Yet, formal as Cowper's language often is, narrow as are the ideas which take up a large part of his writings, the essence of his poetry is its truth. A false note in feeling he seldom struck, and the most artificial language cannot hinder his lines from going direct to the heart. The high-water mark of his genius was reached in two or three poems in which the words are in full harmony with the thought and reflect it limpidly, with no attempt at the "embellishment" which he too frequently employed.
In a book designed to introduce the subject to many readers we could have wished for a little more sympathy of tone than Mr. Goldwin Smith has allowed himself in his otherwise admirable volume. It is hardly necessary, for instance, to insist on the obvious narrowness of Cowper's religion. That the book is too short is a failing on the right side, and chargeable to the plan of the series rather than the writer, whose terse style and excellent arrangement make it full of interest. Cowper's life and poetry are bound together in a singularly close union. He belongs by circumstances rather than by genius to those unfortunate minds which, thrown off the proper balance, have gained a deeper insight and a stronger hold upon others through their very weakness. What lends a peculiar pathos and charm to his figure is the purity and gentleness of his mind, the efforts by which he clung to truth in the cruel darkness of mental disease, and the innocent gayety and light-heartedness which alternated with gloom. Like Rousseau, Cowper had, by the very reaction from sadness, a rare keenness of enjoyment. Little things were enough to feast it, and hence the most trivial matters came naturally into his verse. His poems have certainly had a varied history. Written to afford occupation to a mind on the verge of madness, linked with the slightest events of his daily life, it has been their fate to serve for a long time as poetic tracts, and afterward to be exalted by critics as prophecies of a new order of things, the beginning of a literary revolution.
Barbara; or, Splendid Misery. By Miss M.E. Braddon.—For Her Dear Sake. By Mary Cecil Hay.—Daireen. By Frank Frankfort Moore.—Two Women. By Georgiana M. Craik.—Prince Hugo. By Maria M. Grant.—From Generation to Generation: A Novel. By Lady Augusta Noel.—Young Lord Penrith: A Novel. By John Berwick Harwood.—Clara Vaughan: A Novel. By R.D. Blackmore.—The Heart of Holland. By Henry Havard. Translated by Mrs. Cashel Hoey.—Reata: What's in a Name? A Novel. By E.D. Gerard.—Mary Anerley: A Yorkshire Tale. By R.D. Blackmore.—Poet and Peer: A Novel. By Hamilton Aidé.—The Pennant Family. By Anne Beale. (Franklin Square Library.) New York: Harper & Brothers.
The Diary of a Man of Fifty, and A Bundle of Letters. By Henry James, Jr.—Tales from the Odyssey, for Boys and Girls. By "Materfamilias."—Life of Charlemagne. By Eginhard.—The Right Honorable William Ewart Gladstone: A Biographical Sketch. By Henry W. Lucy. With Portrait.—British and American Education. By Mayo W. Hazeltine.—Mrs. Austin. By Margaret Veley.—Business Life in Ancient Rome. By Charles G. Herbermann, Ph.D. (Harper's Half-Hour Series.) New York: Harper & Brothers.
The Spell-bound Fiddler: A Norse Romance. By Kristofer Janson. Translated from the original by Auber Forestier. Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Co.
Studies of Irving. By Charles Dudley Warner, William Cullen Bryant and George Palmer Putnam. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe. By John Addington Symonds. 2 vols. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Eminent Israelites of the Nineteenth Century. By Henry Samuel Morais. Philadelphia: Edward Stern & Co.