
 
 The minutely faithful description of the man carving 
 the load of bay out of tlic staclc, and again those of the 
 gambolling dog, and the woodman smoking his pipe with 
 the stream of smoke trailins; behind him, remind us of the 
 
v.] THE TASK. 71 
 
 touches of minute fidelity in Homer. The same may be 
 said of many other passages. 
 
 " The shecpfold hero 
 Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe. 
 At first, jn-ogrcssh-c as a stream they seek 
 The middle field; but, scattered hy degrees, 
 Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land. 
 There from the sun-burnt hay-field homeward creeps 
 The loaded wain; tehile Vujhtenhl of its charge, 
 The xeain that meets it jjasscs siciflhj hij ; 
 The boorish driver leaning o'er his team 
 Vociferous and impatient of delay." 
 
 A specimen of more imaginative and distinctly poetical 
 description is the well-known passage on evening, in Avrit- 
 ing which Cowper would seem to have had Collins in his 
 mind. 
 
 " Come, Evening, onco again, season of peace ; 
 Return, sweet Evening, and continue long! 
 Jlethiuks I sco thee iu 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 adoru'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 woru indeed on high 
 With ostentatious pageautry, but set 
 With modest grandeur in thy purple zone, 
 Resplendent less, but of au ampler round." 
 
 Beyond this line Cowper does not go, and had no idea 
 
72 COWPER. [cuAP. 
 
 of going; lie never thinks of lending a soul to material 
 nature as "Wordsworth and Shelley do. He is the poetic 
 counterpart of Gainsborough, as the great descriptive poets 
 of a later and more spiritual day are the counterparts of 
 Turner. AYe have said that Cowper's peasants are genu- 
 ine as well as his landscape ; he might have been a more 
 exquisite Crabbe if he had turned his mind that way, in- 
 stead of writing sermons about a world which to him was 
 little more than an abstraction, distorted, moreover, and 
 discoloured by his religious asceticism. 
 
 / 
 " Poor, yet iudustrious, modest, quiet, ueat, 
 
 Such claim compassion in a night like this, 
 
 And have a friend in every feeliug heart. 
 
 AVarm'd, while it lasts, by labour, all day long 
 
 They brave the season, and yet find at eve, 
 
 111 clad, and fed but sparely, time to cool. 
 
 The frugal housewife trembles when she lights 
 
 Her scanty stock of brushwood, blaziug clear. 
 
 But dying soon, like all terrestrial joys. 
 
 The few small embers left, she nurses well ; 
 
 VAud, while her iufaut 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 iuured than she 
 
 / ^vj 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 extingnish'd, which I saw 
 Daugled 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 butter, costlier still : 
 Sleep seems their only refuge : for, alas ! 
 Where penury is felt the thought is chained, 
 
v.] THE TASK. 73 
 
 Auil sweet colloquial pleasures arc but few ! 
 With all this tlirift they thrive uot. All the care 
 lugeuious Parsimouy takes, hut just 
 Saves the small inventory, bed and stool, 
 .Skillet, and old carved chest, from public sale. 
 They live, and live without extorted aluis 
 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 Lave the plain, unvarnisbecl record of visitings 
 among the poor of Oluey. The List two Hues are sunple 
 trutli as well as the rest. 
 
 " In some passages, especially in the second book, you 
 will observe me very satirical." In the second book of 
 The Task there are some bitter things about the clergy ; 
 and in the passage pourtraying a fashionable preacher, 
 there is a touch of satiric vigour, or rather of that 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 towards the end of it, for two reasons; first, that I 
 might not revolt the reader at his entrance ; and, secondly, 
 that my best impressions might be made last. Were I to 
 write as many volumes as Lope de Vega or Voltaire, not 
 one of them would be without this tincture. If the world 
 like it not, so much the worse for them. I make all the 
 concessions I can, that I may please them, but I will not 
 please them at the expense of conscience." The passages 
 of The Task penned by conscience, taken together, form a 
 lamentably large proportion of the poem. An ordinary 
 reader can be carried through them, if at all, only by his 
 interest in the history of opinion, or by the companion- 
 ship of the writer, who is always present, as Walton is in 
 
74 COWrER. [chap. 
 
 his Angler, as White is in his Selbourne. Cowper, how- 
 ever, even at his worst, is a highly cultivated Methodist : 
 if he is sometimes enthusiastic, and possibly superstitious, 
 he is never coarse or unctuous. He speaks with contempt 
 of " the twang of the conventicle." Even his enthusiasm 
 had by this time been somewhat tempered. Just after his 
 conversion he used to preach to everybody. lie had found 
 out, as he tells us himself, that this was a mistake, that 
 "the pulpit was for preaching; the garden, the parlour, 
 and the walk abroad were for friendly and agreeable con- 
 versation." It may have been his consciousness of a cer- 
 tain change in himself that deterred him from taking 
 Newton into his confidence when he was engaged upon 
 The Task. The worst passages are those Avhich betray a 
 fanatical antipathy to natural science, especially that in the 
 third book (150-190). The episode of the judgment of 
 Heaven on the young atheist Misagathus, in the sixth book, 
 is also fanatical and repulsive. 
 
 Puritanism had come into violent collision with the tem- 
 poral power, and had contracted a character fiercely polit- 
 ical and revolutionary. IMethodism fought only against un- 
 belief, vice, and the coldness of the Establishment; it was 
 in no way political, much less revolutionary ; by the recoil 
 from the atheism of the French Revolution, its leaders, in- 
 cluding Wesley himself, were drawn rather to the Tory side. 
 Cowper, we have said, always remained in principle what 
 he had been born, a Whig, an unrevolutionary Whig, an 
 "Old Whig," to adopt the phrase made canonical 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." 
 
T.] THE TASK. 75 
 
 The sentiment of these lines, which were familiar and 
 dear to Cobden, is tempered by judicious professions of 
 loyalty to a king who rules in accordance with the law. 
 At one time Cowper was inclined to regard the govern- 
 ment of George III. as a repetition of that of Charles I., 
 absolutist in the State and reactionary in the Church ; but 
 the progress of revolutionary opinions evidently increased 
 liis loyalty, as it did that of many other Whigs, to the 
 good Tory king. "We shall presently see, however, that 
 the views of the French Revolution itself expressed in his 
 letters are Avonderfully rational, calm, and free from the 
 political panic and the apocalyptic hallucination, both of 
 which we should rather have expected to find in him. He 
 describes himself to Newton as having seen, since his sec- 
 ond attack of madness, " an extramundane character with 
 reference to this globe, and though not a native of the 
 moon, not made of the dust of this planet." The Evan- 
 gelical party has remained down to the present day non- 
 political, and in its own estimation extramundane, taking 
 part in the affairs of the nation only when some religious 
 object was directly in view. In speaking of the family 
 of nations, an Evangelical poet is of course a preacher of 
 peace and human brotherhood. lie has even in some lines 
 of Charity, which also were dear to Cobden, remarkably 
 anticipated the sentiment of modern economists respecting 
 the influence of free trade in making one nation of mankind. 
 The passage is defaced by an atrociously bad simile : — 
 
 "Again — the band of comnicrco was dcsign'd, 
 To associate all the branches of mankind, 
 And if a boiimlless 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, 
 4* 
 
76 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 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 tlien, however, in reading The Task^ we come 
 across a dasli of warlike patriotism which, amidst the gen- 
 eral philanthropy, surprises and offends the reader's palate, 
 like the taste of garlic in our butter. 
 
 An innocent Epicurism, tempered by religious asceticism 
 of a mild kind — such is the philosophy of The Task; and 
 such the ideal embodied in the portrait of the happy man 
 with which it concludes. AYhatever may be said of the 
 religious asceticism, the Epicurism required a corrective to 
 redeem it from selfishness and guard it against self-deceit. 
 This solitary was serving humanity in the best way he 
 could, not by his prayers, as in one rather fanatical pas- 
 sage he suggests, but by his literary work ; he had need 
 also to remember that humanity was serving him. The 
 newspaper through which he looks out so complacently 
 into the great " Babel," has been printed in the great Babel 
 itself, and brought by the poor postman, with his " spat>- 
 tered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks," to the recluse 
 sitting comfortably by his fireside. The " fragrant lymph " 
 poured by " the fair" for their companion in his cosy seclu- 
 sion, has been brought over the sea by the trader, who must 
 encounter the moral dangers of a trader's life, as well as the 
 perils of the stormy wave. It is delivered at the door by 
 
 " The waggoner who bears 
 The pelting brunt of the tempestuous night, 
 
v.] THE TASK. 77 
 
 With lialf-sliut eyes and puckered clieeks and teeth 
 Presented bare against the storm ;" 
 
 and whose coarseness and callousness, as he whips his team, 
 arc the consequences of the hard calling in which he minis- 
 ters to the reclnse's pleasure and refinement. If town life 
 has its evils, from the city comes all that makes retirement 
 comfortable and civilized, lietircment without the city 
 would have been bookless, and have fed on acorns. 
 
 Rousseau is conscious of the necessity of some such in- 
 stitution as slavery, by way of basis for his beautiful life 
 according to nature. The celestial purity and felicity of 
 St. Pierre's Paul and Virginia arc sustained by the labour 
 of two faithful slaves. A weak point of Cowper's philos- 
 ophy, taken apart from liis own saving activity as a poet, 
 betrays itself in a somewhat similar way. 
 
 " Or if the garden with its many cares 
 All well repaid demand him, ho attends 
 The welcome call, conscious how much the hand 
 Of luhhard labour needs his watchful eye, 
 Oft loitering lazily if not o'erseeu ; 
 Or misapplying his unskilful strength 
 But much performs himself, no icorks indeed 
 That asTc robust tough sineus 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 allow- 
 ing our own happiness to be enhanced by contrast with 
 the less happy condition of others : 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 the ut- 
 most of his limited capacity. 
 
78 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 Botli in tlie Moral Satires and in The Task, there are 
 sweeping denunciations of amusements whicli we now just- 
 ly deem innocent, and without which, or something equiv- 
 alent to them, the wrinhles on the brow of care could not 
 be smoothed, nor life preserved from dulness and morose- 
 ness. There is fanaticism in this, no doubt ; but in justice 
 to the Methodist as well as to the Puritan, let it be remem- 
 bered that the stage, card parties, and even dancing, once 
 had in them something from which 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 a perpetual protest not only' 
 against the fashionable vices and the irreligion but against 
 the hardness of the world; and in a world which worship- 
 ped Chesterfield the protest was not needless, nor was it 
 ineffective. Among the most tangible characteristics of 
 this special sensibility is the tendency of its brimming love 
 of humankind to overflow upon animals; and of this there 
 are marked instances in some passages of The Task. 
 
 " I would not enter on my list of friends 
 (Thougli graced' with polished manners and fine souse, 
 Yet wanting sensibility) the man 
 Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm." 
 
 Of Cowper's sentimentalism (to use the word in a neu- 
 tral sense), part flowed from his own temperament, part 
 was Evangelical, but part belonged to an element which 
 was European, which produced the JVoiivelle Heloise and 
 the Sorroios of Werther, and which was found among the 
 Jacobins in sinister companionship with the cruel frenzy 
 of the Revolution. Cowper shows us several times that 
 
v.] THE TASK. 19 
 
 ho had been a reader of Rousseau, nor did he fail to pro- 
 duce in his time a measure of the same effect which llous- 
 scau produced ; though there have been so many senti- 
 mentalists since, and the vein has been so much worked, 
 that it is difficult to carry ourselves back in imagination 
 to the day in which Parisian ladies could forego balls to 
 read the NouvcUe Heloise, or the stony heart of people of 
 the world could be melted by The Task. 
 
 In his versification, as in his descriptions, Cowper flat- 
 tered himself that he imitated no one. But he manifest- 
 ly imitates the softer passages of Milton, whose music he 
 compares in a rapturous passage of one of his letters to 
 that of a fine organ. To produce melody and variety, he, 
 like Milton, avails himself fully of all the resources of a 
 composite language. Blank verse confined to short Anglo- 
 Saxon words is apt to strike the ear, not like the swell of 
 an organ, but like the tinkle of a musical-box. 
 
 The Task made Cowper famous. He was told that ho 
 had sixty readers at the Hague alone. The interest of his 
 relations and friends in him revived, and those of Avhom 
 he had heard nothing for many years cmulously renewed 
 their connexion. Colman and Thurlow reopened their cor- 
 respondence 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 his judgment. His portrait 
 was taken by famous painters. Literary lion-hunters be- 
 gan to fix tlieir eyes upon him. His renown spread even 
 to Olney. The clerk of All Saints', Northampton, came 
 over to ask him to write the verses annually appended to 
 the bill of mortality for that parish. Cowper suggested 
 that " there were several men of genius in Northampton, 
 particularly Mr. Cox, the statuary, wlio, as everybody knew, 
 
80 COWPER. [cuAP. T. 
 
 was a first -rate maker of verses." "Alas!" replied the 
 clerk, " I have heretofore borrowed help from him, but he 
 is a gentleman of so much reading that the people of our 
 town cannot understand him." The compliment was irre- 
 sistible, and for seven years the author of The Task wrote 
 the mortuary verses for All Saints', Northampton. , Amuse- 
 ment, not profit, was Cowper's aim ; he rather rashly gave 
 away his copyright to his publisher, and his success does 
 not seem to have brought him money in a direct way ; but 
 it brought him a pension of 300Z. in the end. In the 
 meantime it brought him presents, and among them an 
 annual gift of 50^. from an anonymous hand, the first in- 
 stalment being accompanied by a pretty snufE-box orna- 
 mented with a picture of the three hares. From the grace- 
 fulness of the gift, Southey infers that it came from a 
 woman, and he conjectures that the woman was Theodora. 
 
CHAPTER YI. 
 
 SHORT POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS. 
 
 The TasJc was not quite finished wlien the influence wliich 
 had inspired it was withdrawn. Among the little mys- 
 teries and scandals of literary history is the rupture be- 
 tween Cowper and Lady Austen. Soon after the com- 
 mencement of their friendship there had been a " fracas," 
 of which Cowper gives an account in a letter to William 
 Unwin. " My letters have already apprised you of that 
 close and intimate connexion that took place between the 
 lady you visited in Queen Anne Street and us. Nothing 
 could be more promising, though sudden in the com- 
 mencement. She treated us with as much unreservedness 
 of communication, as if we had been born in the same 
 house and educated together. At her departure, she her- 
 self proposed a correspondence, and, because writing does 
 not agree with your mother, proposed a correspondence 
 with me. This sort of intercourse had not been long 
 maintained before I discovered, by some slight intimations 
 of it, that she had conceived displeasure at somewhat I 
 had Avritten, though I cannot now recollect it; conscious 
 of none but the most upright, inoffensive intentions, I yet 
 apologized for the passage in question, and the flaw was 
 healed again. Our correspondence after this proceeded 
 smoothly for a considerable time ; but at length, having 
 had repeated occasion to observe that she expressed a sort 
 
82 COWrER. [chap. 
 
 of romantic idea of our merits, and built such expectations 
 of felicity upon our friendship, as we were sure that noth- 
 ing human could possibly answer, I wrote to remind her 
 that we were mortal, to recommend her not to think more 
 highly of us than the subject would warrant, and intimat- 
 ing that when we embellish a creature with colors taken 
 from our own fancy, and, so adorned, admire and praise it 
 beyond its real merits, we make it an idol, and have noth- 
 ing to expect in the end but that it will deceive our 
 hopes, and that we shall derive nothing from it but a 
 painful conviction of our error. Your mother heard me 
 read the letter ; she read it herself, and honoured it with 
 her warm approbation. But it gave mortal offence ; it 
 received, indeed, an answer, but such an one as I could by 
 no means reply to ; and there ended (for it was impossible 
 it should ever be renewed) a friendship that bid fair to be 
 lasting; being formed with a woman Avhose seeming sta- 
 bility of temper, whose knowledge of the world and great 
 experience of its folly, but, above all, whose sense of relig- 
 ion and seriousness of mind (for with all that gaiety she 
 is a great thinker) induced us both, in spite of that cau- 
 tious reserve that marked our characters, to trust her, to 
 love and value her, and to open our hearts for her recep- 
 tion. It may be necessary to add that, by her own desire, 
 I wrote to her under the assumed relation of a brother, 
 and she to me as my sister. Ceu fiimus in auras.'''' It is 
 impossible to read this without suspecting that there was 
 more of "romance" on one side than there was either of 
 romance or of consciousness of the situation on the other. 
 On that occasion the reconciliation, though " impossible," 
 took place, the lady sending, by way of olive branch, a 
 pair of ruffles, which it was known she had begun to work 
 before the quarrel. The second rupture was final. Hay- 
 
VI.] SHORT POEMS AND TKANSLATIOXS. 83 
 
 ley, wlio treats the matter with sad solemnity, tells us that 
 Cowpcr's letter of fare\Yell to Lady Austen, as she assured 
 him herself, Avas 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 lleskcth, 
 with reference to the final rupture, a version of the whole 
 affair : — " There came a lady into this country, by name 
 and title Lady Austen, the widow of the late Sir Robert 
 Austen. At first she lived with her sister about a mile 
 from Olncy ; but in a few weeks took lodgings at the Vic- 
 arage here. Between the Vicarage and the back of our 
 house are interposed our garden, an orchard, and the gar- 
 den belonging to the Vicarage. She had lived much in 
 France, was very sensible, and had infinite vivacity. She 
 took a great liking to us, and we to her. She had been 
 used to a great deal of company, and we, fearing that she 
 would feel such a transition into silent retirement irk- 
 some, contrived to give her our agreeable company often. 
 Becoming continually more and more intimate, a practice 
 at length obtained of our dining with each other alter- 
 nately every day, Sundays excepted. In order to facili- 
 tate our communication, we made doors in the two gar- 
 den-walls aforesaid, by which means we considerably short- 
 ened the way from one house to the other, and could 
 meet when we pleased without entering the town at all — a 
 measure the rather expedient, because the town is abomi- 
 nably dirty, and she kept no carriage. On her first settle- 
 ment in our neighbourhood, I made it my own particular 
 business (for at that time I was not employed in writing, 
 having published ray first volume and not begun my sec- 
 ond) to pay my devoirs to her ladyship every morning at 
 eleven. Customs very soon became laws. I began The 
 Tasl; for she was the lady who gave me the Sofa for a 
 
84 COWrER. [CHAP. 
 
 subject. Being once engaged in the work, I began to feel 
 the inconvenience of my morning attendance. We had 
 seldom breakfasted ourselves till ten ; and the intervening 
 hour Avas all the time I could find in the -whole day for 
 writing, and occasionally it would happen that the half 
 of that hour was all that I could secure for the purpose. 
 But there was no remedy. Long usage had made that 
 Avhich was at first optional a point of good manners, and 
 consequently of necessity, and I was forced to neglect The 
 Task to attend upon the Muse who had inspired the sub- 
 ject. But she had ill-health, and before I had quite fin- 
 ished the work was obliged to repair to Bristol," Evi- 
 dently this was not the whole account of the matter, or 
 there would have been no need for a formal letter of fare- 
 well. We are very sorry to find the revered Mr. Alexan- 
 der Knox saying, in his correspondence with Bishop Jebb, 
 that he had a severer idea of Lady Austen than he should 
 wish to put into writing for publication, and that he al- 
 most suspected she Avas a very artful woman. On the 
 other hand, the unsentimental Mr. Scott is reported to 
 have said, " Who can be surprised that two women should 
 be continually in the society of one man and not quarrel, 
 sooner or later, with each other ?" Considering what Mrs. 
 ITnwin had been to Cowper, and what he had been to her, 
 a little jealousy on her part would not have been highly 
 criminal. But, as Southey observes, we shall soon see two 
 women continually in the society of this very man with- 
 out quarrelling with each other. That Lady Austen's be- 
 haviour to Mrs. Unwin was in the highest degree affec- 
 tionate, Cowper has himself assured us. Whatever the 
 cause may have been, this bird of paradise, having alight- 
 ed for a moment in Olney, took wing and was seen no 
 more. 
 
Ti.] SHORT POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS. 85 
 
 llcr place as a companion was supplied, and more than 
 supplied, by Lady Ilcslvcth, like her a woman of the world, 
 and almost as bright and vivacious, but with more sense 
 and staliility of character, and who, moreover, could be 
 treated as a sister without any danger of misunderstanding. 
 The renewal of the intercourse between Cowper and the 
 merry and affectionate play-fellow of his early days, had 
 been one of the best fruits borne to liim by The Task, or 
 perhaps wc should rather say by John Gilpin; for on read- 
 ing that ballad she first became aware that her cousin had 
 emerged from the dark seclusion of his truly Christian 
 happiness, and might again be capable of intercourse with 
 her sunny nature. Full of real happiness for Cowper were 
 her visits to OIney ; the announcement of her coming 
 threw him into a trepidation of delight. And how was 
 this new rival received by Mrs. XJnwin ? " There is some- 
 thing," says Lady Ileskcth, in a letter which has been al- 
 ready quoted, " truly affectionate and sincere in Mrs. Un- 
 win's manner. No one can express more heartily than 
 she docs her joy to have me at Olney; and as this must 
 be for his sake, it is an additional proof of her regard and 
 esteem for him." She could even cheerfully yield prece- 
 dence in trifles, which is the greatest trial of all. " Our 
 friend," says Lady ITesketh, " delights in a large tabic and 
 a large chair. There arc two of the latter comforts in my 
 parlour. I am sorry to say that he and I always spread 
 ourselves out in them, leaving poor Mrs. Unwin to find all 
 the comfort she can in a small one, half as high again as 
 ours, and considerably harder than marble. However, she 
 protests it is what she likes, that she prefers a high chair 
 to a low one, and a hard to a soft one ; and I hope she 
 is sincere ; indeed, I am persuaded she is." She never 
 gave the slightest reason for doubting her sincerity ; so 
 
86 COWPEK. [chap. 
 
 Mr. Scott's coarse theory of the " two women " falls to the 
 ground; though, as Lady Hesketh was not Lady Austen, 
 room is still left for the more delicate and interesting hy- 
 pothesis. 
 
 By Lady Hesketh's care Cowper was at last taken out 
 of the "well" at Olney and transferred, with his partner, 
 to a house at Weston, a place in the neighbourhood, but 
 on higher ground, more cheerful, and in better air. The 
 house at ATeston belonged to Mr. Throckmorton, of Wes- 
 ton Hall, with whom and Mrs. Throckmorton, Cowper had 
 become so intimate that they were already his Mr. and 
 Mrs. Frog. It is a proof of his freedom from fanatical 
 bitterness that he was rather drawn to them by their being 
 Eoman Catholics, and having suffered rude treatment from 
 the Protestant 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 sx^ace 
 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 swiug uncertain, and yet falls 
 Full on the destined ear. Wide flies the chaff, 
 The rustling straw sends uj) a fragrant mist 
 Of atoms, sparkling in the noonday heam." 
 
 A pretty little vignette, which the threshing-machine has 
 now made antique. There were ramblings, picnics, and 
 
Ti] SHORT roEMS AND THANSLATIU-NS. 87 
 
 little diuucr- parties. Lady lleskcth kept a carriage. 
 Gayluirst, the seat of Mr. Wright, was visited, as well as 
 Weston Ilall ; the life of the lonely pair was fast becom- 
 ing social. The Rev. John Newton was absent in the 
 flesh, but he was present in the spirit, thanks to the tattle 
 of Olncy. To show that lie was, he addressed to Mrs. Un- 
 win a letter of remonstrance on the serious change which 
 had taken place in the habits of his spiritual children. It 
 was answered by her companion, who in repelling the cen- 
 sure mingles the dignity of self-respect Avith a just appre- 
 ciation of the censor's motives, in a style wliich showed 
 that although he was sometimes mad, he was not a fool. 
 
 Having succeeded in one great poem, Cowpcr thought 
 of writing another, and several subjects were started — The 
 Mcdilcrrancan, The Four Ages of Man, Yardley Oak. 
 The Mediterranean would not have suited him well if it 
 was to be treated historically, for of history he was even 
 more ignorant than most of those Avho have had the bene- 
 fit of a classical education, being capable of believing that 
 the Latin element of our language had come in Avith the 
 Roman conquest. Of the Four Ages he wrote a frag- 
 ment. Of Yardley Oah he Avrotc the opening; it Avas, 
 apparently, to have been a survey of the countries in con- 
 nexion with an immemorial oak Avhich stood in a neigh- 
 bouring chace. Bat he Avas forced to say that the mind 
 of man Avas not a fountain but a cistern, and his Avas a 
 broken one. He had expended his stock of materials for 
 a long poem in The Task. 
 
 These, the sunniest days of Cowper's life, hoAvever, gave 
 birth to many of those short poems Avhich are perhaps 
 his best, certainly his most popular Avorks, and Avhich Avill 
 probably keep his name alive when The Task is read only 
 in extracts. The Loss of the Royal George, The Solitude 
 
88 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 of Alexander Selkirk, The Poplar Field, The Shrubbery, 
 the Lines on a Young Lady, and those To Mary, will hold 
 then- places forever in the treasury of English Lyrics. In 
 its humble way The Needless Alarm is one of the most 
 perfect of human compositions. Cowper had reason to 
 complain of ^sop for having written his fables before 
 him. One great charm of these little pieces is their per- 
 fect spontaneity. Many of them were never published; 
 and generally they have the air of being the simple effu- 
 sions of the moment, gay or sad. When Cowper was in 
 good spirits his joy, intensified by sensibility and past suf- 
 fering, played like a fountain of light on all the little in- 
 cidents of his quiet life. An ink-glass, a flatting mill, a 
 halibut served up for dinner, the killing of a snake in the 
 garden, the arrival of a friend wet after a journey, a cat 
 shut up in a drawer, sufficed to elicit a little jet of poetical 
 delight, the highest and brightest jet of all being John Gil- 
 pin, Lady Austen's voice and touch still faintly live in 
 two or three pieces which were written for her harpsichord. 
 Some of the short poems, on the other hand, are poured 
 from the darker urn, and the finest of them all is the sad- 
 dest. There is no need of illustrations unless it be to call 
 attention to a secondary quality less noticed than those of 
 more importance. That which used to be specially called 
 " wit," the faculty of ingenious and unexpected combina- 
 tion, such as is shown in the similes of JIudibras, was pos- 
 sessed by Cowper in large measure. 
 
 " A friendship that in frequent fits 
 Of controversial rage emits 
 The sparks of disputation, 
 Like baud-in-liand insurance i)latcs, 
 Most unavoidably creates 
 
 The thoiigUt of conflagration. 
 
VI.] SHORT rOEilS AND TKANSLATIONS. 89 
 
 " Some fickle creatures boast a soul 
 True as a uecdlo to the polo, 
 
 Their Lumour yet so A'arious — 
 They inauifest their Avholo life through 
 The needle's tleviations too, 
 
 Their love is so precarious. 
 
 '• The great aud small but rarely meet 
 On terms of amity complete ; 
 
 riebeiaus must surremler, 
 And yield so mucli to noble folk, 
 It is eombiuiug lire uith smoke, 
 
 Obscurity with splendour. 
 
 " Some are so placid and screno 
 (As Irish bogs are always greeu), 
 
 They sleep secure from waking ; 
 And arc indeed a bog, that bears 
 Your unparticipated cares 
 
 Unmoved aud without quaking. 
 
 "Courtier and patriot cannot mix 
 Their heterogeneous politics 
 
 AVithout an eftervesccnce. 
 Like that of salts with lemon juice, 
 "Which docs 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 the lyrical depth and passion 
 of the great Revolution poets Cowper is wholly devoid. 
 Ilis soul was stirred by no movement so mighty, if it were 
 even capable of the impulse. Tenderness he has, and 
 pathos as well as playfulness ; he has unfailing grace and 
 ease : lie has clearness like that of a trout-stream. Fash- 
 
90 COWPEK. [chap. 
 
 ions, even our fashions, change. Tlic move metaphysical 
 poetry of our time has indeed too much in it, besides the 
 metaphysics, to be in any danger of being ever laid on the 
 shelf with the once admired conceits of Cowley; yet it 
 may one day in part lose, while the easier and more limpid 
 kind of poetry may in part regain, its charm. 
 
 The opponents of the Slave Trade tried to enlist this 
 winning voice in the service of their cause. Cowper dis- 
 liked the task, but he wrote two or three anti-Slave-Trade 
 ballads. The Slave Trader in the Dumios, with its ghastl^'^ 
 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 ex- 
 hausted, the rill of occasional poems still ran freely, fed by 
 a spring which, so long as life presented the most trivial 
 object or incident, could not fail. Why did not Cowper 
 go on writing these charming pieces, which he evidently 
 produced with the greatest facility ? Instead of this, he 
 took, under an evil star, to translating Homer. The trans- 
 lation of Homer into verse is the Polar Expedition of lit- 
 erature, always failing, yet still desperately renewed. Ho- 
 mer defies modern reproduction. His primeval simplicity 
 is a dew of the dawn which can never be re-distillcd. His 
 primeval savagery is almost equally unpresentable. What 
 civilized poet can don the barbarian sufficiently to revel, or 
 seem to revel, in the ghastly details of carnage, in hideous 
 wounds described with surgical gusto, in the butchery of 
 captives in cold blood, or even in those particulars of the 
 shambles and the spit which to the troubadour of barba- 
 rism seem as delightful as the images of the harvest and 
 the vintage? Poetry can be translated into poetry only 
 by taking up the ideas of the original into the mind of 
 the translator, which is very difficult whcu the translator 
 
VI.] SHORT rOEMS AND TiU.NSLATIONS. !)1 
 
 and the orii^lnal arc separated by a gulf of tliouglit and 
 fcclinjr, and when the gulf is very wide, becomes impossi- 
 ble. There is nothing for it in the case of llomcr l)ut a 
 prosG translation. Even in prose to find perfect equiva- 
 lents for some of the Homeric phrases is not easy. "What- 
 ever tlic clironological date of the Homeric poems may be, 
 their political and psychological date may be pretty well 
 fixed. Politically they belong, as the episode of Thersitcs 
 shows, to the rise of democracy and to its first collision 
 Avith aristocracy, which Homer regards with the feelings 
 of a bard who sang in aristocratic halls. Psychologically 
 they belong to the time when, in ideas and language, the 
 moral was just disengaging itself from the physical. In 
 the wail of Andromache, for instance, adinon ejjos, which 
 Pope improves into " sadly dear," and Cowper, with bet- 
 ter taste at all events, renders "precious," is really semi- 
 physical, and scarcely capable of exact translation. It be- 
 longs to an unrcproduciblc past, like the fierce joy which, 
 in the same wail, bursts from the savage woman in the 
 midst of her desolation at the thought of the numbers 
 whom her husband's hands had slain. Cowper had studied 
 the Homeric poems thoroughly in his youth ; he knew 
 them so well that he was able to translate them, not very 
 incorrectly with only the help of a Clavis; he understood 
 their peculiar qualities as well as it was possible for a read- 
 er without the historic sense to do; he had compared 
 Pope's translation carefully with the original, and had de- 
 cisively noted the defects which make it not a version of 
 Homer, but a periwigged epic of the Augustan age. In 
 his own translation he avoids Pope's faults, and he pre- 
 serves at least the dignity of the original, while his com- 
 mand of language could never fail him, nor could he ever 
 lack the ^idance of good tasto. But wo wull know 
 5 
 
92 COWTEll. [cuAP. 
 
 where he -nill be at his best. We turn at once to such 
 passages as the description of Calypso's Isle. 
 
 " Aligliting on Pieria, down lie (Hermes) stooxicd 
 To Ocean, and tlie billows lightly skimmed 
 In form a sea-mew, sucli as iu the bays 
 Tremendous of tbe baiTcu deep her food 
 Seeking, dips oft in brine ker ample wing. 
 In suck disguise o'er many a waTC be rodo, 
 But reacking, now, tkat isle remote, forsook 
 Tke azure deep, and at tke spacious grove 
 Wkero dwelt tke amber-tressed nympk arrived 
 Found ker witkin. A fire on all tke keartk 
 Blazed sjirig-ktly, and, afar difl'used, tke scent 
 Of smootk-split cedar and of cypress-wood 
 Odorous, burning ckeered tke happy isle. 
 Ske, busied at tke loom and plying fast 
 Her golden skuttle, witk melodious voice 
 Sat ckanting tkere ; a grove on eitker side, 
 Alder and po^dar, and tke redolent branck 
 "Wide-sproad of cypress, skirted dark tke cave 
 AVLore many a bird of broadest pinion built 
 Secure ker nest, tke owl, tke kite, and daw, 
 Long-tongued freriuentcrs of the sandy shores. 
 A garden vine luxuriant ou all sides 
 Mantled tke spacious cavern, clnster-kung 
 Profuse; four fountains of serenest lympk, 
 Tkeir sinuous course pursuing side by side, 
 Strayed all around, and everywkere appeared 
 Meadows of softest verdure purpled o'er 
 Witk 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 natural history ; and " serenest lymph " is a sad de- 
 parture from Homeric simplicity. Still, on the whole, the 
 
Ti.] SHORT rOEMS AND TRANSLATIONS. 93 
 
 passage in the translation cliarms, and its charm is tolera- 
 bly identical -with that of the original. In more martial 
 and stirring passages the failure is more signal, and here 
 especially wc feel that if Pope's rhyming couplets arc sor- 
 ry equivalents for the Homeric hexameter, Llank verse is 
 superior to them only in a negative way. The real equiv- 
 alent, if any, is the romance metre of Scott, parts of whose 
 poems, notably the last canto of Marmion and some pas- 
 sages in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, are about the most 
 Homeric things in our language. Cowper brought such 
 poetic gifts to his work that his failure might have de- 
 terred others from making the same hopeless attempt. 
 But a failure liis work is ; the translation is no more a 
 counterpart of the original, than the Ouse creeping through 
 its meadows is the counterpart of the ^gean rolling be- 
 fore a fresh wind and under a bright sun. Pope delights 
 school-boys ; Cowper delights nobody, though, on the rare 
 occasions when he is taken from the shelf, he commends 
 himself, in a certain measure, to the taste and judgment of 
 cultivated men. 
 
 In his translations of Horace, both those from the Sat- 
 ires and those from the Odes, Cowper succeeds far better. 
 Horace requires in his translator little of the fire which 
 Cowper lacked. In the Odes he requires grace, in the 
 Satires urbanity and playfulness, all of which Cowper had 
 in abundance. Moreover, Horace is separated from iis by 
 no intellectual gulf. He belongs to what Dr. Arnold call- 
 ed the modern period of ancient history. Nor is Cowper's 
 translation of part of the eighth book of Virgil's yEneid 
 bad, in spite of the heaviness of the blank verse. Virgil, 
 like Horace, is within his intellectual range. 
 
 As though a translation of the whole of the Homeric 
 puems had not been enough to bury his finer faculty, and 
 
y 1 COWTER. [cuap. ti. 
 
 prevent him from giving us any more of the minor poems, 
 the publishers seduced him into undertaking an edition 
 of Milton, whicli was to eclipse all its predecessors in splen- 
 dour. Perhaps he may have been partly entrapped by a 
 cliivalrous desire to rescue his idol from the disparagement 
 cast on it by the tasteless and illiberal Johnson. The proj- 
 ect, after weighing on his mind and spirits for some time, 
 was abandoned, leaving as its traces only translations of 
 Milton's Latin poems, and a few notes on Paradise Lost, in 
 which there is too much of religion, too little of art. 
 
 Lady Ilesteth had her eye on the Laureateship, and 
 probably with that view persuaded her cousin to write 
 loyal verses on the recovery of George IIL He wrote 
 the verses, but to the hint of the Laureateship he said, 
 *' Heaven guard my brows from the wreath you mention, 
 whatever wreaths beside may hereafter adorn them. It 
 would be a leaden extinguisher clapt on my genius, and I 
 should never more produce a line worth reading." Be- 
 sides, was he not already the mortuary poet of All Saints, 
 Northampton ? 
 
CHAPTER YIT. 
 
 THE LETTERS. 
 
 SouTiiET, no mean judge in sucli a matter, calls Cowpcr 
 the best of English letter - writers. If the first place is 
 shared with him by any one it is by Byron, rather than 
 by Gray, whose letters are pieces of fine writing, addressed 
 to literary men, or Horace AValpolc, Avhose letters are me- 
 moirs, the English counterpart of St. Simon. The letters 
 both of Gray and AValpole are manifestly written for pub- 
 lication. Those of Cowpcr have the true epistolary charm. 
 They are conversation, perfectly artless, and at the same 
 time autobiography, perfectly genuine ; Avhereas all formal 
 autobiography is cooked. They are the vehicles of the 
 writer's thoughts and feelings, and the mirror of his life. 
 Wc have the strongest proofs that they were not written 
 for publication. In many of them there arc outpourings 
 of wretchedness which could not possibly have been in- 
 tended for any heart but that to which they were ad- 
 dressed, while others contain medical details which no 
 one would have thought of presenting to the public eye. 
 Some, wc know, were answers to letters received but a 
 moment before ; and Southey says that the manuscripts 
 arc very free from erasures. Though Cowpcr kept a note- 
 book for subjects, which no doubt were scarce with liim, 
 it is manifest that he did not premeditate. Grace of form 
 
96 COWrER. [ciiAP. 
 
 he never lucks, but tins was a part of his nature, improved 
 by his classical training. The character and the thoughts 
 presented are those of a recluse who was sometimes a hyp- 
 ochondriac ; the life is life at Olncy. But simple self- 
 revelation is always interesting, and a garrulous playful- 
 ness with great happiness of expression can lend a certain 
 charm even to things most trivial and commonplace. 
 There is also a certain pleasure in being carried back to 
 the quiet days before railways and telegraphs, when peo- 
 ple passed their whole lives on the same spot, and life 
 moved always in the same tranquil round. In truth, it is 
 to such days that letter-writing, as a species of literature, 
 belongs ; telegrams and postal cards have almost killed it 
 now. 
 
 The large collection of Cowper's letters is probably sel- 
 dom taken from the shelf; and the "Elegant Extracts" 
 select those letters which are most sententious, and there- 
 fore least characteristic. Two or three specimens of the 
 other style may not be miwelcome or needless as elements 
 of a biographical sketch ; though specimens hardly do jus- 
 tice to a series of which the charm, such as it is, is evenly 
 diffused, not gathered into centres of brilliancy like Ma- 
 dame de Sevigne's letter on the Orleans Marriage. Here 
 is a letter written in the highest spirits to Lady Hesketh. 
 
 "Obey, Feb. 9th, 1786. 
 "My dearest Cousin, — I have been impatient to tell 
 you that I am impatient to see you again, Mrs. Unwin 
 partakes with me in all my feelings upon this subject, and 
 longs also to see you. I should have told you so by the 
 last post, but have been so completely occupied by this 
 tormenting specimen, that it was impossible to do it. I 
 sent the General a letter on Monday, that would distress 
 
VII.] THE LETTERS. 97 
 
 and alarm liiin ; I sent him another yesterday, that uill, I 
 hope, quiet him again. Johnson has apologized very civ- 
 illy for the multitude of his friend's strictures; and his 
 friend has promised to confine liimself in future to a com- 
 parison of me Avith the original, so that, I doubt not, \\c 
 shall jog on merrily togethei*. And now, my dear, let me 
 tell you once more that your kindness in promising us a 
 visit has charmed us both. I shall sec you again. I shall, 
 hear your voice. Wo shall take walks together. I will 
 show you my prospects — the hovel, the alcove, the Ouse and 
 its banks, everything that I have described. I anticipate 
 the pleasure of those days not very far distant, and feel a 
 part of it at this moment. Talk not of an inn 1 Mention 
 it not for your life ! Wc have never had so many visit- 
 ors but we could easily accommodate them all ; though wc 
 have received TJnwin, and his Avife, and his sister, and his 
 son all at once. My dear, I will not let you come till the 
 end of May, or beginning of June, because before that 
 time my greenhouse will not be ready to receive us, and 
 it is the only pleasant room belonging to us. When the 
 plants go out, wc go in. I line it with mats, and spread 
 the floor with mats ; and there you shall sit with a bed of 
 mignonette at your side, and a h-edge of honeysuckles, 
 roses, and jasmine ; and I will make you a bouquet of myr- 
 tle every day. Sooner than the time I mention the coun- 
 try 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 ves- 
 tibule, if you cast a look on either side of you, you shall 
 see on the right hand a box of my making. It is the box 
 in which have been lodged all my hares, and in which 
 lodges Puss at present ; but he, poor fellow, is worn out 
 with age, and promises to die before you can see him. 
 
98 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 On tlio right Land stands a cupboard, tlic work of the 
 same author ; it was once a dovc-cagc, but I transformed 
 it. Opposite to you stands a table, which I also made ; 
 but a merciless servant having scrubbed it until it became 
 paralytic, it serves no purpose now but of ornament ; and 
 all my clean shoes stand under it. On the left hand, at 
 the further end of this superb vestibule, you will find the 
 door of the parlour, into which I will conduct you, and 
 where I will introduce you to Mrs. Unwin, unless we 
 should meet her before, and where we will be as happy 
 as the day is long. Order yourself, luy cousin, to the 
 Swan at Newport, and there you shall find me ready to 
 conduct you to Olney. 
 
 " My dear, I have told Homer what you say about casks 
 and urns, and have asked him whether he is sure that it is 
 a cask in which Jupiter keeps his wine. lie swears that 
 it is a cask, and that it will never be anything better than 
 a cask to eternity. So, if the god is content with it, we 
 must even wonder at his taste, and be so too. 
 
 " Adieu ! my dearest, dearest cousin. W. C." 
 
 Ilere, by way of contrast, is a letter written in the low- 
 est spirits possible to Mr. Newton. It displays literary 
 grace inalienable even in the depths of hypochondria. It 
 also shows plainly the connexion of hypochondria with 
 the weather. January was a month to the return of 
 Avhich the sufferer always looked forward with dread as a 
 mysterious season of evil. It was a season, especially at 
 Olney, of thick fog combined with bitter frosts. To Cow- 
 per this state of the atmosphei'e appeared the emblem of 
 his mental state ; we see in it the cause. At the close the 
 letter slides from spiritual despair to the worsted-merchant, 
 showing that, as we remarked before, the language of dc- 
 
VII.] THE LETTERS. 99 
 
 spondcncy liad become habitual, and docs not always How 
 from a soul really in the dei)tlis of woe. 
 
 To THE Kkv. John Newton. 
 
 " Jan. 13tli, 1'784. 
 
 " My dear Friend, — I too have taken leave of the old 
 year, and parted with it just when you did, but with very 
 different sentiments and feelings upon the occasion. I 
 looked back upon all the passages and occurrences of it, 
 as a traveller looks back upon a Avildcrness through which 
 lie has passed with weariness and sorrow of heart, reaping 
 no other fruit of his labour than the poor consolation that, 
 dreary as the desert was, he has left it all behind him. 
 The traveller would find even this comfort considerably les- 
 sened if, as soon as lie had passed one wilderness, another 
 of equal length, and equally desolate, should expect him. 
 In this particular, his experience and mine would exactly 
 tally. I should rejoice, indeed, that the old year is over 
 and gone, 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 an acquaintance Avith the events of it yet un- 
 born, 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 unen- 
 lightened man, that he can wish for death, and indulge a 
 hope, at least, that in death he shall find deliverance. But, 
 loaded as my life is with despair, I have no such comfort 
 as would result from a supposed probability of better 
 things to come, were it once ended. For, more unhappy 
 than the traveller with whom I set out, pass through what 
 
100 COWrER. [chap. 
 
 diflBculties I may, tliroiigh Avliatever dangers and afflictions, 
 I am not a vvbit nearer tlie home, unless a dungeon may be 
 called so. This is no very agreeable tlieme ; but in so great 
 a dearth of subjects to Avrite npon, and especially impress- 
 ed as I am at this moment Avith a sense of my own condi- 
 tion, I could choose no other. The weather is an exact 
 emblem of my mind in its present state. A thick fog en- 
 velopes everything, and at the same time it freezes intense- 
 ly. You will tell me that this cold gloom will be succeed- 
 ed by a cheerful spring, and endeavour to encourage me to 
 hope for a spiritual change resembling it ; — but it will be 
 lost labour. Nature revives again ; but a soul once slain 
 lives no more. The hedge that has been apparently dead, 
 is not so ; it will burst into leaf and blossom at the ap- 
 pointed time ; but no such time is appointed 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 will 
 complete a period of eleven years in Avhich I have spoken 
 no other language. It is a long time for a man, whose 
 eyes were once opened, to spend in darkness ; long enough 
 to make despair an inveterate habit ; and such it is in me. 
 My friends, I know, expect that I shall see yet again. 
 They think it necessary to the existence of divine truth, 
 that he who once had possession of it should never finally 
 lose it. I admit the solidity of this reasoning in every 
 case but my own. And why not in my own ? For causes 
 which to them it appears madness to allege, but Avhich 
 rest upon my mind with a weight of immovable convic- 
 tion. If I am recoverable, why am I thus? — why crippled 
 and made useless in the Church, just at that time of life 
 Avhen, my judgment and experience being matured, I might 
 be most useful ? — why cashiered and turned out of service, 
 till, according to the course of nature, there is not life 
 
vii.] THE LETTERS. 101 
 
 enough loft in inc to make amends for the years I have 
 lost — till there is no reasonable hope left that the fruit can 
 ever pay the expense of the fallow ? I forestall the an- 
 swer : — God's ways arc mysterious, and lie giveth no ac- 
 count of Ilis matters — an answer that would serve my 
 purpose as well as theirs to use it. There is a mystery in 
 my destruction, and in time it shall be explained. 
 
 " I am glad you have found so much hidden treasure ; 
 and Mrs. Unwin desires me to tell you that you did her 
 no more than justice in believing that she would rejoice in 
 it. It is not easy to surmise the reason why the reverend 
 doctor, your predecessor, concealed it. Being a subject of 
 a free government, and I suppose full of the divinit}'^ most 
 in fashion, he could not fear lest his riches should expose 
 him to persecution. Nor can 1 suppose that he held it 
 any disgrace for a dignitary of the Church to be wealthy, 
 at a time when Churchmen in general spare no pains to be- 
 come so. But the wisdom of some men has a droll sort 
 of knavishncss in it, much like that of a magpie, who hides 
 what he finds with a deal of contrivance, merely for the 
 pleasure of doing it. 
 
 " Mrs. Unwin is tolerably well. She wishes me to add 
 tliat she shall be obliged to Mrs. Newton, if, when an op- 
 portunity offers, she will give the worsted-merchant a jog. 
 We congratulate you that Eliza does not grow worse, 
 which I know you expected would be the case in the 
 course of the winter. Present our love to her. Remem- 
 ber us to Sally Johnson, and assure yourself that we ro- 
 main as warmly as ever, Yours, W. C. 
 
 " :m. u." 
 
 In the next specimen we shall see the faculty of impart- 
 ing interest to the most trivial incident by the way of tell- 
 
102 COWPEK. [chap. 
 
 ing it. The incident in tliis case is one wliich also forms 
 the subject of the little poem called The Colubriud. 
 
 To THE Rev. AYilliam UnwIn. 
 
 "Aug. 3ia, 1782. 
 
 " My dear Friend, — Entertaining some liope that Mr. 
 Newton's next letter would furnish me with the means of 
 satisfying your inquiry on the subject of Dr. Johnson's 
 opinion, I have till now delayed my answer to your last ; 
 but the information is not yet come, Mr. Newton having 
 intermitted a week more than usual since liis last writing. 
 "When I receive it, favourable or not, it shall be communi- 
 cated to you ; but I am not very sanguine in my expecta- 
 tions from that quarter. Very learned and very critical 
 heads are hard to please. He may, perhaps, treat me with 
 levity for the sake of my subject and design, but the com- 
 position, I think, will hardly escape his censure. Though 
 all doctors may not be of the same mind, there is one doc- 
 tor at least, whom I have lately discovered, my professed 
 admirer. He too, like Johnson, was with difficulty per- 
 suaded to read, having an aversion to all poetry except 
 the Nirjht Thoughts; which, on a certain occasion, when 
 being confined on board a ship, he had no other employ- 
 ment, he got by heart. He was, however, prevailed upon, 
 and read me several times over ; 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 then al- 
 lotted to the Doctor : his name is Ilcnny, and he lives at 
 Newport Paguel. 
 
 " It is a sort of paradox, but it is true : we are never 
 more in danger than when Ave think ourselves most secure, 
 nor in reality more secure than when avc seem to be most 
 
Ml.] THE LETTKUS. 103 
 
 ill danger. Both sides of this apparent contradiction Avcrc 
 lately verified in my experience. Passing from the green- 
 house to the barn, I saw three kittens (for we have so 
 many in our retinue) looking with fixed attention at some- 
 thing, which lay on the threshold of a door, coiled up. I 
 took but little notice of them at first; but a loud hiss en- 
 gaged mo to attend more closely, when behold — a viper ! 
 the largest I remember to have seen, rearing itself, darting 
 its forked tongue, and ejaculating the aforementioned hiss 
 at the nose of a kitten, almost in contact with his lips, I 
 ran into the hall 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 feared had escaped mc. 
 Still, however, the kitten sat Avatching immovably upon 
 the same spot. I concluded, therefore, that, sliding be- 
 tween the door and the threshold, he had found his way 
 out of the garden into the yard. I went round immedi- 
 ately, and there found him in close conversation with the 
 old cat, whose curiosity being excited by so novel an ap- 
 pearance, inclined her to pat his head repeatedly with her 
 fore foot; with her claws, however, sheathed, and not in 
 anger, but in the way of philosophical inquiry and exami- 
 nation. To prevent her falling a victim to so laudable an 
 exercise of her talents, I interposed in a moment with the 
 hoe, and performed an act of decapitation, 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 
 the yard, met with no interruption from the cat, and se- 
 creted himself in any of the outhouses, it is hardly possi- 
 ble but that some of the family must have been bitten ; 
 lie might have been trodden upon without being per- 
 ceived, and have slipped away before the sufferer could 
 have well distinu-nisjicd wliat f<)(3 had woiiiidcd him. 
 
104 COWTEH. [CUAP. 
 
 Three years ai;o -we discovered one in the same place, 
 which the barber slew witli a trowel. 
 
 " Our i^roposed removal to Mr. Small's was, as you sup- 
 pose, a jest, or rather a joco-serious matter. We never 
 looked upon it as entirely feasible, yet we saw in it some- 
 thing so like practicability, that we did not esteem it alto- 
 gether unworthy of our attention. It was one of those 
 projects which people of lively imaginations play with, 
 and admire for a few days, and then break in pieces. 
 Lady Austen returned on Thursday from London, where 
 she spent the last fortnight, and whither she was called by 
 an unexpected opportunity to dispose of tbe remainder of 
 her lease. She has now, therefore, no longer any connex- 
 ion with the great city ; she has none on earth whom she 
 calls friends but us, and no house but at Olney. ller 
 abode is to be at the Vicarage, where she has hired as 
 much room as she Avants, which she will embellish with 
 her own furniture, and whicli she will occupy, as soon as 
 the minister's wife has produced another child, which is 
 expected to make its entry in October. 
 
 " Mr. Bull, a dissenting minister of Newport, a learned, 
 ingenious, good-natured, pious friend of ours, who some- 
 times visits us, and whom we visited last Aveek, has put 
 into my hands three volumes of French poetry, 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 
 welcome to have nothing to do Avith her, but in the mean- 
 time her verse is the only French verse I ever read that I 
 found agreeable; there is a neatness in it equal to that 
 which we applaud with so much reason in the composi- 
 tions of Prior. I have translated several of them, and 
 shall proceed in my translations till I have filled a Lillipu- 
 tian paper-book I happen to have by me, which, when fill- 
 
VII.] THE LETTERS. ^ , in> 
 
 cd, I shall present to Mr. Lull. lie is her passionato ad- 
 mirer, rode twenty miles to see her picture in tlic house of 
 a stranger, -which stranger politely insisted on liis accept- 
 ance of it, and it now hangs over his parlour chimney. It 
 is a striking portrait, too characteristic not to be a strong*' 
 resemblance, and "were it encompassed with a glory, in- 
 stead of being dressed in a nun's hood, might pass for the '" 
 face of an angel. 
 
 "Our meadows arc covered with a winter-flood in Au- 
 gust; the rushes with which our bottomless chairs were 
 to have been bottomed, and much hay, which was not car- 
 ried, are gone down the river on a voyage to Ely, and it is 
 oven uncertain whether they will ever return. Sic transit 
 gloria miindi! 
 
 " I am glad you have found a curate ; may ho answer 1 
 Am happy in Mrs. Bouveric's continued approbation; it 
 is worth while to write for such a reader. Yours, 
 
 " W. C." 
 
 The power of imparting interest to commonplace inci- 
 dents is so gi'cat that we read with a sort of excitement a 
 minute account of tlie conversion of an old card-table into 
 a writing and dining tabic, with the causes and conse- 
 quences of that momentous event; curiosity having been 
 first cunningly aroused by the suggestion that the clerical 
 friend to whom the letter is addressed might, if the mys- 
 tery were not explained, be haunted by it when he was 
 getting into his pulpit, at which time, as he had told Cow- 
 per, perplexing questions were apt to come into his mind. 
 
 A man who lived by himself could have little but him- , 
 self to write about. Yet in these letters there is hardly a 
 touch of offensive egotism. Nor is there any qucrulous- 
 ncss, except that of religious despondency. From those 
 
10« COWrER. [chap. 
 
 weaknesses Cowpcr Avas free. Of his proneness to self- 
 revelation we have bad a specimen already. 
 
 The minor antiquities of the generations immediately 
 preceding ours are becoming rare, as compared with those 
 of remote ages, because nobody thinks it worth while to 
 preserve them. It is almost as easy to get a personal 
 memento of Priam or Nimrod as it is to get a harpsichord, 
 a spinning -Avheel, a tinder-box, or a scratch - back. An 
 Egyptian wig is attainable, a wig of the Georgian era is 
 hardly so, much less a tie of the Regency. So it is with 
 the scenes of common life a century or two. ago. They 
 arc being lost, because they were familiar. Here are two 
 of them, however, which liave limned themselves with the 
 distinctness of the camcra-obscura on the page of a chron- 
 icler of trifles. 
 
 To THE Rev. John Newton. 
 
 "Nov. 17th, 1783. 
 "My dear Friend, — The country around is much 
 alarmed with apprehensions of fire. Two have happened 
 since that of Olney. One at Ilitchin, where the damage is 
 said to amount to eleven thousand pounds ; and another, 
 at a place not far from Ilitchin, of which I have not yet 
 learnt the name. Letters have been dropped at Bedford, 
 threatening to burn the town ; and the inhabitants have 
 been so intimidated as to have placed a guard in many parts 
 of it, several nights past. Since our conflagration here, we 
 have sent two women and a boy to the justice for depre- 
 dation ; S. R. for stealing a piece of beef, which, in her ex- 
 cuse, she said she intended to take care of. This lady, 
 Avhom you avcII remember, escaped for want of evidence ; 
 not that evidence was wanting, but our men of Gotham 
 jiulged it unnecessary to send it. With her went the 
 
VII.] THE LETTERS. 107 
 
 woman I mentioned before, who, it seems, lias made some 
 sort of profession, but npon tliis occasion allowed herself a 
 latitude of conduct rather inconsistent with it, having filled 
 her apron with wcaring-appurel, which she likewise intend- 
 ed to take care of. She would have gone to the county 
 gaol, had William Kaban, the baker's son, who prosecuted, 
 insisted upon it; but he, good-naturedl}', though I think 
 weakly, interposed in her favour, and begged her off. The 
 young gentleman who accompanied these fair ones is the 
 junior son of Molly Boswell. lie had stolen some iron- 
 work, the property of Griggs the butcher. Being convict- 
 ed, ho was ordered to be whipped, which operation he un- 
 derwent at the cart's tail, from the stone-house to the high 
 arch, and back again. lie seemed to show great fortitude, 
 but it was all an imposition npon the public. The beadle, 
 who performed it, had filled his left hand with yellow 
 ochre, through which, after every stroke, he drew the lash 
 of his whip, leaving the appearance of a wound upon the 
 skin, but in reality not hurting him at all. This being 
 perceived by Mr. Constable II., who followed the beadle, 
 lie applied his cane, without any such management or pre- 
 caution, to the shoulders of the too merciful executioner. 
 The scene immediately became more interesting. The 
 beadle could by no means be prevailed upon to strike 
 hard, which provoked the constable to strike harder; and 
 this double flogging continued, till a lass of Silver-End, 
 pitying the pitiful beadle thus suffering under the hands of 
 the pitiless constable, joined the procession, and placing 
 herself immediately behind the latter, seized him by his 
 capillary club, and pulling him backwards by the same, 
 slapped his face with a most Amazon fury. This con- 
 catenation of events has taken up more of my paper than 
 I intended it should, but I could not forbear to inform you 
 
108 COWrER. [chap. 
 
 liow tliG beadle tliraslied the thief, the constable the bea- 
 dle, and the lady the constable, and how the thief was the 
 only person concerned who snffcred nothing. Mr. Tcedon 
 lias been here, and is gone again. He came to thank nic 
 for some Icft-off clothes. In answer to our inquiries after 
 liis health, he replied that he had a slow fever, which made 
 him take all possible care not to inflame his blood. I ad- 
 mitted his prudence, but in his particular instance could 
 not very clearly discern the need of it. Pump water will 
 not heat him much ; and, to speak a little in his own style, 
 more inebriating fluids are to him, I fancy, not very attain- 
 able, lie brought us news, the truth of which, however, 
 I do not vouch for, that the town of Bedford was actually 
 on fire yesterday, and the flames not extinguished when 
 the bearer of the tidings left it. 
 
 " Swift observes, when he is giving his reasons why the 
 preacher is elevated always above his hearers, that, let the 
 crowd be as great as it will below, there is always room 
 enough overhead. If the French philosophers can carry 
 their art of flying to the perfection they desire, the obser- 
 vation 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 very delightful. I dreamt a night or tAvo 
 since that I drove myself through the upper regions in a 
 balloon and pair, with the greatest case and security. Hav- 
 ing finished the tour I intended, I made a short turn, 
 and, with one flourish of my whip, descended ; my horses 
 prancing and curvetting with an infinite share of spirit, 
 but without the least danger, either to me or my vehicle. 
 The time, we may suppose, is at hand, and seems to be 
 prognosticated by my dream, when these airy excursions 
 will be universal, when judges will fly the circuit, and 
 
VII.] THE LETTERS. 109 
 
 bishops their visitations; and when the tour of Europe 
 Avill be performed with much greater speed, and with cqnal 
 advantage, by all who travel merely for the sake of having 
 it to say that they liavc made it. 
 
 "I beg you will accept for yourself and yours our un- 
 feigned love, and remember me affectionately to Mr. Bacon, 
 when you sec him. Yours, my dear friend, 
 
 " Wm. Cowpeu." 
 
 To THE Rev. John Newtox. 
 
 "March 29th, 1784. 
 
 "My dear Friend, — It being his Majesty's pleasure 
 that I should yet have another opportunity to write before 
 he dissolves the Parliament, I avail myself of it with all 
 possible alacrity. I thank you for your last, which was 
 not the less welcome for coming, like an extraordinary 
 gazette, at a time when it was not expected. 
 
 "As when the sea is uncommonly agitated, the water 
 finds its way into creeks and holes of rocks, Avhich in its 
 calmer state it never reaches, in like manner the effect of 
 these turbulent times is felt even at Orchard Side, where, 
 in general, we live as undisturbed by the political element 
 as shrimps or cockles that have been accidentally deposited 
 in some hollow beyond the water-mark, by the usual dash- 
 ing of the waves. We were sitting yesterday after dinner, 
 the two ladies and myself, very composedly, and without 
 the least apprehension of any such intrusion in our snug 
 parlour, one lady knitting, the other netting, and the gen- 
 tleman winding worsted, when to our unspeakable surprise 
 a mob appeared before the window ; a smart rap was 
 heard at the door, the boys bellowed, and the maid an- 
 nounced Mr. Grenville. Puss was unfortunately let out 
 of her box, so that the candidate, with all his good friends 
 
110 COWrER. [chap. 
 
 at liis beds, was refused admittance at the grand entr}', 
 and referred to tLc back door, as tbe only possible way of 
 approach. 
 
 "Candidates arc creatures not very susceptible of af- 
 fronts, and would rather, I suppose, climb in at the win- 
 dow than be absolutely excluded. In a minute, the yard, 
 the Icitchcn, and the parlour were filled. Mr. Grenville, 
 advancing toward me, shook me by the hand witb a de- 
 gree of cordiality that was extremely seducing. As soon 
 as be, and as many more as could find chairs, were seated, 
 be began to open the intent of his visit. I told him I had 
 no vote, for whicb he readily gave me credit. I assured 
 him I had no influence, Avhich he was not equally inclined 
 to believe, and the less, no doubt, becanse Mr. Ashburner, 
 the draper, addressing bimself to me at this moment, in- 
 formed me that I had a great deal. Supposing that I 
 could not be possessed of sucli a treasure 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 where it 
 could be, or wherein it consisted. Thus ended the con- 
 ference. Mr. Grenville squeezed me by the hand again, 
 kissed the ladies, and withdrew. He kissed, likewise, the 
 maid in the kitchen, and seemed, upon the whole, a most 
 loving, kissing, kind-hearted gentleman. He is very young, 
 genteel, and handsome. He has a pair of very good eyes 
 in his head, whicb not being sufficient as it should seem 
 for the many nice and difficult purposes of a senator, he 
 has a third also, whicb he suspended from his buttonhole. 
 The boys halloo'd ; the dogs barked ; puss scampered ; the 
 hero, witb bis long train of obsequious followers, Avith- 
 drew. AVe made ourselves very merry with the adventure, 
 and in a short time settled into our former tranquillity, 
 never probably to be thus interrupted more. I thought 
 
Ml.] THE LETTERS. Ill 
 
 iny.sclf, however, happy in being able to affirm truly th;it 
 I liad not that influence for which he sued; and wliicli, 
 had I been possessed of it, with my present views of the 
 dispute between the Crown and the Commons, I must 
 have refused him, for he is on the side of tlic former. It 
 is comfortable to be of no consequence in a woild wliorc 
 one cannot exercise any without disobliging somebody. 
 The town, liowevcr, seems to be much at iiis service, and 
 if lie be equally successful throughout the country, he w^ill 
 undoubtedly gain his election. Mr. Ashburncr, perhaps, 
 was a little mortified, because it was evident that I owed 
 the honour of this visit to his misrepresentation of my im- 
 portance. But had he thought proper to assure Mr. Gren- 
 ville that I had three heads, I should not, 1 suppose, have 
 been bound to produce them. 
 
 " Mr. Scott, who you say was so much admired in your 
 pulpit, Avould be equally admired in his own, at least by 
 all capable judges, were he not so apt to be angry with his 
 congregation. This hurt liim, and had lie the understand- 
 ing and eloquence of Paul himself, would still hurt him. 
 lie seldom, hardly ever indeed, preaches a gentle, well-tem- 
 pered sermon, but I hear it highly commended; but warmth 
 of temper, indulged to a degree that may be called scold- 
 ing, defeats the end of preaching. It is a misapplication 
 of his powers, which it also cripples, and tears away his 
 hearers. But he is a good man, and may perhaps out- 
 grow it. 
 
 " Many thanks for the worsted, which is excellent. AVc 
 arc as well as a spring hardly less severe than the severest 
 winter will give us leave to be. "With our united love, we 
 conclude ourselves yours and Mrs, Xewton's affectionate 
 and faithful, W. C. 
 
 " M. U." 
 
112 COWrER. [chap. 
 
 In 1789 tlie French Revolution, advancing witli tlmndcr- 
 trcad, makes even the hermit of Weston look up for a 
 moment from his translation of Homer, though he little 
 dreamed that he, "svith his gentle philanthropy and senti- 
 mcntalism, had anything to do with the great overturn of 
 the social and political systems of the past. From time 
 to time some crash of especial magnitude awakens a faint 
 echo in the letters. 
 
 To Lady IIesketii. 
 
 "July 7th, 1< 90. 
 
 " Instead of beginning with the saffron-vested mourning 
 to which Homer invites me, on a morning that has no saf- 
 fron vest to boast, I shall begin with you. It is irksome 
 to us both to wait so long as we must for you, but we are 
 willing to hope that by a longer stay you will make us 
 amends for all this tedious procrastination. 
 
 " Mrs. Unwin has made known her whole case to Mr. 
 Gregson, whose opinion of it has been very consolatory to 
 me ; he says, indeed, it is a case perfectly out of the reach 
 of all physical aid, but at the same time not at all danger- 
 ous. Constant pain is a sad grievance, whatever part is 
 affected, and she is hardly ever free from an aching head, 
 as well as 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, are such in their zeal for freedom ; and if it 
 were possible to make so noble a cause ridiculous, their 
 manner of promoting it could not fail to do so. Princes 
 and peers reduced to plain gentlemanship, and gentles re- 
 duced to a level with their own lackeys, are excesses of 
 which they will repent hereafter. Differences of rank and 
 subordination are, I believe, of God's appointment, and 
 
vii.] THE LETTEKS. 113 
 
 consequently essential to the ^vcll- being of society ; but 
 what wc mean by fanaticism in religion is exactly that 
 ■which animates their politics ; and, unless time should 
 sober them, they will, after all, be an unhappy poo|il(>. 
 IVn'haps it deserves not much to be wondered at, that at 
 their lirst escape from tyrannic shactlcs they should act 
 extravagantly, and treat their kings as they liavo some- 
 times treated their idol. To these, however, they arc 
 reconciled in due time again, but their respect for mon- 
 archy is at an end. They want nothing now but a little 
 English sobriety, and that they want extremely. I heart- 
 ily wish them some wit in their anger, for it were great 
 pity that so many millions should be miserable for want 
 of it." 
 
 This, it win be admitted, is very moderate and unapoca- 
 lyptic. Presently Monarchical Europe takes arms against 
 the Revolution. But there arc two political observers at 
 least who see that Monarchical Europe is making a mis- 
 take — Kaunitz and Cowper. "The French," observes 
 Cowper to Lady llcsketh in December, 1792, "are a vain 
 and childish people, and conduct themselves on this grand 
 occasion with a levity and extravagance nearly akin to mad- 
 ness ; but it would have been better for Austria and Prus- 
 sia to let them alone. All nations liavc a right to choose 
 their own form of government, and the sovereignty of the 
 people is a doctrine that evinces itself ; for, whenever the 
 people choose to be masters, they always are so, and none 
 can liindcr them. God grant that we may have no revo- 
 lution here, but unless we have reform, we certainly shall. 
 Depend upon it, ray dear, the hour has come when power 
 founded on patronage and corrupt majorities must govern 
 this land no lunger. Concessions, too, must be made to 
 
114 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 Dissenters of every denomination. They Lave a riglit to 
 tlicm — a right to all the j^rivileges 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 cordial abhorrence of the doings of the French, 
 he calls them not fiends, but " madcaps," lie expresses 
 the strongest indignation against the Tory mob which 
 sacked Priestley's house at Birmingham, as he docs, in 
 justice be it said, against all manifestations of fanaticism. 
 We cannot help sometimes wishing, as we read these pas- 
 sages in the letters, that their calmness and reasonableness 
 could have been communicated to another " Old "Whig," 
 who was setting the world on fire Avith his anti-revolution- 
 ary rhetoric. 
 
 f It is true, as has already been said, that Cowper was 
 " extramundane ;" and that his political reasonableness was 
 in part the result of the fancy that he and his fellow-saints 
 had nothing to do with the world but to keep themselves 
 clear of it, and let it go its own way to destruction. But 
 it must also be admitted that w^hile the wealth of Estab- 
 lishments of which Burke was the ardent defender, is nec- 
 essarily reactionary in the highest degree, the tendency 
 of religion itself, where it is genuine and sincere, must be 
 to repress any selfish feeling about class or position, and 
 to make men, in temporal matters, more willing to sacri- 
 fice the present to the future, especially where the hope is 
 held out of moral as well as of material improvement. 
 Thus it has come to pass that men who professed and 
 imagined themselves to have no interest in this world 
 have practically been its great reformers and improvers in 
 the political and material as well as in the moral sphere. 
 
 The last specimen shall be one in the more sententious 
 style, and one which proves that Cowper was capable of 
 
vii.] THE LETTERS. 115 
 
 urilitig in ;i judioioiis manner on a (liflieult and delicate 
 question — even a question so diflioult and so delicate as 
 that of the propriety of painting the face. 
 
 To THE IkEV. ^^'lLI.IAM UxWiy. 
 
 "May 3d, 1*781. 
 
 " Mv DEAR FuiEND, — Tlic subjcct of face painting may 
 bo considered, I think, in two points of view. First, tlicro 
 is room for dispute with respect to the consistency of the 
 practice with good morals ; and, secondly, whether it be, on 
 tlie whole, convenient or not, may be a matter worthy of 
 agitation. I set out with all the formality of logical dis- 
 quisition, but do not promise to observe the same regulari- 
 ty any further 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 see none. On the contrary, it seems in that 
 country to be a symptom of modest consciousness, and a 
 tacit confession of what all know to be true, that French 
 faces have, in fact, neither red nor white of their own. 
 This humble acknowledgment of a defect looks the more 
 like a virtue, being found among a people not remarkable 
 for humility. Again, before we can prove the practice to 
 be immoral, we must prove immorality in the design of 
 those who use it; either that they intend a deception, 
 or to kindle unlawful desires in the beholders. ]]ut the 
 French ladies, so far as their purpose comes in question, 
 must be acquitted of both these charges. Nobody sup- 
 poses their colour to be natural for a moment, any more 
 than he would if it were blue or green ; and this unam- 
 biguous judgment of the matter is owing to two causes : 
 first, to the universal knowledge we have, that French 
 Women arc naturally either brown or yellow, with very few 
 6 
 
116 OUWl'EU. [CUAP. 
 
 exceptions; and secondly, to the inartificial manner in 
 which they paint; for they do not, as I am most satisfac- 
 torily informed, even attempt an imitation of nature, but 
 besmear themselves hastily, and at a venture, anxious only 
 to lay on enough. "Where, therefore, there is no wanton 
 intention, nor a Avish to deceive, I can discover no immo- 
 rality. But in England, I am afraid, our painted ladies are 
 not clearly entitled to the same apology. They even imi- 
 tate nature with such exactness that the whole public is 
 sometimes divided into parties, who litigate with great 
 warmth the question whether painted or not? This was 
 remarkably the case with a Miss B , whom I well re- 
 member. Her roses and lilies were never discovered to 
 be spurious till she attained an age that made the suppo- 
 sition of their being natural impossible. This anxiety to 
 be not merely red and white, which is all they aim at in 
 France, but to be thought very beautiful, and mucli more 
 beautiful than Natui'e has made them, is a symptom not 
 very favourable to the idea we would wish to entertain of 
 the chastity, purity, and modesty of our countrywomen. 
 That they are guilty of a design to deceive, is certain. 
 Otherwise why so much art ? and if to deceive, wherefore 
 and with what purpose ? Certainly either to gratify van- 
 ity of the silliest kind, or, which is still more criminal, to 
 decoy and inveigle, and carry on more successfully the 
 business of temptation. Ilere, therefore, my opinion splits 
 itself into two opposite sides upon the same question. I 
 can suppose a French woman, though painted an inch 
 deep, to be a virtuous, discreet, excellent character ; and in 
 no instance should I think the worse of one because she 
 was painted. But an English belle must pardon me if I 
 have not the same charity for her. She is at least an im- 
 postor, whether she cheats me or not, because she means 
 
VII.] THE LETTERS. 117 
 
 to do so; and it i.s ^vell if that be all the censure she de- 
 serves, 
 
 " This brings nic to my second class of ideas upon this 
 topic ; and here I feel that I should be fearfully puzzled 
 were I called upon to recommend the practice on tlie score 
 of convenience. If a husband chose that his wife should 
 paint, perhaps it might be her duty, as well as her interest, 
 to comply. But I think he would not much consult his 
 own, for reasons that will follow. In the first place, she 
 would admire herself the more ; and in the next, if she 
 managed the matter well, she might be more admired by 
 others; an acquisition that might bring her vi'.Uic under 
 trials, to which otherwise it might never have been ex- 
 posed. In no other case, however, can I imagine the prac- 
 tice in this country to be either expedient or convenient. 
 As a general one it certainly is not expedient, because, in 
 general, English women have no occasion for it. A 
 swarthy complexion is a rarity here ; and the sex, especial- 
 ly since inoculation has been so much in use, have very 
 little cause to complain that nature has not been kind to 
 them in the article of complexion. They may hide and 
 spoil a good one, but they cannot, at Ipast they hardly can, 
 give themselves a better. But even if they could, there 
 is yet a tragedy in the sequel which should make them 
 tremble, 
 
 " I understand that in France, thougli the use of rouge 
 be general, the use of white paint is far from being so. 
 In England, she that uses one commonly uses both. Now, 
 all white paints, or lotions, or whatever they may be called, 
 are mercurial ; consequently poisonous, consequently ruin- 
 ous, in time, to the constitution. The Miss B above 
 
 mentioned was a miserable witness of this truth, it being 
 certain that her flesh fell from her bones before she died. 
 
118 COWrER. [ciiAr. yii. 
 
 Lady Coventry was hardly a less melancholy proof of it; 
 and a London physician, perhaps, were he at liberty to 
 blab, could publish a bill of female mortality, of a length 
 that would astonish us. 
 
 " For these reasons I utterly condemn the practice, as it 
 obtains in England ; and for a reason superior to all these, 
 I must disapprove it. I cannot, indeed, discover that 
 Scripture forbids it in so many Avords. But that anxious 
 solicitude about the person, which such an artifice evident- 
 ly betrays, is, I am sure, contrary to the tenor and spirit 
 of it throughout. Show me a woman with a painted face, 
 and I will show you a woman whose heart is set on things 
 of the earth, and not on things above. 
 
 "But this observation of mine applies to it only when 
 it is an imitative art. For, in the use of French women, I 
 think it is as innocent as in the use of a wild Indian, who 
 draws a circle round her face, and makes two spots, per- 
 haps blue, perhaps white, in the middle of it. Such are 
 my thoughts upon the matter. 
 
 " Vive valeque. 
 
 "Yours ever, 
 
 " W. C." 
 
 These letters have been chosen as illustrations of Cow- 
 per's epistolary style, and for that purpose they have been 
 given entire. But they are also the best pictures of his 
 character; and his character is everything. The events 
 of his life worthy of record might all be comprised in a 
 dozen pages. 
 
CHAPTER VI IT. 
 
 CLOSE OF LIFE. 
 
 CowPER says there could not have been a liappier trio on 
 earth than Lady Ileskcth, Mrs. Unwin, and himself. Nev- 
 ertheless, after his removal to Weston, he again went mad, 
 and once more attempted self-destruction. His malady 
 was constitutional, and it settled down upon him as his 
 years increased, and his strength failed. He was now 
 sixty. The OIney physicians, instead of husbanding his 
 vital power, had wasted it away secundum artcm by purg- 
 ing, bleeding, and emetics. He had overworked himself 
 on his fatal translation of Homer, under the burden of 
 which he moved, as he says himself, like an ass overladen 
 with sand-bags. He had 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, itself began to 
 fail. Mrs. Unwin was stricken with paralysis ; the stroke 
 was slight, but of its nature there was no doubt. Her 
 days of bodily life were numbered ; of mental life there 
 remained to her a still shorter span. Her excellent son, 
 William Unwin, had died of a fever soon after the re- 
 moval of the pair to Weston. He had been engaged in 
 the work of liis profession as a clergyman, and wc do not 
 hear of his being often at Olney. But he was in constant 
 correspondence with Cowper, in whoso heart as well as in 
 that of Mrs. Unwin, liis death must have left a great void, 
 
120 COWrER. [chap. 
 
 and Lis support was withdrawn just at the moment when 
 it was about to become most necessary. 
 
 Happily, just at tliis juncture a new and a good friend 
 appeared. Hayley was a mediocre poet, who had for a 
 time obtained distinction above his merits. Afterwards 
 his star had declined, but having an excellent heart, he 
 had not been in the least soured by the downfall of his 
 reputation. He was addicted to a pompous rotundity of 
 style ; perhaps he was rather absurd ; but he was thor- 
 oughly good-natured, very anxious to make himself use- 
 ful, and devoted to Cowper, to whom, as a poet, he looked 
 up with an admiration unalloyed by any other feeling. 
 Both of them, as it happened, were engaged on Milton, 
 and an attempt had been made to set them by the ears ; 
 but Hayley took advantage of it to introduce himself to 
 Cowper with an effusion of the warmest esteem. He v/as 
 at Weston when Mrs. Unwin was attacked with paralysis, 
 and displayed his resource by trying to cure her with an 
 electric-machine. At Eartham, on the coast of Sussex, he 
 had, by an expenditure beyond his means, made for him- 
 self a little paradise, where it was his delight to gather a 
 distinguished circle. To this place he gave the pair a 
 pressing invitation, which was accepted in the vain hope 
 that a change might do Mrs. Unwin good. 
 
 From Weston to Eartham was a three days' journey, an 
 enterprise not undertaken without much trepidation and 
 earnest prayer. It was safely accomplished, however, the 
 enthusiastic Mr. Eose walking to meet his poet and philos- 
 opher on the way. Hayley had tried to get Thurlow to 
 meet Cowper. A sojourn in a country house with the 
 tremendous Thurlow, the only talker for whom Johnson 
 condescended to prepare himself, would have been rather 
 an overpowering pleasure ; and perhaps, after all, it was as 
 
VIII.] CLOSE t»F LIFE. 121 
 
 well that Ilaylcy could only get Cowpcr's discii)le, Hunlis, 
 afterwards professor of poetry at Oxford, and Charlotte 
 Smith. 
 
 At Eavtham, Cowpcr's portrait was painted by llonmcy. 
 
 " Roiuney, expert infallibly to traco 
 On chart or canvas not the form alono 
 Aiul scinblanco, but, however faintly shown 
 TIic 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 
 Tiie artist shining with superior grace ; 
 But this I mark, that symptoms none of woo 
 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 
 AVhen I was Hayley's guest and sat to thee." 
 
 Sonthoy observes that it was likely enough there woidd 
 be no melancholy in the portrait, but that Hayley and 
 Romney fell into a singular error in mistaking for "the 
 light of genius " what Leigh Hunt calls " a fire fiercer than 
 that cither of intellect or fancy, gleaming from the raised 
 and protruded eye." 
 
 Ilayley evidently did his utmost to make his guest hap- 
 py. They spent the hours in literary chat, and compared 
 notes about Milton. The first days were days of enjoy- 
 ment. But soon the recluse began to long for his nook 
 at "Weston. Even the extcnsiveness of the view at Ear- 
 tham made liis mind ache, and increased his melancholy. 
 To AVeston the pair returned ; the paralytic, of course, 
 none the better for her journey. Her mind asAvell as her 
 
122 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 body was now rapidly giving way. "We quote as biogra- 
 phy that wLicli is too well known to be quoted as poetry. 
 
 TO MAEY. 
 
 The tweutietli year is well-uigli past 
 Since first our sky was overcast : — 
 All, would tbat 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, ouce 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, 
 
 INIy Mary ! 
 
 Thy silver locks, once auburn bright, 
 Are still more lovely in my sight 
 Than golden beams of orient light, 
 
 My Mary ! 
 
VIII.] CLOSE OF LIFE. 123 
 
 Foi- coiiUl I view nor tbem nor thee, 
 What sight worth seeing couhl I sec ? 
 The sun avouUI rise in vain for me, 
 
 My Mary! 
 
 Partakers of thy sad decline. 
 
 Thy hands their little force resign ; 
 
 Yet gently prcss'd, press gently mine. 
 
 My Mary ! 
 
 Such feebleness of limbs thou provest, 
 That now at every step thou movest, 
 L''^pheld by two; yet still thou lovcst, 
 
 I\Iy Mary ! 
 
 And still to love, though prcssVl with ill, 
 In wintry age to feel no chill, 
 AV'ith me is to be lovely still, 
 
 My Mary I 
 
 But ah ! by constant heed I know, 
 How oft the sadness that I show 
 Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe, 
 
 My Mary ! 
 
 Ami should my future lot be cast 
 AVith much resemljlaiico of the past, 
 Thy worn-out heart will break at last, 
 
 My Mary! 
 
 Even love, at least the power of manifesting love, bcgvin 
 to betray its mortality. She who had been so devoted, 
 became, as her mind failed, exacting, and instead of sup- 
 porting her partner, drew him down. He sank again into 
 the depth of hypochondria. As usual, his malady took 
 the form of religious horrors, and he fancied that he was 
 ordained to undergo severe penance for his sins. Six days 
 he sat motionless and silent, almost refusing to take food. 
 6* 
 
124 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 His physician suggested, as the ouly chance of arousing 
 him, that Mrs. Tin win should be induced, if possible, to in- 
 vite him to go out with her; with difficulty she was made 
 to understand what they wanted her to do ; at last she 
 said that it was a fine morning, and she should like a walk. 
 Her partner at once rose and placed her arm in his. Al- 
 most unconsciously, she had rescued him from the evil 
 spirit for the last time. The pair were in doleful plight. 
 AVhen their minds failed they had fallen in a miserable 
 manner under the influence of a man named Teedon, a 
 schoolmaster crazed with self-conceit, at whom Cowper in 
 his saner mood had laughed, but whom he now treated as 
 a spiritual oracle, and a sort of medium of communication 
 with the spirit-world, writing down the nonsense which the 
 charlatan talked. Mrs. Unwin, being no longer in a con- 
 dition to control the expenditure, the housekeeping, of 
 course, went wrong; and at the same time her partner lost 
 the protection of the love-inspired tact by which she had 
 always contrived to shield his weakness and to secure for 
 him, in spite of his eccentricities, respectful treatment 
 from his neighbours. Lady Hesketh's health had failed, 
 and she had been obliged to go to Bath. Hayley now 
 proved himself no mere lion-hunter, but a true friend. In 
 conjunction with Cowper's relatives, he managed the re- 
 moval of the pair from Weston to Mundsley, on the coast 
 of Norfolk, where Cowper seemed to be soothed by the 
 sound of the sea; then to Dunham Lodge, near Swafiham ; 
 and finally (in 1796) to East Dereham, where, two months 
 after their arrival, Mrs. Unwin died. Her partner was 
 barely conscious of his loss. On the morning of her death 
 he asked the servant "whether there was life above stairs?" 
 On being taken to see the corpse, he gazed at it for a mo- 
 ment, uttered one passionate cry of grief, and never spoke 
 
Tin.] CLOSE OF LIFE. 125 
 
 of Mrs. Unwln more. He had the misfortune to survive 
 her throe yours and a half, during wliich rchitives and 
 friends were kind, and Miss Perowne partly filled the place 
 of Mrs. TJnwin. Now and then there was a gleam of rea- 
 son and faint revival of literary faculty; but composition 
 was confined to Latin verse or translation, with one 
 memorable and almost awful exception. The last origi- 
 nal poem written by Cowper was The Castaway, founded 
 on an incident in Anson's Voyage. 
 
 " Obscurest uight involved the sky, 
 
 The Atlantic billows roared, 
 When such a destined wretcli as I, 
 
 Wasli'd. beadloiig from on board, 
 Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, 
 His lloatiug home forever left. 
 
 "No braver chief could Albion boast 
 Thau he with whom he -went, 
 Nor ever ship left Albion's coast 
 
 With warmer -wishes sent. 
 He loved them botli, 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, 
 Sniiported by despair of life. 
 
 " no shouted ; nor his friends had fail'd 
 
 To check the vessel's course. 
 But so the furious blast prevail'd 
 
 That i)itilcss iierforco 
 They left their outcast mate behind. 
 And scudded still before the wind. 
 
126 COWPER. [chap. 
 
 " Some succour yet they could afibrd ; 
 
 And, sucli as storms allow, 
 The cask, tlie coop, the floated cord, 
 
 Delay'd not to bestow : 
 But he, they knew, nor ship nor shore, 
 Whate'cr they gave, should visit more. 
 
 " Xor, cruel as it seem'd, could he 
 
 Their haste himself condemn, 
 Aware that flight iu 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 
 
 Iu 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 A'oice iu every blast. 
 
 Could catch the sonnd no more : 
 
 For then, by toil subdued, he drank 
 
 The stifling wave, and then be sauk. 
 
 " 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. 
 
viii.] CLOSE OF LIFE. 127 
 
 To give the mclanclioly tbomo 
 
 A more eiKTiuiiig date : 
 I5nt misery still (k'li,i;!it.s to trace 
 Its seinblance in anotlicr'ti case. 
 
 "No voice iliviuc tlio storm allay'd, 
 No liglit propiuous slioiie, 
 WlicD, snatcli'cl from all cftectiial aid, 
 
 Wo perish'd, eacli alone : 
 But I beneath a rougher sea, 
 Ami whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he." 
 
 The despair wliicli finds vent in verse is liardly despair. 
 Poetry can never be tlie direct expression of emotion ; it 
 must be the product of reflection combined with an exer- 
 cise of the faculty of composition which in itself is pleas- 
 ant. Still, The Castaivay ought to be an antidote to relig- 
 ious depression, since it is the work of a man of whom it 
 would be absurdity to think as really estranged from the 
 spirit of good, who had himself done good to the utmost 
 of his powers. 
 
 Cowper died very peacefully on the morning of April 
 25, 1800, and was buried in Dereham Church, Avhere there 
 is a monument to him with an inscription by Ilayley, 
 which, if it is not good poetry, is a tribute of sincere 
 affection. 
 
 Any one whose lot it is to write upon the life and 
 works of Cowper must feel that there is an immense dif- 
 ference between the interest which attaches to him, and 
 that which attaches to any one among the far greater 
 poets of the succeeding age. Still, there is something 
 about liim so attractive, liis voice has such a silver tone, 
 he retains, even in liis ashes, such a faculty of winning 
 friends, that liis biographer and critic may be easily be- 
 
128 COWPER. [ciiAP.viii. 
 
 guilcd into giving liim too Ligli a place. lie belongs to 
 a particular religious movement, with the vitality of which 
 the interest of a great part of his works has departed or 
 is departing. Still more emphatically and in a still more 
 important sense does he belong to Christianity. In no 
 natural struggle for existence would he have been the sur- 
 vivor; by no natural process of selection would ho over 
 have been picked out as a vessel of honour. If the shield 
 which for eighteen centuries Christ, by His teaching and 
 His death, has spread over the weak things of this world, 
 should fail, and might should again become the title to 
 existence and the measure of worth, Cowper will be cast 
 aside as a specimen of despicable infirmity, and all who 
 have said anything in his praise will be treated with the 
 same scorn. 
 
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