The Works of William Cowper / His life, letters, and poems, now first completed by the introduction of Cowper's private correspondence

by William Cowper

ON THE GENIUS AND POETRY OF COWPER.

BY THE REV. J. W. CUNNINGHAM, A.M., VICAR OF HARROW.

In presenting to the public the first Complete Edition of the Works of Cowper, it is thought desirable to prefix to the Poems a short dissertation on his Genius and Poetry. It is true that criticisms abound which have nearly the same object. It is true also that some of these criticisms are of a very high order of excellence. But perhaps their very number and merit supply a reason for adding at least one to the catalogue. The observations of the different Reviewers are scattered over so large a number of volumes, and these volumes are many of them, either of so expensive or so ephemeral a character, that an essay which endeavours to collect these criticisms into a focus, and present them at once to the eye of the reader, is far from superfluous. And the present critique pretends to little more than the accomplishment of this object. The writer is not ashamed to profit from the labour and genius of his predecessors in the same course, and to let them say for him, what he could not say so well for himself.

With this apology for what might otherwise be deemed a work of supererogation, we enter upon the proposed undertaking.

And here we must begin by observing that it is impossible not to be struck with certain peculiarities in the history of Cowper, as connected with his poetical productions. Although, as it has been truly said of him—"born a poet, if ever there was one,"—thinking and feeling upon all occasions as none but a poet could, expressing himself in verse with almost incredible facility, it does not appear that Cowper, between the ages of fourteen and thirty-three, produced anything beyond the most trifling specimens of his art. The only lines characteristic of his genius and peculiarities as a poet, and which, though composed at a distance of more than thirty years from the publication of "The Task," have so intimate a resemblance to it as to seem to be a page out of the same volume, are those written at the age of eighteen, on finding the heel of an old shoe.

"This ponderous heel of perforated hide,
Compact, with pegs indented, many a row,
Haply (for such its massy form bespeaks)
The weighty tread of some rude peasant clown
Upbore: on this supported, oft he stretched,
With uncouth strides, along the furrow'd glebe,
Flattening the stubborn clod; till cruel time,
(What will not cruel time?) or a wry step,
Sever'd the strict cohesion; when, alas!
He who could erst, with even, equal pace,
Pursue his destin'd way, with symmetry,
And some proportion form'd, now, on one side,
Curtail'd and maim'd, the sport of vagrant boys,
Cursing his frail supporter, treach'rous prop!
With toilsome steps, and difficult, moves on."

A few light and agreeable poems, two hymns written at Huntingdon, with about sixty others composed at Olney, are almost the only known poetical productions of his pen between the years 1749 and 1782, at which last period he committed his volume of poems in rhyme to the press. There are examples in the physical world, of mountains reposing in coldness and quietness for ages; and, at length, without any apparently new stimulus, awaking from their slumber, and deluging the surrounding vineyards with streams of fire. But it is, we believe, an unheard-of poetical phenomenon, for a mind teeming with such tendencies and capabilities as that of Cowper, to sleep through so long a period, and, at length, suddenly to awake, when illness and age might seem to have laid their palsying hand upon its energies, and at once to erect itself into poetical life and supremacy. In general, the poet either 'lisps in numbers,' or begins to put forth his hidden powers under the exciting influence of some new passion or emotion—such as love, fear, hope, or disappointment. But, how wide of this was the history of Cowper! In his case, the muse had no infancy, but sprang full armed from the brain of the poet.

But, if the tardy development of the poetical powers of our author was one peculiarity in his case, the suddenness and completeness of the development, when it did take place, was, under his circumstances, a still greater subject of surprise. In the account of his life we learn, that, after quitting Westminster school, at the age of eighteen, he spent three years in a solicitor's office; and passed from thence, at the age of twenty-one, into chambers in the Inner Temple. Soon after this event, he says of himself, "I was struck, not long after my settlement in the Temple, with such a dejection of spirits, as none but they who have felt the same can have the least conception of. Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in horror, rising up in despair. I presently lost all relish for the studies to which before I had been closely attached. The classics had no longer any charm for me. I had need of something more salutary than amusement, but I had no one to direct me where to find it." This dejection of mind, as our readers are aware, led him onward from depth to depth of misery and despair, till at length he was borne away, helpless and hopeless, in the year 1768, to an asylum for insane patients at St. Albans. Released from the awful grasp of a perverted imagination, chiefly by the power of that religion, which, in spite of every fact in his history, has been, with malignant hatred to Christianity, charged as the cause of his madness, he spent the two happiest years of his life at Huntingdon. After this, he retired with the Unwin family to Olney, in Buckinghamshire; and there, after passing through the most tremendous mental conflicts, sank again into a state of despondency; from which he at length awoke, (if it might be called awaking,) not indeed to be freed from his delusions, but, whilst under their dominion, to delight, instruct, and astonish mankind, with some of the most original and enchanting poems in any language. The philosophical work of Browne, dedicated to Queen Caroline, and composed, as the author says, by a man who had lost his "rational soul," has been always reputed the miracle of literature. But Browne's case is scarcely more remarkable than that of Cowper. That a work sparkling with the most childlike gaiety and brilliant wit; exhibiting the most cheerful views of the character of God, the face of nature, and the circumstances of man, should proceed from a writer who at the time regarded God as an implacable enemy; the earth we live on, as the mere porch to a world of punishment; and human life, at least in his own case, as the cloudy morning of a day of interminable anguish—all this is to be explained only by the fact that madness disdains all rules, and reconciles all contrarieties. His history supplies an example, not without its parallel, of a mind—like some weapon drawn from its sheath to fight a particular battle, and then suspended on the walls again—called forth to accomplish an important end, and then sent back again into obscurity. And it is no less an evidence, amongst a thousand other instances, that our heavenly Father "in judgment remembers mercy," and bestows this mitigation of the heaviest of all maladies, that those exposed to its deadliest influence and themselves denied all access to the bright sources of happiness, are sometimes privileged to pour the streams of consolation over the path of others. How truly may it be said of such persons, "Sic vos, non vobis, mellificatis apes."

But whilst we speak of certain peculiarities in the case of Cowper, as calculated to destroy all reasonable expectation of such poems as he has given to the public, we are not sure that these very peculiarities have not assisted to supply his poetry with some of its characteristic and most valuable features. Among the qualities, for example, by which his compositions are distinguished, are those of strong sense—moderation on all the subjects most apt to throw the mind off its balance—maturity in thought, reasoning and imagination—fulness without inflation—the "strength of the oak without its nodosities"—the "inspiration of the Sybil without her contortions"—the most profound and extensive views of human nature. But perhaps every one of these qualities is oftener the growth of age than of youth; and is rather the tardy fruit of patient experience than the sudden shoot of untrained and undisciplined genius.

In like manner, the poetry of Cowper is characterised by the most touching tenderness, by the deepest sympathy with the sufferings of others, by a penetrating insight into the dark recesses of a tempted and troubled heart. But where are qualities such as these so likely to be cultivated as in the shady places of a suffering mind, and in the school of that stern mistress who teaches us "from our own, to melt at others' woe," and to administer to others the medicines which have healed ourselves? A celebrated physician is said to have inoculated himself with the virus of the plague, in order to practise with more efficacy in the case of others. Such voluntary initiation in sorrow was needless in the case of Cowper;—another hand had opened the wound which was to familiarize him with the deepest trials of suffering humanity.

It is time, however, that we should proceed to consider some of the claims of Cowper to the character of a poet. Large multitudes have found an almost irresistible charm in his writings. In what peculiarities does this powerful influence mainly reside?

In order to reply to this question, we would first direct the attention of our readers to the constitution of his mind.

And here we may enter on our work by observing, that almost all critics have regarded an ardent love of nature as a sine quâ non in the constitution of a poet. And nature, surely, never had a more enthusiastic admirer than the author of the Task. How feelingly does he write on this subject!

"I have loved the rural walk through lanes
Of grassy swarth, close cropp'd by nibbling sheep,
And skirted thick with intertexture firm
Of thorny bows; have loved the rural walk
O'er hills, through valleys, and by river's brink,
E'er since, a truant boy, I pass'd my bounds,
T' enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames.

When Homer describes his shepherd as contemplating the heavens and earth by the light of the moon and stars, and says, with his accustomed simplicity and grace,—"The heart of the shepherd is glad;" our author might seem to have sat for the portrait. Although unacquainted with nature in her sublimest aspect, every point in creation appears to have a charm for him. To no lips would the strain of another poet be more appropriate.

"I care not, fortune, what you me deny;
You cannot rob me of free nature's grace;
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns by living stream at eve."

It is true, that every enthusiastic lover of nature is not a poet: but a man can scarcely rise to the dignity of that high office who has not a touch of this enthusiasm. Poetry is essentially an imitative art; and he who is no lover of nature loses all the finest subjects of imitation. On the contrary, this attachment, especially if it be of an ardent character, supplies subjects to the muse every where. Winter or summer, the wilderness and the garden, the cedar of Libanus, and the hyssop on the wall; all that is dull and ineloquent to another has a voice for him, and rouses him to think, to feel, to admire, and to speak. The following lines are said to have been introduced into "The Task," to gratify Mrs. Unwin, after the first draught of the poem was finished. But what language can exhibit a more genuine attachment to nature?

"And witness, dear companion of my walks,
Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceive
Fast lock'd in mine....
Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long.
Thou know'st my praise of nature most sincere,
And that my raptures are not conjur'd up
To serve occasion of poetic pomp,
But genuine; and art partner of them all."

Nor was the delight which he derived from nature confined, in the case of our poet, to one sense. "All the sounds," he writes, "that nature utters are delightful, at least in this country. I should not perhaps find the roarings of lions in Africa, or of bears in Russia, very pleasing; but I know of no beast in England, whose voice I do not account musical, save and except only the braying of an ass. The notes of all our birds and fowls please me, without one exception. I should not indeed think of keeping a goose in a cage, that I might hang him up in the parlour for the sake of his melody, but the goose upon a common, or in a farm-yard, is no bad performer. Seriously, however, it strikes me as a very observable instance of providential kindness to man, that such an exact accord has been contrived between his ear and the sounds with which, at least in a rural situation, it is almost every moment visited. The fields, the woods, the gardens, have each their concerts; and the ear of man is for ever regaled by creatures who seem only to please themselves. Even the ears that are deaf to the Gospel are continually entertained, though without knowing it, by sounds for which they are solely indebted to its Author."[796]

It is interesting to compare with this the poetical expression of the same thought.

"Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds
Exhilirate the spirit, and restore
The tone of languid nature....
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds,
But animated nature sweeter still,
To soothe or satisfy the human ear.
Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one
The live-long night. Nor those 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."

Another poetical quality in the mind of Cowper is his ardent love of his species—a love which led him to contemplate, with the most solicitous regard, their wants, tastes, passions; their diseases, and the appropriate remedies for them. It has been justly observed, that, if there are some who have little taste for the poetry which delineates only inanimate beings or objects, there is hardly any one who does not listen, with sympathy and delight, to that which exhibits the fortunes and feelings of man. The truth is, we suppose, that this last order of topics is most easily brought home to our own business and bosoms. Aristotle considers that the imitation or delineation of human action is one of the main objects of poetry. But if this be true, if the "proper study of mankind is man," and one of the highest offices of poetry be to exhibit, as upon the stage, the fortunes and passions of his fellow beings—few have attained such eminence in his art as Cowper. His hymns are the close transcripts of his own soul. His rhymed poems have more of a didactic character; but they are for the most part exhibitions of man in all his attitudes of thought and action. They are mirrors in which every man may contemplate his own mind. In the "Task," he passes every moment from the contemplation of nature to that of the being who inhabits this fair, though fallen, world. He lashes the vices, laughs at the follies, mourns over the guilt of his species; he spares no pains to conduct the guilty to the feet of their only true Friend, and to land the miserable amidst the green pastures and still waters of heavenly consolation.

Another property in the mind of Cowper, which has given birth to some of the noblest passages in his poems, is his intense love of freedom. The political state of this country was scarcely ever more degraded than at the period when he began to write; and every real patriot who could wield the pen, or lift the voice in the cause of legitimate and regulated freedom, had plenty to do at home. At the same period also the profligacy and tyranny of the privileged orders in France, and other of the old European dynasties, were such as to provoke the indignation of every lover of liberty. And lastly, at this time, that horrible traffic in human flesh, that capital crime, disgrace, and curse of the human species, the Slave Trade, prevailed in all its horrors. How splendid are many of the passages scattered so prodigally through his poems, in which the author rebukes the crimes of despotism and cruelty at home or abroad, and claims for mankind the high privileges with which God, by an everlasting charter, had endowed them.

What lines can breathe a deeper indignation, than those quoted with such admiration by Mr. Fox, in the House of Commons, on the Bastile?

"Ye horrid towers, th' abode of broken hearts,
Ye dungeons and ye cages of despair,
That monarchs have supplied, from age to age,
With music such as suits their sovereign ears,
The sighs and groans of miserable men:
There's not an English heart that would not leap
To hear that ye were fallen at last."

And what passage in any uninspired writer is more noble and heart-stirring, than that on the decision in the case tried by the illustrious Granville Sharpe, to establish the liberty of all who touched the soil of England—a passage confessedly the foundation of the noblest effort of Curran, in his great speech on the liberty of the subject!

"I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation priz'd above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home—then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loos'd.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through ev'ry vein
Of all your empire; that, where Britain's pow'r
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too."

But after all, perhaps, the peculiarity in the mind of Cowper, which gives the chief charm to his poetry, is the depth and ardour of his piety.

It is impossible not to be aware of the severance which critics have laboured to effect between religion and poetry,—between the character of the prophet and the poet: and that Johnson's decision is thought by some to be final on the subject. Cowper himself admits that the connexion has been rare between the two characters—as witness the following lines—

"Pity religion has so seldom found
A skilful guide into poetic ground!
For flow'rs would spring where'er she deigned to stray,
And ev'ry muse attend her in her way.
Virtue indeed meets many a rhyming friend,
And many a compliment politely penn'd;
But, unattir'd in that becoming vest
Religion weaves for her, and half undrest,
Stands in the desert, shiv'ring and forlorn,
A wintry figure like a wither'd thorn."

But he does not despair of seeing some

"Bard all fire,
Touch'd with a coal from heaven, assume the lyre,
And tell the world, still kindling as he sung,
With more than mortal music on his tongue,
That He who died below, and reigns above,
Inspires the song, and that his name is 'Love.'"

Indeed no theory can have less foundation either in philosophy or in fact, than that poetry and religion have too little in common, for either to gain by an attempt to unite them. They seem to us born for each other. And, so important is this topic, that, although at the risk of repeating what has been said elsewhere, it may be well for a moment, to dwell upon it.

The theory which endeavours to secure a perpetual divorce between religion and poetry has not the authority of the great critics of antiquity. Longinus maintains, in one place, that "he who aims at the reputation of a sublime writer must spare no labour to educate his soul to grandeur, and to impregnate it with great and generous ideas." And he affirms, in another, that "the faculties of the soul will grow stupid, the spirit be lost, and good sense and genius lie in ruins, when the care and study of man is engaged about the mortal and worthless part of himself, and he has ceased to cultivate virtue, and polish up the nobler part, his soul." Quintilian has a whole chapter to prove that a great writer must be a good man. And the greatest modern critics hold the same language. But, perhaps, in no passage is the truth upon this subject more nobly expressed, and a difficulty connected with it more ably explained, than in the following verses of a poem now difficult of access:

"But, of our souls, the high-born loftier part,
Th' ethereal energies that touch the heart;
Conceptions ardent, labouring thought intense,
Creative fancy's wild magnificence;
And all the dread sublimities of song
—These, Virtue, these to thee alone belong.
Chill'd by the breath of Vice, their radiance dies,
And brightest burns, when lighted at the skies;
Like vestal lamps, to purest bosoms giv'n,
And kindled only by a ray from heav'n."[797]

Nor does this sentiment stand on the mere authority of critics; but appears to be founded on just views of the constitution of our nature. Lighter themes can be expected to awaken only light and transient feelings in the bosom. The profounder topics of religion sink deeper; touch all the hidden springs of thought and action; and awaken emotions, which have all the force and permanence of the great principles and interests in which they originate.

To us, no assertion would seem to have less warrant, than that taste suffers by its alliance with religion. The proper objects of taste are beauty and sublimity; and if (as a modern critic seems to us to have incontrovertibly established) beauty and sublimity do not reside in the mere forms and colours of the objects we contemplate, but in the associations which they suggest to the mind, it cannot be questioned that the associations suggested to a man of piety, exceed both in beauty and sublimity those of every other class. God, as a Father, is the most lovely of all objects—God, as an avenger, is the most terrible; and it is to the religious man exclusively, that this at once most tender and most terrible Being is disclosed, in all the beauty and majesty of holiness, by every object which he contemplates—

"Præsentiorem conspicimus Deum
Per invias rupes, fera per juga,
Clivosque præruptos sonantes,
Inter aquas, nemorumque noctem."

Or, as the same sentiment is expressed by Cowper,

"His are the mountains, and the valleys his,
And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy
With a propriety that none can feel,
But who, with filial confidence inspired,
Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling say,—'My Father made them all!'"

It is striking to what an extent the greatest poets of all ages and countries have called in religion, under some form or other, to their assistance. How are the Iliad and Odyssey ennobled by their mythological machinery; by the scales of Fate, the frown of Jove, and the intercession of Minerva! How anxiously does Virgil labour to give a moral and religious character to his Georgics and Æneid! And how nobly do these kindred spirits, by a bold fiction bordering upon truth, display the eternal mansions of joy and of misery, of reward and of punishment; thus disclosing, not by the light of revelation, but by the blended flashes of genius and tradition, the strongest incentives to virtue, and the most terrific penalties of crime.

The same may be affirmed of many of our own most distinguished poets; of "the sage and serious Spenser," and the immortal author of "the Paradise Lost" himself. Nor can we hesitate to trace the deep interest continually excited by the poetry of Cowper, in great measure, to the same source. Though often careless in the structure of his verse; though sometimes lame, and lengthy, and prosaic in his manner; though frequently employed about unpopular topics; he is perhaps the most popular, with the exception of one, of all the English poets: and we believe that the main source of his general acceptance is the fact that he never fails to introduce the Creator into the scenes of his own universe; that, by the soarings of his own mind, he lifts us from earth to heaven, and "makes us familiar with a world unseen;" that he draws largely from the mine of Scripture, and thus exhibits the majesty and love of the Divine Being, in words and imagery which the great object of his wonder and love Himself provides.

It is wholly needless for us to refer to any particular parts of the works of our author, as illustrative of his deep and sanguine spirit of piety. That spirit breathes through every line, and letter. It is, if we may so speak, the animating soul of his verses. The mind of the Christian reader is refreshed, in every step of his progress, by the conviction that the songs thus sung on earth were taught from Heaven; and that, in resigning himself to the sweetest associate for this world, he is choosing the very best guide to another. Indeed, few have been disposed to deny to Cowper the highest of all poetical titles—that of The Poet of Christianity. In this field he has but one rival, the author of the "Paradise Lost." And happily the provinces which they have chosen for themselves within the sacred enclosure are, for the most part, so distinct, that it is scarcely necessary to bring them into comparison. The distinguishing qualities of Milton are a surpassing elevation of thought and energy of expression, which leave the mind scarcely able to breathe under the pressure of his majesty, courage, and sublimity. The main defect of his poetry, as has been justly stated by an anonymous critic, is "the absence of a charm neither to be named nor defined, which would render the whole as lovely as it is beautiful, and as captivating as it is sublime." "His poetry," it is added by the same critic, "will be ever praised by the many, and read by the few. The weakest capacity may be offended by its faults, but it requires a genius equal to his own to comprehend and enjoy all his merits.

"Cowper rarely equals Milton in sublimity, to which his subjects but seldom led; he excels him in easy expression, delicate pleasantry, and generous satire; and he resembles him in the temperate use of all his transcendent abilities. He never crushes his subject by falling upon it, nor permits his subject to crush him by falling beneath it. Invested with a sovereign command of diction, and enjoying unlimited freedom of thought, he is never prodigal of words, and he never riots amidst the exuberance of his conceptions; his economy displays his wealth, and his moderation is the proof of his power; his richest phrases seem the most obvious expression of his ideas, and his mightiest exertions are made apparently without toil. This, as we have already observed, is one of the grandest characteristics of Milton. It would be difficult to name a third poet of our country who could claim a similar distinction. Others, like Cowley, overwhelm their theme with their eloquence, or, like Young, sink exhausted beneath it, by aiming at magnificent, but unattainable, compression; a third class, like Pope, whenever they write well, write their best, and never win but at full speed, and with all their might; while a fourth, like Dryden and Churchill, are confident of their strength, yet so careless of their strokes, that when they conquer, it seems a matter of course, and when they fall, a matter of no consequence, for they can rise again as soon as they please. Milton and Cowper alone appear always to walk within the limits of their genius, yet up to the height of their great argument. We are not pretending to exalt them above all other British poets; we have only compared them together on one point, wherein they accord with each other, and differ from the rest. But there is one feature of resemblance between them of a nobler kind. These good and faithful servants, who had received ten talents each, neither buried them in the earth, nor expended them for their own glory, nor lavished them in profligacy, but occupied them for their Master's service; and we trust have both entered into his joy. Their unfading labours, (not subject to change, from being formed according to the fashion of this world, but being of equal and eternal interest to man in all ages,) have disproved the idle and impious position which vain philosophy, hating all godliness, has endeavoured to establish,—that religion can neither be adorned by poetry, nor poetry ennobled by religion."[798]

Having thus noticed some of those grand peculiarities in the mind of Cowper, which appear to have mainly contributed to place him among the highest order of poets, we proceed to point out some subordinate qualifications, without which, those already referred to would have failed to raise him to his present elevation. Even the buoyant spirit of a poet has certain inferior members by which it is materially assisted in its upward flight.

In the first place, then, he was one of the most simple and natural of all writers. With the exception of the sacred volume, it would perhaps be impossible to name any compositions with so large a proportion of simple ideas and Saxon monosyllables. He began to be an author when Pope, with his admirable critic Johnson, had established a taste for all that was most ornate, pompous, and complicated in phraseology. But, with due respect for the genius and power of this class of writers, he may be said to have hewn out for himself a new path to glory. It has been justly said by an accomplished modern critic and poet, that, "between the school of Dryden and Pope, with their few remembered successors, not one of whom ranks now above a fourth-rate poet; for Young, Thomson, Goldsmith, Gray, and Collins, though flourishing in the interval, were not of their school, but all, in their respective ways, originals;—between the school of Dryden and Pope, and our undisciplined, independent contemporaries, Cowper stands as having closed the age of the former illustrious masters, and commenced that of the eccentric leaders of the modern fashions in song. We cannot stop to trace the affinity which he bears to either of these generations, so dissimilar from each other; but it would be easy to show how little he owed to his immediate forerunners, and how much his immediate followers have been indebted to him. All the cant phrases, all the technicalities, of the former school he utterly threw away, and by his rejection of them they became obsolete. He boldly adopted cadences of verse unattempted before, which though frequently uncouth, and sometimes scarcely reducible to rhythm, were not seldom ingeniously significant, and signally energetic. He feared not to employ colloquial, philosophical, judicial idioms, and forms of argument, and illustrations, which enlarged the vocabulary of poetical terms, less by recurring to obsolete ones, (which has been too prodigally done since,) than by hazardous, and generally happy innovations of more recent origin, which have become graceful and dignified by usage, though Pope and his imitators durst not have touched them. The eminent adventurous revivers of English poetry about thirty years ago, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, in their blank verse, trod directly in the steps of Cowper, and, in their early productions at least, were each, in a measure, what he made them. Our author may be legitimately styled the father of this triumvirate, who are, in truth, the living fathers of the innumerable race of moderns, whom no human ingenuity could well classify into their respective schools."[799]

The simplicity of Cowper as a thinker, examiner, and writer, is unquestionably one of his greatest charms. He constantly reminds us of a highly-gifted and intelligent child. In all that he says and does, there is a total absence of all plot and stratagem, of all pretensions to think profoundly, or write finely; though, without an effort, he does both. His manner is to invite you to walk abroad with him amidst the glories of nature; to fix at random on some point in the landscape; to display its beauties or its peculiarities—to touch on some feature which has, perhaps, altogether escaped your own eye—to pour out the simplest thoughts in the simplest language—and to make you feel that never man before had so sweet, so moral, so devout, so affectionate, so gifted, so musical a companion. The simplicity of his style is, we believe, considering its strength, without a parallel. No author, perhaps, has done more to recover the language of our country from the grasp and tyranny of a foreign idiom, and to teach English people to speak in English accents. In some instances, it may be granted, that he is somewhat more colloquial and homely than the dignity of his subject warrants. But for offences of this kind he makes the amplest compensation, by leading us to those "wells of undefiled English," at which he had drunk so deeply, and whence alone the pure streams of our national composition are to be drawn.

It is next to be noticed, as to the style of Cowper, that it is as nervous as it is clear and unpretending. It is impossible to compare the works of Addison, and others of the simple class of writers, with Johnson, and those of the opposite class, without feeling that what they gain in simplicity they often lose in strength and power. But the language of Cowper is often to the full as vigorous and masculine as that of Shakspeare. Bring a tyrant or a slave-driver before him for judgment; and the axe of the one and the scourge of the other are not keener weapons than the words of the poet.

It would be difficult to find in any writer a more striking example of nervous phraseology than we have in the well-known lines:

"But hark—the doctor's voice!—fast wedged between
Two empirics he stands, and with swoll'n cheeks
Inspires the news, his trumpet. Keener far
Than all invective, is his bold harangue,
While through that public organ of report
He hails the clergy; and defying shame,
Announces to the world his own and theirs!
He teaches those to read, whom schools dismissed
And colleges, untaught; sells accent, tone,
And emphasis in score, and gives to pray'r
Th' adagio and andante it demands.
He grinds divinity of other days
Down into modern use; transforms old print
To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes
Of gall'ry critics by a thousand arts.
Are there who purchase of the doctor's ware?
O name it not in Gath!—It cannot be,
That grave and learned clerks should need such aid.
He doubtless is in sport, and does but droll;
Assuming thus a rank unknown before—
Grand caterer and dry-nurse of the church!"

In the next place, it will not be questioned, we think, by any reader of the preceding letters, that Cowper was a wit of the very highest order—and this quality is by no means confined to his prose, but enters largely into everything that he writes. No author surprises us more frequently with rapid turns and unexpected coincidences. The mock sublime is one of his favourite implements; and he employs it with almost unrivalled success. There is also a delicacy of touch in his witticisms which is more easily felt than described. And his wit has this noble singularity, that it is never derived from wrong sources, or directed to wrong ends. It never wounds a feeling heart, or deepens the blush upon a modest cheek. Other wits are apt to dip their vessels in any stream which presents itself; Cowper draws only from the purest fountains. It has been said of Sterne, that he hides his pearls in a ditch, and forces his readers to dive for them; but the witticisms of Cowper are as well calculated to instruct as to delight.

This last topic is intimately connected with another, which, in touching on the excellences of Cowper as a poet, cannot be passed over,—we mean, the astonishing fertility of his imagination. It was observed to the writer of these pages by the late Sir James Mackintosh, of the friend and ornament of his species, William Wilberforce, that "he was perhaps the finest of all orators of his own particular order—that the wealth of his imagination was such, that no idea seemed to present itself to his mind without its accompanying image or ghost, which he could produce at his pleasure, and which it was a matter of self-denial if he did not produce." And the latter part of this criticism might seem to be made for Cowper. His mind appears never to wait for an image, but to be overrun by them. In argument or description—in hurling the thunders of rebuke, or whispering the messages of mercy—he does but wave his wand, and a host of spiritual essences descend to darken or brighten the scenes at his bidding; to supply new weapons of rebuke, or new visions of love and joy. Some of his personifications are among the finest specimens in any language. What, for example, has more of the genuine spirit of poetry, than the personification of Famine, in the following lines?—

"He calls for Famine......
......and the meagre fiend
Blows mildew from between his shrivell'd lips
And taints the golden ear."

What is more lively or forcible than his description of Time?—

"Time, as he passes us, has a dove's wing,
Unsoiled and swift, and of a silken sound;
But the world's Time is Time in masquerade!
Theirs, should I paint him, has his pinions fledged
With motley plumes; and where the peacock shows
His azure eyes, is tinctured black and red
With spots quadrangular of diamond form,
Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife,
And spades, the emblems of untimely graves.
What should be and what was an hour-glass once,
Become a dice-box, and a billiard mace
Well does the work of his destructive scythe."

What, again, is superior in this way to his address to Winter?—

"O Winter! ruler of the inverted year!
Thy scattered hair with sleet-like ashes filled,
Thy breath congealed upon thy lips, thy cheeks
Fringed with a beard made white with other snows
Than those of age, thy forehead wrapped in clouds,
A lifeless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne
A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,
But urged by storms along its slippery way."

But the examples of this species of personification are without number; and we are not afraid to bring many of them into comparison with the Discord of Homer, the Fame of Virgil, or the Famine of Ovid—passages of so powerful a cast as at once, and without any assistance, to establish the poetical authority of their inventors.

It may seem strange to some, that we should assign a place, among the poetical claims of Cowper, to his strong sense. He appears to us to be one of the most just, natural, and rational of all writers; and, however Poetry may seem to appropriate to herself rather the remote and visionary regions of fiction than that of dull reality, we are disposed to think, that, even in her wildest wanderings, she will maintain no real and permanent ascendency over the mind, if she widely deviates from nature and good sense. "Monstrous sights," says Beattie, and he might have added, monstrous conceptions, "please but for a moment, if they please at all; for they derive their charm merely from the beholders' amazement. I have read indeed of a man of rank in Sicily who chooses to adorn his villa with pictures and statues of the most unnatural deformity. But it is a singular instance; and one would not be much more surprised to hear of a man living without food, or growing fat upon poison. To say of anything that it is 'contrary to nature,' denotes censure and disgust on the part of the speaker; as the epithet 'natural' intimates an agreeable quality, and seems, for the most part, to imply that a thing is as it ought to be, suitable to our own taste, and congenial to our own disposition.... Think how we should relish a painting in which there was no regard to colours, proportions, or any of the physical laws of nature; where the eyes and ears of animals were placed in their shoulders; where the sky was green, and the grass crimson." Such distortions and anomalies would not be less offensive in poetry than in the sister art. And it is one of the main sources of delight in Cowper, that all is in its due proportion, and wears its right colours; that the "eyes and ears" are in "their proper places;" that his skies are blue, and his grass is green; and that every reflection of the poet has, what he himself calls the

"Stamp and clear impression of good sense."

The very passage in the sixth book of "The Task" from which this line is taken, and which furnishes perhaps the most perfect uninspired delineation of a true Christian, supplies, at the same time, an admirable example of the quality we mean; and shows, that even where his feelings were the most intensely interested, his passions were under the control of his reason; that, when he mounted the chariot of the sun, he took care not to approach too near the flaming luminary.

It would be impossible, in a sketch such as this, not to advert to the powers of the author as a satirist. And here, we think the most partial critic will be scarcely disposed to deny, that he sometimes handles his knife a little at random and with too much severity. He had early in life been intimate with Churchill; and, with scarcely a touch of the temper of that right English poet, had plainly caught something of his manner. There is this wide distinction between him and his master—that his irony and rebuke are never the weapons of party, or personality, but of truth, honour, and the public good. The strong, though homely, image applied by Churchill to another critic,—

"Like a butcher, doom'd for life
In his mouth to wear his knife,"—

is too just a picture of its author, but is infinitely far from being that of Cowper. It was well said of his satire, that "it was the offspring of benevolence; and that, like the Pelian spear, it furnishes the only cure for the wound it inflicts. When he is obliged to blame, he pities; when he condemns, it is with regret. His censures display no triumphant superiority; but rather express a turn of feeling such as we might suppose angels to indulge in at the prospect of human frailty."

But, if his satirical powers were sometimes indulged to excess, it is impossible to deny that he was, generally and habitually, of all poets the most sympathizing and tender. Nothing in human composition can surpass the tenderness of the poem on receiving his mother's picture, or of those exquisite lines addressed to a lady in France suffering under deep calamity, of which last we shall quote a few for the ornament of our page:—

"The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown:
No trav'ller ever reach'd that blest abode,
Who found not thorns and briers in his road.
The world may dance along the flowery plain,
Cheer'd as they go by many a sprightly strain,
Where Nature has her mossy velvet spread
With unshod feet they yet securely tread,
Admonish'd, scorn the caution and the friend,
Bent all on pleasure, heedless of its end.
But He, who knew what human hearts would prove,
How slow to learn the dictates of his love,
That, hard by nature, and of stubborn will,
A life of ease would make them harder still,
In pity to the souls his grace design'd
To rescue from the ruins of mankind,
Call'd for a cloud to darken all their years,
And said, 'Go, spend them in the vale of tears.'
O balmy gales of soul-reviving air!
O salutary streams that murmur there!
These flowing from the fount of grace above,
Those breathed from lips of everlasting love."

The Hymns are almost uniformly of the same character. Drawn from the deep recesses of a broken heart, they find a short and certain way to the bosom of others.

And this leads to the notice of another peculiarity in his writings. It is said to have been a favourite maxim with Lord Byron, "that every writer is interesting to others in proportion as he is able and willing to seize and to display to them the hidden workings of his own soul." The noble critic is himself a strong exemplification of the truth of his own rule. Not merely his heroes and his heroines, but his rocks, mountains, and rivers, are a sort of fac simile of himself. The blue lake reposing among the mountains is the bard in a state of repose. The thunder leaping from rock to rock is the same mind under the strong excitement of passion. But perhaps of all writers Cowper is the most habitually what may be termed an experimentalist in poetry. He sought in "the man within," the secret machinery by which to touch and to control the world without. He felt deeply; and caught the feeling as it arose, and transferred it, warm from the heart to his own paper. Hence one great attraction of his writings. "As face answereth to face in water, so the heart of man to man." The sensations of other men are to a great degree our own; and the poetical exhibition of these sensations is the presenting to us a sort of illuminated mirror, in which we see ourselves, and are, according to the view, moved to sorrow or to joy. Preachers as well as poets will do well to remember this law of our nature, and will endeavour to analyze and to delineate their own feelings, if they mean to reach those of others. Unhappily, the noble author of this canon in philosophy and literature had no very profitable picture of this kind to display to his fellow men. He speaks, however, of "unmasking the hell that dwelt within." And he has taught no unimportant lesson to his species, if he has instructed us in the utter wretchedness of those who, gifted with the noblest powers, refuse to consecrate them to the glorious Giver. But, however unprofitable his own application of the rule, the rule itself is valuable; and, in the case of Cowper, we have the application of it, both on the largest scale and to the best possible purpose.

There is one other feature in the mind of Cowper on which, before quitting the subject of this examination, we must be permitted to say a few words. It has been the habit with many, while freely conceding to our poet most of the humbler claims to reputation for which we have contended, to assign him only a second or third place in the scale of poets, on the ground that he is, according to their estimate, altogether "incapable of the true sublime." Now it must be admitted that, if the only true sublimity in writing be to write like Milton, Cowper cannot be ranked in the same class as a poet. Of Milton it may be said, in the words of a poet as great as himself—

"He doth bestride the world
Like a Colossus: and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs."

Nothing can be more astonishing than the composure and dignity with which, like his own Satan, he climbs the "empyreal height"—sails between worlds and worlds—and moves among thrones and principalities, as if in his natural element. "The genius of Cowper," as it has been justly said, "did not lead him to emulate the songs of the seraphim:" but though, in one respect, he moves in a lower region than his great master, in what may be termed the "moral sublime," he is by no means inferior to him. Scarcely any poetry awakens in the mind more of those deep emotions of "pity and terror," which the great critic of antiquity describes as the main sources of the sublime; and by which poetry is said to "purge the mind of her votaries." In this view of the sublime we know of few passages which surpass the description of "liberty of soul," in the conclusion of the 5th book of "The Task."

"Then liberty, like day,
Breaks on the soul; and, by a flash from heav'n,
Fires all the faculties with glorious joy.
A voice is heard that mortal ears hear not,
Till Thou hast touch'd them; 'tis the voice of song,
A loud hosanna sent from all thy works;
Which he that hears it with a shout repeats,
And adds his rapture to the gen'ral praise.
In that blest moment, Nature, throwing wide
Her veil opaque, discloses with a smile
The Author of her beauties; who, retir'd
Behind His own creation, works unseen
By the impure, and hears his pow'r denied.
Thou art the source and centre of all minds,
Their only point of rest, eternal Word!
From Thee departing, they are lost, and rove
At random, without honour, hope, or peace.
From Thee is all that soothes the life of man,
His high endeavour, and his glad success,
His strength to suffer, and his will to serve.
But, O Thou bounteous Giver of all good,
Thou art of all thy gifts thyself the crown!
Give what thou canst, without thee we are poor;
And with thee rich, take what thou wilt away!"

In like manner the Millennium of Cowper is at least not inferior to the Messiah of Pope. The corresponding passage in the latter writer is greatly inferior to that in which our poet says,—

"... No foe to man
Lurks in the serpent now—the mother sees,
And smiles to see, her infant's hand
Stretch'd forth to dally with the crested worm,
To stroke his azure neck, and to receive
The lambent homage of his arrowy tongue."

And few passages in any poem have more of the true sublime than that which follows soon after the last extract:—

"One song employs all nations, and all cry
'Worthy the Lamb, for he was slain for us!'
The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks
Shout to each other, and the mountain tops
From distant mountains catch the flying joy:
Till, nation after nation taught the strain,
Earth rolls the rapturous hosanna round."

Having offered these general observations "on the Genius and Poetry" of Cowper, and having so largely drawn from his sweet and instructive pages, it is not thought necessary to supply any more specific notice of his several poems. It is superfluous to enter upon a detailed proof that his poems in rhyme, though occasionally brightened by passages of extraordinary merit, are often prosaic in their character, and halting and feeble in the versification; that his shorter poems, whether of a gay or of a devotional cast, are, for pathos, wit, delicacy of conception, and felicity of expression, unequalled in our language; that his Homer is an evidence, not of his incapacity as a translator, but of the impossibility of transmuting into stiff unyielding English monosyllables the rich compounds of the Greek, without a sacrifice both of sound and sense; that "The Task" outruns in power, variety, depth of thought, fertility of imagination, vigour of expression, in short, in all which constitutes a poet of the highest order, every hope which his earlier poems had allowed his readers to indulge. The dawn gave little or no promise of such a day. The porch was in no sense commensurate to the temple afterwards to be erected.—On the whole, his "Poems" will always be considered as one of the richest legacies which genius and virtue have bequeathed to mankind; and will be welcomed wherever the English language is known, and English minds, tastes, and habits prevail; wherever the approbation of what is good and the abhorrence of what is evil are felt; wherever truth is honoured, and God and his creatures are loved.

With these observations, we bring our imperfect criticisms on the Poems of Cowper to a conclusion. The writer of them does not hesitate to say that he has been amply rewarded for his own critical labours, by the privilege of often escaping from his own page to that of his author. And the reader of them will be still more largely compensated if, when weary of the critic, he will turn aside to breathe an ardent supplication to the Giver of all that was good and great in Cowper, that he himself may drink deeply of the spirit, without participating in the sorrows of this most holy, most distinguished, most suffering, but now most triumphant, servant of the God and Saviour to whom he so nobly and habitually dedicated all his powers.

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