“Yon cottager that weaves at her own door,
Pillow and bobbins, all her little store!”
She little knew how much pleasure the sight of her gave to a passing stranger, with whom her art had been rendered poetically beautiful, by the charms of Cowper’s verse. This is, in fact, the secret of his spell as a poet, the power of investing even homely things, in real life, with a certain fascinating attractiveness. He avoids the romantic and the poetical, in choosing his themes; but he elevates what is common to a dignity and beauty unknown before. He is the most English of English bards, and I love him for teaching me to see a something even in the English poor, which makes them, to me, vastly more interesting than the romantic peasantry of Italy. True, the latter tread the vintage, and the other only stack the corn; but the English cottage has the Bible in it, and its children learn the Ten Commandments, and also learn that “cleanliness is next to godliness;” while in Italy, among fleas and other vermin, the idle parents sit lazily in the sun, and the children run after the traveller’s coach-wheel, lying while they beg, and showing by their religious vocabulary, that Bacchus and Maria are confounded in their imagination as saints of the same calendar.
At length I saw the spire of Olney, and soon I crossed the bridge, over whose “wearisome, but needful length,” used to come the news from London, to solace Cowper’s winter evenings. I was not long in finding the poet’s most unpoetical home, now occupied by a petty shop-keeper, who has turned his parlour into a stall. Here he lived, however, and here he sang: here, motherly Mrs. Unwin made tea for him, and Lady Austen gave him “the sofa” for his “Task.” Under these stairs once lodged Puss, Tiney, and Bess; those happy hares which, alone of their kind, have had a local habitation, and will always have a name. In the garden, I saw where the cucumber-vine used to grow, and where Puss used to ruminate beneath its leaves, like Jonah under his gourd. An apple-tree was pointed out to me as “set by Mr. Cowper’s own hands.” The garden has been pieced off, and to see the “summer-house,” I was forced to enter, by a neighbour’s leave, another enclosure. Here is the little nestling-place of Cowper’s poesy—the retreat where his Egeria came to him. In the fence, is still the wicket he made, to let him into the parsonage-grounds, when Newton was his confessor. ‘Here, then,’ I said, ‘one may fancy the lily and the rose, growing in rivalry; and another rose just washed in a shower; and the sound of the church-going bell, and a thousand other minute matters in themselves, all taking their place in the poetic magazine of Cowper, and so coming into verse, through his brain, as the mulberry leaf becomes silk, by another process of spinning.’ It was a small field for such a harvest, and yet “the Task” grew here.
And now, another mile brought me to the more agreeable Weston-Underwood, the resort of all his walking days at Olney, and the dear retreat of his later life; the dearer, because bestowed by the lovely Lady Hesketh. This is, indeed, a residence worthy of a poet, and though all who once rendered it so charming to Cowper have passed away, I was agreeably surprised to find no important feature changed. A painful identity belongs to it: you recognize, at every step, the fidelity of the poet’s descriptive powers, and it seems impossible that he who has made the scene part of himself, has been for half a century in his grave, while all this survives. You enter the desolate park of the Throckmortons, and there is “the alcove,” with its commanding view, so dear to the poet’s eye, and Olney spire in the distance. You pass into “the Wilderness,” now a wilderness indeed, for it is neglected and overgrown. Here are a couple of urns, now green with moss, and lovingly clasped by ivy, but each marked with familiar names, and graced by Cowper’s playful verse. The one adorns the grave of “Neptune,” Sir John Throckmorton’s pointer; the other is the monument of “Fop,” his lady’s favourite spaniel. I hailed this memorial of “Lady Frog’s” pet; but was far more moved to descry, before long, at the end of a flowery alley, the antique bust of Homer, which Cowper so greatly valued, and to which he gave a Greek inscription, which Hayley was proud to do into English:—
“The sculptor? Nameless though once dear to fame;
But this man bears an everlasting name.”
Here, then, that “stricken deer that left the herd,” was led to a sweet covert at last, and went in and out, and found pasture, under the guidance of one “who had himself been hurt by the archers.” With what enchantment these haunts of hallowed genius inspired me! And yet never felt I so melancholy before. The utter loneliness of the scene; the fact that they who had bestowed its charm, were all, long ago, dead; and then that painful reality—everything else there, as it should be; the Task, no poem, but a verity, and before my eyes; but Cowper, Hayley, Austen, Hesketh, all gone forever; these thoughts were oppressive. I sat down, and almost wept, as I repeated the names of those who were so “lovely and pleasant in their lives,” and who now are undivided in death! It was an hour of deeper feeling than I had realized before, at any shrine of departed genius, in England.
I went to the house, and rejoiced in the comfort it must have afforded Cowper, in his latter days. It is neat and comfortable, and the village is a pretty one, trim and thrifty in its look, and sufficiently poetical. It has “an air of snug concealment,” which must have been most congenial to its gifted inhabitant, and it was not unsuited to his fondness for receiving his friends as guests. I went into the poet’s chamber, and also into that which Lady Hesketh used to occupy. In the former, there is a sad autograph of the poet, in lead-pencil, behind a window-shutter. The window had been walled up, and only lately re-opened, when the pencilling was found. It is one of the poet’s last performances—an adieu to Weston, written there, as he left it forever:—
“Farewell dear scenes forever closed to me,