In Keble’s “Essay on Sacred Poetry” I lately read the following comparison between Cowper and Burns as descriptive poets. “Compare,” he says, “the landscapes of Cowper with those of Burns. There is, if we mistake not, the same sort of difference between them, as in the conversation of two persons on scenery, the one originally an enthusiast in his love of the works of Nature, the other, driven by disappointment or weariness to solace himself with them as he might.... The one all-overflowing with the love of Nature, and indicating at every turn, that whatever his lot in life, he could not have been happy without her; the other visibly and wisely soothing himself, but not without effort, by attending to rural objects in default of some more congenial happiness, of which he had almost come to despair. The latter, in consequence, laboriously sketching every object that came in his way; the other, in one or two rapid lines which operate, as it were, like a magician’s spell, presenting to the fancy just that picture which was wanted to put the reader’s mind in unison with the writer’s.” And then Keble quotes, in illustration of the difference, the description of Evening in the fourth book of the “Task,” set over against the truly pastoral chant of “Dainty Davie.” I cannot regard this estimate of the two poets as altogether true. The passage which Keble quotes from Cowper is not one of his happiest. “Evening” is there personified in conventional fashion, as “with matron-step slow moving,” with night treading “on her sweeping train.” If the two poets are to be compared at all, let it be when both are at their best. Again, is it quite fair to contrast poetry of description with the poetry of lyric passion, and to reject the former because it does not possess the vivid glow that belongs to the latter? Moreover, the country which Cowper had before him suited better a sober and meditative than an impassioned strain. There can be no doubt that Cowper turned to Nature as a relief and solace from too sad thoughts rather than with the rapture of a fresh heart and a youthful love. But Keble surely would have been the last to deny that this is a legitimate use to make of Nature. He, before most men, would have felt that that is one of the finest ministries of Nature which Cowper thus expresses:—
“Our groves were planted to console at noon
The pensive wanderer in their shades, at eve
The moonbeam, sliding softly in between
The sleeping leaves is all the light they wish,
Birds warbling all the music.”
If it be one of Nature’s offices to make the young and the happy happier, it is her no less genuine and beneficent work to lighten, by her glad or reposeful looks, aged hearts that may be world-weary or desponding.
How exact, faithful, and literally true in his record of the appearances of Nature Cowper is, we have seen. It remains to ask whether he had any philosophy of Nature, and if so, what it was. It could not be that one so devout could look habitually on the face of Nature without asking himself how all this visible vastness stands related to the Invisible One whom his heart held commune with. All remember his well-known line,—
“God made the country, but man made the town,”
and this thought echoes through all his praises of the country, and enhances his pleasure in it. But it is not only by incidental allusion that Cowper lets us know his thoughts on these things. The “Task” contains two long passages, one in the “Winter Morning Walk,” from line 733 to 906, and another in “The Winter Walk at Noon,” from line 181 to 254, in which his feelings on this subject find full utterance, opening with the noble words,—