That, like some cottage beauty, strikes the heart,
Quite unindebted to the tricks of art.”
The charm of Cowper’s letters, acknowledged by all competent judges to be the best in the English language, lies in the simplicity and naturalness,—the freedom from affectation,—by which they are uniformly characterized. Contrasting them with those of Wilberforce, Dr. Andrew Combe observes in a letter to a friend: “Cowper’s letters, to my mind, do far more to excite a deep sense of religion, than all the labored efforts of Wilberforce. The one gives expression simply and naturally to the thoughts and feelings which spring up spontaneously as he writes. The other forces in the one topic in all his letters, and lashes himself up to a due fervor of expression, whether the mind wills or not. On one occasion Wilberforce dispatched a very hurried letter on Saturday night, without any religious expressions in it. In the night-time his conscience troubled him so much for the omission, that he could not rest till he sat down next morning and wrote a second with the piety, and apologizing for his involuntary departure from his rule! Only think what a perversion of a good principle this was!”
It is in the conduct of political affairs that the class of words of which we have spoken are used most frequently. Sir Henry Wotton long since defined an ambassador as “a gentleman sent abroad to lie for the benefit of his country.” In Europe, so indissolubly has diplomacy been associated with trickery, that it is said Talleyrand’s wonderful success with the representatives of foreign courts was owing largely to his frankness and fair dealing, nobody believing it possible that he was striving for that for which he seemed to be striving. The plain, open, straightforward way in which he spoke of and dealt with all public matters, completely puzzled the vulgar minds, that could not dissociate from diplomacy the mysterious devices that distinguish the hack from the true diplomatist. In the titles and styles of address used by Kings and Emperors, we have examples of cant in its most meaningless forms. One sovereign is His Most Christian Majesty; another, Defender of the Faith, etc. A monarch, forced by public opinion to issue a commission of inquiry, addresses all the members of it as his “well-beloved,” though in his heart he detests them.
Everybody knows that George I of England obtained his crown, not by hereditary title, but by an Act of Parliament; yet, in his very first speech to that body, he had the effrontery to speak of ascending the throne of his ancestors. Well might Henry Luttrell exclaim:
“O that in England there might be
A duty on hypocrisy!
A tax on humbug, an excise
On solemn plausibilities,