"Send me the precious bit of oak,
Which your own hand so fondly took
From off the consecrated tree,
A relic dear to you and me.
To many 'twould a bauble prove
Not worth the keeping.—Those who love
The teeming grand poetic mind,
Which God thought fit in chains to bind,
Of dreadful, dark despairing gloom;
Yet left within such ample room,
For coruscations strong and bright:
Such beams of everlasting light,
As make men envy, love, and dread,
The structure of that wondrous head,
Must prize a bit of Judith's stem,
That brought to light that precious gem—
The fragment: which in verse sublime
Records her honours to all time."
[783] These lines were written prophetically, and previously to the event.
[784] The late Lord Erskine was a frequent reciter of passages from Cowper's poems. The Editor is indebted to E. H. Barker, Esq. of Thetford, for the following anecdote which was communicated to him by Joseph Jekyll, Esq., the eminent counsellor.
Mr. Jekyll was dining with Lord Oxford, and among the company were Dr. Parr, Horne Tooke, Lord Erskine, and Mr. W. Scott, (brother to Lady Oxford.) Lord Erskine recited, in his admirable manner, the verses of Cowper about the Captive, without saying whose they were: Dr. Parr expressed great admiration of the verses, and said that he had never heard of them or seen them before; he inquired whose they were? H. Tooke said, "Why, Cowper's." Dr. Parr said he had never read Cowper's poems. "Not read Cowper's poems!" said Horne Tooke, "and you never will, I suppose, Dr. Parr, till they are turned into Greek?" When the company went into the drawing-room, Lady Oxford presented Dr. Parr with a small edition of Cowper's Poems, and Mr. Jekyll was desired by her ladyship to write in the book, "From the Countess of Oxford to Dr. Parr." Horne Tooke wrote also underneath, "Who never read the book," and signed his name to it: all present signed their names and added some remark, and among the rest W. Scott. At the sale of Dr. Parr's books, this volume fetched about five pounds, being considered valuable and curious, as the W. Scott signed was supposed to have been Sir W. Scott (since Lord Stowell.) Lord Stowell afterwards took great pains to contradict the report.
[785] THE WISH.
"Ye verdant hills, ye soft umbrageous vales,
Fann'd by light Zephyr's health-inspiring gales;
Ye woods, whose boughs in rich luxuriance wave;
Ye sparkling rivulets, whose waters lave
Those meads, where erst, at morning's dewy prime,
(Reckless of shoals beneath the stream of Time,)
My vagrant feet your flowery margin press'd,
Whilst Heaven gave back the sunshine in my breast:—
O, would the powers that rule my wayward lot
Restore me to the lone paternal cot!
There, far from folly, fraud's ensnaring wiles,
The world's dark frown, or still more dangerous smiles,
Let peaceful duties peaceful hours engage;
Till, winding gently down the slope of age,
Tranquil I mark life's swift-declining day
Fling deeper shades athwart my lessening way;
And pleased, at last put off this mortal coil,
Again to mingle with its kindred soil
Beneath the grassy turf, or silent stone;
Unseen the path I trod, my resting-place unknown."
T. Ostler.
[786] The reasons which he assigns, in justification of this opinion, are thus specified.
"Let no pious ear be offended if I advance, in opposition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often please. The doctrines of religion may indeed be defended in a didactic poem; and he who has the happy power of arguing in verse will not lose it because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of the spring, and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide, and the revolutions of the sky, and praise the Maker for his works, in lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of the disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the description is not God, but the works of God.
"Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer.