divine simplicity! but very rambling, and the order not very lucid. He seems to put down every thought as it arises, and never to retrench or alter anything.—MORE, HANNAH, 1786, Letter to Her Sister, Feb; Memoirs. ed. Roberts, vol. 1, p. 235. With England's Bard, with Cowper who shall vie?

Original in strength and dignity,

With more than painter's fancy blest, with lays

Holy, as saints to heav'n expiring raise. -MATHIAS, THOMAS JAMES, 1794-98, The Pursuits of Literature, Eighth ed., p. 418. I have been reading "The Task" with fresh delight. I am glad you love Cowper. I could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton; but I would not call that man my friend who should be offended with the "divine chit-chat of Cowper."— LAMB, CHARLES, 1796, Dec. 5; Letters, ed. Ainger, vol. 1, p. 52.

It has been thought that Cowper was the first poet who re-opened the true way. to nature and a natural style; but we hold this to be a mistake, arising merely from certain negations on the part of that amiable but by no means powerful writer. Cowper's style is for the most part as inverted and artificial as that of the others; and we look upon him to have been by nature not so great a poet as Pope; but Pope, from certain infirmities on his part, was thrown into the society of the world, and thus had to get what he could out of an artificial sphere:-Cowper, from other and more distressing infirmities (which by the way the wretched superstition that undertook to heal, only burnt in upon him) was confined to a still smaller though more natural sphere, and in truth did not much with it, though quite as much perhaps as was to be expected from an organization too sore almost to come in contact with any thing.-HUNT, LEIGH, 1817, The Examiner.

The love of nature seems to have led Thomson to a cheerful religion; and a gloomy religion to have led Cowper to a love of nature. The one would carry his fellowmen along with him into nature; the other flies to nature from his fellowmen. In chastity of diction, however, and the harmony of blank verse, Cowper leaves Thomson immeasurably below him; yet still I feel the latter to have been the born poet.-COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1817, Biographia Literaria, note.

He

With all his boasted simplicity and love of the country, he seldom launches out into general descriptions of nature: he looks at her over his clipped hedges, and from his well-swept garden-walks; or if he makes a bolder experiment now and then, it is with an air of precaution, as if he were afraid of being caught in a shower of rain, or of not being able, in case of any untoward accident, to make good his retreat home. He shakes hands with nature with a pair of fashionable gloves on, and leads his "Vashti" forth to public view with a look of consciousness and attention to etiquette, as a fine gentleman hands a lady out to dance a minuet. is delicate to fastidiousness, and glad to get back, after a romantic adventure with crazy Kate, a party of gypsies or a little and the ladies again, to the sofa and the child on a common, to the drawing-room tea-kettle-No, I beg his pardon, not to the singing, well-scoured tea-kettle, but to the polished and loud-hissing urn. . . . Still he is a genuine poet, and deserves all his reputation. His worst vices are amiable weaknesses, elegant trifling. Though there is a frequent dryness, timidity, and jejuneness in his manner, he has left a number of pictures of domestic comfort and social refinement, as well as of natural imagery and feeling, which can hardly be forgotten but with the language itself. HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1818, Lectures on the English Poets, Lecture v.

His language has such a masculine idiomatic strength, and his manner, whether he rises into grace or falls into negligence, has so much plain and familiar freedom, that we read no poetry with a deeper conviction of its sentiments having come from the author's heart, and of the enthusiasm, in whatever he describes, having been unfeigned and unexaggerated.

. Considering the tenor and circumstances of his life, it is not much to be wondered at, that some asperities and peculiarities should have adhered to the strong stem of his genius, like the moss and fungus that cling to some noble oak of the forest, amid the damps of its unsunned retirement. It is more surprising that he preserved, in such seclusion, so much genuine power of comic observation. Though he himself acknowledged having written "many things with bile" in his first volume, yet his satire has many

legitimate objects: and it is not abstracted and declamatory satire; but it places human manners before us in the liveliest attitudes and clearest colours. There is much of the full distinctness of Theophrastus, and of the nervous and concise spirit of La Bruyè, in his piece entitled "Conversation," with a cast of humour superadded, which is peculiarly English, and not to be found out of England.CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets.

At last, Cowper threw off the whole. trammels of French criticism and artificial refinement; and, setting at defiance all the imaginary requisites of poetical diction and classical imagery-dignity of style, and politeness of phraseology-ventured to write again with the force and the freedom which had characterised the old school of English literature, and been so unhappily sacrificed, upwards of a century before. Cowper had many faults, and some radical deficiencies;-but this atoned for all. There was something so delightfully refreshing, in seeing natural phrases and natural images again displaying their unforced graces, and waving their unpruned heads in the enchanted gardens of poetry, that no one complained of the taste displayed in the selection; and Cowper is, and is likely to continue, the most popular of all who have written for the present or the last generation.-JEFFREY, FRANCIS LORD, 1819-44, Contributions to the Edinburgh Review, vol. II, p. 293.

Of Cowper, how shall I express myself in adequate terms of admiration? The purity of his principles, the tenderness of his heart, his unaffected and zealous piety, his warmth of devotion (however tinctured at times with gloom and despondency), the delicacy and playfulness of his wit, and the singular felicity of his diction, all conspire by turns

To win the wisest, warm the coldest heart. Cowper is the poet of a well-educated and well-principled Englishman. "Home, sweet home" is the scene-limited as it may be imagined-in which he contrives to concentrate a thousand beauties, which others have scattered far and wide upon objects of less interest and attraction. His pictures are, if I may so speak, conceived with all the tenderness of Raffaelle, and executed with all the finish and sharpness of Teniers. No man, in such few

words, tells his tale, or describes his scene, so forcibly and so justly. His views of Nature are less grand and less generalised than those of Thomson: and here, to carry on the previous mode of comparison, I should say that Thomson was the Gaspar Poussin, and Cowper the Hobbima, of rural poetry.-DIBDIN, THOMAS FROGNALL, 1824, The Library Companion, p. 735, note.

Cowper divested verse of its exquisite polish; he thought in metre, but paid more attention to his thoughts than his verse. It would be difficult to draw the boundary of prose and blank verse between his letters and his poetry.—PEACOCK, THOMAS LOVE, 1820, The Four Ages of Poetry, Calidore and Miscellanea, p. 61.

Cowper was a good man, and lived at a fortunate time for his works.-BYRON, LORD, 1821, On Bowles's Strictures on Pope.

He is allowed, both by Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, to be the patriarch and founder of the romantic, or present school of poetry. When we say, present we ought to recollect, that there is a Lake, as well as a romantic school. . . One thing, however, we must say, that a school of which that moonstruck prophet, Cowper, was the founder, is a school of which we should not wish to become disciples. Is poetry run mad? or is that poetry good for nothing, which is not run mad? So it would seem, from making Cowper the founder of that school which established itself on the ruins of the classical. The Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews give him the credit of being the founder of this school, a school of which they are themselves admirers, and yet they know he was a fanatic. M'DERMOT, M., 1824, The Beauties of Modern Literature, pp. xxii, xxiii.

copies from the internal impression made on the fancy.-BRYDGES, SIR SAMUEL EGERTON, 1824, Recollections of Foreign Travel, July 20, vol. 1, pp. 268, 269.

Compare the landscapes of Cowper with those of Burns. There is, if we mistake not, the same sort of difference between them, as in the conversation of two persons on scenery, the one originally an enthusiast in his love of the works of nature, the other driven, by disappointment or weariness, to solace himself with them as he might. It is a contrast which every one must have observed, when such topics come under discussion in society; and those who think it worth while, may find abundant illustration of it in the writings of this unfortunate but illustrious pair. The one all overflowing with the love of nature, and indicating, at every turn, that whatever his lot in life, he could not have been happy without her. The other visibly and wisely soothing himself, but not without effort, by attending to rural objects, in default of some more congenial happiness, of which he had almost come to despair. The latter, in consequence, laboriously sketching every object that came in his way: the other, in one or two rapid lines, which operate, as it were, like a magician's spell, presenting to the fancy just that picture, which was wanted. to put the reader's minds in unison with the writer's.-KEBLE, JOHN, 1825, Sacred Poetry, Quarterly Review, vol. 32, p. 217.

Cowper has not Thomson's genius, but he has much more taste. His range is neither so wide, nor so lofty, but, as far as it extends, it is peculiarly his own. He cannot paint the Plague at Carthagena, or the Snow-storm, or the Earthquake, as Thomson has done; but place him by the banks of the Ouse, or see him taking his "Winter walk at Noon," or accompany him in his rambles through his Flower garden, and where is the Author who can compare with him for a moment? The pictures of domestic life which he has painted are inimitable. It is hard to say whether his sketches of external nature, or of indoor life, are the best. Cowper does not attempt the same variety of scene as Thomson; but in what he does attempt, he always succeeds. NEELE, HENRY, 1827-29, Lectures on English Poetry, p. 184.

The forerunner of the great restoration

of our literature was Cowper.-MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, 1830, Moore's Life of Lord Byron, Edinburgh Review; Critical and Miscellaneous Essays.

Cowper's bold freedom, though it seemed at first like uncouth roughness, gained much in variety of expression, without losing much in point of sound. It offended, because it seemed careless, and as if he respected little the prevailing taste of his readers: but it was far from being unpolished as it seemed. He tells us, that the lines of his earlier poems were touched and retouched, with fastidious delicacy: his ear was not easily pleased; and yet, if we may judge from one or two specimens of alterations, his corrections very often injured what they were meant to repair. PEABODY, W. B. O., 1834, Life of Cowper, North American Review, vol. 38, p. 27.

The poet of the Cross.-MEMES, JOHN, 1840, ed. Cowper's Works, Life.

If Cowper had written songs, such was the honesty of his nature that he would probably have equalled Burns, great as are the disadvantages under which our language would have laid him. . . . Cowper does not, like Burns, write the history of the poor in every page of his works, but his heart was with them.

If

Cowper had been blessed with the physical strength of Burns, he might have been,but I don't say he would have been, at once, one of the greatest of poets and ablest of active men. As it is, I am unable to name a poet whose writings, page for page, can boast an equal amount of original thought and sterling common sense.-ELLIOTT, EBENEZER, 1842, A Lecture on Cowper and Burns, Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 9, p. 359.

When the shame of England burns in the heart of Cowper, you must believe him; for through that heart rolled the best of England's blood.-WILSON, JOHN, 1845, Supplement to Mac-Flecnoe and the Dunciad, Blackwood's Magazine.

Sweet are thy strains, celestial Bard;
And oft, in childhood's years,
I've read them o'er and o'er again,
With floods of silent tears.

Is He the source of every good,
The spring of purity?
Then in thine hours of deepest woe
Thy God was still with thee.
How else, when every hope was fled,

Couldst thou so fondly cling

To holy things and holy men?

And how so sweetly sing,

Of things that God alone could teach?
And whence that purity,
That hatred of all sinful ways--

That gentle charity? -BRONTË, ANNE, 1846, To Cowper, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.

He is emphatically the poet of ordinary and intimate life, of the domestic emotions, of household happiness. His muse is a domestic deity, a familiar Lar, and his countrymen have enshrined his verses in the very holiest penetralia of their hearths. Cowper was one of the first poets -even among the English-who ventured to describe those familiar thoughts, feelings, and enjoyments which are imagined by the word home-that word which echoes so deeply in the English heart, that word for which so many cultivated languages have neither synonym nor equivalent. His language is in the highest degree easy, familiar, and consequently impressive; there is no author who so completely talks to his readernone whose works breathe so completely of the individuality and personal character of their writer. He abounds in description of scenery; and we hardly regret that he should have passed his life among the dull levels of the Ouse, when we think that the power of his genius has given an unfading grace and interest to landscapes in themselves neither romantic nor sublime. It appears to us that he is greatly inferior to Thomson in comprehensiveness and rapidity of picturesque perception; but then his mode of expression is simpler, less ambitious, and in purer taste, and he surpasses not only the author of "The Seasons," but perhaps all poets, in the power of communicating interest to the familiar details of domestic life. His humour was very delicate and just, and his descriptions of the common absurdities of ordinary intercourse are masterly. When rising, as he often and gracefully does, into the loftier atmosphere of moral or religious thought, he exhibits a surprising ease and dignity; his mind was of that rare order which can rise without an effort and sink without meanness. He is uniformly earnest and sincere. SHAW, THOMAS B., 1817, Outlines of English Literature, pp. 305, 307.

Cowper is eminently the David of

English poetry, pouring forth, like the great Hebrew bard, his own deep and warm feelings in behalf of moral and religious truth.-CELVELAND, CHARLES D., 1848, A Compendium of English Literature, p. 737.

Tenderest of tender hearts, of spirits pure

The purest! such, O Cowper! such wert thou, But such are not the happiest: thou wert not, Till borne where all those hearts and spirits rest.

Young was I, when from Latin lore and Greek

I play'd the truant for thy sweeter Task, Nor since that hour hath aught our Muses held

Before me seem'd so precious; in one hour, I saw the poet and the sage unite,

More grave than man, more versatile than boy!

-LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE, 1853, The Last Fruit off an Old Tree, xxxvii.

Cowper is certainly the sweetest of our didactic poets. He is elevated in his "Table Talk;" acute in detailing the "Progress of Error;" and he chants the praises of "Truth" in more dulcet notes than were ever sounded by the fairest swan in Cayster. His "Expostulation" is made in the tones of a benevolent sage. His "Hope" and his "Charity" are proofs of his pure Christian-like feeling,—a feeling which also pervades his "Conversation' and his "Retirement," and which barbs the shafts of his satire without taking away from their strength.-DORAN, JOHN, 1854, Habits and Men, p. 20.

As a scold, we think Cowper failed. He had a great idea of the use of railing, and there are many pages of laudable invective against various vices which we feel no call whatever to defend. But a great vituperator had need to be a great hater; and of any real rage, any such gall and bitterness as great and irritable satirists have in other ages let loose upon men,—of any thorough, brooding, burning, abiding detestation, he was as incapable as a tame hare. His vituperation reads like the mild man's whose wife ate up his dinner: "Really, sir, I feel quite angry!" Nor has his language any of the sharp intrusive acumen which divides in sunder both soul and spirit, and makes fierce and unforgetable reviling.-BAGEHOT, WALTER, 1855, William Cowper, Works, ed. Morgan, vol. I, p. 428.

Whatever estimate may be formed of

his poetry in comparison with that of earlier or later writers, everyone must feel that his English is that of a scholar and a gentleman that he had the purest enjoyment of domestic life, and of what one may call the domestic or still life of nature. One is sure also that he had the most earnest faith, which he cherished for others when he could find no comfort in it for himself.

These would be sufficient explanations of the interest which he has awakened in so many simple and honest readers who turn to books for sympathy and fellowship, and do not like a writer at all the worse because he also demands their sympathy with him. Cowper is one of the strongest instances, and proofs, how much more qualities of this kind affect Englishmen than any others. The gentleness of his life might lead some to suspect him of effeminacy; but the old Westminster school-boy and cricketer comes out in the midst of his Meditation on Sofas; and the deep tragedy which was at the bottom of his whole life, and which grew more terrible as the shadows of evening closed upon him, shows that there may be unutterable struggles in those natures which seem least formed for the rough work of the world. MAURICE, FREDERICK DENISON, 1856, The Friendship of Books and Other Lectures, p. 28.

His language is often vulgar, and not least so when his theme is most sublime; and his most successful passages, his minutely touched descriptions of familiar still-life and rural scenery, are indeed strongly suggestive, but have little of the delicate susceptibility of beauty which breathes through Thomson's musings on nature. SPALDING, WILLIAM, 1852-82, A History of English Literature, p. 357.

As the death of Samuel Johnson closes one era of our literature, so the appearance of Cowper as a poet opens another. Notwithstanding his obligations both to Churchill and Pope, a main characteristic of Cowper's poetry is its originality. Compared with almost any one of his predecessors, he was what we may call a natural poet. He broke through conventional forms and usages in his mode of writing more daringly than any English poet before him had done, at least since the genius of Pope had bound in its spell the phraseology and rhythm of our poetry. His opinions were not more his own than

his manner of expressing them.-CRAIK, GEORGE L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language, vol. II, p. 372.

If we compare our English literature to a beautiful garden, where Milton lifts his head to heaven in the spotless chalice of the tall white lily, and Shakspere scatters his dramas round him in beds of fragrant roses, blushing with a thousand various. shades some stained to the core as if with blood, others unfolding their fair pink petals with a lovely smile to the summer sun,-what shall we find in shrub or flower so like the timid, shrinking spirit of William Cowper, as that delicate sensitive plant, whose leaves, folding up at the slightest touch, cannot bear even the brighter rays of the cherishing sun?COLLIER, WILLIAM FRANCIS, 1861, A History of English Literature, p. 379.

William Cowper and Erasmus Darwin were contemporaries: but how has the lowlier russet outlasted the glittering Balmasque costume, a genuine human heart beneath the one, a piece of mechanism, like a skeleton-clock, within the other: the one pure, true, beating, the other movement without life, energy without appliance. GROSART, ALEXANDER B., 1868, Giles Fletcher's Poems, MemorialIntroduction, p. 56.

The gentleness of his temper, and the wide charity of his sympathies, made it natural for him to find good in everything except the human heart. Your muscles grow springy, and your lungs dilate with the crisp air as you walk along with him. You laugh with him at the grotesque shadow of your legs lengthened across the snow by the just-risen sun. I know nothing that gives a purer feeling of out-door exhilaration than the easy verses of this escaped hypochondriac. . . . To me Cowper is still the best of our descriptive poets for every-day wear. And what unobtrusive skill he has! How he heightens, for example, your sense of winter-evening seclusion, by the twanging horn of the postman on the bridge!LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 1871, A Good Word for Winter, My Study Windows.

...

While his poems have in them much that might be thought didactic, this matter is given in so natural, reflective, and yet more, in so emotional, a manner as quite to escape the censure that might be