William Cowper, the most popular poet of his generation, and the best of English letter-writers,' as Southey called him, belonged to the English aristocracy; his father was the son of one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas, and a younger brother of the first Earl Cowper, Lord Chancellor. The name is the same as Cooper, and by the family is so pronounced. Cowper's mother, Anne Donne, was also well born, and through her he claimed the famous Dean of St Paul's as an ancestor. His father, a chaplain to George II., was rector of Great Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire, and there the poet was born, 26th (15th O.S.) November 1731. In his sixth year he lost his mother-whom he tenderly and affectionately remembered his life long-and was sent to a boarding-school. There the tyranny of a schoolfellow terrorised the timid and home-sick boy, and led after two years to his removal. At Westminster, where Vincent Bourne, the Latin poet, was one of his masters, he had Churchill and Warren Hastings as schoolfellows, and, as he says, served a seven years' apprenticeship to the classics. At eighteen he was articled to an attorney, having the future Lord Chancellor Thurlow as fellow-clerk; and in 1754 was called to the Bar. He never made law a study in the solicitor's office he and Thurlow were 'constantly employed from morning to night in giggling and making giggle;' in his chambers in the Temple he wrote lively verses, and idled with Bonnell Thornton, Colman, Lloyd, and other wits. He contributed a few papers to the Connoisseur and to the St James's Chronicle, both conducted by his friends; and in 1759 was appointed to a small sinecure as Commissioner of Bankrupts (worth £60 a year). Darker days were at hand. When he was in his thirty-second year, almost 'unprovided with an aim,' his kinsman, Major Cowper, presented him to the office of Clerk of the Journals to the House of Lords, a desirable and lucrative appointment. Cowper accepted it; but the labour of studying the forms of procedure, and the dread of having to stand an examination (though often a mere form) at the bar of the House of Lords, plunged him into the deepest misery. The seeds of insanity were then in his frame; and after brooding over imaginary terrors till reason and self-control had fled, he made several attempts to commit suicide. The appointment was given up, and Cowper was removed to the quaintly named 'Collegium Insanorum' at St Albans, kept by Dr Cotton (see page 532). The cloud of horror (from the conviction that he was eternally damned) gradually passed away, and on his recovery a few months later he resolved to withdraw entirely from the society and business of the world, and conscientiously resigned even his Commissionership. He had still a small fund left, and his family and friends subscribed a further sum to enable him to live frugally in retirement. He retired to Huntingdon in order to be near Cambridge, where his brother was a Fellow, and there formed an intimacy with the family of the Rev. Morley Unwin. He was adopted as one of the family; became almost wholly devoted to spiritual interests; and when in 1767 Mr Unwin died, of a fall from his horse, he continued to live in the house of the widow, engaged mainly in religious exercises, reading, and correspondence. Mary Unwin's name will ever be associated with Cowper's. Death only could sever a tie so strongly knit-cemented by mutual faith and friendship, and by sorrows of which the world knew nothing. After the death of Mr Unwin the family were advised by the Rev. John Newton to fix their abode at Olney, in northern Buckinghamshire, where Mr Newton was curate; and Cowper removed with them to a spot for ever consecrated by his genius. He had still the river Ouse with him, as at Huntingdon, but the scenery was more varied and attractive, with many delightfully retired walks. His life was that of a religious recluse; he corresponded less regularly with his friends, and associated only with Mrs Unwin and the evangelical curate. Newton, who strove—not always judiciously, it may be-to cheer the gentle invalid, engaged his help in writing the famous 'Olney Hymns,' Cowper's share including sixty-seven. Cowper further aided Newton in parochial work, visiting the sick, and taking part in meetings; but his morbid melancholy gained ground, and in 1773 became once more decided insanity. When after about two years in this unhappy state Cowper began to recover, he took to gardening, rearing hares, sketching landscapes, and composing poetry. Poetry was fortunately his chief enjoyment; and its fruits appeared in a volume of poems published in 1782-poems on abstract subjects, the dialogue called Table Talk being added to enliven the tone. The sale was slow; but his friends were eager in praise of the book, which received the approbation of Johnson and Franklin. His correspondence had been resumed, and cheerfulness revived at Olney, whence Newton had now removed to a London rectory. This happy change was greatly promoted by the presence of Lady Austen, a widow who came to live near Olney, and by her conversation for a time charmed away the melancholy spirit. She told Cowper the story of John Gilpin, and the famous horseman and his feats were an inexhaustible source of merriment.' She it was also who prevailed upon the poet to try his powers in blank verse, and from her suggestion sprang the noble poem of The Task. This memorable friendship was at length disturbed; perhaps a shade of jealousy on the part of Mrs Unwin (to whom for a time he had been formally engaged, his mental condition alone having stood in the way of marriage) intervened; and before the Task was finished, its fair inspirer had finally (1783) left Olney. In 1785 the new volume was published. Its success was instant and decided, and it left its mark on the literary taste of the time. Eighteenth century readers were glad to hear the frank and spontaneous voice of poetry and of nature, and in the rural descriptions and fireside scenes of the Task they saw English scenery and domestic life faithfully and tenderly delineated. 'The Task,' said Southey, was at once descriptive, moral, and satirical. The descriptive parts everywhere bore evidence of a thoughtful mind and a gentle spirit, as well as of an observant eye; and the moral sentiment which pervaded them gave a charm in which descriptive poetry is often found wanting. The best didactic poems, when compared with the Task, are like formal gardens in comparison with woodland scenery.' The blank verse has nothing of Milton's grandeur, indeed, but pos sesses a sweetness and serious power of its own-though Cowper's rhymed couplets are neater and more masterly than his blank verse. He next undertook a translation of Homer, having, after critical study in the Temple, formed a poor opinion of Pope's translation. Setting himself to a daily task of in 1791 and 1794, the task of nursing her fell upon the sensitive and dejected poet. He had translated poems from the French of Madame de Guyon, from the Greek poets, from Milton's Latin and Italian verse, and from Vincent Bourne's Latin, and now a careful revision of his Homer and an engagement to edit a new edition of Milton were his last literary undertakings. The Homer he did revise, but without improving the first edition; the second task was never finished. A deepening WILLIAM COWPER. gloom settled on his mind, with occasional bright intervals. A visit to his friend Hayley, at Eartham, gave him a lucid interval, and in 1794 a pension of £300 was granted to him from the Crown. He was induced, in 1795, to remove with Mrs Unwin to East Dereham in Norfolk, and there Mrs Unwin died in December 1796. Cowper heard of his old friend's death apparently without emotion. He lingered on for more than three years, still under the same dark shadow of religious despondency and terror, but occasionally writing, and listening attentively to works read to him forty lines, he at length accomplished the forty | by his friends. His last poem was The Castaway, thousand verses, and published by subscription, his friends being generously active in supporting the work, which appeared in 1791 in two volumes quarto. The modest translator's confident expectation that he had for ever superseded Pope has not been fulfilled; baldness has proved a worse fault than ornament. Meanwhile the now successful author and Mrs Unwin had removed to Weston-Underwood, a beautiful village about a mile from Olney. His fascinating cousin, Lady Hesketh, had cheered him and encouraged him in the Homeric labour; he had also formed a friendly intimacy with the Catholic family of the Throckmortons, to whom Weston belonged, and his circumstances were comparatively easy. Yet his malady returned upon him in 1787; and Mrs Unwin being rendered helpless by paralytic attacks in touching and beautiful verse, which showed no decay of poetical power; and death came to his release on the 25th of April 1800. So sad and strange a destiny has seldom befallen a man of genius. With wit and humour at will, he was nearly all his life weighed down by the deepest melancholy. Innocent, pious, and confiding, he lived in perpetual dread of everlasting punishment: he saw between him and heaven a high wall he could not scale; yet his intellectual vigour was not subdued by affliction. What he wrote for amusement or relief in the midst of 'supreme distress' shows no sign of mental disturbance; and in the very winter of his days, his fancy was often as fresh and blooming as in the spring and morning of existence. That he was constitutionally prone to melancholy and insanity is undoubted; but the predisposing causes were probably aggravated by his strict and secluded habits. His life was strangely isolated, and his position in the history of English literature is in many ways unique. He was in the eighteenth century, but not of it. He manifestly stands at the parting of the ways, and did not fully embody, though he heralded, the new spirit. He was neither Burns nor Byron nor Wordsworth, but had something of all of them. He was too much of a recluse, too little audacious or profound, to head a revolution or found a school of thought in poetry. Not very deeply impressed with the importance of his art or the value of his poetic message, he looked on poetry mainly as a means of enforcing morals and rendering religion attractive; his specific puritanism limited for him the world of life and joy and legitimate enterprise ; with the eighteenth century he is accordingly eminently didactic in purpose, though the sweet spontaneity and simplicity of much of his work are his most conspicuous characteristics. The naturalness and transparent sincerity of his letters are hardly more remarkable than their easy grace and brightness of expression. Cowper was fifty years of age ere he became a poet: he found little pleasure then in reading poetry, English or other, though his mind was stored with fresh memories of youthful studies; he depended greatly on casual suggestions from others, which he accepted as his themes mainly in the hope of relieving his own melancholy; and when he sought to entertain others by his verse, it was with the hope of elevating and instructing, not in order to produce an artistic creation, secure fame, or establish an æsthetic renaissance. Yet everywhere in his poetry we see a spirit at work wonderfully different from that of his predecessors-from Pope or Johnson, from Goldsmith or Thomson: a true and genial joy in nature and natural objects (for no two poets seem to love nature and its aspects quite in the same way); a tender and kindly interest in the simple domestic affections; a sense of the brotherhood of man; a horror of cruelty or vice; a devout and warm religious heart. He does not expressly proclaim a revolt against the conventions of the artificial, critical, classical school, but goodnaturedly takes his own independent way. Even when he is didactic he is not logically argumentative so much as friendly and communicative; the ideas come, as it were, of their own accord; and the clear simple English, the natural words and phrases, are manifestly his own and inevitable, as little designed to overthrow one school of poetic diction as to found another. He is not one of the greatest but one of the truest poets; his influence was deep and effective; and for those who can taste it there is a perennial charm in his poetry. It is scarcely to be wondered at that Cowper's first volume was somewhat coldly received. The subjects (Table Talk, The Progress of Error, Truth, Expostulation, Hope, Charity, and the like) did not promise much, and his manner of handling them was not calculated to conciliate the man about town. He was both too plain and too spiritual for general readers. Johnson had written moral poems in the same form of verse, but they possessed a rhetorical grandeur and wealth of illustration which Cowper did not attempt, and probably would on principle have rejected. Yet there are in these simple, subdued, unobtrusive works passages of masterly execution and lively fancy. Selkirk's 'I am monarch of all I survey' and Boadicea are among the most frequently quoted. The character of Chatham in Table Talk -where the interlocutors are the impersonal individuals' A and B is somewhat on the lines of Pope or Dryden : A. Patriots, alas! the few that have been found, Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared, And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard; To carry nature lengths unknown before, To give a Milton birth asked ages more. Thus genius rose and set at ordered times, And shot a dayspring into distant climes, Ennobling every region that he chose. He sunk in Greece, in Italy he rose ; And, tedious years of Gothic darkness past, Emerged all splendour in our isle at last. Thus lovely halcyons dive into the main, Then shew far off their shining plumes again. Conversation, in this volume, is rich in Addisonian humour and quiet satire, and formed no unworthy prelude to the Task. In Hope and Retirement we see traces of the descriptive powers and kindly pleasantry afterwards more fully developed. A very characteristic passage is the sketch of the Greenland missionaries, from Hope: That sound bespeaks salvation on her way, O blest within the inclosure of your rocks, Of those that walk at evening where ye dwell; From happier scenes to make your land a prey; In this pleasing (rather than powerful) blending in plain-sailing verse of argument and piety, poetry and sound sense, we have distinctive traits of Cowper's genius. Practice in composition and Lady Austen's influence were obvious gains to him; and when he entered upon the Task, he was far more disposed to look at the sunny side of things, and to attempt more detailed and picturesque description. His versification underwent a like improvement. His former poems were often rugged in style and expression, and were made so on purpose to avoid the polished uniformity of Pope and his imitators. He was now sensible that he had erred on the opposite side, and accordingly the Task was made to unite strength and freedom with elegance and harmony. Few poets have introduced so much idiomatic expression into a grave poem of blank verse; but the higher passages are all carefully finished, and rise or fall, according to the nature of the subject, with grace and melody of their own, in contrast to Thomson, whose pompous march is never relaxed, however trivial be the theme. The variety of the Task in style and manner, no less than in subject, is one of its greatest charms. The mock-heroic opening illustrates his humour, and from this he glides naturally into description and reflection. The scenery of the Ouse, described with the detail of painting, leads up to higher themes: Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds, Of ancient growth, make music not unlike The earth was made so various, that the mind From the beginning to the end of the Task we never lose sight of the author. His old boyish love of country rambles; his walks with Mrs Unwin, when he had exchanged the Thames for the Ouse, and had grown sober in the vale of years;' his playful satire and tender admonition, his denunciation of slavery, his noble patriotism, his devotional earnestness and sublimity, his tenderness to animals, his affection for his pets, his warm sympathy with his fellow-men, and his exquisite paintings of domestic peace and happiness are all so much self-portraiture, drawn with the ripe skill of a master and the modesty and good taste of the man. The very rapidity of his transitions, where things light and sportive are ranged alongside the most solemn truths, is characteristic of his mind and temperament in ordinary life. The inimitable ease and colloquial freedom which lend such a charm to his letters are never long absent from his poetry. He never concealed his strongly Calvinistic tenets, yet they are not much obtruded in his great work; his piety is of the kind which wins sympathy; and if his temperament (he was 'a stricken deer that left the herd') tinged the prospect of life with too deep a shade, it also imparted a more impressive weight to his solemn appeals. Of his lighter things, John Gilpin is universally recognised as a masterpiece; and The Dog and the Water Lily is in another manner exquisite. Most of his hymns are introspective, plaintive rather than joyous or confident; 'There is a fountain filled with blood,' 'Jesus, where'er Thy people meet,' 'The Spirit breathes upon the word,' and 'The Lord will happiness divine On contrite hearts bestow' are all in various ways representative; even 'Sometimes a light surprises,' 'Hark, my soul, it is the Lord,' and 'God moves in a mysterious way' are not without a touch of sadness; and 'O for a closer walk with God' is largely humiliation and prayer. From 'Conversation.' ... The emphatic speaker dearly loves to oppose, And give us in recitals of disease A doctor's trouble, but without the fees; Some fretful tempers wince at every touch, I pity bashful men, who feel the pain The fear of being silent makes us mute. Faint as a chicken's note that has the pip; On receiving his Mother's Picture. O welcome guest, though unexpected here! I will obey, not willingly alone, |