Pourquoi, me voyant libre, avouer pour maîtresse "The grapes are sour," remarks his latest editor. But he is surely mistaken. Dehénault was a discouraged but not a disappointed man; he was oversensitive but not bitter. The unfavourable nature of his circumstances undoubtedly prevented the full growth of his talents, but did not sour him. He was marked by "gentle melancholy" from his youth up; the stoicism of Seneca, the epicureanism of Lucretius were the conceptions of life to which he naturally turned. Dehénault had recaptured something of the ancient wisdom of the classics, and in his excellent translations one feels the emotion and conviction of the translator On a vu les Mortels trainer long-tems leur vie There is a stir in the translator's words which shows how profoundly he was moved by his immortal original. Similarly the resigned pessimism of Seneca moved him. Where M. Lachèvre is wrong in his estimate of Dehénault is in his assumption that scepticism of itself implies spiritual sterility, a petty vanity, and a life of persistent debauchery. He does not sufficiently appreciate the fact that the yearning and delicate scepticism of a man like Dehénault is as purely spiritual as the mystic's ecstatic yearning. What is alone disgraceful is spiritual indifference, the cold brutality of ignorant materialism, the cold formality of dull orthodoxy. But Dehénault was guilty of neither of these; he was a poet and a scholar, a philosopher and an honest man. And if his own age failed to understand him and his poetry, we may at least try to do better. Among all the scores of seventeenth-century minor authors, he is certainly one of the most attractive and genuine. IT IX COWLEY AND THE FRENCH EPICUREANS T is regrettable that we do not possess more of Cowley's prose. Apart from the "Discourse Concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell," which is languid in manner and petulant in tone, all Cowley's prose is pleasing, whether it be the rapid popular speech of "The Cutter of Coleman Street," the " easy familiarity " of his letter-writing, or the urbane sententiousness of his "Essays." Unhappily, Cowley did not live to complete the "Essays" as he had planned, and those we have are more burdened with citation and translation than modern taste allows; though, if this be a fault, it is one shared with Montaigne and Bacon. "The Cutter of Coleman Street," for all its briskness and raciness, obtains little praise nowadays, perhaps from the fashion which makes English drama fall with King Charles's head. What is greatly to be lamented is the loss of Cowley's letters, only a few of which (it appears) are preserved, and one of those because it chanced to gratify Johnson's spleen against a country life. We owe this loss principally to "the courtly Sprat," whose own words may be used in evidence against him— This familiar way of verse puts me in mind of one kind of Prose wherein Mr. Cowley was excellent; and that is his Letters to his private Friends. In these he always express'd the Native tenderness and innocent gayety of his Mind. I think, Sir, you and I have the greatest Collection of this sort. But I know you agree with me, that nothing of this Nature should be published: And herein you have always consented to approve of the modest Judgment of our Countrymen above the practice of some of our Neighbours, and chiefly of the French. Sprat was Cowley's literary executor and editor, but whether he destroyed Cowley's letters or whether they are yet extant does not appear. In spite of our own and Dr. Sprat's objections to literary gossip, he seems to have been too scrupulous; a collection of Cowley's letters might have preserved his name through those fluctuations of public taste which have so diminished his poetical reputation. To enjoy the reflective and familiar moods of Cowley we are now reduced to the "Essays," a slight collection, but often praised, with reason; for theirs is a slowly distilled sweetness that grows more attractive by frequentation. These essays are Epicurean in tone, an interesting fact revealed neither by Sprat's diffuse enthusiasm nor by Johnson's brief eulogy. Sprat does say that Cowley intended them "as a real Character of his own thoughts, upon the point of his retirement," or, as we might say, a defence of his philosophy, which tended chiefly to place tranquillity of mind and indolence of body as the "sovereign good." Johnson merely notes of the "Essays": "His thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid équability which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought, or hard-laboured; but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness." These discriminating criticisms (which make one wish that the plan of the "Lives Lives" had permitted a more ample development) are technical, but Johnson's language shows he had perceived the philosophic tendency of the "Essays"; naturalness and familiarity, "smooth and placid equability," are essentially Epicurean virtues. But Christians like Sprat and Johnson would not be likely to attribute any virtues to a philosopher so perverted from dogmatic gloom as to consider pleasure the object of life. So few details of Cowley's life are preserved in Sprat's funeral oration," and so scanty are other evidences from those disturbed times, that we know very little of Cowley's actions outside a few main points. We cannot tell exactly how he acquired his Epicureanism; how far he practised it and with what results; but the amiability, the delicacy in friendship, the love of solitude and obscurity in life 66 |