Newton was succeeded as curate of Olney by his disciple, and a man of somewhat the same cast of mind and character, Thomas Scott the writer of theCommentary on the BibleandThe Force of Truth. To Scott Cowper seems not to have greatly taken. He complains that, as a preacher, he is always scolding the congregation. Perhaps Newton had foreseen that it would be so, for he specially commended the spiritual son whom he was leaving, to the care of the Rev. William Bull, of the neighbouring town of Newport Pagnell, a dissenting minister, but a member of a spiritual connexion which did not stop at the line of demarcation between Nonconformity and the Establishment. To Bull Cowper did greatly take, he extols him as "a Dissenter, but a liberal one," a man of letters and of genius, master of a fine imagination—or, rather, not master of it—and addresses him asCarissime Taurorum. It is rather singular that Newton should have given himself such a successor. Bull was a great smoker, and had made himself a cozy and secluded nook in his garden for the enjoyment of his pipe. He was probably something of a spiritual as well as of a physical Quietist, for he set Cowper to translate the poetry of the great exponent of Quietism, Madame Guyon. The theme of all the pieces which Cowper has translated is the same—Divine Love and the raptures of the heart that enjoys it—the blissful union of the drop with the Ocean—the Evangelical Nirvana. If this line of thought was not altogether healthy, or conducive to the vigorous performance of practical duty, it was at all events better than the dark fancy of Reprobation. In his admiration of Madame Guyon, her translator showed his affinity, and that of Protestants of the same school, to Fenelon and the Evangelical element which has lurked in the Roman Catholic church since the days of Thomas a Kempis.
Since his recovery, Cowper had been looking out for what he most needed, a pleasant occupation. He tried drawing, carpentering, gardening. Of gardening he had always been fond; and he understood it as shown by the loving though somewhat "stercoraceous" minuteness of some passages inThe Task. A little greenhouse, used as a parlour in summer, where he sat surrounded by beauty and fragrance, and lulled by pleasant sounds, was another product of the same pursuit, and seems almost Elysian in that dull dark life. He also found amusement in keeping tame hares, and he fancied that he had reconciled the hare to man and dog. His three tame hares are among the canonized pets of literature, and they were to his genius what "Sailor" was to the genius of Byron. But Mrs. Unwin, who had terrible reason for studying his case, saw that the thing most wanted was congenial employment for the mind, and she incited him to try his hand at poetry on a larger scale. He listened to her advice, and when he was nearly fifty years of age became a poet. He had acquired the faculty of verse-writing, as we have seen; he had even to some extent formed his manner when he was young. Age must by this time have quenched his fire, and tamed his imagination, so that the didactic style would suit him best. In the length of the interval between his early poems and his great work he resembles Milton; but widely different in the two cases had been the current of the intervening years. Poetry written late in life is of course free from youthful crudity and extravagance. It also escapes the youthful tendency to imitation. Cowper's authorship is ushered in by Southey with a history of English poetry; but this is hardly in place; Cowper had little connexion with anything before him. Even his knowledge of poetry was not great. In his youth he had read the great poets, and had studied Milton especially with the ardour of intense admiration. Nothing ever made him so angry as Johnson's Life of Milton. "Oh!" he cries, "I could thrash his old jacket till I made his pension jingle in his pocket." Churchill had made a great—far too great—an impression on him, when he was a Templar. Of Churchill, if of anybody, he must be regarded as a follower, though only in his earlier and less successful poems. In expression he always regarded as a model the neat and gay simplicity of Prior. But so little had he kept up his reading of anything but sermons and hymns, that he learned for the first time from Johnson's Lives the existence of Collins. He is the offspring of the Religious Revival rather than of any school of art. His most important relation to any of his predecessors is, in fact, one of antagonism to the hard glitter of Pope.
In urging her companion to write poetry, Mrs. Unwin was on the right path, her puritanism led her astray in the choice of a theme. She suggestedThe Progress of Erroras a subject for a "Moral Satire." It was unhappily adopted, andThe Progress of Errorwas followed byTruth,Table Talk,Expostulation,Hope,Charity,Conversation, andRetirement. When the series was published,Table Talkwas put first, being supposed to be the lightest and the most attractive to an unregenerate world. The judgment passed upon this set of poems at the time by theCritical Reviewseems blasphemous to the fond biographer, and is so devoid of modern smartness as to be almost interesting as a literary fossil. But it must be deemed essentially just, though the reviewer errs, as many reviewers have erred, in measuring the writer's capacity by the standard of his first performance. "These poems," said theCritical Review, "are written, as we learn from the title-page, by Mr. Cowper of the Inner Temple, who seems to be a man of a sober and religious turn of mind, with a benevolent heart, and a serious wish to inculcate the precepts of morality; he is not, however, possessed of any superior abilities or the power of genius requisite for so arduous an undertaking. . . . . He says what is incontrovertible and what has been said over and over again with much gravity, but says nothing new, sprightly or entertaining; travelling on a plain level flat road, with great composure almost through the whole long and tedious volume, which is little better than a dull sermon in very indifferent verse on Truth, the Progress of Error, Charity, and some other grave subjects. If this author had followed the advice given by Caraccioli, and which he has chosen for one of the mottoes prefixed to these poems, he would have clothed his indisputable truths in some more becoming disguise, and rendered his work much more agreeable. In its present shape we cannot compliment him on its beauty; for as this bard himself sweetly sings:—
"The clear harangue, and cold as it is clear,Falls soporific on the listless ear."
In justice to the bard it ought to be said that he wrote under the eye of the Rev. John Newton, to whom the design had been duly submitted, and who had given hisimprimaturin the shape of a preface which took Johnson the publisher aback by its gravity. Newton would not have sanctioned any poetry which had not a distinctly religious object, and he received an assurance from the poet that the lively passages were introduced only as honey on the rim of the medicinal cup, to commend its healing contents to the lips of a giddy world. The Rev. John Newton must have been exceedingly austere if he thought that the quantity of honey used was excessive.
A genuine desire to make society better is always present in these poems, and its presence lends them the only interest which they possess except as historical monuments of a religious movement. Of satirical vigour they have scarcely a semblance. There are three kinds of satire, corresponding to as many different views of humanity and life, the Stoical, the Cynical, and the Epicurean. Of Stoical satire, with its strenuous hatred of vice and wrong, the type is Juvenal. Of Cynical satire, springing from bitter contempt of humanity, the type is Swift's Gulliver, while its quintessence is embodied in his lines on the Day of Judgment. Of Epicurean satire, flowing from a contempt of humanity which is not bitter, and lightly playing with the weakness and vanities of mankind, Horace is the classical example. To the first two kinds, Cowper's nature was totally alien, and when he attempts anything in either of those lines, the only result is a querulous and censorious acerbity, in which his real feelings had no part, and which on mature reflection offended his own better taste. In the Horatian kind he might have excelled, as the episode of theRetired Statesmanin one of these poems shows. He might have excelled, that is, if like Horace he had known the world. But he did not know the world. He saw the "great Babel" only "through the loopholes of retreat," and in the columns of his weekly newspaper. Even during the years, long past, which he spent in the world, his experience had been confined to a small literary circle. Society was to him an abstraction on which he discoursed like a pulpiteer. His satiric whip not only has no lash, it is brandished in the air.
No man was ever less qualified for the office of a censor; his judgment is at once disarmed, and a breach in his principles is at once made by the slightest personal influence. Bishops are bad, they are like the Cretans, evil beasts and slow bellies; but the bishop whose brother Cowper knows is a blessing to the Church. Deans and Canons are lazy sinecurists, but there is a bright exception in the case of the Cowper who held a golden stall at Durham. Grinding India is criminal, but Warren Hastings is acquitted, because he was with Cowper at Westminster. Discipline was deplorably relaxed in all colleges except that of which Cowper's brother was a fellow. Pluralities and resignation bonds, the grossest abuses of the Church, were perfectly defensible in the case of any friend or acquaintance of this Church Reformer. Bitter lines against Popery inserted inThe Taskwere struck out, because the writer had made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Throckmorton, who were Roman Catholics. Smoking was detestable, except when practised by dear Mr. Bull. Even gambling, the blackest sin of fashionable society, is not to prevent Fox, the great Whig, from being a ruler in Israel. Besides, in all his social judgments, Cowper is at a wrong point of view. He is always deluded by the idol of his cave. He writes perpetually on the twofold assumption that a life of retirement is more favourable to virtue than a life of action, and that "God made the country, while man made the town." Both parts of the assumption are untrue. A life of action is more favourable to virtue, as a rule, than a life of retirement, and the development of humanity is higher and richer, as a rule, in the town than in the country. If Cowper's retirement was virtuous, it was so because he was actively employed in the exercise of his highest faculties: had he been a mere idler, secluded from his kind, his retirement would not have been virtuous at all. His flight from the world was rendered necessary by his malady, and respectable by his literary work; but it was a flight and not a victory. His misconception was fostered and partly produced by a religion which was essentially ascetic, and which, while it gave birth to characters of the highest and most energetic beneficence, represented salvation too little as the reward of effort, too much as the reward of passive belief and of spiritual emotion.
The most readable of the Moral Satires isRetirement, in which the writer is on his own ground expressing his genuine feelings, and which is, in fact, a foretaste ofThe Task.Expostulation, a warning to England from the example of the Jews, is the best constructed: the rest are totally wanting in unity, and even in connexion. In all there are flashes of epigrammatic smartness.
How shall I speak thee, or thy power address,Thou God of our idolatry, the press?By thee, religion, liberty, and lawsExert their influence, and advance their cause;By thee, worse plagues than Pharaoh's land befel,Diffused, make earth the vestibule of hell:Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise,Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies,Like Eden's dread probationary tree,Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
Occasionally there are passages of higher merit. The episode of statesmen inRetirementhas been already mentioned. The lines on the two disciples going to Emmaus inConversation, though little more than a paraphrase of the Gospel narrative, convey pleasantly the Evangelical idea of the Divine Friend. Cowper says in one of his letters that he had been intimate with a man of fine taste who had confessed to him that though he could not subscribe to the truth of Christianity itself, he could never read this passage of St. Luke without being deeply affected by it, and feeling that if the stamp of divinity was impressed upon anything in the Scriptures, it was upon that passage.
It happen'd on a solemn eventide,Soon after He that was our surety died,Two bosom friends, each pensively inclined,The scene of all those sorrows left behind,Sought their own village, busied as they wentIn musings worthy of the great event:They spake of him they loved, of him whose life,Though blameless, had incurr'd perpetual strife,Whose deeds had left, in spite of hostile arts,A deep memorial graven on their hearts.The recollection, like a vein of ore,The farther traced enrich'd them still the more;
They thought him, and they justly thought him, oneSent to do more than he appear'd to have done,To exalt a people, and to place them highAbove all else, and wonder'd he should die.Ere yet they brought their journey to an end,A stranger join'd them, courteous as a friend,And ask'd them with a kind engaging airWhat their affliction was, and begg'd a share.Inform'd, he gathered up the broken thread,And truth and wisdom gracing all he said,Explain'd, illustrated, and search'd so wellThe tender theme on which they chose to dwell,That reaching home, the night, they said is near,We must not now be parted, sojourn here.—The new acquaintance soon became a guest,And made so welcome at their simple feast,He bless'd the bread, but vanish'd at the word,And left them both exclaiming, 'Twas the Lord!Did not our hearts feel all he deign'd to say,Did they not burn within us by the way?
The prude going to morning church inTruthis a good rendering ofHogarth's picture:—
Yon ancient prude, whose wither'd features showShe might, be young some forty years ago,Her elbows pinion'd close upon her hips,Her head erect, her fan upon her lips,Her eyebrows arch'd, her eyes both gone astrayTo watch yon amorous couple in their play,With bony and unkerchief'd neck defiesThe rude inclemency of wintry skies,And sails with lappet-head and mincing airsDaily at clink of hell, to morning prayers.To thrift and parsimony much inclined,She yet allows herself that boy behind;The shivering urchin, bending as he goes,With slipshod heels, and dew-drop at his nose,His predecessor's coat advanced to wear,Which future pages are yet doom'd to share,Carries her Bible tuck'd beneath his arm,And hides his hands to keep his fingers warm.
Of personal allusions there are a few; if the satirist had not been prevented from indulging in them by his taste, he would have been debarred by his ignorance. Lord Chesterfield, as the incarnation of the world and the most brilliant servant of the arch-enemy, comes in for a lashing under the name of Petronius.
Petronius! all the muses weep for thee,But every tear shall scald thy memory.The graces too, while virtue at their shrineLay bleeding under that soft hand of thine,Felt each a mortal stab in her own breast,Abhorr'd the sacrifice, and cursed the priest.Thou polish'd and high-finish'd foe to truth,Gray-beard corruptor of our listening youth,To purge and skim away the filth of vice,That so refined it might the more entice,Then pour it on the morals of thy sonTo tainthisheart, was worthy ofthine own.
This is about the nearest approach to Juvenal that the Evangelical satirist ever makes. InHopethere is a vehement vindication of the memory of Whitefield. It is rather remarkable that there is no mention of Wesley. But Cowper belonged to the Evangelical rather than to the Methodist section. It may be doubted whether the living Whitefield would have been much to his taste.
In the versification of the moral satires there are frequent faults, especially in the earlier poems of the series, though Cowper's power of writing musical verse is attested both by the occasional poems and byThe Task.
With the Moral Satires may be coupled, though written later,Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools. Here Cowper has the advantage of treating a subject which he understood, about which he felt strongly, and desired for a practical purpose to stir the feelings of his readers. He set to work in bitter earnest. "There is a sting," he says, "in verse that prose neither has nor can have; and I do not know that schools in the gross, and especially public schools, have ever been so pointedly condemned before. But they are become a nuisance, a pest, an abomination, and it is fit that the eyes and noses of mankind should be opened if possible to perceive it." His descriptions of the miseries which children in his day endured, and, in spite of all our improvements, must still to some extent endure in boarding schools, and of the effects of the system in estranging boys from their parents and deadening home affections, are vivid and true. Of course the Public School system was not to be overturned by rhyming, but the author ofTirociniumawakened attention to its faults, and probably did something towards amending them. The best lines, perhaps, have been already quoted in connexion with the history of the writer's boyhood. There are, however, other telling passages such as that on the indiscriminate use of emulation as a stimulus:—
Our public hives of puerile resortThat are of chief and most approved report,To such base hopes in many a sordid soulOwe their repute in part, but not the whole.A principle, whose proud pretensions passUnquestion'd, though the jewel be but glass,That with a world not often over-niceRanks as a virtue, and is yet a vice,Or rather a gross compound, justly tried,Of envy, hatred, jealousy, and pride,Contributes moat perhaps to enhance their fame,And Emulation is its precious name.Boys once on fire with that contentious zealFeel all the rage that female rivals feel;The prize of beauty in a woman's eyesNot brighter than in theirs the scholar's prize.The spirit of that competition burnsWith all varieties of ill by turns,Each vainly magnifies his own success,Resents his fellow's, wishes it were less,Exults in his miscarriage if he fail,Deems his reward too great if he prevail,And labours to surpass him day and night,Less for improvement, than to tickle spite.The spur is powerful, and I grant its force;It pricks the genius forward in its course,Allows short time for play, and none for sloth,And felt alike by each, advances both,But judge where so much evil intervenes,The end, though plausible, not worth the means.Weigh, for a moment, classical desertAgainst a heart depraved, and temper hurt,Hurt, too, perhaps for life, for early wrongDone to the nobler part, affects it long,And you are staunch indeed in learning's cause,If you can crown a discipline that drawsSuch mischiefs after it, with much applause.
He might have done more, if he had been able to point to the alternative of a good day school, as a combination of home affections with the superior teaching hardly to be found, except in a large school, and which Cowper, in drawing his comparison between the two systems, fails to take into account.
To the same general class of poems belongsAnti-Thelypthora, which it is due to Cowper's memory to say was not published in his lifetime. It is an angry pasquinade on an absurd book advocating polygamy on Biblical grounds, by the Rev. Martin Madan, Cowper's quondam spiritual counsellor. Alone among Cowper's works it has a taint of coarseness.
The Moral Satires pleased Franklin, to whom their social philosophy was congenial, as at a later day, in common with all Cowper's works, they pleased Cobden, who no doubt specially relished the passage inCharity, embodying the philanthropic sentiment of Free Trade. There was a trembling consultation as to the expediency of bringing the volume under the notice of Johnson. "One of his pointed sarcasms, if he should happen to be displeased, would soon find its way into all companies and spoil the sale." "I think it would be well to send in our joint names, accompanied with a handsome card, such an one as you will know how to fabricate, and such as may predispose him to a favourable perusal of the book, by coaxing him into a good temper, for he is a great bear, with all his learning and penetration." Fear prevailed; but it seems that the book found its way into the dictator's hands, that his judgment on it was kind, and that he even did something to temper the wind of adverse criticism to the shorn lamb. Yet parts of it were likely to incur his displeasure as a Tory, as a Churchman, and as one who greatly preferred Fleet Street to the beauties of nature; while with the sentimental misery of the writer, he could have had no sympathy whatever. Of the incompleteness of Johnson's view of character there could be no better instance than the charming weakness of Cowper. Thurlow and Colman did not even acknowledge their copies, and were lashed for their breach of friendship with rather more vigour than the Moral Satires display, inThe Valedictory, which unluckily survived for posthumous publication, when the culprits had made their peace.
Cowper certainly misread himself if he believed that ambition, even literary ambition, was a large element in his character. But having published, he felt a keen interest in the success of his publication. Yet he took its failure and the adverse criticism very calmly. With all his sensitiveness, from irritable and suspicious egotism, such as is the most common cause of moral madness, he was singularly free. In this respect his philosophy served him well.
It may safely be said that the Moral Satires would have sunk into oblivion if they had not been buoyed up byThe Task.
Mrs. Unwin's influence produced the Moral Satires.The Taskwas born of a more potent inspiration. One day Mrs. Jones, the wife of a neighbouring clergyman, came into Olney to shop, and with her came her sister, Lady Austen, the widow of a Baronet, a woman of the world, who had lived much in France, gay, sparkling and vivacious, but at the same time full of feeling even to overflowing. The apparition acted like magic on the recluse. He desired Mrs. Unwin to ask the two ladies to stay to tea, then shrank from joining the party which he had himself invited, ended by joining it, and, his shyness giving way with a rush, engaged in animated conversation with Lady Austen, and walked with her part of the way home. On her an equally great effect appears to have been produced. A warm friendship at once sprang up, and before long Lady Austen had verses addressed to her as Sister Anne. Her ladyship, on her part, was smitten with a great love of retirement, and at the same time with great admiration for Mr. Scott, the curate of Olney, as a preacher, and she resolved to fit up for herself "that part of our great building which is at present occupied by Dick Coleman, his wife and child, and a thousand rats." That a woman of fashion, accustomed to French salons, should choose such an abode, with a pair of Puritans for her only society, seems to show that one of the Puritans at least must have possessed great powers of attraction. Better quarters were found for her in the Vicarage; and the private way between the gardens, which apparently had been closed since Newton's departure, was opened again.
Lady Austen's presence evidently wrought on Cowper like an elixir: "From a scene of the most uninterrupted retirement," he writes to Mrs. Unwin, "we have passed at once into a state of constant engagement. Not that our society is much multiplied; the addition of an individual has made all this difference. Lady Austen and we pass our days alternately at each other's Chateau. In the morning I walk with one or other of the ladies, and in the evening wind thread. Thus did Hercules, and thus probably did Samson, and thus do I; and were both those heroes living, I should not fear to challenge them to a trial of skill in that business, or doubt to beat them both." It was perhaps while he was winding thread that Lady Austen told him the story of John Gilpin. He lay awake at night laughing over it, and next morning produced the ballad. It soon became famous, and was recited by Henderson, a popular actor, on the stage, though, as its gentility was doubtful, its author withheld his name. He afterwards fancied that this wonderful piece of humour had been written in a mood of the deepest depression. Probably he had written it in an interval of high spirits between two such moods. Moreover he sometimes exaggerated his own misery. He will begin a letter with ade profundis, and towards the end forget his sorrows, glide into commonplace topics, and write about them in the ordinary strain. Lady Austen inspiredJohn Gilpin. She inspired, it seems, the lines on the loss of the Royal George. She did more: she invited Cowper to try his hand at something considerable in blank verse. When he asked her for a subject, she was happier in her choice than the lady who had suggested theProgress of Error. 8he bade him take the sofa on which she was reclining, and which, sofas being then uncommon, was a more striking and suggestive object than it would be now. The right chord was struck; the subject was accepted; andThe Sofagrew intoThe Task; the title of the song reminding us that it was "commanded by the fair." AsParadise Lostis to militant Puritanism, so isThe Taskto the religious movement of its author's time. To its character as the poem of a sect it no doubt owed and still owes much of its popularity. Not only did it give beautiful and effective expression to the sentiments of a large religious party, but it was about the only poetry that a strict Methodist or Evangelical could read; while to those whose worship was unritualistic and who were debarred by their principles from the theatre and the concert, anything in the way of art that was not illicit must have been eminently welcome. ButThe Taskhas merits of a more universal and enduring kind. Its author himself says of it:—"If the work cannot boast a regular plan (in which respect, however, I do not think it altogether indefensible), it may yet boast, that the reflections are naturally suggested always by the preceding passage, and that, except the fifth book, which is rather of a political aspect, the whole has one tendency, to discountenance the modern enthusiasm after a London life, and to recommend rural ease and leisure as friendly to the cause of piety and virtue." A regular plan, assuredly,The Taskhas not. It rambles through a vast variety of subjects, religious, political, social, philosophical, and horticultural, with as little of method as its author used in taking his morning walks. Nor as Mr. Benham has shown, are the reflections, as a rule, naturally suggested by the preceding passage. From the use of a sofa by the gouty to those, who being free from gout, do not need sofas,—and so to country walks and country life is hardly a natural transition. It is hardly a natural transition from the ice palace built by a Russian despot, to despotism and politics in general. But if Cowper deceives himself in fancying that there is a plan or a close connexion of parts, he is right as to the existence of a pervading tendency. The praise of retirement and of country life as most friendly to piety and virtue, is the perpetual refrain of The Task, if not its definite theme. From this idea immediately now the best and the most popular passages: those which please apart from anything peculiar to a religious school; those which keep the poem alive; those which have found their way into the heart of the nation, and intensified the taste for rural and domestic happiness, to which they most winningly appeal. In these Cowper pours out his inmost feelings, with the liveliness of exhilaration, enhanced by contrast with previous misery. The pleasures of the country and of home, the walk, the garden, but above all the "intimate delights" of the winter evening, the snug parlour, with its close-drawn curtains shutting out the stormy night, the steaming and bubbling tea-urn, the cheerful circle, the book read aloud, the newspaper through which we look out into the unquiet world, are painted by the writer with a heartfelt enjoyment, which infects the reader. These are not the joys of a hero, nor are they the joys of an Alcaeus "singing amidst the clash of arms, or when he had moored on the wet shore his storm-tost barque." But they are pure joys, and they present themselves in competition with those of Ranelagh and the Basset Table, which are not heroic or even masculine, any more than they are pure.
The well-known passages at the opening ofThe Winter Evening, are the self-portraiture of a soul in bliss—such bliss as that soul could know—and the poet would have found it very difficult to depict to himself by the utmost effort of his religious imagination any paradise which he would really have enjoyed more.
Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urnThrows up a steamy column, and the cupsThat cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,So let us welcome peaceful evening in.
* * * *
This folio of four pages, happy work!Which not even critics criticise, that holdsInquisitive attention while I readFast bound in chains of silence, which the fair,Though eloquent themselves, yet fear to break,What is it but a map of busy life,Its fluctuations and its vast concerns?
* * * *
'Tis pleasant through the loop-holes of retreatTo peep at such a world. To see the stirOf the great Babel and not feel the crowd.To hear the roar she sends through all her gatesAt a safe distance, where the dying soundFalls a soft murmur on the injured ear.Thus sitting and surveying thus at easeThe globe and its concerns, I seem advancedTo some secure and more than mortal height,That liberates and exempts me from them all.It turns submitted to my view, turns roundWith all its generations; I beholdThe tumult and am still. The sound of warHas lost its terrors ere it reaches me,Grieves but alarms me not. I mourn the prideAnd avarice that make man a wolf to man,Hear the faint echo of those brazen throatsBy which he speaks the language of his heart,And sigh, but never tremble at the sound.He travels and expatiates, as the beeFrom flower to flower, so he from land to land,The manners, customs, policy of allPay contribution to the store he gleans;He sucks intelligence in every clime,And spreads the honey of his deep researchAt his return, a rich repast for me,He travels, and I too. I tread his deck,Ascend his topmast, through his peering eyesDiscover countries, with a kindred heartSuffer his woes and share in his escapes,While fancy, like the finger of a clock,Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.Oh winter! ruler of the inverted year,Thy scatter'd hair with sleet like ashes fill'd,Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeksFringed with a beard made white with other snowsThan those of age; thy forehead wrapt in clouds,A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throneA sliding car indebted to no wheels,And urged by storms along its slippery way;I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st,And dreaded as thou art. Thou hold'st the sunA prisoner in the yet undawning East,Shortening his journey between morn and noon,And hurrying him impatient of his stayDown to the rosy West. But kindly stillCompensating his loss with added hoursOf social converse and instructive ease,And gathering at short notice in one groupThe family dispersed by daylight and its cares.I crown thee king of intimate delights,Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness,And all the comforts that the lowly roofOf undisturb'd retirement, and the hoursOf long uninterrupted evening know.
The writer ofThe Taskalso deserves the crown which he has himself claimed as a close observer and truthful painter of nature. In this respect, he challenges comparison with Thomson. The range of Thomson is far wider, he paints nature in all her moods, Cowper only in a few and those the gentlest, though he has said of himself that "he was always an admirer of thunderstorms, even before he knew whose voice be heard in them, but especially of thunder rolling over the great waters." The great waters he had not seen for many years; he had never, so far as we know, seen mountains, hardly even high hills; his only landscape was the flat country watered by the Ouse. On the other hand he is perfectly genuine, thoroughly English, entirely emancipated from false Arcadianism, the yoke of which still sits heavily upon Thomson, whose "muse" moreover is perpetually "wafting" him away from the country and the climate which he knows to countries and climates which he does not know, and which he describes in the style of a prize poem. Cowper's landscapes, too, are peopled with the peasantry of England; Thomson's, with Damons, Palaemons, and Musidoras, tricked out in the sentimental costume of the sham idyl. In Thomson, you always find the effort of the artist working up a description; in Cowper, you find no effort; the scene is simply mirrored on a mind of great sensibility and high pictorial power.
And witness, dear companion of my walks,Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceiveFast lock'd in mine, with pleasure such as love,Confirm'd by long experience of thy worthAnd well-tried virtues, could alone inspire—Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long.Thou know'st my praise of nature most sincere,And that my raptures are not conjured upTo serve occasions of poetic pomp,But genuine, and art partner of them all.How oft upon yon eminence our paceHas slacken'd to a pause, and we have borneThe ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,While Admiration, feeding at the eye,And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene!Thence with what pleasure have we just discernedThe distant plough slow moving, and besideHis labouring team that swerved not from the track,The sturdy swain diminish'd to a boy!Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plainOf spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er,Conducts the eye along his sinuous courseDelighted. There, fast rooted in their bank,Stand, never overlook'd, our favourite elms,That screen the herdsman's solitary hut;While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,The sloping land recedes into the clouds;Displaying on its varied side the graceOf hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bellsJust undulates upon the listening ear,Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote.Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily viewed,Please daily, and whose novelty survivesLong knowledge and the scrutiny of years—Praise justly due to those that I describe.
This is evidently genuine and spontaneous. We stand with Cowper and Mrs. Unwin on the hill in the ruffling wind, like them, scarcely conscious that it blows, and feed admiration at the eye upon the rich and thoroughly English champaign that is outspread below.
Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds,Exhilarate the spirit, and restoreThe tone of languid Nature. Mighty winds,That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading woodOf ancient growth, make music not unlikeThe dash of Ocean on his winding shore,And lull the spirit while they nil the mind;Unnumber'd branches waving in the blast,And all their leaves fast fluttering, all at once.Nor less composure waits upon the roarOf distant floods, or on the softer voiceOf neighbouring fountain, or ofrills that slipThrough the cleft rock, and chiming as they fallUpon loose pebbles, lose themselves at lengthIn matted grass that with a livelier greenBetrays the secret of their silent course.Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds,But animated nature sweeter still,To soothe and satisfy the human ear.Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and oneThe livelong night: nor these alone, whose notesNice-finger'd Art must emulate in vain,But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublimeIn still-repeated circles, screaming loud,The jay, the pie, and e'en the boding owlThat hails the rising moon, have charms for me.Sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh,Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns,And only there, please highly for their sake.
Affection such as the last lines display for the inharmonious as well as the harmonious, for the uncomely, as well as the comely parts of nature has been made familiar by Wordsworth, but it was new in the time of Cowper. Let us compare a landscape painted by Pope in his Windsor forest, with the lines just quoted, and we shall see the difference between the art of Cowper, and that of the Augustan age.
Here waving groves a checkered scene display,And part admit and part exclude the day,As some coy nymph her lover's warm addressNot quite indulges, nor can quite repress.There interspersed in lawns and opening gladesThe trees arise that share each other's shades;Here in full light the russet plains extend,There wrapt in clouds, the bluish hills ascend,E'en the wild heath displays her purple dyes,And midst the desert fruitful fields arise,That crowned with tufted trees and springing corn.Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn.
The low Berkshire hills wrapt in clouds on a sunny day; a sable desert in the neighbourhood of Windsor; fruitful fields arising in it, and crowned with tufted trees and springing corn—evidently Pope saw all this, not on an eminence, in the ruffling wind, but in his study with his back to the window, and the Georgics or a translation of them before him.
Here again is a little picture of rural life from theWinter MorningWalk.
The cattle mourn in corners, where the fenceScreens them, and seem half-petrified to sleepIn unrecumbent sadness. There they waitTheir wonted fodder; not like hungering man,Fretful if unsupplied; but silent, meek,And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay.He from the stack carves out the accustomed loadDeep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft,His broad keen knife into the solid mass:Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,With such undeviating and even forceHe severs it away: no needless care,Lest storms should overset the leaning pileDeciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcern'dThe cheerful haunts of man; to wield the axeAnd drive the wedge in yonder forest drear,from, morn to eve, his solitary task.Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed earsAnd tail cropp'd short, half lurcher and half cur,His dog attends him. Close behind his heelNow creeps he slow; and now, with many a friskWide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snowWith ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;Then shakes his powder'd coat, and barks for joy.Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churlMoves right toward the mark; nor stops for aughtBut now and then with pressure of his thumbTo adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube,That fumes beneath his nose: the trailing cloudStreams far behind him, scenting all the air.
The minutely faithful description of the man carving the load of hay out of the stack, and again those of the gambolling dog, and the woodman smoking his pipe with the stream of smoke trailing behind him, remind us of the touches of minute fidelity in Homer. The same may be said of many other passages.
The sheepfold herePours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe.At first, progressive as a stream they seekThe middle field: but, scatter'd by degrees,Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land.There from the sun-burnt hay-field homeward creepsThe loaded wain: while lighten'd of its charge,The wain that meets it passes swiftly by;The boorish driver leaning o'er his teamVociferous and impatient of delay.
A specimen of more imaginative and distinctly poetical description is the well-known passage on evening, in writing which Cowper would seem to have had Collins in his mind.
Come, Evening, once again, season of peace,Return, sweet Evening, and continue long!Methinks I see thee in the streaky west,With matron-step slow-moving, while the NightTreads on thy sweeping train; one hand employedIn letting fall the curtain of reposeOn bird and beast, the other charged for manWith sweet oblivion of the cares of day:Not sumptuously adorn'd, nor needing aid,Like homely-featured Night, of clustering gems!A star or two just twinkling on thy browSuffices thee; save that the moon is thineNo less than hers, not worn indeed on highWith ostentatious pageantry, but set.With modest grandeur in thy purple zone,Resplendent less, but of an ampler round.
Beyond this line Cowper does not go, and had no idea of going; he never thinks of lending a soul to material nature as Wordsworth and Shelley do. He is the poetic counterpart of Gainsborough, as the great descriptive poets of a later and more spiritual day are the counterparts of Turner. We have said that Cowper's peasants are genuine as well as his landscape; he might have been a more exquisite Crabbe if he had turned his mind that way, instead of writing sermons about a world which to him was little more than an abstraction, distorted moreover, and discoloured by his religious asceticism.
Poor, yet industrious, modest, quiet, neat,Such claim compassion in a night like this,And have a friend in every feeling heart.Warm'd, while it lasts, by labour, all day longThey brave the season, and yet find at eve,Ill clad, and fed but sparely, time to cool.The frugal housewife trembles when she lightsHer scanty stock of brushwood, blazing clear,But dying soon, like all terrestrial joys.The few small embers left, she nurses well;And, while her infant race, with outspread handsAnd crowded knees sit cowering o'er the sparks,Retires, content to quake, so they be warm'd.The man feels least, as more inured than sheTo winter, and the current in his veinsMore briskly moved by his severer toil;Yet he too finds his own distress in theirs,The taper soon extinguish'd, which I sawDangled along at the cold finger's endJust when the day declined; and the brown loafLodged on the shelf, half eaten without sauceOf savoury cheese, or batter, costlier still:Sleep seems their only refuge: for, alas'Where penury is felt the thought is chained,And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few!With all this thrift they thrive not. All the careIngenious Parsimony takes, but justSaves the small inventory, bed and stool,Skillet, and old carved chest, from public sale.They live, and live without extorted almsfrom grudging hands: but other boast have noneTo soothe their honest pride that scorns to beg,Nor comfort else, but in their mutual love.
Here we have the plain, unvarnished record of visitings among the poor of Olney. The last two lines are simple truth as well as the rest.
"In some passages, especially in the second book, you will observe me very satirical." In the second book ofThe Task, there are some bitter things about the clergy, and in the passage pourtraying a fashionable preacher, there is a touch of satiric vigour, or rather of that power of comic description which was one of the writer's gifts. But of Cowper as a satirist enough has been said.
"What there is of a religious cast in the volume I have thrown towards the end of it, for two reasons; first, that I might not revolt the reader at his entrance, and secondly, that my best impressions might be made last. Were I to write as many volumes as Lope de Vega or Voltaire, not one of them would be without this tincture. If the world like it not, so much the worse for them. I make all the concessions I can, that I may please them, but I will not please them at the expense of conscience." The passages ofThe Taskpenned by conscience, taken together, form a lamentably large proportion of the poem. An ordinary reader can be carried through them, if at all, only by his interest in the history of opinion, or by the companionship of the writer, who is always present, as Walton is in his Angler, as White is in his Selbourne. Cowper, however, even at his worst, is a highly cultivated methodist; if he is sometimes enthusiastic, and possibly superstitious, he is never coarse or unctuous. He speaks with contempt of "the twang of the conventicle." Even his enthusiasm had by this time been somewhat tempered. Just after his conversion he used to preach to everybody. He had found out, as he tells us himself, that this was a mistake, that "the pulpit was for preaching; the garden, the parlour, and the walk abroad were for friendly and agreeable conversation." It may have been his consciousness of a certain change in himself that deterred him from taking Newton into his confidence when he was engaged uponThe Task. The worst passages are those which betray a fanatical antipathy to natural science, especially that in the third book (150—190). The episode of the judgment of heaven on the young atheist Misagathus, in the sixth book, is also fanatical and repulsive.
Puritanism had come into violent collision with the temporal power, and had contracted a character fiercely political and revolutionary. Methodism fought only against unbelief, vice, and the coldness of the establishment; it was in no way political, much less revolutionary; by the recoil from the atheism of the French Revolution its leaders, including Wesley himself, were drawn rather to the Tory side. Cowper, we have said, always remained in principle what he had been born, a Whig, an unrevolutionary Whig, an "Old Whig" to adopt the phrase made canonical by Burke.
'Tis liberty alone that gives the flowerOf fleeting life its lustre and perfume,And we are weeds without it. All constraintExcept what wisdom lays on evil menIs evil.
The sentiment of these lines, which were familiar and dear to Cobden, is tempered by judicious professions of loyalty to a king who rules in accordance with the law. At one time Cowper was inclined to regard the government of George III as a repetition of that of Charles I, absolutist in the State and reactionary in the Church; but the progress of revolutionary opinions evidently increased his loyalty, as it did that of many other Whigs, to the good Tory king. We shall presently see, however, that the views of the French Revolution, itself expressed in his letters are wonderfully rational, calm, and free from the political panic and the apocalyptic hallucination, both of which we should rather have expected to find in him. He describes himself to Newton as having been, since his second attack of madness, "an extramundane character with reference to this globe, and though not a native of the moon, not made of the dust of this planet." The Evangelical party has remained down to the present day non-political, and in its own estimation extramundane, taking part in the affairs of the nation only when some religious object was directly in view. In speaking of the family of nations, an Evangelical poet is of course a preacher of peace and human brotherhood. He has even in some lines ofCharity,which also were dear to Cobden, remarkably anticipated the sentiment of modern economists respecting the influence of free trade in making one nation of mankind. The passage is defaced by an atrociously bad simile:—
Again—the band of commerce was design'd,To associate all the branches of mankind,And if a boundless plenty be the robe,Trade is the golden girdle of the globe.Wise to promote whatever end he means,God opens fruitful Nature's various scenes,Each climate needs what other climes produce,And offers something to the general use;No land but listens to the common call,And in return receives supply from all.This genial intercourse and mutual aidCheers what were else an universal shade,Calls Nature from her ivy-mantled den,And softens human rock-work into men.
Now and then, however, in readingThe Task, we come across a dash of warlike patriotism which, amidst the general philanthropy, surprises and offends the reader's palate, like the taste of garlic in our butter.
An innocent Epicurism, tempered by religious asceticism of a mild kind—such is the philosophy ofThe Task, and such the ideal embodied in the portrait of the happy man with which it concludes. Whatever may be said of the religious asceticism, the Epicurism required a corrective to redeem it from selfishness and guard it against self-deceit. This solitary was serving humanity in the best way he could, not by his prayers, as in one rather fanatical passage he suggests, but by his literary work; he had need also to remember that humanity was serving him. The newspaper through which he looks out so complacently into the great "Babel," has been printed in the great Babel itself, and brought by the poor postman, with his "spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks," to the recluse sitting comfortably by his fireside. The "fragrant lymph" poured by "the fair" for their companion in his cosy seclusion, has been brought over the sea by the trader, who must encounter the moral dangers of a trader's life, as well as the perils of the stormy wave. It is delivered at the door by
The waggoner who bearsThe pelting brunt of the tempestuous night,With half-shut eyes and puckered cheeks and teethPresented bare against the storm;
and whose coarseness and callousness, as he whips his team, are the consequences of the hard calling in which he ministers to the recluse's pleasure and refinement. If town life has its evils, from the city comes all that makes retirement comfortable and civilized. Retirement without the city-would have been bookless and have fed on acorns.
Rousseau is conscious of the necessity of some such institution as slavery, by way of basis for his beautiful life according to nature. The celestial purity and felicity of St. Pierre'sPaul and Virginiaare sustained by the labour of two faithful slaves. A weak point of Cowper's philosophy, taken apart from his own saving activity as a poet, betrays itself in a somewhat similar way.
Or if the garden with its many caresAll well repaid demand him, he attendsThe welcome call, conscious how much the handOf lubbard labour, needs his watchful eye,Oft loitering lazily if not o'er seen;Or misapplying his unskilful strengthBut much performs himself,no works indeedThat ask robust tough sinews bred to toil,Servile employ, but such as may amuseNot tire, demanding rather skill than force.
We are told inThe Taskthat there is no sin in allowing our own happiness to be enhanced by contrast with the less happy condition of others: if we are doing our best to increase the happiness of others, there is none. Cowper, as we have said before, was doing this to the utmost of his limited capacity.
Both in the Moral Satires and inThe Task, there are sweeping denunciations of amusements which we now justly deem innocent, and without which or something equivalent to them, the wrinkles on the brow of care could not be smoothed, nor life preserved from dulness and moroseness. There is fanaticism in this no doubt: but in justice to the Methodist as well as to the Puritan, let it be remembered that the stage, card parties, and even dancing once had in them something from which even the most liberal morality might recoil.
In his writings generally, but especially inThe Task, Cowper, besides being an apostle of virtuous retirement and evangelical piety, is, by his general tone, an apostle of sensibility.The Task, is a perpetual protest not only against the fashionable vices and the irreligion, but against the hardness of the world; and in a world which worshipped Chesterfield the protest was not needless, nor was it ineffective. Among the most tangible characteristics of this special sensibility is the tendency of its brimming love of humankind to overflow upon animals, and of this there are marked instances in some passages ofThe Task.
I would not enter on my list of friends(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,Yet wanting sensibility) the manWho needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
Of Cowper's sentimentalism (to use the word in a neutral sense), part flowed from his own temperament, part was Evangelical, but part belonged to an element which was European, which produced theNouvelle Heloiseand theSorrows of Werther, and which was found among the Jacobins in sinister companionship with the cruel frenzy of the Revolution. Cowper shows us several times that he had been a reader of Rousseau, nor did he fail to produce in his time a measure of the same effect which Rousseau produced; though there have been so many sentimentalists since, and the vein has been so much worked, that it is difficult to carry ourselves back in imagination to the day in which Parisian ladies could forego balls to read theNouvelle Heloise, or the stony heart of people of the world could be melted byThe Task.
In his versification, as in his descriptions, Cowper flattered himself that he imitated no one. But he manifestly imitates the softer passages of Milton, whose music he compares in a rapturous passage of one of his letters to that of a fine organ. To produce melody and variety, he, like Milton, avails himself fully of all the resources of a composite language. Blank verse confined to short Anglo-Saxon words is apt to strike the ear, not like the swell of an organ, but like the tinkle of a musical-box.
The Taskmade Cowper famous. He was told that he had sixty readers at the Hague alone. The interest of his relations and friends in him revived, and those of whom he had heard nothing for many years emulously renewed their connexion. Colman and Thurlow reopened their correspondence with him, Colman writing to him "like a brother." Disciples, young Mr. Rose, for instance, came to sit at his feet. Complimentary letters were sent to him, and poems submitted to his judgment. His portrait was taken by famous painters. Literary lion-hunters began to fix their eyes upon him. His renown spread even to Olney. The clerk of All Saints', Northampton, came over to ask him to write the verses annually appended to the bill of mortality for that parish. Cowper suggested that "there were several men of genius in Northampton, particularly Mr. Cox, the statuary, who, as everybody knew, was a first-rate maker of verses." "Alas!" replied the clerk, "I have heretofore borrowed help from him, but he is a gentleman of so much reading that the people of our town cannot understand him." The compliment was irresistible, and for seven years the author of The Task wrote the mortuary verses for All Saints', Northampton. Amusement, not profit, was Cowper's aim; he rather rashly gave away his copyright to his publisher, and his success does not seem to have brought him money in a direct way, but it brought him a pension of 300 pounds in the end. In the meantime it brought him presents, and among them an annual gift of 50 pounds from an anonymous hand, the first instalment being accompanied by a pretty snuff-box ornamented with a picture of the three hares. From the gracefulness of the gift, Southey infers that it came from a woman, and he conjectures that the woman was Theodora.
The task was not quite finished when the influence which had inspired it was withdrawn. Among the little mysteries and scandals of literary history is the rupture between Cowper and Lady Austen. Soon after the commencement of their friendship there had been a "fracas," of which Cowper gives an account in a letter to William Unwin. "My letters have already apprised you of that close and intimate connexion, that took place between the lady you visited in Queen Anne Street and us. Nothing could be more promising, though sudden in the commencement. She treated us with as much unreservedness of communication, as if we had been born in the same house and educated together. At her departure, she herself proposed a correspondence, and, because writing does not agree with your mother, proposed a correspondence with me. This sort of intercourse had not been long maintained before I discovered, by some slight intimations of it, that she had conceived displeasure at somewhat I had written, though I cannot now recollect it; conscious of none but the most upright, inoffensive intentions, I yet apologized for the passage in question, and the flaw was healed again. Our correspondence after this proceeded smoothly for a considerable time, but at length, having had repeated occasion to observe that she expressed a sort of romantic idea of our merits, and built such expectations of felicity upon our friendship, as we were sure that nothing human could possibly answer, I wrote to remind her that we were mortal, to recommend her not to think more highly of us than the subject would warrant, and intimating that when we embellish a creature with colours taken from our own fancy, and so adorned, admire and praise it beyond its real merits, we make it an idol, and have nothing to expect in the end but that it will deceive our hopes, and that we shall derive nothing from it but a painful conviction of our error. Your mother heard me read the letter, she read it herself, and honoured it with her warm approbation. But it gave mortal offence; it received, indeed, an answer, but such an one as I could by no means reply to; and there ended (for it was impossible it should ever be renewed) a friendship that bid fair to be lasting; being formed with a woman whose seeming stability of temper, whose knowledge of the world and great experience of its folly, but, above all, whose sense of religion and seriousness of mind (for with all that gaiety she is a great thinker) induced us both, in spite of that cautious reserve that marked our characters, to trust her, to love and value her, and to open our hearts for her reception. It may be necessary to add that by her own desire, I wrote to her under the assumed relation of a brother, and she to me as my sister.Ceu fumus in auras." It is impossible to read this without suspecting that there was more of "romance" on one side, than there was either of romance or of consciousness of the situation on the other. On that occasion the reconciliation, though "impossible," took place, the lady sending, by way of olive branch, a pair of ruffles, which it was known she had begun to work before the quarrel. The second rupture was final. Hayley, who treats the matter with sad solemnity, tells us that Cowper's letter of farewell to Lady Austen, as she assured him herself, was admirable, though unluckily, not being gratified by it at the time, she had thrown it into the fire. Cowper has himself given us, in a letter to Lady Hesketh, with reference to the final rupture, a version of the whole affair:—"There came a lady into this country, by name and title Lady Austen, the widow of the late Sir Robert Austen. At first she lived with her sister about a mile from Olney; but in a few weeks took lodgings at the vicarage here. Between the vicarage and the back of our house are interposed our garden, an orchard, and the garden belonging to the vicarage. She had lived much in France, was very sensible, and had infinite vivacity. She took a great liking to us, and we to her. She had been used to a great deal of company, and we, fearing that she would feel such a transition into silent retirement irksome, contrived to give her our agreeable company often. Becoming continually more and more intimate, a practice at length obtained of our dining with each other alternately every day, Sundays excepted. In order to facilitate our communication, we made doors in the two garden-walls aforesaid, by which means we considerably shortened the way from one house to the other, and could meet when we pleased without entering the town at all; a measure the rather expedient, because the town is abominably dirty, and she kept no carriage. On her first settlement in our neighbourhood, I made it my own particular business (for at that time I was not employed in writing, having published my first volume and not begun my second) to pay mydevoirsto her ladyship every morning at eleven. Customs very soon became laws. I beganThe Task, for she was the lady who gave me theSofafor a subject. Being once engaged in the work, I began to feel the inconvenience of my morning attendance. We had seldom breakfasted ourselves till ten; and the intervening hour was all the time I could find in the whole day for writing, and occasionally it would happen that the half of that hour was all that I could secure for the purpose. But there was no remedy. Long usage had made that which was at first optional a point of good manners, and consequently of necessity, and I was forced to neglectThe Taskto attend upon the Muse who had inspired the subject. But she had ill-health, and before I had quite finished the work was obliged to repair to Bristol." Evidently this was not the whole account of the matter, or there would have been no need for a formal letter of farewell. We are very sorry to find the revered Mr. Alexander Knox saying, in his correspondence with Bishop Jebb, that he had a severer idea of Lady Austen than he should wish to put into writing for publication, and that he almost suspected she was a very artful woman. On the other hand, the unsentimental Mr. Scott is reported to have said, "Who can be surprised that two women should be continually in the society of one man and quarrel, sooner or later, with each other?" Considering what Mrs. Unwin had been to Cowper, and what he had been to her, a little jealousy on her part would not have been highly criminal. But, as Southey observes, we shall soon see two women continually in the society of this very man without quarrelling with each other. That Lady Austen's behaviour to Mrs. Unwin was in the highest degree affectionate, Cowper has himself assured us. Whatever the cause may have been, this bird of paradise, having alighted for a moment in Olney, took wing and was seen no more.
Her place, as a companion, was supplied, and more than supplied, by Lady Hesketh, like her a woman of the world, and almost as bright and vivacious, but with more sense and stability of character, and who, moreover, could be treated as a sister without any danger of, misunderstanding. The renewal of the intercourse between Cowper and the merry and affectionate play-fellow of his early days, had been one of the best fruits borne to him byThe Task, or perhaps we should rather say byJohn Gilpin, for on reading that ballad she first became aware that her cousin had emerged from the dark seclusion of his truly Christian happiness, and might again be capable of intercourse with her sunny nature. Full of real happiness for Cowper were her visits to Olney; the announcement of her coming threw him into a trepidation of delight. And how was this new rival received by Mrs. Unwin. "There is something," says Lady Hesketh in a letter which has been already quoted, "truly affectionate and sincere in Mrs. Unwin's manner. No one can express more heartily than she does her joy to have me at Olney; and as this must be for his sake it is an additional proof of her regard and esteem for him." She could even cheerfully yield precedence in trifles, which is the greatest trial of all. "Our friend," says Lady Hesketh, "delights in a large table and a large chair. There are two of the latter comforts in my parlour. I am sorry to say that he and I always spread ourselves out in them, leaving poor Mrs. Unwin to find all the comfort she can in a small one, half as high again as ours, and considerably harder than marble. However, she protests it is what she likes, that she prefers a high chair to a low one, and a hard to a soft one; and I hope she is sincere; indeed, I am persuaded she is." She never gave the slightest reason for doubting her sincerity; so Mr. Scott's coarse theory of the "two women" falls to the ground, though, as Lady Hesketh was not Lady Austen, room is still left for the more delicate and interesting hypothesis.
By Lady Hesketh's care Cowper was at last taken out of the "well" at Olney and transferred with his partner to a house at Weston, a place in the neighbourhood, but on higher ground, more cheerful, and in better air. The house at Weston belonged to Mr. Throckmorton of Weston Hall, with whom and Mrs. Throckmorton, Cowper had become so intimate that they were already his Mr. and Mrs. Frog. It is a proof of his freedom from fanatical bitterness that he was rather drawn to them by their being Roman Catholics, and having suffered rude treatment from the Protestant boors of the neighbourhood. Weston Hall had its grounds, with the colonnade of chestnuts, the "sportive light" of which still "dances" on the pages ofThe Task; with the Wilderness,—
Whose well-rolled walks,With curvature of slow and easy sweep,Deception innocent, give ample spaceTo narrow bounds—
with the Grove,—
Between the upright shafts of whose tall elmsWe may discern the thresher at his task,Thump after thump resounds the constant flailThat seems to swing uncertain, and yet fallsFull on the destined ear. Wide flies the chaff,The rustling straw sends up a fragrant mistOf atoms, sparkling in the noonday beam.
A pretty little vignette, which the threshing-machine has now made antique. There were ramblings, picnics, and little dinner-parties. Lady Hesketh kept a carriage. Gayhurst, the seat of Mr. Wright, was visited as well as Weston Hall; the life of the lonely pair was fast becoming social. The Rev. John Newton was absent in the flesh, but he was present in the spirit, thanks to the tattle of Olney. To show that he was, he addressed to Mrs. Unwin a letter of remonstrance on the serious change which had taken place in the habits of his spiritual children. It was answered by her companion, who in repelling the censure mingles the dignity of self-respect with a just appreciation of the censor's motives, in a style which showed that although he was sometimes mad, he was not a fool.
Having succeeded in one great poem, Cowper thought of writing another, and several subjects were started—The Mediterranean,The Four Ages of Man,Yardley Oak.The Mediterraneanwould not have suited him well if it was to be treated historically, for of history he was even more ignorant than most of those who have had the benefit of a classical education, being capable of believing that the Latin element of our language had come in with the Roman conquest. Of theFour Ageshe wrote a fragment. OfYardley Oakhe wrote the opening; it was apparently to have been a survey of the countries in connexion with an immemorial oak which stood in a neighbouring chace. But he was forced to say that the mind of man was not a fountain but a cistern, and his was a broken one. He had expended his stock of materials for a long poem inThe Task.
These, the sunniest days of Cowper's life, however, gave birth to many of those short poems which are perhaps his best, certainly his most popular works, and which will probably keep his name alive whenThe Taskis read only in extracts.The Loss of the Royal George,The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk,The Poplar Field,The Shrubbery, theLines on a Young Lady, and those _To Mary, will hold their places for ever in the treasury of English Lyrics. In its humble wayThe Needless Alarmis one of the most perfect of human compositions. Cowper had reason to complain of Aesop for having written his fables before him. One great charm of these little pieces is their perfect spontaneity. Many of them were never published, and generally they have the air of being the simple effusions of the moment, gay or sad. When Cowper was in good spirits his joy, intensified by sensibility and past suffering, played like a fountain of light on all the little incidents of his quiet life. An ink-glass, a flatting mill, a halibut served up for dinner, the killing of a snake in the garden, the arrival of a friend wet after a Journey, a cat shut up in a drawer, sufficed to elicit a little jet of poetical delight, the highest and brightest jet of all beingJohn Gilpin. Lady Austen's voice and touch still faintly live in two or three pieces which were written for her harpsichord. Some of the short poems on the other hand are poured from the darker urn, and the finest of them all is the saddest. There is no need of illustrations unless it be to call attention to a secondary quality less noticed, than those of more importance. That which used to be specially called "wit," the faculty of ingenious and unexpected combination, such as is shown in the similes ofHudibras, was possessed by Cowper in large measure.
A friendship that in frequent fitsOf controversial rage emitsThe sparks of disputation,Like hand-in-hand insurance plates,Most unavoidably createsThe thought of conflagration.
Some fickle creatures boast a soulTrue as a needle to the pole,Their humour yet so various—They manifest their whole life throughThe needle's deviations too,Their love is so precarious.
The great and small but rarely meetOn terms of amity complete;Plebeians must surrender,And yield so much to noble folk,It is combining fire with smoke,Obscurity with splendour.
Some are so placid and serene(As Irish bogs are always green)They sleep secure from waking;And are indeed a bog, that bearsYour unparticipated caresUnmoved and without quaking.
Courtier and patriot cannot mixTheir heterogeneous politicsWithout an effervescence,Like that of salts with lemon juice,Which does not yet like that produceA friendly coalescence.
Faint presages of Byron are heard in such a poem asThe Shrubbery, and of Wordsworth in such a poem as thatTo a Young Lady. But of the lyrical depth and passion of the great Revolution poets Cowper is wholly devoid. His soul was stirred by no movement so mighty, if it were even capable of the impulse. Tenderness he has, and pathos as well as playfulness; he has unfailing grace and ease; he has clearness like that of a trout-stream. Fashions, even our fashions, change. The more metaphysical poetry of our time has indeed too much in it, besides the metaphysics, to be in any danger of being ever laid on the shelf with the once admired conceits of Cowley; yet it may one day in part lose, while the easier and more limpid kind of poetry may in part regain, its charm.
The opponents of the Slave Trade tried to enlist this winning voice in the service of their cause. Cowper disliked the task, but he wrote two or three anti-Slave-Trade ballads.The Slave Trader in the Dumps, with its ghastly array of horrors dancing a jig to a ballad metre, justifies the shrinking of an artist from a subject hardly fit for art.