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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Cowper, by Goldwin Smith
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Cowper
+
+Author: Goldwin Smith
+
+Release Date: June 29, 2004  [eBook #12772]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COWPER***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+COWPER
+
+BY
+
+GOLDWIN SMITH
+
+London, 1880
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS.
+
+  CHAPTER I.
+  Early Life
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+  At Huntingdon--The Unwins
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+  At Olney--Mr. Newton
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+  Authorship--The Moral Satires
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+  The Task
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+  Short Poems and Translations
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+  The Letters
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+  Close of Life
+
+
+
+
+COWPER.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+EARLY LIFE.
+
+Cowper is the most important English poet of the period between Pope
+and the illustrious group headed by Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley,
+which arose out of the intellectual ferment of the European Revolution.
+As a reformer of poetry, who called it back from conventionality 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 he 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 England, and which was called Evangelicism within the
+establishment and Methodism without.  In this way he is associated with
+Wesley and Whitefield, as well as with the philanthropists of the
+movement, such as Wilberforce, Thornton, and Clarkson.  As a poet he
+touches, on different sides of his character, Goldsmith, Crabbe, and
+Burns.  With Goldsmith and Crabbe he shares the honour of improving
+English taste in the sense of truthfulness and simplicity.  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, he
+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 portions 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 common
+readers.  Had its author only done for Cowper what he did for Nelson!
+[Our acknowledgments are also due to Mr. Benham, the writer of the
+Memoir prefixed to the Globe Edition of Cowper.]
+
+William Cowper came of the Whig nobility of the robe.  His great-uncle,
+after whom he was named, was the Whig Lord Chancellor of Anne 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 II.  His mother was a
+Donne, of the race of the poet, and descended by several lines from
+Henry III.  A Whig and a gentleman he was 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 received, 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 feeling and
+refinement, the eye madness.  The stronger parts of character, the
+combative and propelling forces he evidently lacked from the beginning.
+For the battle of life he was totally unfit.  His judgment in its
+healthy state was, even on practical questions, sound enough, as his
+letters abundantly prove; but his sensibility not only rendered 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 English
+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 would not change conditions
+with any saint, in Christendom." Folly produces nothing good, and if
+Cowper had been an absolute 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 civilization.
+
+The world into which the child came was one very adverse 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, Shakespeare, and
+Milton by the arch-versifier Pope.  The Revolution of 1688 was
+glorious, but unlike the Puritan Revolution which it followed, and in
+the political sphere partly ratified, it was profoundly prosaic.
+Spiritual religion, the source of Puritan grandeur and of the poetry of
+Milton, was almost extinct; there was not much more of it among the
+Nonconformists, who had now become to a great extent mere Whigs, with a
+decided Unitarian tendency.  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 corporate
+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 Hell-fire Club, were
+more numerous than the Chesterfields.  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 Positivists now promise, had taken its
+place.  Sometimes the rustic thought for himself, and scepticism took
+formal possession of his mind; but, as we see from one of Cowper's
+letters, it was a coarse scepticism which desired to be buried with its
+hounds.  Ignorance and brutality reigned in the cottage.  Drunkenness
+reigned in palace and cottage alike.  Gambling, cockfighting, and
+bullfighting were the amusements of the people.  Political life, which,
+if it had been pure and vigorous, might have made up for the absence of
+spiritual influences, was corrupt from the top of the scale to the
+bottom: its effect on national character is pourtrayed in Hogarth'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; towards 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
+obsequiously 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 hear Whitefield, "I
+thank your ladyship for the information concerning the Methodist
+preachers; their doctrines are most repulsive, and strongly tinctured
+with disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually 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 cannot but
+wonder that your ladyship should relish any sentiments so much at
+variance with high rank and good breeding.  I shall be most happy to
+come and hear your favourite preacher."  Her Grace's sentiments towards
+the common 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 pillory, of a Temple Bar garnished with the heads of traitors,
+of the unreformed prison system, of the press-gang, of unrestrained
+tyranny and savagery at public schools.  That the slave trade was
+iniquitous hardly any one suspected; even men who deemed themselves
+religious took part in it without scruple.  But a change was at hand,
+and a still mightier change was in prospect.  At the time of Cowper's
+birth, John Wesley was twenty-eight and Whitefield was seventeen.  With
+them the revival of religion was at hand.  Johnson, 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, he 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.  "Every creature,"
+he writes, "that has any affinity to my mother is dear to me, and you,
+the daughter of her brother, are but one remove distant from her, 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
+acceptable 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 embraces.  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
+memory to me beyond expression.  There is in me, I believe, more of the
+Donne than of the Cowper, and though 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 nothing 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 the tears I shed?
+  Hover'd thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son,
+  Wretch even then, life's journey just begun?
+  Perhaps thou gayest me, though unfelt, a kiss;
+  Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss--
+  Ah, that maternal smile!--it answers--Yes.
+  I heard the bell toll'd on thy burial day,
+  I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away,
+  And, turning from my nursery window, drew
+  A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu!
+  But was it such?--It was.--Where thou art gone
+  Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown.
+  May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore,
+  The parting word shall pass my lips no more!
+  Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern,
+  Oft gave me promise of thy quick return.
+  What ardently I wish'd, I long believed,
+  And disappointed still, was still deceived;
+  By expectation every day beguiled,
+  Dupe of to-morrow even from a child.
+  Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went,
+  Till, all my stock of infant sorrows spent,
+  I learn'd at last submission to my lot,
+  But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot.
+
+In the years that followed no doubt he remembered her too well.  At six
+years of age this little mass of timid and quivering sensibility was,
+in accordance with the cruel custom 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 sufficient to say that his savage
+treatment of me impressed such a dread of his figure upon my mind, that
+I well remember being afraid to lift my eyes upon him higher than to
+his knees, and that I knew him better by his shoe-buckles 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-accusing 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 recollection 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 hand
+  A task as much within your own command,
+  That God and nature, and your interest too,
+  Seem with one voice to delegate to you?
+  Why hire a lodging in a house unknown
+  For one whose tenderest thoughts all hover round your own?
+  This second weaning, needless as it is,
+  How does it lacerate both your heart and his
+  The indented stick that loses day by day
+  Notch after notch, till all are smooth'd away,
+  Bears witness long ere his dismission come,
+  With what intense desire he wants his home.
+  But though the joys he hopes beneath your roof
+  Bid fair enough to answer in the proof,
+  Harmless, and safe, and natural as they are,
+  A disappointment waits him even there:
+  Arrived, he feels an unexpected change,
+  He blushes, hangs his head, is shy and strange.
+  No longer takes, as once, with fearless ease,
+  His favourite stand between his father's knees,
+  But seeks the corner of some distant seat,
+  And eyes the door, and watches a retreat,
+  And, least familiar where he should be most,
+  Feels all his happiest privileges lost.
+  Alas, poor boy!--the natural effect
+  Of love by absence chill'd into respect.
+
+From the boarding school, the boy, his eyes being liable to
+inflammation, 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.  He 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 suffering and
+degradation to the younger and weaker boys, has been proved by the
+researches of the Public Schools Commission.  There was an established
+system and a regular vocabulary of bullying.  Yet Cowper seems not to
+have been so unhappy there as at the private school; he speaks of
+himself as having excelled at cricket and football; and excellence in
+cricket and football at a public school generally carries with it,
+besides health and enjoyment, not merely immunity from bullying, but
+high social consideration.  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 treatment 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 gravedigger 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 exclusively
+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
+schoolmaster 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.  He 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 everything that could disgust you in his
+person; and indeed in his writings he has almost made amends for all. .
+. . .  I remember seeing the Duke of Richmond set fire to his greasy
+locks and box his ears to put it out again."  Cowper learned, if not to
+write Latin verses as well as Vinny Bourne himself, to write them very
+well, as his Latin versions 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 unexacting
+rule of the old public schools often did, and read through the whole of
+the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ with a friend.  He also probably picked up at
+Westminster much of the little knowledge of the world which he ever
+possessed.  Among his schoolfellows was Warren Hastings, in whose guilt
+as proconsul he afterwards, 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 Hastings.
+
+On leaving Westminster, Cowper, at eighteen, went to live with Mr.
+Chapman, an attorney, to whom he was articled, being destined for the
+Law.  He chose that profession, he says, not of his own accord, but to
+gratify an indulgent 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 Ashley Cowper, in
+the neighbouring Southampton Row.  Ashley Cowper was a very little man
+in a white hat lined with yellow, and his nephew used to say that he
+would one day he 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, aspiring, and unscrupulous
+Thurlow, who though fond of pleasure was at the same time preparing
+himself to push his way to wealth and power.  Cowper felt that Thurlow
+would reach the summit of ambition, while he would himself remain
+below, and made his friend promise when he was Chancellor to give him
+something.  When Thurlow was 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 with its peculiar beaux, wits, poets, critics, and every
+character in the gay world; 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 entirely given up the
+profession brought him a curious offer of a readership at Lyons Inn.
+His time was given to literature, and he became a member of a little
+circle of men of letters and journalists which had 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 periodical essays which were the rage
+in that day, joint proprietors of the _St. James's Chronicle_,
+contributors both of them to the _Connoisseur_, and translators, Colman
+of Terence, Bonnell Thornton of Plautus, Colman being a dramatist
+besides.  In the set was Lloyd, another wit and essayist and a poet,
+with a character not of the best.  On the edge of the set, 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 admiration.
+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
+literary 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 before he himself became a poet its
+effects had been obliterated by madness, entire change of mind, and the
+lapse of twenty years.  If a trace remained, it was in his admiration
+of Churchill's verses, and in the general results of literary society,
+and of early practice in composition.  Cowper contributed to the
+_Connoiseur_ and the _St.  James's Chronicle_.  His papers in the
+_Connoisseur_ have been preserved; they are mainly imitations of 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.  He had translated an elegy of Tibullus when he
+was fourteen, and at Westminster he had written an imitation of
+Phillips's _Splendid Shilling_, which, Southey says, shows his manner
+formed.  He helped his Cambridge brother, John Cowper, in a translation
+of the _Henriade_.  He kept up his classics, especially his Homer.  In
+his letters there are proofs of his familiarity with Rousseau.   Two or
+three ballads which he wrote are lost, but he says they were popular,
+and we may believe him.  Probably they were patriotic.  "When poor Bob
+White," he says, "brought in the news of Boscawen'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 marriage, 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.  Theodora 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 boarding-schools, in estranging children from their
+parents, may have had some reference to his own case.  His local
+affections, however, were very strong, and he felt with unusual
+keenness the final parting from his old home, and the pang of thinking
+that strangers usurp our dwelling and the familiar places will know us
+no more.
+
+  Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more,
+  Children not thine have trod my nursery floor;
+  And where the gardener Robin, day by day,
+  Drew me to school along the public way,
+  Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapp'd
+  In scarlet mantle warm and velvet capp'd.
+  'Tis now become a history little known,
+  That once we call'd the pastoral house our own.
+
+Before the rector's death, it seems, his pen had hardly realized the
+cruel frailty of the tenure by which a home in a parsonage is held.  Of
+the family of Berkhampstead Rectory there was now left besides himself
+only his brother 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 his life.  He 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.  Hut in Cowper's case there is no proof of anything of the
+kind; his confessions, after his conversion, of his own past sinfulness
+point to nothing worse than general ungodliness and occasional excess
+in wine; and the tradition 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 scarcely compatible with
+low and gross amours.  Generally, 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 Iphigenia.  But when he first went mad, his
+conversion to Evangelicism had not taken place; he had not led a
+particularly religious life, nor been greatly given to religious
+practices, though as a clergyman's son he naturally believed in
+religion, had at times felt religious emotions, and when he found his
+heart sinking had tried devotional books and prayers.  The truth is his
+malady was simple hypochondria, 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 hiss 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 outlook was altogether dark.  It yielded to the
+remedies to which hypochondria usually yields, air, exercise, sunshine,
+cheerful society, congenial occupation.  It came with January and went
+with May.  Its gathering gloom was dispelled 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 hypochondria took a religious form,
+but so did his recovery from hypochondria; both must be set down to the
+account 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 forsaken 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 which religion had
+nothing to do.  The office of clerk of the Journals in the House of
+Lords fell vacant, and was in the gift of Cowper's kinsman Major
+Cowper, as patentee.  Cowper received the nomination.  He 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.  His 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 undergone before the frowning peers.  After
+hopelessly poring over the Journals for some months he became quite
+mad, and his madness took a suicidal form.  He has told with unsparing
+exactness the story of his attempts to kill himself.  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 chophouses was enough in his present
+condition to confirm him in his belief that self-destruction was
+lawful.  Evidently he was perfectly insane, for he could not take up a
+newspaper without reading in it a fancied libel on himself.  First he
+bought laudanum, and had gone out into the fields with the intention of
+swallowing it, when the 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, his 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, under 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 swallow 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.  He 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 kinsman.  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 Cowper's life, and remember that he lived to write
+_John Gilpin_ and _The Task_.
+
+Cowper tells us that "to this moment he had felt no concern of a
+spiritual kind;" that "ignorant of original sin, insensible of the
+guilt of actual transgression, he understood neither the Law nor the
+Gospel, the condemning nature of the one, nor the restoring mercies of
+the other."  But after attempting suicide he was seized, as he well
+might be, with 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 he 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 Gilead, it would be found in the
+ministrations of his friend Martin Madan, an Evangelical clergyman of
+high repute, whom he had been wont to regard as an enthusiast.  His
+Cambridge brother, John, the translator of the _Henriade_, seems to
+have had some philosophic doubts as to the efficacy of the proposed
+remedy; but, like a philosopher, he 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-control, and amidst the horrors of inrushing madness.  Diabolical,
+they might be termed more truly than religious.
+
+There was nothing for it but a madhouse.  The sufferer was consigned to
+the private asylum of Dr. Cotton, at St. Alban's.  An ill-chosen
+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 intercourse with
+the keenest pleasure and gratitude; so that in the opinion of the two
+persons best qualified to judge, religion in this case was not the
+bane.  Cowper has given us 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 cheerful 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 Righteousness 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 was
+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 soul, a dreary province once
+  Of Satan's dark domain,
+  Feels a new empire form'd within,
+  And owns a heavenly reign.
+
+  The glorious orb whose golden beams
+  The fruitful year control,
+  Since first obedient to Thy word,
+  He started from the goal,
+
+  Has cheer'd the nations with the joys
+  His orient rays impart;
+  But', Jesus, 'tis Thy light alone
+  Can shine upon the heart.
+
+Once for all, the reader of Cowper's life must make up his mind 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.  He can easily translate them into the
+language of psychology, or even of physiology, if he thinks fit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+AT HUNTINGDON--THE UNWINS.
+
+The storm was over; but it had swept away a great part of Cowper'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
+was, of course, out of the question.  His relations, however, 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 Cowper did not become a convert to
+Evangelical doctrine till he was near his end, and he was incapable of
+sharing William's spiritual emotions.  Of his brilliant companions, the
+Bonnell Thorntons and the Colmans, the quondam members 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 lawyer, 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 business, with regard
+to which he was himself a child.  He had brought with him from the
+asylum at St.  Albans the servant who had attended him there, and who
+had been drawn by the singular talisman of personal attraction which
+partly made up to this frail and helpless being for his entire lack of
+force.  He had also brought from the same place an outcast boy whose
+case bad excited his interest, and for whom he afterwards provided by
+putting him to a trade.  The maintenance of these two retainers was
+expensive and led to grumbling among the subscribers to the family
+subsidy, the Major especially threatening to withdraw his contribution.
+While the matter was in agitation, Cowper received an anonymous letter
+couched in the kindest terms, bidding him not distress himself, for
+that whatever deduction from his income might be made, the loss would
+be supplied by one who loved him tenderly and approved his conduct.  In
+a letter to Lady Hesketh, he says that he wishes he knew who dictated
+this letter, and that he had seen not long before a style excessively
+like it.  He 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
+with contentment and cheerfulness of his earthly lot.  Nothing
+splenetic, no element of suspicions 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 Huntingdon, within a long ride, so
+that William becoming 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
+companionship or even for acquaintance, was sociable in an unrefined
+way.  There were assemblies, dances, races, card-parties, and a
+bowling-green, at which the little world met and enjoyed itself.  From
+these the new convert, in his spiritual ecstasy, 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 eccentric
+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 common 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 regaled
+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 maladies, with repose after the burning fever of the brain.
+When first he went to church he was in a spiritual ecstasy; it was with
+difficulty that he restrained his emotions, though his voice was
+silent, being stopped by the intensity of his feelings, his heart
+within him sang for joy; and when the Gospel for the day was read, the
+sound of it was more than he could well bear.   This brightness of his
+mind communicated itself to all the objects round him, to the sluggish
+waters of the Ouse, to dull, fenny Huntingdon, 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 lonely 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 perhaps 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
+carried to a morbid excess beneath its roof, Christian charity opened
+its door.
+
+The religious revival was now in full career, with Wesley for its chief
+apostle, organizer, and dictator, Whitefield for its great preacher,
+Fletcher of Madeley for its typical saint, Lady Huntingdon for its
+patroness among the aristocracy 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 was
+assailing the scepticism, the coldness, the frivolity, the vices of the
+age.  English society was deeply stirred; multitudes were converted,
+while among those who were not converted violent and sometimes cruel
+antagonism was aroused.  The party had two wings, the Evangelicals,
+people of the wealthier class or clergymen of the Church of England,
+who remained within the Establishment; and the Methodists, people of
+the lower middle class or peasants, the personal converts and followers
+of Wesley and Whitefield, who, like their leaders, without a positive
+secession, soon found themselves organizing a separate spiritual 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 thousands.  So far as the masses were concerned, it was in
+fact a preaching of Christianity anew.  There was a cross division of
+the party into the Calvinists and those whom the Calvinists called
+Arminians; Wesley belonging to the latter 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
+religious 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 Ritualism on
+one side and of nationalism 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 which they have wrought, the works of charity and
+philanthropy to which they have given birth, are matters not only of
+recent memory, but of present experience.  Like the great Protestant
+revivals which had preceded them in England, like the Moravian revival
+on the Continent, to which they were closely related, they sought to
+bring the soul into direct communion with its Maker, rejecting the
+intervention of a priesthood or a sacramental system.  Unlike the
+previous revivals in England, they warred not against the rulers of the
+Church or State, but only against vice or irreligion.  Consequently in
+the characters which they produced, 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, engaged 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 drawbacks and follies, from extravagance,
+exaggeration, breaches of good taste in religious matters,
+unctuousness, and cant--from chimerical attempts to get rid of the
+flesh and live an angelic life on earth--from delusions about special
+providences and miracles--from a tendency to over-value doctrine and
+undervalue duty--from arrogant assumption of spiritual authority by
+leaders and preachers--from the self-righteousness which fancies itself
+the object of a divine election, and looks out with a sort of religious
+complacency from the Ark of Salvation in which it fancies itself
+securely placed, upon the drowning of an unregenerate world.  Still it
+will hardly be doubted that in the effects produced by Evangelicism and
+Methodism the good has outweighed the evil.  Had Jansenism prospered as
+well, France might have had more of reform and less of revolution.  The
+poet of the movement will not be condemned on account of his connexion
+with it, any more than Milton is condemned on account of his 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 Bedlam, who is more likely to be a stumblingblock to
+others, than to advance their faith," though he adds, with 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. Albans, 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 conversion
+to Evangelicism, which gave him his inspiration and his theme.
+
+At Huntingdon dwelt the Rev. William Unwin, a clergyman, taking pupils,
+his wife, much younger than himself, and their son and daughter.  It
+was a typical family of the Revival.  Old Mr. Unwin is described by
+Cowper as a Parson Adams.  The son, William Unwin, was preparing 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 appearance 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 trees.  Under the influence of
+religious sympathy the acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship;
+Cowper at once became one of the Unwin circle, and soon afterwards, a
+vacancy being made by the departure of one of the pupils, 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 had begun to experience the difficulty
+and expensiveness, as well as the loneliness, of bachelor housekeeping,
+and financial deficit was evidently before him.  To Mrs. Unwin he was
+from the first strongly drawn.  "I met Mrs. Unwin in the street," he
+says, "and went home with her.  She 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 portrait 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 bon coeur_ upon the smallest provocation.  Amidst all the
+little puritanical words which fall from her _de temps 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 undergone for one
+whom she certainly loves as well as one human being can love another.
+I will not say she idolizes him, because that she would think wrong;
+but she certainly seems to possess the truest regard and affection for
+this excellent creature, and, as I said before, has in the most literal
+sense of those words, no will or shadow of inclination but what is his.
+My account of Mrs. Unwin may seem perhaps to you, on comparing my
+letters, contradictory; 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 speaks 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 sufficient 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 way 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, we read either
+the scripture, or the sermons of some faithful preacher of those holy
+mysteries; at eleven we attend divine service, which is performed here
+twice every day, and from twelve to three we separate, and amuse
+ourselves as we please.  During that interval, I either read in my own
+apartment, or walk or ride, or work in the garden.  We 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 conversation 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. Unwin'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
+read and converse as before till supper, and commonly finish the
+evening either 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, accordingly we are all happy,
+and dwell together in unity as brethren."
+
+Mrs. Cowper, the wife of Major (now Colonel) Cowper, to whom this was
+written, was herself strongly Evangelical; 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 with 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 the last words of
+the passage.  Overstrained and ascetic piety found an antidote in
+affection.  The Unwins were Puritans and enthusiasts, but their
+household was a picture of domestic love.
+
+With the name of Mrs. Cowper is connected an incident which, occurred
+at this time, and which illustrates the propensity 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 general
+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 lady, in a
+letter to whom he afterwards disclosed his secret motive.  "My dear
+Cousin,--You sent my friend Unwin home to us charmed, with your kind
+reception of him, and with everything 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 desired 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.  Though my friend, you may suppose, before I was admitted an
+inmate here, was satisfied that I was not a mere vagabond, and has,
+since that time, received more convincing proofs of my _sponsibility_;
+yet I could not resist the opportunity of furnishing him with ocular
+demonstration of it, by introducing him to one of my most splendid
+connexions; that when he hears me called 'that fellow Cowper,' which
+has happened heretofore, he may be able, upon unquestionable 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 goodwill.  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 Cowper'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 storm being passed, a quiet and peaceful serenity of
+soul succeeded," and the serenity in this case was unquestionably
+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 in distant shades,
+  There was I found by one who had himself
+  Been hurt by the archers.  In his side he bore
+  And in his hands and feet the cruel scars,
+  With gentle force soliciting the darts,
+  He drew them forth and healed and bade me live.
+
+Cowper thought for a moment of taking orders, but his dread of
+appearing in public conspired with the good sense which 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 had not been two years with the Unwins when Mr. Unwin, the
+father, was killed by a fall from his horse; this broke up the
+household.  But between Cowper and Mrs. Unwin an indissoluble tie had
+been formed.  It seems clear, notwithstanding Southey's assertion to
+the contrary, that they at one time meditated marriage, possibly as a
+propitiation to the evil tongues which did not spare even this most
+innocent connexion; but they were prevented from fulfilling their
+intention by a return of Cowper's malady.  They became companions for
+life.  Cowper says they were as mother and son to each other; but Mrs.
+Unwin was only seven years older than he.   To label their connexion 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 her son, a strictly virtuous and religious
+man, never had the slightest misgiving about his mother's position.
+
+The pair had to choose a dwelling-place; they chose Olney in
+Buckinghamshire, on the Ouse.  The Ouse was "a slow winding river,"
+watering low meadows, from which crept pestilential fogs.  Olney was a
+dull town, or rather village, inhabited by a population of lace-makers,
+ill-paid, fever-stricken, and for the most part as brutal as they were
+poor.  There was not a woman in the place excepting Mrs. Newton with
+whom Mrs. Unwin could associate, 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 worst 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 was?
+
+The attraction was the presence of the Rev. John Newton, then curate of
+Olney.  The vicar was Moses Brown, an Evangelical and a religious
+writer, who has even deserved a place among the worthies 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 advantage
+of the indulgent character of the ecclesiastical polity of those days
+by becoming a pluralist and a non-resident, so that the curate had
+Olney to himself.  The patron was the Lord Dartmouth, who, as Cowper
+says, "wore a coronet and prayed."  John Newton was one of the shining
+lights and foremost leaders and preachers of the revival.  His name was
+great both in the Evangelical churches within the pale of the
+Establishment, and in the Methodist churches without it.  He was a
+brand plucked from the very heart of the burning.  We have a memoir of
+his life, partly written by himself, in the form of letters, and
+completed under his superintendence.  It is a monument of the age of
+Smollett and Wesley, not less characteristic 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.  His mother was a pious Dissenter,
+who was at great pains to store his mind with religious thoughts and
+pieces.  She died when he was young, and his stepmother was not pious.
+He began to drag his religious 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 his own earlier
+years.  While still but a stripling he fell desperately in love with a
+girl of thirteen; his affection for her was as constant as it was
+romantic; through all his wanderings and sufferings he never ceased to
+think of her, 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.  Released 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 indomitable 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 Bible, 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 Kempis, 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 safely 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 profitable,
+it made him a sort of gaoler, unpleasantly conversant with both chains
+and shackles; and he besought Providence 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 obtained an office in the port of
+Liverpool, but soon he set his heart on becoming a minister of the
+Church of England.  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 secretary "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 Rome, 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 newborn apostle upon the irreligion and brutality of Olney.  No
+Carthusian's breast could glow more intensely with the zeal which is
+the offspring of remorse.  Newton was a Calvinist of course, though it
+seems not an extreme one, otherwise he would probably have confirmed
+Cowper in the darkest of hallucinations.  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 sedentary 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 who 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 misery; 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 appointed to conduct an
+empire and the other to sweep a street in it, they would feel no
+inclination to change employments."  "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 defeating heresy
+is by establishing truth.  One proposes to fill a bushel with tares;
+now if I can fill it first with wheat, I shall defy his attempts." That
+his Calvinism was not very dark or sulphureous, seems to be shown from
+his repeating with gusto the saying of one of the old women of Olney
+when some preacher dwelt on the doctrine of predestination--"Ah, I have
+long settled that point; for if God had not chosen me before I was
+born, I am sure he would have seen nothing to have chosen me for
+afterwards."  That he had too much sense to take mere profession for
+religion appears from his describing the Calvinists 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,
+enabled 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. Unwin a visit
+at Huntingdon, after her husband's death, and had at once established
+the ascendancy of a powerful character over her and Cowper.  He now
+beckoned the pair to his side, placed them in the house adjoining 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, unhappy 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 prayer.  He was also made to visit the 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.  Cowper was almost entirely
+cut off from intercourse with his friends and people of his own class.
+He dropped his correspondence even with his beloved cousin, Lady
+Hesketh, and would probably have dropped his correspondence with Hill,
+had not Hill's assistance in money matters been indispensable.  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 hymnbook which Newton was compiling.  Cowper's Olney hymns have not
+any serious value as poetry.  Hymns rarely have.  The relations of man
+with Deity transcend and repel poetical treatment.  There is nothing in
+them on which the creative imagination can be exercised.  Hymns can be
+little more than incense of the worshipping soul.  Those of the Latin
+church are the best; not because they are better poetry than the rest
+(for they are not), but because their language is the most sonorous.
+Cowper's hymns were accepted by the religious body for which they 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 advancing malady
+falls; but in the main there is a predominance of religious joy and
+hope.  The most despondent hymn of the series is _Temptation_, the
+thought of which resembles that of _The Castaway_.
+
+Cowper's melancholy may have been aggravated by the loss of his only
+brother, who died about this time, and at whose death-bed he was
+present; though in the narrative which he wrote, joy at John's
+conversion and the religious happiness of his end seems to exclude the
+feelings by which hypochondria was likely to be fed.  But his mode of
+life under Newton was enough to account for the return of his disease,
+which in this sense may be fairly laid to the charge of religion.  He
+again went mad, fancied as before that he was rejected of heaven,
+ceased to pray as one helplessly doomed, and again attempted suicide.
+Newton and Mrs. Unwin at first treated the disease as a diabolical
+visitation, and "with deplorable consistency," to borrow the phrase
+used by one of their friends in the case of Cowper's desperate
+abstinence from prayer, abstained from calling in a physician.  Of this
+again their religion must bear the reproach.  In other respects they
+behaved admirably.  Mrs. Unwin, shut up for sixteen months with her
+unhappy partner, tended him with unfailing love; alone she did it, for
+he could bear no one else about him; though to make her part more
+trying he had conceived the insane idea that she hated him.  Seldom has
+a stronger proof been given of the sustaining power of affection.
+Assuredly of whatever Cowper may have afterwards done for his kind, a
+great part must be set down to the credit of Mrs. Unwin.
+
+  Mary!  I want a lyre with other strings,
+  Such aid from heaven as some have feigned they drew,
+    An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new
+  And undebased by praise of meaner things,
+  That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings,
+    I may record thy worth with honour due,
+    In verse as musical as thou art true,
+  And that immortalizes whom it sings.
+  But thou hast little need.  There is a book
+    By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light,
+  On which the eyes of God not rarely look,
+    A chronicle of actions just and bright;
+  There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary shine,
+  And, since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine.
+
+Newton's friendship too was sorely tried.  In the midst of the malady
+the lunatic took it into his head to transfer himself from his own
+house to the Vicarage, which, he obstinately refused to leave; and
+Newton bore this infliction for several months without repining,
+though, he might well pray earnestly for his friend's deliverance.
+"The Lord has numbered the days in which I am appointed to wait on him
+in this dark valley, and he has given us such a love to him, both as a
+believer and a friend, that I am not weary; but to be sure his
+deliverance would be to me one of the greatest blessings my thoughts
+can conceive."  Dr. Cotton was at last called in, and under his
+treatment, evidently directed against a bodily disease, Cowper was at
+length restored to sanity.
+
+Newton once compared his own walk in the world to that of a physician
+going through Bedlam.  But he was not skilful in his treatment of the
+literally insane.  He 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, who had conceived the idea
+that, being under the displeasure of Heaven, 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.  He seems to have thought that theology fell
+under the same category, for he proceeded to write some theological
+treatises, which he dedicated 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 spiritual 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 Cowper, Newton left Olney for St.
+Mary Woolnoth.  He was driven away at last by a quarrel with his
+barbarous parishioners, 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 rather to prayer
+than water, but he took the lead in practical measures of relief, and
+tried to remove the earthly cause of such visitations by putting an end
+to bonfires and illuminations 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 are reminded of the case of
+Cotton Mather, who, after being a leader in witch-burning, nearly
+sacrificed his life in combatting the fanaticism which opposed itself
+to the introduction of inoculation.  Let it always be remembered that
+besides its theological side, the Revival had its philanthropic 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 people
+it was the great civilizing agency of the time.
+
+Newton was succeeded as curate of Olney by his disciple, 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
+Cowper 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. William 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
+demarcation between Nonconformity and the Establishment.  To Bull
+Cowper did greatly take, he extols him as "a Dissenter, but a liberal
+one," a man of letters and of genius, master of a fine imagination--or,
+rather, not master of it--and addresses him as _Carissime Taurorum_.
+It is rather singular that Newton should have given himself such a
+successor.  Bull was a great smoker, and had made himself a cozy and
+secluded nook in his garden for the enjoyment of his pipe.  He was
+probably something of a spiritual 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 Cowper has
+translated is the same--Divine Love and the raptures of the heart 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
+element which has lurked in the Roman Catholic church since the days of
+Thomas a Kempis.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+AUTHORSHIP.  THE MORAL SATIRES.
+
+Since his recovery, Cowper had been looking out for what he most
+needed, a pleasant occupation.  He tried drawing, carpentering,
+gardening.  Of gardening he had always been fond; and he understood it
+as shown by the loving though somewhat "stercoraceous" minuteness of
+some passages in _The Task_.  A little greenhouse, used as a parlour in
+summer, where he sat surrounded by beauty and fragrance, and lulled by
+pleasant sounds, was another product of the same pursuit, and seems
+almost Elysian in that dull dark life.  He also found amusement in
+keeping tame hares, and he fancied that he had reconciled the hare to
+man and dog.  His three tame hares are among the canonized pets of
+literature, and they were to his genius what "Sailor" was to the genius
+of Byron.  But Mrs. Unwin, who had terrible reason for studying his
+case, saw that the thing most wanted was congenial employment for the
+mind, and she incited him to try his hand at poetry on a larger scale.
+He listened to her advice, and when he was nearly fifty years of age
+became a poet.  He had acquired the faculty of verse-writing, as we
+have seen; he had even to some extent formed his manner when he was
+young.  Age must by this time have quenched his fire, and tamed his
+imagination, so that the didactic style would suit him best.  In the
+length of the interval between his early poems and his great work he
+resembles Milton; but widely different in the two cases had been the
+current of the intervening years.  Poetry written late in life is of
+course free from youthful 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 anything before 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
+admiration.  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 anybody, he must be regarded as a follower, though only in his
+earlier and less successful poems.  In expression he always regarded as
+a model the neat and gay simplicity of Prior.  But so little had he
+kept up his reading of anything 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 Religious 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 unhappily adopted, and _The Progress of Error_ was followed by
+_Truth_, _Table Talk_, _Expostulation_, _Hope_, _Charity_,
+_Conversation_, and _Retirement_.  When the series was published,
+_Table Talk_ was put first, being supposed to be the lightest and the
+most attractive to an unregenerate world.  The judgment passed upon
+this set of poems at the time by the _Critical Review_ seems
+blasphemous to the fond biographer, and is so devoid of modern
+smartness as to be almost interesting as a literary fossil.  But it
+must be deemed essentially just, though the reviewer errs, as many
+reviewers have erred, in measuring the 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 precepts of morality; he is not, however, possessed of any superior
+abilities or the power of genius requisite for so arduous an
+undertaking. . . . .  He says what is incontrovertible and what has
+been said over and over again with much gravity, but says nothing new,
+sprightly or entertaining; travelling on a plain level flat road, with
+great composure almost through the whole long and tedious volume, which
+is little better than a dull sermon in very indifferent verse on Truth,
+the Progress of Error, Charity, and some other grave subjects.  If this
+author had followed the advice given by Caraccioli, and which he has
+chosen for one of the mottoes prefixed to these poems, he would have
+clothed his indisputable truths in some more becoming disguise, and
+rendered his work much more agreeable.  In 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 on the listless ear."
+
+In justice to the bard it ought to be said that he wrote under the eye
+of the Rev. John Newton, to whom the design had been duly submitted,
+and who had given his _imprimatur_ in the shape of a preface which took
+Johnson the publisher aback by its gravity.  Newton would not have
+sanctioned any poetry which had not a distinctly religious 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 contents to the lips of a giddy world.  The Rev. John
+Newton must have been exceedingly austere if he thought that the
+quantity of honey used was excessive.
+
+A genuine desire to make society better is always present 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, corresponding to as many different views of humanity and life,
+the Stoical, the Cynical, and the Epicurean.  Of Stoical 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, Horace is the classical 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 Horatian kind he
+might have excelled, as the episode of the _Retired Statesman_ in one
+of these poems shows.  He might have excelled, that is, if like Horace
+he had known the world.  But he did not know the world.  He 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.  His satiric whip not only has no lash, it
+is brandished in the air.
+
+No man was ever less qualified for the office of a censor; his judgment
+is at once disarmed, and a breach in his principles is at once made by
+the slightest personal influence.  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
+who held a golden stall at Durham.  Grinding India is criminal, but
+Warren Hastings is acquitted, because he was with Cowper at
+Westminster.  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 acquaintance 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. Throckmorton, who were Roman Catholics.  Smoking was detestable,
+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 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 untrue.  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 was rendered necessary by
+his malady, and respectable by his literary work; but it was a flight
+and not a victory.  His misconception was fostered and partly produced
+by a religion which was essentially ascetic, and which, while it gave
+birth to characters of the highest and most energetic beneficence,
+represented 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 genuine feelings, and which
+is, in fact, a foretaste of _The Task_.  _Expostulation_, a warning to
+England from the example 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 press?
+  By thee, religion, liberty, and laws
+  Exert their influence, and advance their cause;
+  By thee, worse plagues than Pharaoh's land befel,
+  Diffused, make earth the vestibule of hell:
+  Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise,
+  Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies,
+  Like Eden's dread probationary tree,
+  Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
+
+Occasionally there are passages of higher merit.  The episode of
+statesmen in _Retirement_ has been already mentioned.  The lines on the
+two disciples going to Emmaus in _Conversation_, though little more
+than a paraphrase of the Gospel narrative, convey pleasantly the
+Evangelical idea of the Divine Friend.  Cowper says in one of his
+letters that he had been intimate with a man of fine taste who had
+confessed to him that though he could not subscribe 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 impressed upon anything in the Scriptures, it was upon
+that passage.
+
+  It happen'd on a solemn eventide,
+  Soon after He that was our surety died,
+  Two bosom friends, each pensively inclined,
+  The scene of all those sorrows left behind,
+  Sought their own village, busied as they went
+  In musings worthy of the great event:
+  They spake of him they loved, of him whose life,
+  Though blameless, had incurr'd perpetual strife,
+  Whose deeds had left, in spite of hostile arts,
+  A deep memorial graven on their hearts.
+  The recollection, like a vein of ore,
+  The farther traced enrich'd them still the more;
+
+
+  They thought him, and they justly thought him, one
+  Sent to do more than he appear'd to have done,
+  To exalt a people, and to place them high
+  Above all else, and wonder'd he should die.
+  Ere yet they brought their journey to an end,
+  A stranger join'd them, courteous as a friend,
+  And ask'd them with a kind engaging air
+  What their affliction was, and begg'd a share.
+  Inform'd, he gathered up the broken thread,
+  And truth and wisdom gracing all he said,
+  Explain'd, illustrated, and search'd so well
+  The tender theme on which they chose to dwell,
+  That reaching home, the night, they said is near,
+  We must not now be parted, sojourn here.--
+  The new acquaintance soon became a guest,
+  And made so welcome at their simple feast,
+  He bless'd the bread, but vanish'd at the word,
+  And left them both exclaiming, 'Twas the Lord!
+  Did not our hearts feel all he deign'd to say,
+  Did they not burn within us by the way?
+
+The prude going to morning church in _Truth_ is a good rendering of
+Hogarth's picture:--
+
+  Yon ancient prude, whose wither'd features show
+  She might, be young some forty years ago,
+  Her elbows pinion'd close upon her hips,
+  Her head erect, her fan upon her lips,
+  Her eyebrows arch'd, her eyes both gone astray
+  To watch yon amorous couple in their play,
+  With bony and unkerchief'd neck defies
+  The rude inclemency of wintry skies,
+  And sails with lappet-head and mincing airs
+  Daily at clink of hell, to morning prayers.
+  To thrift and parsimony much inclined,
+  She yet allows herself that boy behind;
+  The shivering urchin, bending as he goes,
+  With slipshod heels, and dew-drop at his nose,
+  His predecessor's coat advanced to wear,
+  Which future pages are yet doom'd to share,
+  Carries her Bible tuck'd beneath his arm,
+  And hides his hands to keep his fingers warm.
+
+Of personal allusions there are a few; if the satirist had not been
+prevented from indulging in them by his taste, he would have been
+debarred by his ignorance.  Lord Chesterfield, as the incarnation of
+the world and the most brilliant servant of the arch-enemy, comes in
+for a lashing under the name of Petronius.
+
+  Petronius! all the muses weep for thee,
+  But every tear shall scald thy memory.
+  The graces too, while virtue at their shrine
+  Lay bleeding under that soft hand of thine,
+  Felt each a mortal stab in her own breast,
+  Abhorr'd the sacrifice, and cursed the priest.
+  Thou polish'd and high-finish'd foe to truth,
+  Gray-beard corruptor of our listening youth,
+  To purge and skim away the filth of vice,
+  That so refined it might the more entice,
+  Then pour it on the morals of thy son
+  To taint _his_ heart, was worthy of _thine own_.
+
+This is about the nearest approach to Juvenal that the Evangelical
+satirist ever makes.  In _Hope_ there is a vehement 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 are frequent 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,
+_Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools_.  Here Cowper has the advantage of
+treating a subject which he understood, about which he felt strongly,
+and desired for a practical purpose to stir the feelings of his
+readers.  He set to work in bitter earnest.  "There is a sting," he
+says, "in verse that prose neither has nor can have; and I do not know
+that schools in the gross, and especially public schools, have ever
+been so pointedly condemned before.  But they are become a nuisance, a
+pest, an abomination, and it is fit that the eyes and noses of mankind
+should be opened if possible to perceive it."  His descriptions of the
+miseries which children in his day endured, and, in spite of all our
+improvements, must still to some extent endure in boarding schools, and
+of the effects of the system in estranging boys from their parents and
+deadening home affections, are vivid and true.  Of course the Public
+School system was not to be overturned by rhyming, but the author of
+_Tirocinium_ awakened attention to its faults, and probably did
+something towards amending them.   The best lines, perhaps, have been
+already quoted in connexion with the history of the writer's boyhood.
+There are, however, other telling passages such as that on the
+indiscriminate use of emulation as a stimulus:--
+
+  Our public hives of puerile resort
+  That are of chief and most approved report,
+  To such base hopes in many a sordid soul
+  Owe their repute in part, but not the whole.
+  A principle, whose proud pretensions pass
+  Unquestion'd, though the jewel be but glass,
+  That with a world not often over-nice
+  Ranks as a virtue, and is yet a vice,
+  Or rather a gross compound, justly tried,
+  Of envy, hatred, jealousy, and pride,
+  Contributes moat perhaps to enhance their fame,
+  And Emulation is its precious name.
+  Boys once on fire with that contentious zeal
+  Feel all the rage that female rivals feel;
+  The prize of beauty in a woman's eyes
+  Not brighter than in theirs the scholar's prize.
+  The spirit of that competition burns
+  With all varieties of ill by turns,
+  Each vainly magnifies his own success,
+  Resents his fellow's, wishes it were less,
+  Exults in his miscarriage if he fail,
+  Deems his reward too great if he prevail,
+  And labours to surpass him day and night,
+  Less for improvement, than to tickle spite.
+  The spur is powerful, and I grant its force;
+  It pricks the genius forward in its course,
+  Allows short time for play, and none for sloth,
+  And felt alike by each, advances both,
+  But judge where so much evil intervenes,
+  The end, though plausible, not worth the means.
+  Weigh, for a moment, classical desert
+  Against a heart depraved, and temper hurt,
+  Hurt, too, perhaps for life, for early wrong
+  Done to the nobler part, affects it long,
+  And you are staunch indeed in learning's cause,
+  If you can crown a discipline that draws
+  Such mischiefs after it, with much applause.
+
+He might have done more, if he had been able to point to the
+alternative of a good day school, as a combination of home affections
+with the superior teaching hardly to be found, except in a large
+school, and which Cowper, in drawing his comparison between the two
+systems, fails to take into account.
+
+To the same general class of poems belongs _Anti-Thelypthora_, which it
+is due to Cowper's memory to say was not published in his lifetime.  It
+is an angry pasquinade on an absurd book advocating polygamy on
+Biblical grounds, by the Rev. 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_, embodying 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 displeased, 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 with 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, with all his learning and penetration."  Fear
+prevailed; but it seems that the book found its way into the dictator's
+hands, that his judgment on it was kind, and that he even did something
+to temper the wind of adverse criticism 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 incompleteness of Johnson's view of
+character there could be no better instance than the charming weakness
+of Cowper.  Thurlow and Colman did not even acknowledge their copies,
+and were lashed for their breach of friendship with rather more vigour
+than the Moral Satires display, in _The Valedictory_, which unluckily
+survived for posthumous publication, when the culprits had made their
+peace.
+
+Cowper certainly misread himself if he believed that ambition, even
+literary ambition, was a large element in his character.  But having
+published, he felt a keen interest in the success of his publication.
+Yet he took its failure 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.
+
+THE TASK.
+
+Mrs. Unwin's influence produced the Moral Satires.  _The Task_ was born
+of a more potent inspiration.  One day Mrs. Jones, the wife of a
+neighbouring clergyman, came into Olney to shop, 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 vivacious, but at the same
+time full of feeling even to overflowing.  The apparition acted like
+magic on the recluse.  He desired Mrs. Unwin to ask the two ladies to
+stay to tea, then shrank from joining the party which he had himself
+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 way home.  On her an equally great effect appears to have
+been produced.  A warm friendship at once sprang up, and before long
+Lady Austen had verses addressed to her as Sister 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 society, seems to show that one of the Puritans at least must
+have possessed great powers of attraction.  Better quarters were found
+for her in the Vicarage; and the private way between the gardens, which
+apparently had been closed since Newton's departure, was opened again.
+
+Lady Austen's presence evidently wrought on Cowper like an elixir:
+"From a scene of the most uninterrupted retirement," he writes to Mrs.
+Unwin, "we have passed at once into a state of constant engagement.
+Not that our society is much multiplied; the addition of an 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 probably did Samson, and thus do I; and were both
+those heroes 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 Austen 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
+Henderson, a popular actor, on the stage, though, as its gentility was
+doubtful, its author withheld his name.  He afterwards fancied that
+this wonderful piece of humour had been written in a mood of the
+deepest depression.  Probably he had written it in an interval of high
+spirits between two such moods.  Moreover he sometimes exaggerated his
+own misery.  He will begin a letter with a _de profundis_, 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 his hand at something considerable
+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_.
+8he bade him take the sofa on which she was reclining, and which, sofas
+being then uncommon, was a more striking 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 reminding 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 character as the poem of a sect it no doubt owed and
+still owes much of its popularity.  Not only did it give beautiful 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, anything
+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 which respect, however, I do not think it altogether
+indefensible), it may yet boast, that the reflections are naturally
+suggested always by the preceding passage, and that, except the fifth
+book, which is rather of a political aspect, the whole has one
+tendency, to discountenance the modern 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, political,
+social, philosophical, and horticultural, with as little of method as
+its author used in taking his morning walks.  Nor as Mr. Benham has
+shown, are the reflections, as a rule, naturally suggested 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 hardly a natural
+transition from the ice palace built by a Russian 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 existence 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 now 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 winningly 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 which we
+look out into the unquiet world, are 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 Alcaeus "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
+competition with those of Ranelagh and the Basset Table, which are 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 would really have enjoyed more.
+
+    Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,
+  Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
+  And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn
+  Throws up a steamy column, and the cups
+  That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
+  So let us welcome peaceful evening in.
+
+      *        *        *        *
+
+  This folio of four pages, happy work!
+  Which not even critics criticise, that holds
+  Inquisitive attention while I read
+  Fast bound in chains of silence, which the fair,
+  Though eloquent themselves, yet fear to break,
+  What is it but a map of busy life,
+  Its fluctuations and its vast concerns?
+
+      *        *        *        *
+
+    'Tis pleasant through the loop-holes of retreat
+  To peep at such a world.  To see the stir
+  Of the great Babel and not feel the crowd.
+  To hear the roar she sends through all her gates
+  At a safe distance, where the dying sound
+  Falls a soft murmur on the injured ear.
+  Thus sitting and surveying thus at ease
+  The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced
+  To some secure and more than mortal height,
+  That liberates and exempts me from them all.
+  It turns submitted to my view, turns round
+  With all its generations; I behold
+  The tumult and am still.  The sound of war
+  Has lost its terrors ere it reaches me,
+  Grieves but alarms me not.  I mourn the pride
+  And avarice that make man a wolf to man,
+  Hear the faint echo of those brazen throats
+  By which he speaks the language of his heart,
+  And sigh, but never tremble at the sound.
+  He travels and expatiates, as the bee
+  From flower to flower, so he from land to land,
+  The manners, customs, policy of all
+  Pay contribution to the store he gleans;
+  He sucks intelligence in every clime,
+  And spreads the honey of his deep research
+  At his return, a rich repast for me,
+  He travels, and I too.  I tread his deck,
+  Ascend his topmast, through his peering eyes
+  Discover countries, with a kindred heart
+  Suffer his woes and share in his escapes,
+  While fancy, like the finger of a clock,
+  Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.
+    Oh winter! ruler of the inverted year,
+  Thy scatter'd hair with sleet like ashes fill'd,
+  Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks
+  Fringed with a beard made white with other snows
+  Than those of age; thy forehead wrapt in clouds,
+  A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne
+  A sliding car indebted to no wheels,
+  And urged by storms along its slippery way;
+  I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st,
+  And dreaded as thou art.  Thou hold'st the sun
+  A prisoner in the yet undawning East,
+  Shortening his journey between morn and noon,
+  And hurrying him impatient of his stay
+  Down to the rosy West.  But kindly still
+  Compensating his loss with added hours
+  Of social converse and instructive ease,
+  And gathering at short notice in one group
+  The family dispersed by daylight and its cares.
+  I crown thee king of intimate delights,
+  Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness,
+  And all the comforts that the lowly roof
+  Of undisturb'd retirement, and the hours
+  Of long uninterrupted evening know.
+
+The writer of _The Task_ also deserves the crown which he has himself
+claimed as a close observer and truthful painter of nature.  In this
+respect, he challenges comparison 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 thunderstorms, even before he knew whose voice be
+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 watered by the Ouse.  On the other
+hand he is perfectly genuine, thoroughly English, 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 countries and climates
+which he does not know, and which he describes in the style of a prize
+poem.  Cowper's landscapes, too, are peopled with the peasantry of
+England; Thomson's, with Damons, Palaemons, and Musidoras, tricked 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 is simply mirrored on a mind of great
+sensibility and high pictorial power.
+
+  And witness, dear companion of my walks,
+  Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceive
+  Fast lock'd in mine, with pleasure such as love,
+  Confirm'd by long experience of thy worth
+  And well-tried virtues, could alone inspire--
+  Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long.
+  Thou know'st my praise of nature most sincere,
+  And that my raptures are not conjured up
+  To serve occasions of poetic pomp,
+  But genuine, and art partner of them all.
+  How oft upon yon eminence our pace
+  Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne
+  The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,
+  While Admiration, feeding at the eye,
+  And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene!
+  Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned
+  The distant plough slow moving, and beside
+  His labouring team that swerved not from the track,
+  The sturdy swain diminish'd to a boy!
+  Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain
+  Of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er,
+  Conducts the eye along his sinuous course
+  Delighted.  There, fast rooted in their bank,
+  Stand, never overlook'd, our favourite elms,
+  That screen the herdsman's solitary hut;
+  While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,
+  That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,
+  The sloping land recedes into the clouds;
+  Displaying on its varied side the grace
+  Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,
+  Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells
+  Just undulates upon the listening ear,
+  Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote.
+  Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily viewed,
+  Please daily, and whose novelty survives
+  Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years--
+  Praise justly due to those that I describe.
+
+This is evidently genuine and spontaneous.  We stand with Cowper 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 English champaign that is outspread below.
+
+  Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds,
+  Exhilarate the spirit, and restore
+  The tone of languid Nature.  Mighty winds,
+  _That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood
+  Of ancient growth, make music not unlike
+  The dash of Ocean on his winding shore_,
+  And lull the spirit while they nil the mind;
+  Unnumber'd branches waving in the blast,
+  And all their leaves fast fluttering, all at once.
+  Nor less composure waits upon the roar
+  Of distant floods, or on the softer voice
+  Of neighbouring fountain, or of _rills that slip
+  Through the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall
+  Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length
+  In matted grass that with a livelier green
+  Betrays the secret of their silent course_.
+  Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds,
+  But animated nature sweeter still,
+  To soothe and satisfy the human ear.
+  Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one
+  The livelong night: nor these alone, whose notes
+  Nice-finger'd Art must emulate in vain,
+  But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime
+  In still-repeated circles, screaming loud,
+  The jay, the pie, and e'en the boding owl
+  That hails the rising moon, have charms for me.
+  Sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh,
+  Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns,
+  And only there, please highly for their sake.
+
+Affection such as the last lines display for the inharmonious as well
+as the harmonious, for the uncomely, as well as the comely parts of
+nature has been made familiar by Wordsworth, but it was new in the time
+of Cowper.  Let us compare a landscape painted by Pope in his Windsor
+forest, with the lines just quoted, and we shall see the difference
+between the art of Cowper, and that of the Augustan age.
+
+  Here waving groves a checkered scene display,
+  And part admit and part exclude the day,
+  As some coy nymph her lover's warm address
+  Not quite indulges, nor can quite repress.
+  There interspersed in lawns and opening glades
+  The trees arise that share each other's shades;
+  Here in full light the russet plains extend,
+  There wrapt in clouds, the bluish hills ascend,
+  E'en the wild heath displays her purple dyes,
+  And midst the desert fruitful fields arise,
+  That crowned with tufted trees and springing corn.
+  Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn.
+
+The low Berkshire hills wrapt in clouds on a sunny day; a sable 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 his 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 _Winter Morning
+Walk_.
+
+  The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence
+  Screens them, and seem half-petrified to sleep
+  In unrecumbent sadness.  There they wait
+  Their wonted fodder; not like hungering man,
+  Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek,
+  And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay.
+  _He from the stack carves out the accustomed load
+  Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft,
+  His broad keen knife into the solid mass:
+  Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,
+  With such undeviating and even force
+  He severs it away_: no needless care,
+  Lest storms should overset the leaning pile
+  Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.
+  Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcern'd
+  The cheerful haunts of man; to wield the axe
+  And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear,
+  from, morn to eve, his solitary task.
+  Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears
+  And tail cropp'd short, half lurcher and half cur,
+  His dog attends him.  Close behind his heel
+  Now creeps he slow; and now, with many a frisk
+  Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow
+  With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;
+  Then shakes his powder'd coat, and barks for joy.
+  Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl
+  Moves right toward the mark; nor stops for aught
+  But now and then with pressure of his thumb
+  To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube,
+  That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloud
+  Streams far behind him, scenting all the air.
+
+The minutely faithful description of the man carving the load of hay
+out of the stack, and again those of the gambolling dog, and the
+woodman smoking his pipe with the stream of smoke trailing behind him,
+remind us of the touches of minute fidelity in Homer.  The same may be
+said of many other passages.
+
+    The sheepfold here
+  Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe.
+  _At first, progressive as a stream they seek
+  The middle field: but, scatter'd by degrees,
+  Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land_.
+  There from the sun-burnt hay-field homeward creeps
+  _The loaded wain: while lighten'd of its charge,
+  The wain that meets it passes swiftly by_;
+  The boorish driver leaning o'er his team
+  Vociferous and impatient of delay.
+
+A specimen of more imaginative and distinctly poetical description is
+the well-known passage on evening, in writing which Cowper would seem
+to have had Collins in his mind.
+
+  Come, Evening, once again, season of peace,
+  Return, sweet Evening, and continue long!
+  Methinks I see thee in the streaky west,
+  With matron-step slow-moving, while the Night
+  Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employed
+  In letting fall the curtain of repose
+  On bird and beast, the other charged for man
+  With sweet oblivion of the cares of day:
+  Not sumptuously adorn'd, nor needing aid,
+  Like homely-featured Night, of clustering gems!
+  A star or two just twinkling on thy brow
+  Suffices thee; save that the moon is thine
+  No less than hers, not worn indeed on high
+  With ostentatious pageantry, but set.
+  With modest grandeur in thy purple zone,
+  Resplendent less, but of an ampler round.
+
+Beyond this line Cowper does not go, and had no idea of going; he 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.  We have said that Cowper's peasants are
+genuine as well as his landscape; he might have been a more exquisite
+Crabbe if he had turned his mind that way, instead 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 industrious, modest, quiet, neat,
+  Such claim compassion in a night like this,
+  And have a friend in every feeling heart.
+  Warm'd, while it lasts, by labour, all day long
+  They brave the season, and yet find at eve,
+  Ill clad, and fed but sparely, time to cool.
+  The frugal housewife trembles when she lights
+  Her scanty stock of brushwood, blazing clear,
+  But dying soon, like all terrestrial joys.
+  The few small embers left, she nurses well;
+  And, while her infant race, with outspread hands
+  And crowded knees sit cowering o'er the sparks,
+  Retires, content to quake, so they be warm'd.
+  The man feels least, as more inured than she
+  To winter, and the current in his veins
+  More briskly moved by his severer toil;
+  Yet he too finds his own distress in theirs,
+  The taper soon extinguish'd, which I saw
+  Dangled along at the cold finger's end
+  Just when the day declined; and the brown loaf
+  Lodged on the shelf, half eaten without sauce
+  Of savoury cheese, or batter, costlier still:
+  Sleep seems their only refuge: for, alas'
+  Where penury is felt the thought is chained,
+  And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few!
+  With all this thrift they thrive not.  All the care
+  Ingenious Parsimony takes, but just
+  Saves the small inventory, bed and stool,
+  Skillet, and old carved chest, from public sale.
+  They live, and live without extorted alms
+  from grudging hands: but other boast have none
+  To soothe their honest pride that scorns to beg,
+  Nor comfort else, but in their mutual love.
+
+Here we have the plain, unvarnished record of visitings among the poor
+of Olney.  The last two lines are simple truth 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 companionship of the writer, who is
+always present, as Walton is in his Angler, as White is in his
+Selbourne.  Cowper, however, 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.  He 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 conversation."  It
+may have been his consciousness of a certain change in himself that
+deterred him from taking Newton into his confidence when he was engaged
+upon _The Task_.  The worst passages are those which 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 temporal power, and
+had contracted a character fiercely political and revolutionary.
+Methodism fought only against unbelief, 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,
+including 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.
+
+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
+government 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 his 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 wonderfully 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 been, since his second 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
+Evangelical 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.  He 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 commerce was design'd,
+  To associate all the branches of mankind,
+  And if a boundless plenty be the robe,
+  Trade is the golden girdle of the globe.
+  Wise to promote whatever end he means,
+  God opens fruitful Nature's various scenes,
+  Each climate needs what other climes produce,
+  And offers something to the general use;
+  No land but listens to the common call,
+  And in return receives supply from all.
+  This genial intercourse and mutual aid
+  Cheers what were else an universal shade,
+  Calls Nature from her ivy-mantled den,
+  And softens human rock-work into men.
+
+Now and then, however, in reading _The Task_, we come across a dash of
+warlike patriotism which, amidst the general 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.  Whatever 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 passage 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 "spattered
+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 seclusion, 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,
+  With half-shut eyes and puckered cheeks and teeth
+  Presented bare against the storm;
+
+and whose coarseness and callousness, as he whips his team, are the
+consequences of the hard calling in which he ministers to the recluse's
+pleasure and refinement.  If town life has its evils, from the city
+comes all that makes retirement comfortable and civilized.  Retirement
+without the city-would have been bookless and have fed on acorns.
+
+Rousseau is conscious of the necessity of some such institution 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_
+are sustained by the labour of two faithful slaves.  A weak point of
+Cowper's philosophy, taken apart from his 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, he attends
+  The welcome call, conscious how much the hand
+  Of lubbard labour, needs his watchful eye,
+  Oft loitering lazily if not o'er seen;
+  Or misapplying his unskilful strength
+  But much performs himself, _no works indeed
+  That ask robust tough sinews bred to toil,
+  Servile employ_, but such as may amuse
+  Not tire, demanding rather skill than force.
+
+We are told in _The Task_ that there is no sin in allowing our 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
+utmost of his limited capacity.
+
+Both in the Moral Satires and in _The Task_, there are sweeping
+denunciations of amusements which we now justly deem innocent, and
+without which or something equivalent to them, the wrinkles on the brow
+of care could not be smoothed, nor life preserved from dulness and
+moroseness.  There is fanaticism in this no doubt: but in justice to
+the Methodist as well as to the Puritan, let it be remembered 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
+worshipped 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
+  (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
+  Yet wanting sensibility) the man
+  Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
+
+Of Cowper's sentimentalism (to use the word in a neutral sense), part
+flowed from his own temperament, part was Evangelical, but part
+belonged to an element which was European, which produced the _Nouvelle
+Heloise_ and the _Sorrows 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 he had been a reader of
+Rousseau, nor did he fail to produce in his time a measure of the same
+effect which Rousseau produced; though there have been so many
+sentimentalists 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 _Nouvelle Heloise_, or
+the stony heart of people of the world could be melted by _The Task_.
+
+In his versification, as in his descriptions, Cowper flattered himself
+that he imitated no one.  But he manifestly 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 he had sixty readers
+at the Hague alone.  The interest of his relations and friends in him
+revived, and those of whom he had heard nothing for many years
+emulously renewed their connexion.  Colman and Thurlow reopened their
+correspondence 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 began to fix their 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, who, as everybody
+knew, 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 irresistible, and for seven years the author of The Task
+wrote the mortuary verses for All Saints', Northampton.  Amusement, 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 300 pounds in the end.
+In the meantime it brought him presents, and among them an annual gift
+of 50 pounds from an anonymous hand, the first instalment being
+accompanied by a pretty snuff-box ornamented with a picture of the
+three hares.  From the gracefulness of the gift, Southey infers that it
+came from a woman, and he conjectures that the woman was Theodora.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+SHORT POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS.
+
+The task was not quite finished when the influence which had inspired
+it was withdrawn.  Among the little mysteries and scandals of literary
+history is the rupture between Cowper and Lady Austen.  Soon after the
+commencement 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 commencement.
+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 herself 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 written, 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 of romantic idea of our merits, and
+built such expectations of felicity upon our friendship, as we were
+sure that nothing 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 intimating that when we embellish a
+creature with colours taken from our own fancy, and so adorned, admire
+and praise it beyond its real merits, we make it an idol, and have
+nothing 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 whose seeming stability of temper, whose knowledge of the world
+and great experience of its folly, but, above all, whose sense of
+religion and seriousness of mind (for with all that gaiety she is a
+great thinker) induced us both, in spite of that cautious reserve that
+marked our characters, to trust her, to love and value her, and to open
+our hearts for her reception.  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 fumus 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.  Hayley, who treats the matter
+with sad solemnity, tells us that Cowper's letter of farewell to Lady
+Austen, as she assured him herself, was admirable, though unluckily,
+not being gratified by it at the time, she had thrown it into the fire.
+Cowper has himself given us, in a letter to Lady Hesketh, 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 Olney; but in a few weeks took lodgings at the
+vicarage here.  Between the vicarage and the back of our house are
+interposed our garden, an orchard, and the garden 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 irksome, 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 alternately every day, Sundays excepted.  In order to facilitate
+our communication, we made doors in the two garden-walls aforesaid, by
+which means we considerably shortened 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 abominably dirty,
+and she kept no carriage.  On her first settlement in our
+neighbourhood, I made it my own particular business (for at that time I
+was not employed in writing, having published my first volume and not
+begun my second) to pay my _devoirs_ to her ladyship every morning at
+eleven.  Customs very soon became laws.  I began _The Task_, for she
+was the lady who gave me the _Sofa_ for a 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 was 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 which 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 subject.  But
+she had ill-health, and before I had quite finished the work was
+obliged to repair to Bristol."  Evidently this was not the whole
+account of the matter, or there would have been no need for a formal
+letter of farewell.  We are very sorry to find the revered Mr.
+Alexander 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 almost suspected she was 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 quarrel, sooner or later,
+with each other?" Considering what Mrs. Unwin 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 without quarrelling
+with each other.  That Lady Austen's behaviour to Mrs. Unwin was in the
+highest degree affectionate, Cowper has himself assured us.  Whatever
+the cause may have been, this bird of paradise, having alighted for a
+moment in Olney, took wing and was seen no more.
+
+Her place, as a companion, was supplied, and more than supplied, by
+Lady Hesketh, like her a woman of the world, and almost as bright and
+vivacious, but with more sense and stability of character, and who,
+moreover, could be treated as a sister without any danger of,
+misunderstanding.  The renewal of the intercourse between Cowper and
+the merry and affectionate play-fellow of his early days, had been one
+of the best fruits borne to him by _The Task_, or perhaps we should
+rather say by _John Gilpin_, for on reading 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 Olney; the announcement of her coming threw him into a
+trepidation of delight.  And how was this new rival received by Mrs.
+Unwin.  "There is something," says Lady Hesketh in a letter which has
+been already quoted, "truly affectionate and sincere in Mrs. Unwin's
+manner.  No one can express more heartily than she does 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
+precedence in trifles, which is the greatest trial of all.  "Our
+friend," says Lady Hesketh, "delights in a large table and a large
+chair.  There are 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 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 hypothesis.
+
+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 Weston belonged to Mr. Throckmorton of Weston 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 Roman 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 space
+  To narrow bounds--
+
+with the Grove,--
+
+  Between the upright shafts of whose tall elms
+  We may discern the thresher at his task,
+  Thump after thump resounds the constant flail
+  That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls
+  Full on the destined ear.  Wide flies the chaff,
+  The rustling straw sends up a fragrant mist
+  Of atoms, sparkling in the noonday beam.
+
+A pretty little vignette, which the threshing-machine has now made
+antique.  There were ramblings, picnics, and little dinner-parties.
+Lady Hesketh kept a carriage.  Gayhurst, the seat of Mr. Wright, was
+visited as well as Weston Hall; the life of the lonely pair was fast
+becoming social.  The Rev. John Newton was absent in the flesh, but he
+was present in the spirit, thanks to the tattle of Olney.  To show that
+he was, he addressed to Mrs. Unwin 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
+censure mingles the dignity of self-respect with a just appreciation of
+the censor's motives, in a style which showed that although he was
+sometimes mad, he was not a fool.
+
+Having succeeded in one great poem, Cowper thought of writing another,
+and several subjects were started--_The Mediterranean_, _The Four 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 who have had the benefit of a
+classical education, being capable of believing that the Latin element
+of our language had come in with the Roman conquest.  Of the _Four
+Ages_ he wrote a fragment.  Of _Yardley Oak_ he wrote the opening; it
+was apparently to have been a survey of the countries in connexion with
+an immemorial oak which stood in a neighbouring chace.  But he was
+forced to say that the mind of man was not a fountain but a cistern,
+and his was a broken one.  He had expended his stock of materials for a
+long poem in _The Task_.
+
+These, the sunniest days of Cowper's life, however, gave birth to many
+of those short poems which are perhaps his best, certainly his most
+popular works, and which will probably keep his name alive when _The
+Task_ is read only in extracts.  _The Loss of the Royal George_, _The
+Solitude of Alexander Selkirk_, _The Poplar Field_, _The Shrubbery_,
+the _Lines on a Young Lady_, and those _To Mary, will hold their places
+for ever 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 Aesop for having written his fables
+before him.  One great charm of these little pieces is their perfect
+spontaneity.  Many of them were never published, and generally they
+have the air of being the simple effusions of the moment, gay or sad.
+When Cowper was in good spirits his joy, intensified by sensibility and
+past suffering, played like a fountain of light on all the little
+incidents 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 Gilpin_.  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 saddest.  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
+combination, such as is shown in the similes of _Hudibras_, was
+possessed by Cowper in large measure.
+
+  A friendship that in frequent fits
+  Of controversial rage emits
+    The sparks of disputation,
+  Like hand-in-hand insurance plates,
+  Most unavoidably creates
+    The thought of conflagration.
+
+  Some fickle creatures boast a soul
+  True as a needle to the pole,
+    Their humour yet so various--
+  They manifest their whole life through
+  The needle's deviations too,
+    Their love is so precarious.
+
+  The great and small but rarely meet
+  On terms of amity complete;
+    Plebeians must surrender,
+  And yield so much to noble folk,
+  It is combining fire with smoke,
+    Obscurity with splendour.
+
+  Some are so placid and serene
+  (As Irish bogs are always green)
+    They sleep secure from waking;
+  And are indeed a bog, that bears
+  Your unparticipated cares
+    Unmoved and without quaking.
+
+  Courtier and patriot cannot mix
+  Their heterogeneous politics
+    Without an effervescence,
+  Like that of salts with lemon juice,
+  Which does not yet like that produce
+    A friendly coalescence.
+
+Faint presages of Byron are heard in such a poem as _The Shrubbery_,
+and of Wordsworth in such a poem as that _To a Young Lady_.  But of the
+lyrical depth and passion of the great Revolution poets Cowper is
+wholly devoid.  His 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; he has clearness
+like that of a trout-stream.  Fashions, even our fashions, change.  The
+more 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 disliked the task, but he wrote two
+or three anti-Slave-Trade ballads.  _The Slave Trader in the Dumps_,
+with its ghastly array of horrors dancing a jig to a ballad metre,
+justifies the shrinking of an artist from a subject hardly fit for art.
+
+If the cistern which had supplied _The Task_ was exhausted, the rill 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 translation of Homer into
+verse is the Polar Expedition of literature, always failing, yet still
+desperately renewed.  Homer defies modern reproduction.  His primeval
+simplicity is a dew of the dawn which can never be re-distilled.  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
+barbarism 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 when the translator and the original are separated by a gulf
+of thought and feeling, and when the gulf is very wide, becomes
+impossible.  There is nothing for it in the case of Homer but a prose
+translation.  Even in prose to find perfect equivalents for some of the
+Homeric phrases is not easy.  Whatever the chronological date of the
+Homeric poems may be, their political and psychological date may be
+pretty well fixed.  Politically they belong, as the episode of
+Thersites shows, to the rise of democracy and to its first collision
+with 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 epos_,
+which Pope improves into "sadly dear," and Cowper, with better taste at
+all events, renders "precious," is really semi-physical, and scarcely
+capable of exact translation.  It belongs to an unreproducible 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
+reader without the historic sense to do; he had compared Pope's
+translation carefully with the original, and had decisively 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 preserves at least the dignity of the original, while his command of
+language could never fail him, nor could he ever lack the guidance of
+good taste.  But we well know where he will be at his best.  We turn at
+once to such passages as the description of Calypso's Isle,
+
+  Alighting on Pieria, down he (Hermes) stooped.
+  To Ocean, and the billows lightly skimmed
+  In form a sea-mew, such as in the bays
+  Tremendous of the barren deep her food
+  Seeking, dips oft in brine her ample wing.
+  In such disguise o'er many a wave he rode,
+  But reaching, now, that isle remote, forsook
+  The azure deep, and at the spacious grove
+  Where dwelt the amber-tressed nymph arrived
+  Found her within.  A fire on all the hearth
+  Blazed sprightly, and, afar diffused, the scent
+  Of smooth-split cedar and of cypress-wood
+  Odorous, burning cheered the happy isle.
+  She, busied at the loom and plying fast
+  Her golden shuttle, with melodious voice
+  Sat chanting there; a grove on either side,
+  Alder and poplar, and the redolent branch
+  Wide-spread of cypress, skirted dark the cave
+  Where many a bird of broadest pinion built
+  Secure her nest, the owl, the kite, and daw,
+  Long-tongued frequenters of the sandy shores.
+  A garden vine luxuriant on all sides
+  Mantled the spacious cavern, cluster-hung
+  Profuse; four fountains of serenest lymph,
+  Their sinuous course pursuing side by side,
+  Strayed, all around, and everywhere appeared
+  Meadows of softest verdure purpled o'er
+  With violets; it was a scene to fill
+  A God from heaven with wonder and delight.
+
+There are faults in this and even blunders, notably in the natural
+history; and "serenest lymph" is a sad departure from Homeric
+simplicity.  Still on the whole the passage in the translation charms,
+and its charm is tolerably identical with that of the original.  In
+more martial and stirring passages the failure is more signal, and here
+especially we feel that if Pope's rhyming couplets are sorry
+equivalents for the Homeric hexameter, blank verse is superior to them
+only in a negative way.  The real equivalent, if any, is the romance
+metre of Scott, parts of whose poems, notably the last canto of
+_Marmion_ and some passages 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 deterred others
+from making the same hopeless attempt.  But a failure his work is; the
+translation is no more a counterpart of the original, than the Ouse
+creeping through its meadows is the counterpart of the Aegean rolling
+before 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 Satires 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 us by no
+intellectual gulf.   He belongs to what Dr. Arnold called the modern
+period of ancient history.  Nor is Cowper's translation of part of the
+eighth book of Virgil's Aeneid 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 poems had not been
+enough to bury his finer faculty, and prevent him from giving us any
+more of the minor poems, the publishers seduced him into undertaking an
+edition of Milton, which was to eclipse all its predecessors in
+splendour.  Perhaps he may have been partly entrapped by a chivalrous
+desire to rescue his idol from the disparagement cast on it by the
+tasteless and illiberal Johnson.  The project 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 Hesketh had her eye on the Laureateship, and probably with that
+view persuaded her cousin to write loyal verses on the recovery of
+George III.  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." Besides, was he not already the mortuary poet of All
+Saints, Northampton?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE LETTERS.
+
+Southey, no mean judge in such a matter, calls Cowper 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 Walpole, whose
+letters are memoirs, the English counterpart of St.  Simon.  The
+letters both of Gray and Walpole are manifestly written for
+publication.  Those of Cowper have the true epistolary charm.  They are
+conversation, perfectly artless, and at the same time autobiography,
+perfectly genuine, whereas all formal autobiography is cooked.  They
+are the vehicles of the writer's thoughts and feelings, and the mirror
+of his life.  We have the strongest proofs that they were not written
+for publication.  In many of them there are outpourings of wretchedness
+which could not possibly have been intended for any heart but that to
+which they were addressed, while others contain medical details which
+no one would have thought of presenting to the public eye.  Some, we
+know, were answers to letters received but a moment before; and Southey
+says that the manuscripts are very free from erasures.  Though Cowper
+kept a note-book for subjects, which no doubt were scarce with him, it
+is manifest that he did not premeditate.  Grace of form he never lacks,
+but this was a part of his nature, improved by his classical training.
+The character and the thoughts presented are those of a recluse who was
+sometimes a hypochondriac; the life is life at Olney.  But simple
+self-revelation is always interesting, and a garrulous playfulness 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 people 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 seldom taken from
+the shelf; and the "Elegant Extracts" select those letters which are
+most sententious, and therefore least characteristic.  Two or three
+specimens of the other style may not be unwelcome or needless as
+elements of a biographical sketch; though specimens hardly do justice
+to a series of which the charm, such as it is, is evenly diffused, not
+gathered, into centres of brilliancy like Madame de Sevigne's letter on
+the Orleans Marriage.  Here is a letter written, in the highest spirits
+to Lady Hesketh.
+
+
+  "Olney, _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 and alarm him; I sent
+him another yesterday, that will, I hope, quiet him again.  Johnson has
+apologized very civilly for the multitude of his friend's strictures;
+and his friend has promised to confine himself in future to a
+comparison of me with the original, so that, I doubt not, we shall jog
+on merrily together.  And now, my dear, let me tell you once more, that
+your kindness in promising us a visit has charmed us both.  I shall see
+you again.  I shall hear your voice.  We 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!  Mention it not for your life!  We have never had
+so many visitors, but we could easily accommodate them all; though we
+have received Unwin, and his wife, 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, we 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 hedge of honeysuckles, roses, and jasmine; and I will
+make you a bouquet of myrtle every day.  Sooner than the time I mention
+the country will not be in complete beauty.
+
+"And I will tell you what you shall find at your first entrance.
+Imprimis, as soon as you have entered the vestibule, if you cast a 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.  On the right hand
+stands a cupboard, the work of the same author, it was once a
+dove-cage, 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, my 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.  He 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."
+
+
+Here, by way of contrast, is a letter written in the lowest 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
+which 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 Cowper this state of the atmosphere
+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
+despondency had become habitual, and does not always flow from a soul
+really in the depths of woe.
+
+
+  TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.
+
+  "_Jan. 13th_, 1784.
+
+"MY DEAR FRIEND,--I too have taken leave of the old year, and 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 wilderness through
+which he 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 lessened, if, as soon as he 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 with the events of it yet unborn, but rest convinced that,
+be they what they may, not one of them comes a messenger of good to me.
+If even death itself should be of the number, he is no friend of mine.
+It is an alleviation of the woes even of an unenlightened man, that 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 difficulties I may,
+through whatever dangers and afflictions, I am not a whit nearer the
+home, unless a dungeon may be called so.  This is no very agreeable
+theme; but in so great a dearth of subjects to write upon, and
+especially impressed as I am at this moment with a sense of my own
+condition, I could choose no other.  The weather is an exact emblem of
+my mind in its present state.  A thick fog envelopes everything, and at
+the same time it freezes intensely.  You will tell me that this cold
+gloom will be succeeded 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 appointed 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 which 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
+which rest upon my mind with a weight of immovable conviction.  If I am
+recoverable, why am I thus?--why crippled and made useless in the
+Church, just at that time of life when, 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
+enough left in me 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 answer:--God's ways are mysterious, and He
+giveth no account of His 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 fall of the divinity most
+in fashion, he could not fear lest his riches should expose him to
+persecution.  Nor can I 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 become so.  But the wisdom of some men has a
+droll sort of knavishness 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 that she shall be
+obliged to Mrs. Newton, if, when an opportunity 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.  Remember us to Sally Johnson,
+and assure yourself that we remain as warmly as ever,
+
+  "Yours,
+     W. C.
+     M. U."
+
+
+In the next specimen we shall see the faculty of imparting interest to
+the most trivial incident by the way of telling it.  The incident in
+this case is one which also forms the subject of the little poem called
+_The Colubriad_.
+
+
+  To THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.
+
+    "_Aug. 3rd_, 1782.
+
+"MY DEAR FRIEND,--Entertaining some hope that Mr. Newton's next 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 his last writing.  When I
+receive it, favourable or not, it shall be communicated to you; but I
+am not very sanguine in my expectations 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
+composition, I think, will hardly escape his censure.  Though all
+doctors may not be of the same mind, there is one doctor at least, whom
+I have lately discovered, my professed admirer.  He too, like Johnson,
+was with difficulty persuaded to read, having an aversion to all
+poetry, except the _Night Thoughts_; which, on a certain occasion, when
+being confined on board a ship he had no other employment, 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
+allotted to the Doctor; his name is Renny, and he lives at Newport
+Pagnel.
+
+"It is a sort of paradox, but it is true: we are never more in danger
+than when we think ourselves most secure, nor in reality more secure
+than when we seem to be most in danger.  Both sides of this apparent
+contradiction were lately verified in my experience.  Passing from the
+greenhouse to the barn, I saw three kittens (for we have so many in our
+retinue) looking with fixed attention at something, which lay on the
+threshold of a door, coiled up.  I took but little notice of them at
+first, but a loud hiss engaged me to attend more closely, when
+behold--a viper! the largest I remember to have seen, rearing itself,
+darting its forked tongue, and ejaculating the afore-mentioned 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 me.  Still, however, the kitten sat watching immovably upon
+the same spot.  I concluded, therefore, that, sliding between the door
+and the threshold, he had found his way out of the garden into the
+yard.  I went round immediately, and there found him in close
+conversation with the old cat, whose curiosity being excited by so
+novel an appearance, 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 examination.  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 secreted himself in
+any of the outhouses, it is hardly possible but that some of the family
+must have been bitten; he might have been trodden upon without being
+perceived, and have slipped away before the sufferer could have well
+distinguished what foe had wounded him.  Three years ago we discovered
+one in the same place, which the barber slew with a trowel.
+
+"Our proposed removal to Mr. Small's was, as you suppose, a jest, or
+rather a joco-serious matter.  We never looked upon it as entirely
+feasible, yet we saw in it something so like practicability, that we
+did not esteem it altogether 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 the
+remainder of her lease.  She has now, therefore, no longer any
+connexion with the great city, she has none on earth whom she calls
+friends but us, and no house but at Olney.  Her abode is to be at the
+vicarage, where she has hired as much room as she wants, which she will
+embellish with her own furniture, and which 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 sometimes visits us, and whom
+we visited last week, 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 with her, but in the meantime 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 compositions of Prior.  I have translated several of them, and
+shall proceed in my translations, till I have filled a Lilliputian
+paper-book I happen to have by me, which, when filled, I shall present
+to Mr. Bull.  He is her passionate admirer, rode twenty miles to see
+her picture in the house of a stranger, which stranger politely
+insisted on his acceptance 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, instead of
+being dressed, in a nun's hood, might pass for the face of an angel.
+
+"Our meadows are covered with a winter-flood in August; the rushes with
+which our bottomless chairs were to have been bottomed, and much hay,
+which was not carried, are gone down the river on a voyage to Ely, and
+it is even uncertain whether they will ever return.  Sic transit gloria
+mundi!
+
+"I am glad you have found a curate, may he answer!  Am happy in Mrs.
+Bouverie's continued approbation; it is worth while to write for such a
+reader.  Yours,
+
+  "W. C."
+
+
+The power of imparting interest to commonplace incidents is so great
+that we read with a sort of excitement a minute account of the
+conversion of an old card-table into a writing and dining-table, with
+the causes and consequences 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 mystery were not
+explained, be haunted by it when he was getting into his pulpit, at
+which time, as he had told Cowper, perplexing questions were apt to
+come into his mind.
+
+A man who lived by himself could have little but himself to write
+about.  Yet in these letters there is hardly a touch of offensive
+egotism.  Nor is there any querulousness, except that of religious
+despondency.  From those weaknesses Cowper was free.  Of his proneness
+to self-revelation we have had 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-wheel, 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 are being lost, because they were familiar.  Here are two of
+them, however, which have limned themselves with the distinctness of
+the camera obscura on the page of a chronicler of trifles.
+
+
+  TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.
+
+  "_Nov. 17th_, 1783.
+
+"MY DEAR FRIEND,--The country around is much alarmed with apprehensions
+of fire.  Two have happened since that of Olney.  One at Hitchin, where
+the damage is said to amount to eleven thousand pounds; and another, at
+a place not far from Hitchin, of which I have not yet learnt the name.
+Letters have been dropped at Bedford, threatening to burn the town; 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 depredation, S. R.
+for stealing a piece of beef, which, in her excuse, she said she
+intended to take care of.  This lady, whom you well remember, escaped
+for want of evidence; not that evidence was wanting, but our men of
+Gotham judged it unnecessary to send it.  With her went the woman I
+mentioned before, who, it seems, has made some sort of profession, but
+upon this occasion allowed, herself a latitude of conduct rather
+inconsistent with it, having filled her apron with wearing-apparel,
+which she likewise intended to take care of.  She would have gone to
+the county gaol, had William Raban, the baker's son, who prosecuted,
+insisted upon it; but he, good-naturedly, though I think weakly,
+interposed in her favour, and begged her off.  The young gentleman who
+accompanied these fair ones is the junior son of Molly Boswell.  He had
+stolen some iron-work, the property of Griggs the butcher.  Being
+convicted, he was ordered to be whipped, which operation he underwent
+at the cart's tail, from the stone-house to the high arch, and back
+again.  He seemed to show great fortitude, but it was all an imposition
+upon 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 H., who followed the beadle, he applied his cane, without any
+such management or precaution, 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 concatenation of events
+has taken up more of my paper than I intended it should, but I could
+not forbear to inform you how the beadle thrashed the thief, the
+constable the beadle, and the lady the constable, and how the thief was
+the only person concerned who suffered nothing.  Mr. Teedon has been
+here, and is gone again.  He came to thank me for some left-off
+clothes.  In answer to our inquiries after his health, he replied that
+he had a slow fever, which made him take all possible care not to
+inflame his blood.  I admitted 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 attainable.  Ho
+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 observation may be reversed, the crowd will be overhead,
+and they will have most room who stay below.  I can assure you,
+however, upon my own experience, that this way of travelling is very
+delightful.  I dreamt a night or two since that I drove myself through
+the upper regions in a balloon and pair, with the greatest ease and
+security.  Having 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
+bishops their visitations; and when the tour of Europe will be
+performed with much greater speed, and with equal advantage, by all who
+travel merely for the sake of having it to say, that they have made it.
+
+"I beg you will accept for yourself and yours our unfeigned love, and
+remember me affectionately to Mr. Bacon, when you see him.
+
+  "Yours, my dear friend,
+    WM. COWPER."
+
+
+  TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.
+
+  "_March 29th_, 1784.
+
+"MY DEAR FRIEND,--It being his Majesty's pleasure, that I should 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, which 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 dashing 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
+gentleman 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 announced Mr. Grenville.  Puss was unfortunately
+let out of her box, so that the candidate, with all his good friends at
+his heels, was refused admittance at the grand entry, and referred to
+the back door, as the only possible way of approach.
+
+"Candidates are creatures not very susceptible of affronts, and would
+rather, I suppose, climb in at the window, than be absolutely excluded.
+In a minute, the yard, the kitchen, and the parlour, were filled.  Mr.
+Grenville, advancing toward me, shook me by the hand with a degree of
+cordiality that was extremely seducing.   As soon as he, and as many
+more as could find chairs, were seated, he began to open the intent of
+his visit.  I told him I had no vote, for which he readily gave me
+credit.  I assured him I had no influence, which he was not equally
+inclined to believe, and the less, no doubt, because Mr. Ashburner, the
+draper, addressing himself to me at this moment, informed me that I had
+a great deal.  Supposing that I could not be possessed of such 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 conference.  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, which not being sufficient as it should seem for the many nice
+and difficult purposes of a senator, he has a third also, which he
+suspended from his buttonhole.  The boys halloo'd, the dogs barked,
+puss scampered, the hero, with his long train of obsequious followers,
+withdrew.  We made ourselves very merry with the adventure, and in a
+short time settled into our former tranquillity, never probably to be
+thus interrupted more.  I thought myself, however, happy in being able
+to affirm truly that I had not that influence for which he sued; and
+which, 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 the former.  It is comfortable to be of no consequence
+in a world where one cannot exercise any without disobliging somebody.
+The town, however, seems to be much at his service, and if he be
+equally successful throughout the country, he will undoubtedly gain his
+election.  Mr. Ashburner, perhaps, was a little mortified, because it
+was evident that I owed the honour of this visit to his
+misrepresentation of my importance.  But had he thought proper to
+assure Mr. Grenville that I had three heads, I should not, I suppose,
+have been bound to produce them.
+
+"Mr. Scott, who you say was so much admired in your pulpit, would 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 him, and had he
+the understanding and eloquence of Paul himself, would still hurt him.
+He seldom, hardly ever indeed, preaches a gentler well-tempered sermon,
+but I hear it highly commended; but warmth of temper, indulged to a
+degree that may he called scolding, 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 outgrow it.
+
+"Many thanks for the worsted, which is excellent.  We are 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.
+Newton's affectionate and faithful,
+
+  "W. C.
+   M. U."
+
+
+In 1789 the French Revolution advancing with thunder-tread makes even
+the hermit of Weston look up for a moment from his translation of
+Homer, though he little dreamed that he with his gentle philanthropy
+and sentimentalism 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 HESKETH.
+
+  "_July 7th_, 1790.
+
+"Instead of beginning with the saffron-vested mourning to which Homer
+invites me, on a morning that has no saffron 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 dangerous.  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 reduced 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 consequently
+essential to the well-being of society; but what we 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 people.
+Perhaps it deserves not much to be wondered at, that at their first
+escape from tyrannic shackles they should act extravagantly, and treat
+their kings as they have sometimes treated their idol.  To these,
+however, they are reconciled in due time again, but their respect for
+monarchy is at an end.  They want nothing now but a little English
+sobriety, and that they want extremely.  I heartily 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 will he admitted, is very moderate and unapocalyptic.
+Presently Monarchical Europe takes arms against the Revolution.  But
+there are two political observers at least who see that Monarchical
+Europe is making a mistake--Kaunitz and Cowper.  "The French," observes
+Cowper to Lady Hesketh in December, 1792, "are a vain and childish
+people, and conduct themselves on this grand occasion with a levity and
+extravagance nearly akin to madness; but it would have been better for
+Austria and Prussia to let them alone.  All nations have 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 hinder them.  God grant that
+we may have no revolution here, but unless we have reform, we certainly
+shall.  Depend upon it, my dear, the hour has come when power founded
+on patronage and corrupt majorities must govern this land no longer.
+Concessions, too, must he made to Dissenters of every denomination.
+They have a right to them--a right to all the privileges of Englishmen,
+and sooner or later, by fair means or by foul, they will have them."
+Even in 1793, though he expresses, as he well might, a cordial
+abhorrence of the doings of the French, he calls them not fiends, but
+"madcaps."  He expresses the strongest indignation against the Tory mob
+which sacked Priestley's house at Birmingham, as he does, in justice be
+it said, against all manifestations of fanaticism.  We cannot help
+sometimes wishing, as we read these passages in the letters, that
+their calmness and reasonableness could have been communicated to
+another "Old Whig," who was setting the world on fire with his
+anti-revolutionary rhetoric.
+
+It is true, as has already been said, that Cowper was "extramundane,"
+and that his political reasonableness was in part the result of 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 while the wealth of
+Establishments, of which Burke was the ardent defender, is necessarily
+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 sacrifice 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 writing in a judicious manner
+on a difficult and delicate question--even a question so difficult and
+so delicate as that of the propriety of painting the face.
+
+
+  TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.
+
+  "May 3rd, 1784.
+
+"MY DEAR FRIEND,--The subject of face painting may be considered, I
+think, in two points of view.  First, there is room for dispute with
+respect to the consistency of the practice with good morals; and
+secondly, whether it be on the whole convenient or not, may be a matter
+worthy of agitation.  I set out with all the formality of logical
+disquisition, but do not promise to observe the same regularity 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.  But the
+French ladies, so far as their purpose comes in question, must be
+acquitted of both these charges.  Nobody supposes their colour to be
+natural for a moment, any more than he would if it were blue or green:
+and this unambiguous judgment of the matter is owing to two causes;
+first, to the universal knowledge we have, that French women are
+naturally either brown or yellow, with very few exceptions; and
+secondly, to the inartificial manner in which they paint; for they do
+not, as I am most satisfactorily 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
+wish to deceive, I can discover no immorality.  But in England, I am
+afraid, our painted ladies are not clearly entitled to the same
+apology.  They even imitate 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 E----, whom I well remember.  Her roses and lilies
+were never discovered to be spurious, till she attained an age that
+made the supposition 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 much more beautiful than Nature 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 vanity of the silliest kind, or, which is
+still more criminal, to decoy and inveigle, and carry on more
+successfully the business of temptation.  Here, 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
+impostor, whether she cheats me or not, because she means to do so; and
+it is well if that be all the censure she deserves.
+
+"This brings me 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 the 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 he more admired by others; an acquisition that might
+bring her virtue under trials, to which otherwise it might never have
+been exposed.  In no other case, however, can I imagine the practice 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,
+especially 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
+least 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, though 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
+ruinous 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.  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 words.
+But that anxious solicitude about the person, which such an artifice
+evidently 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, perhaps 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 Cowper'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 VIII.
+
+CLOSE OF LIFE.
+
+Cowper says there could not have been a happier trio on earth than Lady
+Hesketh, Mrs. Unwin, and himself.  Nevertheless, 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 Olney
+physicians, instead of husbanding his vital power, had wasted it away
+_secundum artem_ by purging, 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 over-laden 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 removal of the pair to Weston.  He had been engaged in the work of
+his profession as a clergyman, and we do not hear of his being often at
+Olney.  But he was in constant correspondence with Cowper, in whose
+heart as well as in that of Mrs. Unwin his death must have left a great
+void, and his support was withdrawn just at the moment when it was
+about to become most necessary.
+
+Happily just at this 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 thoroughly good-natured, very anxious
+to make himself useful, 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
+was 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 himself 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. Rose walking to meet his
+poet and philosopher 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 well that Hayley could only get Cowper's disciple, Hurdis,
+afterwards professor of poetry at Oxford, and Charlotte Smith.
+
+At Eartham, Cowper's portrait was painted by Romney.
+
+  Romney, expert infallibly to trace
+  On chart or canvas not the form alone
+  And semblance, but, however faintly shown
+  The mind's impression too on every face,
+  With strokes that time ought never to erase,
+  Thou hast so pencilled mine that though I own
+  The subject worthless, I have never known
+  The artist shining with superior grace;
+  But this I mark, that symptoms none of woe
+  In thy incomparable work appear:
+  Well: I am satisfied it should be so
+  Since on maturer thought the cause is clear;
+  For in my looks what sorrow could'st thou see
+  When I was Hayley's guest and sat to thee.
+
+Southey observes that it was likely enough there would be no 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 either of intellect or fancy, gleaming from the
+raised and protruded eye."
+
+Hayley evidently did his utmost to make his guest happy.  They spent
+the hours in literary chat, and compared notes about Milton.  The first
+days were days of enjoyment.  But soon the recluse began to long for
+his nook at Weston.  Even the extensiveness of the view at Eartham made
+his mind ache, and increased his melancholy.  To Weston the pair
+returned; the paralytic, of course, none the better for her journey.
+Her mind as well as her body was now rapidly giving way.  We quote as
+biography that which is too well known to be quoted as poetry.
+
+
+  TO MARY.
+
+  The twentieth year is well nigh past.
+  Since first our sky was overcast:--
+  Ah, would that this might be the last!
+    My Mary!
+
+  Thy spirits have a fainter flow,
+  I see thee daily weaker grow:--
+  'Twas my distress that brought thee low,
+    My Mary!
+
+  Thy needles, once a shining store,
+  For my sake restless heretofore,
+  Now rust disused, and shine no more,
+    My Mary!
+
+  For though thou gladly wouldst fulfil
+  The same kind office for me still,
+  Thy sight now seconds not thy will,
+    My Mary!
+
+  But well thou play'dst the housewife's part,
+  And all thy threads with magic art,
+  Have wound themselves about this heart,
+    My Mary!
+
+  Thy indistinct expressions seem
+  Like language utter'd in a dream:
+  Yet me they charm, whate'er the theme,
+    My Mary!
+
+  Thy silver locks, once auburn bright,
+  Are still more lovely in my sight
+  Than golden, beams of orient light,
+    My Mary!
+
+  For could I view nor them nor thee,
+  What sight worth seeing could I see P
+  The sun would rise in vain for me,
+    My Mary!
+
+  Partakers of thy sad decline,
+  Thy hands their little force resign;
+  Yet gently press'd, press gently mine,
+    My Mary!
+
+  Such feebleness of limbs thou provest,
+  That now at every step thou movest,
+  Upheld by two; yet still thou lovest,
+    My Mary!
+
+  And still to love, though press'd with ill,
+  In wintry age to feel no chill,
+  With me is to be lovely still,
+    My Mary!
+
+  But ah! by constant heed I know,
+  How oft the sadness that I show
+  Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe,
+    My Mary!
+
+  And should my future lot be cast
+  With much resemblance of the past,
+  Thy worn-out heart will break at last,
+    My Mary!
+
+
+Even love, at least the power of manifesting love, began to betray its
+mortality.  She who had been so devoted, became, as her mind failed,
+exacting, and instead of supporting 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.  His physician suggested, as the
+only chance of arousing him, that Mrs. Unwin should be induced, if
+possible, to invite 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.  Almost unconsciously, she had rescued
+him from the evil spirit for the last time.  The pair were in doleful
+plight.  When 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 condition 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 removal 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 Swaffham, 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 moment, uttered
+one passionate cry of grief, and never spoke of Mrs. Unwin more.  He
+had the misfortune to survive her three years and a half, during which
+relatives and friends were kind, and Miss Perowne partly filled, the
+place of Mrs. Unwin.  Now and then, there was a gleam of reason and
+faint revival of literary faculty, but composition was confined to
+Latin verse or translation, with one memorable and almost awful
+exception.  The last original poem written by Cowper was _The
+Castaway_, founded on an incident in Anson's Voyage.
+
+  Obscurest night involved the sky,
+    The Atlantic billows roared,
+  When such a destined, wretch as I,
+    Wash'd headlong from on board,
+  Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
+  His floating home for ever left.
+
+  No braver chief could Albion boast;
+    Than he with whom he went,
+  Nor ever ship left Albion's coast
+    With warmer wishes sent.
+  He loved them both, but both in vain;
+  Nor him beheld, nor her again.
+
+  Not long beneath the whelming brine
+    Expert to swim, he lay,
+  Nor soon he felt his strength decline,
+    Or courage die away;
+  But waged with death a lasting strife,
+  Supported by despair of life.
+
+  He shouted; nor his friends had fail'd
+    To check the vessel's course,
+  But so the furious blast prevail'd,
+    That pitiless perforce
+  They left their outcast mate behind,
+  And scudded still before the wind.
+
+  Some succour yet they could afford,
+    And, such as storms allow,
+  The cask, the coop, the floated cord,
+    Delay'd not to bestow;
+  But he, they knew, nor ship nor shore,
+  Whate'er they gave, should visit more.
+
+  Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he
+    Their haste himself condemn,
+  Aware that flight, in such a sea,
+    Alone could rescue them;
+  Yet bitter felt it still to die
+  Deserted, and his friends so nigh.
+
+  He long survives, who lives an hour
+    In ocean, self-upheld;
+  And so long he, with unspent power,
+    His destiny repelled:
+  And ever, as the minutes flew,
+  Entreated help, or cried--"Adieu!"
+
+  At length, his transient respite past,
+    His comrades, who before
+  Had heard his voice in every blast,
+    Could catch the sound no more:
+  For then by toil subdued, he drank
+  The stifling wave, and then he sank.
+
+  No poet wept him; but the page
+    Of narrative sincere,
+  That tells his name, his worth, his age,
+    Is wet with Anson's tear;
+  And tears by bards or heroes shed
+  Alike immortalize the dead.
+
+  I therefore purpose not, or dream,
+    Descanting on his fate,
+  To give the melancholy theme
+    A more enduring date:
+  But misery still delights to trace
+  Its semblance in another's case.
+
+  No voice divine the storm allay'd,
+    No light propitious shone,
+  When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
+    We perish'd, each alone:
+  But I beneath a rougher sea,
+  And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he.
+
+
+The despair which finds vent in verse is hardly despair.  Poetry can
+never be the direct expression of emotion; it must be the product of
+reflection combined with an exercise of the faculty of composition
+which in itself is pleasant.  Still _The Castaway_ ought to be an
+antidote to religious depression, since it is the work of a man of whom
+it would be absurdity to think as realty 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, where there is a monument to him with an
+inscription by Hayley, 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 difference 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
+him so attractive, his voice has such a silver tone, he retains, even
+in his ashes, such a faculty of winning friends that his biographer and
+critic may be easily beguiled into giving him too high a place.  He
+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 survivor, by no natural process of selection would he
+ever 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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