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persons so nobly patronised themselves on the score of literature, should resolve to give no encouragement to it in return." We think 80 too.

wonder at his taste, and be so too."-Vol. i. pp.

I

161-163.

The following is very much in the same style.

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The period that elapsed from the publicaThis house, accordingly, since it has been oction of his first volume in 1781, to that of his cupied by us and our Meubles, is as much superior Homer in 1791, seems to have been by far to what it was when you saw it as you can imagine. the happiest and most brilliant part of Cow- The parlour is even elegant. When I say that the per's existence. It was not only animated by parlour is elegant, I do not mean to insinuate that It is neat, warm, and silent, the vigorous and successful exertions in which the study is not so. and a much better study than I deserve, if I do not he was engaged, but enlivened, in a very produce in it an incomparable translation of Homer. pleasing manner, by the correspondence and think every day of those lines of Milton, and consociety of his cousin, Lady Hesketh, who re-gratulate myself on having obtained, before I am newed, about this time, an intimacy that quite superannuated, what he seems not to have seems to have endeared the earlier days of hoped for sooner. their childhood. In his letters to this lady, we have found the most interesting traits of his simple and affectionate character, combined with an innocent playfulness, and vivacity, that charms the more, when contrasted with the gloom and horror to which it succeeded, and by which it was unfortunately replaced. Our limits will not allow us to make many extracts from this part of the publication. We insert, however, the following delightful letter, in answer to one from Lady Hesketh, promising to pay him a visit during the summer.

And may at length my weary age Find out the peaceful hermitage." For if it is not a hermitage, at least it is a much better thing; and you must always understand, my dear, that when poets talk of cottages, hermitages, and such like things, they mean a house with six sashes in front, two comfortable parlours, a smart staircase, and three bedchambers of convenient dimensions; in short, exactly such a house

as this."-Vol. i. pp. 227, 228.

In another letter, in a graver humour, he says—

"Many thanks for the cuckow, which arrived perfectly safe, and goes well, to the amusement and amazement of all who hear it. Hannah lies awake to hear it; and I am not sure that we have not others in the house that admire his music as much as she."-Vol. i. p. 331.

In the following passage, we have all the calmness of a sequestered and good-natured man, and we doubt whether there was another educated and reflecting individual to be found in the kingdom, who could think and speak so dispassionately of the events which were passing in 1792.

"I am almost the only person at Weston, known to you, who have enjoyed tolerable health this "I shall see you again!-I shall hear your voice-winter. In your next letter give us some account we shall take walks together: I will show you my of your own state of health, for I have had my The winter has been mild; prospects, the hovel, the alcove, the Ouse, and its anxieties about you. banks, every thing that I have described. I antici- but our winters are in general such. that, when a pate the pleasure of those days not very far distant, friend leaves us in the beginning of that season, I and feel a part of it at this moment. Talk not of always feel in my heart a perhaps, importing that an inn; mention it not for your life. We have we have possibly met for the last time, and that the never had so many visitors, but we could easily ac robins may whistle on the grave of one of us before commodate them all, though we have received the return of summer. Unwin, and his wife, and his sister, and his son, all at once. My dear, I will not let you come till the end of May, or beginning of June, because before that time my green-house will not be ready to receive us; and it is the only pleasant room belonging to us. When the plants go out, we go in. I line it with mats, and spread the floor with mats, and there you shall sit with a bed of mignonette at your side, and a hedge of honeysuckles, roses, and jesmine; and I will make you a bouquet of myrtle every day. Sooner than the time I mention, the country will not be in complete beauty. And I will tell you what you shall find at your first entrance. Imprimis, As soon as you have entered the vestibule, if you cast a look on either side of you, you shall see on the right hand a box of my "The French, who, like all lively folks, are exmaking. It is the box in which have been lodged treme in every thing, are such in their zeal for all my hares, and in which lodges puss at present. freedom; and if it were possible to make so noble But he, poor fellow, is worn out with age, and pro- a cause ridiculous, their manner of promoting it mises to die before you can see him. On the right could not fail to do so. Princes and peers reduced hand stands a cupboard, the work of the same to plain gentlemanship, and gentles reduced to a author. It was once a dove-cage, but I transform-level with their own lackeys, are excesses of which ed it. Opposite to you stands a table, which I also made; but a merciless servant having scrubbed it until it became paralytic, it serves no purpose now but of ornament; and all my clean shoes stand under it. On the left hand, at the farther end of this superb vestibule, you will find the door of the parlour into which I shall conduct you, and where I will introduce you to Mrs. Unwin (unless we should meet her before),-and where we will be as happy as the day is long! Order yourself, my cousin, to the Swan at Newport, and there you shall find me ready to conduct you to Olney.

they will repent hereafter. Difference of rank and subordination are, I believe, of God's appointment, and, consequently, essential to the well-being of society: but what we mean by fanaticism in religion, is exactly that which animates their politics; and, unless time should sober them, they will, after all, be an unhappy people. Perhaps it deserves not much to be wondered at, that at their first escape from tyrannic shackles, they should act extravagantly, and treat their kings as they have sometimes treated their idols. To these, however, they are reconciled in due time again; but their respect for monarchy is at an end. They want nothing now but a little English sobriety, and that they want extremely. I heartily wish them some wit in their anger; for it were great pity that so many millions should be miserable for want of it."

"My dear, I have told Homer what you say about casks and urns: and have asked him whether he is sure that it is a cask in which Jupiter keeps his wine. He swears that it is a cask, and that it will never be any thing better than a cask to eternity. So if the god is content with it, we must even-Vol. i. p. 379.

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Homer was scarcely finished, when a proposal was made to the indefatigable translator, to engage in a magnificent edition of Milton, for which he was to furnish a version of his Latin and Italian poetry, and a critical commentary upon his whole works. Mr. Hayley had, at this time, undertaken to write a life of Milton: and some groundless reports, as to an intended rivalry between him and Cowper, led to a friendly explanation, and to a very cordial and affectionate intimacy. In the year 1792, Mr. Hayley paid a visit to his newly acquired friend at Weston; and happened to be providentially present with him when the agony which he experienced from the sight of a paralytic attack upon Mrs. Unwin, had very nearly affected his understanding. The anxious attention of his friend, and the gradual recovery of the unfortunate patient, prevented any very calamitous effect from this unhappy occurrence: But his spirits appear never to have recovered the shock; and the solicitude and apprehension which he constantly felt for his long tried and affectionate companion, suspended his literary exertions, aggravated the depression to which he had always been occasionally liable, and rendered the remainder of his life a very precarious struggle against that overwhelming malady by which it was at last obscured. In the end of summer, he returned Mr. Hayley's visit at Eartham; but came back again to Weston, with spirits as much depressed and forebodings as gloomy as ever. His constant and tender attention to Mrs Unwin, was one cause of his neglect of every thing else. "I cannot sit," he says in one of his letters, "with my pen in my hand, and my books before me, while she is, in effect, in solitude-silent, and looking in the fire." A still more powerful cause was, the constant and oppressive dejection of spirits that now began again to overwhelm him. "It is in vain," he says, "that I have made several attempts to write since I came from Sussex. Unless more comfortable days arrive, than I have now the confidence to look for, there is an end of all writing with me! I have no spirits. When Rose came, I was obliged to prepare for his coming, by a nightly dose of laudanum."

cility were beginning to be painfully visible; nor can nature present a spectacle more truly pitiable, than imbecility in such a shape, eagerly grasping for dominion, which it knows not either how to retain, or how to relinquish."-Vol. ii. pp. 161, 162.

From a part of these evils, however, the poet was relieved, by the generous compassion of Lady Hesketh, who nobly took upon herself the task of superintending this melancholy household. We will not withhold from our readers the encomium she has so well earned from the biographer.

"Those only, who have lived with the superannuated and melancholy, can properly appreciate fectly apprehend, what personal sufferings it must the value of such magnanimous friendship; or percost the mortal who exerts it, if that mortal has received from nature a frame of compassionate sensibility. The lady, to whom I allude, has felt but too severely, in her own health, the heavy tax that mortality is forced to pay for a resolute perseverance in such painful duty."-Vol. ii. p. 177.

It was impossible, however, for any care or attention to arrest the progress of that dreadful depression, by which the faculties of this excellent man were destined to be extinguished. In the beginning of the year 1794, he became utterly incapable of any sort of exertion, and ceased to receive pleasure from the company or conversation of his friends. Neither a visit from Mr. Hayley, nor his Majesty's order for a pension 3001. a-year, was able to rouse him from that languid and melancholy state into which he had gradually been sinking; and, at length, it was thought necessary to remove him from the village of Weston to Tuddenham in Norfolk, where he could be under the immediate superintendence of his kinsman, the Reverend Mr. Johnson. After a long cessation of all correspondence, he addressed the following very moving lines to the clergyman of the favourite village, to which he was no more to return:

"I will forget, for a moment, that to whomsoever I may address myself, a letter from me can no otherwise be welcome, than as a curiosity. To you, sir, I address this, urged by extreme penury thing of what is doing, and has been done, at of employment, and the desire I feel to learn someWeston (my beloved Weston!) since I left it? No situation, at least when the weather is clear and bright, can be pleasanter than what we have In the course of the year 1793, he seems here; which you will easily credit, when 1 add, to have done little but revise his translation that it imparts something a little resembling pleaof Homer, of which he meditated an im- sure even to me.-Gratify me with news of Wesproved edition. Mr. Hayley came to see him there, mention me to them in such terms as you ton!-If Mr. Gregson and the Courtney's are a second time at Weston, in the month of sce good. Tell me if my poor birds are living! November; and gives this affecting and pro-I never see the herbs I used to give them, without phetic account of his situation

a recollection of them, and sometimes am ready to gather them, forgetting that I am not at home.Pardon this intrusion.'

"He possessed completely at this period all the admirable faculties of his mind, and all the native tenderness of his heart; but there was something In summer 1796, there were some faint indescribable in his appearance, which led me to glimmerings of returning vigour, and he again apprehend, that, without some signal event in his applied himself, for some time, to the revisal favour, to re-animate his spirits, they would gradu-of his translation of Homer. In December, ally sink into hopeless dejection. The state of his aged infirm companion, afforded additional ground for increasing solicitude. Her cheerful and beneficent spirit could hardly resist her own accumulated maladies, so far as to preserve ability sufficient to watch over the tender health of him whom she had watched and guarded so long. Imbecility of body and mind must gradually render this tender and heroic woman unfit for the charge which she had so laudably sustained. The signs of such imbe

Mrs. Unwin died; and such was the severe depression under which her companion then laboured, that he seems to have suffered but little on the occasion. He never afterwards mentioned her name! At intervals, in the summer, he continued to work at the revisal of his Homer, which he at length_finished in 1799; and afterwards translated some of

Gay's Fables into Latin verse, and made ners, something of a saintly purity and deEnglish translations of several Greek and corum, and in cherishing that pensive and Latin Epigrams. This languid exercise of contemplative turn of mind, by which he was his once-vigorous powers was continued till so much distinguished. His temper appears the month of January 1800, when symptoms to have been yielding and benevolent; and of dropsy became visible in his person, and though sufficiently steady and confident in soon assumed a very formidable appearance. the opinions he had adopted, he was very After a very rapid but gradual decline, which little inclined, in general, to force them upon did not seem to affect the general state of his the conviction of others. The warmth of his spirits, he expired, without struggle or agita- religious zeal made an occasional exception: tion, on the 25th of April, 1800. but the habitual temper of his mind was toleration and indulgence; and it would be difficult, perhaps, to name a satirical and popular author so entirely free from jealousy and fastidiousness, or so much disposed to make the most liberal and impartial estimate of the merit of others, in literature, in politics, and in the virtues and accomplishments of social life. No angry or uneasy passions. indeed, seem at any time to have found a place in his bosom; and, being incapable of malevolence himself, he probably passed through life, without having once excited that feeling in the breast of another.

Of the volumes now before us, we have little more to say. The biography of Cowper naturally terminates with this account of his death; and the posthumous works that are now given to the public, require very few observations. They consist chiefly of short and occasional poems, that do not seem to have been very carefully finished, and will not add much to the reputation of their author. The longest is a sort of ode upon Friendship, in which the language seems to be studiously plain and familiar, and to which Mr. Hayley certainly has not given the highest poetical praise, by saying that it contains the essence of every thing that has been said on the subject, by the best writers of different Some of the occasional songs and sonnets are good; and the translations from the anthologia, which were the employment of his last melancholy days, have a remarkable closeness and facility of expression. There are two or three little poetical pieces, written by him in the careless days of his youth, while he resided in the Temple, that are, upon the whole, extremely poor and unpromising. It is almost inconceivable, that the author of The Task should ever have been guilty of such verses as the following:

countries."

"Tis not with either of these views, That I presume to address the Muse; But to divert a fierce banditti, (Sworn foes to every thing that's witty!) That, with a black infernal train, Make cruel inroads in my brain, And daily threaten to drive thence My little garrison of sense: The fierce banditti which I mean, Are gloomy thoughts, led on by spleen. Then there's another reason yet, Which is, that I may fairly quit The debt which justly became due The moment when I heard from you: And you might grumble, crony mine, If paid in any other coin."- Vol. i. p. 15. It is remarkable, however, that his prose was at this time uncommonly easy and elegant. Mr. Hayley has preserved three numbers of the Connoisseur, which were written by him in 1796, and which exhibit a great deal of that point and politeness, which has been aimed at by the best of our periodical essayists since the days of Addison.

The personal character of Cowper is easily estimated, from the writings he has left, and the anecdotes contained in this publication. He seems to have been chiefly remarkable for a certain feminine gentleness, and delicacy of nature, that shrunk back from all that was boisterous, presumptuous, or rude. His secluded life, and awful impressions of religion, concurred in fixing upon his man

As the whole of Cowper's works are now before the public, and as death has finally closed the account of his defects and excellencies, the public voice may soon be expected to proclaim the balance; and to pronounce that impartial and irrevocable sentence which is to assign him his just rank and station in the poetical commonwealth, and to ascertain the value and extent of his future reputation. As the success of his works has, in a great measure, anticipated this sentence, it is the less presumptuous in us to offer our opinion of them.

The great merit of this writer appears to us to consist in the boldness and originality of his composition, and in the fortunate audacity with which he has carried the dominion of poetry into regions that had been considered as inaccessible to her ambition. The gradual refinement of taste had, for nearly a century, been weakening the force of origi nal genius. Our poets had become timid and fastidious, and circumscribed themselves both in the choice and the management of their subjects, by the observance of a limited number of models, who were thought to have exhausted all the legitimate resources of the art. Cowper was one of the first who crossed this enchanted circle; who reclaimed the natural liberty of invention, and walked abroad in the open field of observation as freely as those by whom it was originally trodden. He passed from the imitation of poets, to the imitation of nature, and ventured boldly upon the representation of objects that had not been saretified by the description of any of his prede cessors. In the ordinary occupations and duties of domestic life, and the consequences of modern manners, in the common scenery of a rustic situation, and the obvious contemplation of our public institutions, he has found a multitude of subjects for ridicule and reflection, for pathetic and picturesque description, for moral declamation, and devotional rapture, that would have been looked upon with disdain, or with despair, by most of our poetical adventurers. He took as wide a

range in language too, as in matter; and, shaking off the tawdry incumbrance of that poetical diction which had nearly reduced the art to the skilful collocation of a set of conventional phrases, he made no scruple to set down in verse every expression that would have been admitted in prose, and to take advantage of all the varieties with which our language could supply him.

that are bestowed upon them; nor can we believe that soldiership, or Sunday music, have produced all the terrible effects which he ascribes to them: There is something very undignified, too, to say no worse of them, in the protracted parodies and mock-heroic passages with which he seeks to enliven some of his gravest productions. The Sofa (for instance, in the Task) is but a feeble imitaBut while, by the use of this double licence, tion of "The Splendid Shilling; the Monitor he extended the sphere of poetical composi- is a copy of something still lower; and the tion, and communicated a singular character tedious directions for raising cucumbers, which of freedom, force, and originality to his own begin with calling a hotbed "a stercorarious performances, it must not be dissembled, that heap," seem to have been intended as a the presumption which belongs to most inno- counterpart to the tragedy of Tom Thumb. vators, has betrayed him into many defects. All his serious pieces contain some fine devoIn disdaining to follow the footsteps of others, tional passages: but they are not without a he has frequently mistaken the way, and has taint of that enthusiastic intolerance which been exasperated, by their blunders, to rush religious zeal seems but too often to produce. into opposite extremes. In his contempt for It is impossible to say any thing of the detheir scrupulous selection of topics, he has fects of Cowper's writings, without taking introduced some that are unquestionably low notice of the occasional harshness and ineleand uninteresting; and in his zeal to strip off gance of his versification. From his correthe tinsel and embroidery of their language, spondence, however, it appears that this was he has sometimes torn it (like Jack's coat in not with him the effect of negligence merely, the Tale of a Tub) into terrible rents and but that he really imagined that a rough and beggarly tatters. He is a great master of incorrect line now and then had a very agreeEnglish, and evidently values himself upon able effect in a composition of any length. his skill and facility in the application of its This prejudice, we believe, is as old as Cowrich and diversified idioms: but he has in-ley among English writers; but we do not dulged himself in this exercise a little too know that it has of late received the sanction fondly, and has degraded some grave and of any one poet of eminence. In truth, it animated passages by the unlucky introduc- does not appear to us to be at all capable of tion of expressions unquestionably too collo- defence. The very essence of versification quial and familiar. His impatience of control, is uniformity; and while any thing like versiand his desire to have a great scope and va- fication is preserved, it must be evident that riety in his compositions, have led him not uniformity continues to be aimed at. What only to disregard all order and method so en- pleasure is to be derived from an occasional tirely in their construction, as to have made failure in this aim, we cannot exactly undereach of his larger poems professedly a com- stand. It must afford the same gratification, plete miscellany, but also to introduce into we should imagine, to have one of the butthem a number of subjects, that prove not to tons on a coat a little larger than the rest, or be very susceptible of poetical discussion. one or two of the pillars in a colonnade a little There are specimens of argument, and dia-out of the perpendicular. If variety is wantlogue, and declamation, in his works, that partake very little of the poetical character, and make rather an awkward appearance in a metrical production, though they might have had a lively and brilliant effect in an essay or a sermon. The structure of his sentences, in like manner, has frequently much more of the copiousness and looseness of oratory, than the brilliant compactness of poetry; and he heaps up phrases and circumstances upon each other, with a profusion that is frequently dazzling, but which reminds us as often of the exuberance of a practised speaker, as of the holy inspiration of a poet.

Mr. Hayley has pronounced a warm eulogium on the satirical talents of his friend: but it does not appear to us, either that this was the style in which he was qualified to excel, or that he has made a judicious selection of subjects on which to exercise it. There is something too keen and vehement in his invective, and an excess of austerity in his doctrines, that is not atoned for by the truth or the beauty of his descriptions. Foppery and affectation are not such hateful and gigantic vices, as to deserve all the anathemas

ed, let it be variety of excellence, and not a relief of imperfection: let the writer alter the measure of his piece, if he thinks its uniformity disagreeable; or let him interchange it every now and then, if he thinks proper, with passages of plain and professed prose; but do not let him torture an intractable scrap of prose into the appearance of verse, nor slip in an illegitimate line or two among the genuine currency of his poem.

There is another view of the matter, no doubt, that has a little more reason in it. A smooth and harmonious verse is not so easily written, as a harsh and clumsy one; and, in order to make it smooth and elegant, the strength and force of the expression must often be sacrificed. This seems to have been Cowper's view of the subject, at least in one passage. "Give me," says he, in a letter to his publisher, "a manly rough line, with a deal of meaning in it, rather than a whole poem full of musical periods, that have nothing but their smoothness to recommend them." It is obvious, however, that this is not a defence of harsh versification, but a confession of inability to write smoothly. Why should

not harmony and meaning go together? It is difficult, to be sure; and so it is, to make meaning and verse of any kind go together: But it is the business of a poet to overcome these difficulties, and if he do not overcome them both, he is plainly deficient in an accomplishment that others have attained. To those who find it impossible to pay due attention both to the sound and the sense, we would not only address the preceding exhort-turn of the language has often an animated ation of Cowper, but should have no scruple to exclaim, "Give us a sentence of plain prose, full of spirit and meaning, rather than a poem of any kind that has nothing but its versification to recommend it."

it is translated, is a true English style, though
not perhaps a very elegant or poetical one,
may also be assumed; but we are not sure
that a rigid and candid criticism will go far-
ther in its commendation. The language is
often very tame, and even vulgar; and there
is by far too great a profusion of antiquated
and colloquial forms of expression. In the
dialogue part, the idiomatical and familiar
and happy effect; but in orations of dignity,
this dramatical licence is frequently abused,
and the translation approaches to a parody.
In the course of one page, we observe that
Nestor undertakes "to entreat Achilles to a
calm." Agamemnon calls him, "this wrangler
here." And the godlike Achilles himself
complains of being treated "like a fellow of
no worth."
"Ye critics say,

Though it be impossible, therefore, to read the productions of Cowper, without being delighted with his force, his originality, and his variety; and although the enchantment of his moral enthusiasm frequently carries us insensibly through all the mazes of his digresHow poor to this was Homer's style!" sions, it is equally true, that we can scarcely In translating a poetical writer, there are read a single page with attention, without two kinds of fidelity to be aimed at. Fidelity being offended at some coarseness or lowness to the matter, and fidelity to the manner of the of expression, or disappointed by some "most lame and impotent conclusion." The dignity of his rhetorical periods is often violated by the intrusion of some vulgar and colloquial idiom, and, the full and transparent stream of his diction broken upon some obstreperous verse, or lost in the dull stagnation of a piece of absolute prose. The effect of his ridicule is sometimes impaired by the acrimony with which it is attended; and the exquisite beauty of his moral painting and religious views, is injured in a still greater degree by the darkness of the shades which his enthusiasm and austerity have occasionally thrown upon the canvas. With all these defects, however, Cowper will probably very long retain his popularity with the readers of English poetry. The great variety and truth of his descriptions; the minute and correct painting of those home scenes, and private feelings with which every one is internally familiar; the sterling weight and sense of most of his observations, and, above all, the great appearance of facility with which every thing is executed, and the happy use he has so often made of the most common and ordinary language; all concur to stamp upon his poems the character of original genius, and remind us of the merits that have secured immortality to Shakespeare.

After having said so much upon the original writings of Cowper, we cannot take our leave of him without adding a few words upon the merits of the translation with which we have found him engaged for so considerable a portion of his life. The views with which it was undertaken have already been very fully explained in the extracts we have given from his correspondence; and it is impossible to deny, that his chief object has been attained in a very considerable degree. That the translation is a great deal more close and literal than any that had previously been attempted in English verse, probably will not be disputed by those who are the least disposed to admire it; that the style into which

original. The best translation would be that, certainly, which preserved both. But, as this is generally impracticable, some concessions must be made upon both sides; and the largest upon that which will be least regretted by the common readers of the translation. Now, though antiquaries and moral philosophers, may take great delight in contemplating the state of manners, opinions, and civilization, that prevailed in the age of Homer, and be offended, of course, at any disguise or modern embellishment that may be thrown over his representations, still, this will be but a secondary consideration with most readers of poetry; and if the smoothness of the verse, the perspicuity of the expression, or the vigour of the sentiment, must be sacrificed to the observance of this rigid fidelity, they will generally be of opinion, that it ought rather to have been sacrificed to them; and that the poetical beauty of the original was better worth preserving than the literal import of the expressions. The splendour and magnificence of the Homeric diction and versification is altogether as essential a part of his composition, as the sense and the meaning which they convey. His poetical reputation depends quite as much on the one as on the other; and a translator must give but a very imperfect and unfaithful copy of his original, if he leave out half of those qualities in which the excellence of the original consisted. It is an indispensable part of his duty, therefore, to imitate the harmony and elevation of his author's language, as well as to express his meaning; and he is equally unjust and unfaithful to his original, in passing over the beauties of his diction, as in omitting or disguising his sentiments. In Cowper's elaborate version, there are certainly some striking and vigorous passages, and the closeness of the translation continually recals the original to the memory of a classical reader; but he will look in vain for the melodious and elevated language of Homer in the unpolished verses and colloquial phraseology of his translator.

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