"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."