THOUGH his birth is so early in the eighteenth century, yet Cowper, in the production of by far the greater part of his writings, belongs to its conclusion. The first publications of Cowper, Burns, and Crabbe appear within a few years of each other; and their names mark the commencement of the better school of poetry, founded on nature and feeling, which was to supersede the outworn imitations of Pope and Dryden, and to efface the puerilities of Della Cruscan affectation. The eighteenth century had familiarized the public with the beauties of natural and impassioned poetry in the publication of several editions of Shakespeare, as those of Pope, Johnson, etc.; and the Gothic beauty of our elder writers had been unfolded by the publication of Thomas Warton's "History of English Poetry," and of Dr. Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry." The mind of Britain was thus prepared for the reception of a better poetical literature than the mass of that produced towards the conclusion of the century: and the chief heralds of this new age were the poets above mentioned, "It is not uninteresting," says Hugh Miller,1 "to mark the plan on which nature delights to operate in producing a renovation of this character in the literature of a country. Cowper had two vigorous coadjutors in the work of revolution; and all three, though essentially unlike in other respects, resembled one another in the preliminary course through which they were prepared for their proper employment. Circumstances had conspired to throw them all outside the 1 "First Impressions of England and its People." pale of existing literature. ere * # Events over which he had no control suddenly dropped him (Cowper) into a profound retirement, in which for nearly twenty years he had not read the works of any English poet. The chimes of the existing literature had fairly rung themselves out of his head, he struck, as the key-notes of his own noble poetry, a series of exquisitely modulated tones that had no counterparts in the artificial gamut. His two coadjutors in the work of literary revolution were George Crabbe and Robert Burns. The one, self-taught, and wholly shut out from the world of letters, laid in his stores of observation, fresh from nature, in an obscure fishing village on the coast of Suffolk; the other, educated in exactly the same style and degree-Crabbe had a little bad Latin, and Burns a little bad French-and equally secluded from the existing literature, achieved the same important work on the bleak farm of Mossgiel. And the earlier compositions of these three poets— all of them true backwoodsmen in the republic of letters-clearers of new untried fields in the rich unopened provinces, -appeared within five years of each other-Crabbe's first, and Burns's last." Cowper's life cannot, without injury to its interest, be compressed into any reasonable size for our present purpose, because its interest lies chiefly in the development of his mind as exhibited in his letters. His father's family was ancient, and his mother's distantly of royal descent. His grandfather, Spencer Cowper, was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and his grand-uncle, Spencer's brother, was Lord High Chancellor of England. The poet's father, the son of Judge Cowper, was rector of Great Berkhamstead in Hertfordshire, William's birthplace. When about six years old, Cowper lost his mother, whom he remembered through life with the tenderest affection (see his lines on "Receiving his Mother's Picture.") His mind in childhood exhibited that gentleness, timidity, and diffidence, which ripened into such bitter fruits in his after life. At school, both in his childhood and at Westminster, the tyranny of his class-fellows shook the fabric of a mental structure so delicate; hence his strong aversion to the system of public education (see his letters and his poem, Tirocinium). On completing his "apprenticeship of seven years to the classics," he was apprenticed to an attorney. His companion in the solicitor's office was the future Chancellor Thurlow, who, along with Warren Hastings, had sat on the same benches with Cowper at Westminster. There was more of "giggling and making giggle" than of study: and, in his chambers in the Inner Temple, when called to the bar, there was more of "rambling in the primrose paths of literature," than in "the thorny road of jurisprudence." He seems to have mingled cheerfully in the gaieties of the literary friends with whom his nominal profession connected him. The death of his father had left him but a slender patrimony: the interest of his friends, however, procured for him the situation of Clerk of the Journals to the House of Lords. Now occurred the first terrible development of the disease, so often manifested in the nervous frame of those gifted with the "diviner soul," which, slumbering beneath an external surface of gaiety or even of wild jollity, rages like a volcano in the mind's inner depths. The mere contemplation of an appearance in public to take possession of his office, especially in the face of some hostility to his appointment, threw him into a condition that goaded him into an attempt at suicide: Cowper's disease took the direction of religious horror. He was removed to the house of Dr. Cotton in St. Alban's, where the presence and consolations of his brother, the Rev. John Cowper, and the skill of his physician, slowly restored his shattered mind. On his recovery, renouncing all London prospects, he settled in Huntingdon : solitude was bringing back his melancholy, when he providentially acquired the acquaintanceship of the family of Mr. Unwin, a curate in that town. He was received into Mr. Unwin's house as a boarder, and, in the society of a devout and amiable circle of friends, the "wind was ever afterwards tempered to the shorn lamb." On her husband's death in 1767, the poet retired with Mrs. Unwin and her daughter to Olney in Buckinghamshire. He found a new but austere friend in the Rev. John Newton, the curate of Olney. His intervals of tranquil happiness were interrupted by the death of his brother, and in 1773 his spirit was again, for about five years, enveloped in the shadows of his malady. The tender and unwearied cares of Mrs. Unwin and of Mr. Newton, slowly emancipated him from his darkness of horror. While his convalescence was advancing, he amused his mind with the taming of hares, the construction of bird-cages, and gardening; he even attempted to become a painter. At length, at the age of nearly fifty, the fountain of his poetry which had been all but sealed since his malady had driven "the stricken deer" from the society of his fellows, was reopened. His first volume, “Table Talk," etc., appeared in 1782. In the preceding year he had become acquainted with Lady Austen, to whose suggestion we owe the story of "John Gilpin," and "The Task," published in 1784. In 1786 the family removed to Weston, a village in the neighbourhood of Olney. During these years Cowper was engaged in his translation of Homer. A slight shade of jealousy on the part of Mrs. Unwin caused, it is said, the poet's relinquishment of the society of Lady Austen: but he was consoled by the intercourse of the Throckmorton family, the proprietors of Weston, and by the visits of his cousin, Lady Hesketh. His disease, which had been occasionally haunting him, again burst forth with renewed violence, on the increase of the infirmities of Mrs. Unwin's age; these terminated in a paralytic attack. It was now the poet's office to be the nurse of her who had so long and tenderly exercised that kindness by him. The two invalids were removed in 1795 from Weston to a more healthy situation in Norfolk. In the darkest periods of his own depression he hung over her couch with the ministrations of affection. She died in December 1796; Cowper never again mentioned her name, but her loss had completely broken his spirit, although even in these melancholy years his harp sounded occasionally a tender or a saddened strain. The year 1800 terminated his sorrows. His friend Hayley, Southey, and numerous others, have written memoirs of the poet. It is creditable to the British mind that Cowper has been one of the most popular of English poets; his portrait is familiar to every eye, and pilgrims repair with interest and compassion to the scenes among which his footsteps wandered, and which his pen immortalized in song. Of no writer's mind, character, sorrows, joys, or habits, down to his bird-cage making and his hare-taming, do we know more: his whole heart and soul are unfolded in his poetry and letters. Cowper's poems, Table Talk, Truth, Expostulation, etc., are pieces chiefly of a didactic character, but the strain of religious and moral reflection is mingled with general satire, and interspersed with description. His versification in the earlier of them, which he is supposed to 1 His verses "To Mary," written long before this period, exhibit a beautiful tribute of the poet's affection for his venerable friend.-A pension from Pitt came too late to cheer the poet's affliction. FROM TABLE TALK. 341 have modelled on the style of Churchill, is less finished and regular, and the language less richly beautiful, than in his great poem, the "Task ;" which, springing from a slight suggestion, led the poet's mind through a series of objects, thoughts, and observations, changefully beautiful, melancholy, tender, or sarcastic. His language, simple, elegant, and expressive, glides without effort into every avenue of feeling; fitful as the wind-wafted sound of his own "village bells," or as the "shadow and sunshine intermingling quick" of his own sun-lighted trees. How so much that was mirthful, pious, glorious, and hopeful, sprung from a spirit overwhelmed in the despair of hopeless separation from its Maker, is an enigma in the dispensations of providence. FROM TABLE TALK. POETS SHOULD HABITUATE THEIR MINDS TO GREAT SUBJECTS. And every effort ends in push-pin play. The man that means success, should soar above A soldier's feather, or a lady's glove; Else summoning the Muse to such a theme, Stoop'd from its highest pitch to pounce a wren. Should carve himself a wife in gingerbread. Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appear'd, FROM THE TASK. RURAL SOUNDS.-BOOK I. Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds, The tone of languid nature. Mighty winds, That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood Of ancient growth, make music not unlike P And lull the spirit while they fill the mind; To soothe and satisfy the human ear. Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime MOVEMENT AND ACTION THE LIFE OF NATURE.-BOOK I. That Nature rides upon, maintains her health, Her beauty, her fertility. She dreads An instant's pause, and lives but while she moves. And fit the limpid element for use, Else noxious; oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams, Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm : The impression of the blast with proud disdain, He held the thunder: but the monarch owes 1 Comp. Shakesp. Merch. of Ven., see supra, p. 92. |