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

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

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,
Where most they flourish, upon English ground,
The country's need have scantily supplied;
And the last left the scene when Chatham died.
B. Not so; the virtue still adorns our age,
Though the chief actor died upon the stage.
In him Demosthenes was heard again;
Liberty taught him her Athenian strain;
She clothed him with authority and awe,
Spoke from his lips, and in his looks gave law.
His speech, his form, his action full of grace,
And all his country beaming in his face,
He stood as some inimitable hand
Would strive to make a Paul or Tully stand.
No sycophant or slave that dared oppose
Her sacred cause, but trembled when he rose ;
And every venal stickler for the yoke,
Felt himself crushed at the first word he spoke.
This is from the same poem :

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,
The trumpet of a life-restoring day;
'Tis heard where England's eastern glory shines,
And in the gulfs of her Cornubian mines.
And still it spreads. See Germany send forth
Her sons to pour it on the furthest north;
Fired with a zeal peculiar, they defy
The rage and rigour of a polar sky,
And plant successfully sweet Sharon's rose
On icy plains and in eternal snows.

O blest within the inclosure of your rocks,
Nor herds have ye to boast, nor bleating flocks;
No fertilising streams your fields divide,
That shew reversed the villas on their side;
No groves have ye; nor cheerful sound of bird
Or voice of turtle in your land is heard ;
Nor grateful eglantine regales the smell

Of those that walk at evening where ye dwell;
But Winter, armed with terrors here unknown,
Sits absolute on his unshaken throne,
Piles up his stores amidst the frozen waste,
And bids the mountains he has built stand fast ;
Beckons the legions of his storms away

From happier scenes to make your land a prey;
Proclaims the soil a conquest he has won,
And scorns to share it with the distant sun.
Yet Truth is yours, remote unenvied isle !
And Peace, the genuine offspring of her smile;
The pride of lettered ignorance, that binds
In chains of error our accomplished minds,
That decks with all the splendour of the true,
A false religion, is unknown to you.
Nature indeed vouchsafes for our delight
The sweet vicissitudes of day and night;
Soft airs and genial moisture feed and cheer
Field, fruit, and flower, and every creature here ;
But brighter beams than his who fires the skies
Have risen at length on your admiring eyes,
That shoot into your darkest caves the day
From which our nicer optics turn away.

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,
Exhilarate the spirit, and restore
The tone of languid nature. Mighty winds
That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood

Of ancient growth, make music not unlike
The dash of ocean on his winding shore,
And lull the spirit while they fill the mind,
Unnumbered branches waving in the blast,
And all their leaves fast fluttering all at once.
Nor less composure waits upon the roar
Of distant floods, or on the softer voice
Of neighbouring fountain, or of rills that slip
Through the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall
Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length
In matted grass, that with a livelier green
Betrays 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 one
The livelong night; nor these alone whose notes
Nice-fingered art must emulate in vain,
But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime
In still-repeated circles, screaming loud,
The jay, the pie, and even the boding owl
That 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.

The earth was made so various, that the mind
Of desultory man, studious of change
And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
Prospects, however lovely, may be seen
Till half their beauties fade; the weary sight,
Too well acquainted with their smiles, slides off
Fastidious, seeking less familiar scenes.
Then snug enclosures in the sheltered vale,
Where frequent hedges intercept the eye,
Delight us, happy to renounce a while,
Not senseless of its charms, what still we love,
That such short absence may endear it more.
Then forests, or the savage rock may please
That hides the sea-mew in his hollow clefts
Above the reach of man; his hoary head
Conspicuous many a league, the mariner
Bound homeward, and in hope already there,
Greets with three cheers exulting. At his waist
A girdle of half-withered shrubs he shews,
And at his feet the baffled billows die.
The common overgrown with fern, and rough
With prickly gorse, that, shapeless and deform,
And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom,
And decks itself with ornaments of gold,
Yields no unpleasing ramble; there the turf
Smells fresh, and rich in odoriferous herbs
And fungous fruits of earth, regales the sense
With luxury of unexpected sweets.

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,
In contact inconvenient, nose to nose,
As if the gnomon on his neighbour's phiz,
Touched with a magnet, had attracted his.
His whispered theme, dilated and at large,
Proves after all a wind-gun's airy charge-
An extract of his diary-no more-
A tasteless journal of the day before.
He walked abroad, o'ertaken in the rain,
Called on a friend, drank tea, stept home again;
Resumed his purpose, had a world of talk
With one he stumbled on, and lost his walk;
I interrupt him with a sudden bow,
'Adieu, dear sir, lest you should lose it now.'
A graver coxcomb we may sometimes see,
Quite as absurd, though not so light as he :
A shallow brain behind a serious mask,
An oracle within an empty cask,
The solemn fop, significant and budge;
A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge;
He says but little, and that little said,
Owes all its weight, like loaded dice, to lead.
His wit invites you by his looks to come,
But when you knock, it never is at home:
'Tis like a parcel sent you by the stage,
Some handsome present, as your hopes presage;
'Tis heavy, bulky, and bids fair to prove
An absent friend's fidelity and love;
But when unpacked, your disappointment groans
To find it stuffed with brickbats, earth, and stones.
Some men employ their health-an ugly trick-
In making known how oft they have been sick,

And give us in recitals of disease

A doctor's trouble, but without the fees;
Relate how many weeks they kept their bed,
How an emetic or cathartic sped;
Nothing is slightly touched, much less forgot;
Nose, ears, and eyes seem present on the spot.
Now the distemper, spite of draught or pill,
Victorious seemed, and now the doctor's skill;
And now-alas for unforeseen mishaps!
They put on a damp night-cap, and relapse;
They thought they must have died, they were so bad;
Their peevish hearers almost wish they had.

Some fretful tempers wince at every touch,
You always do too little or too much :
You speak with life, in hopes to entertain—
Your elevated voice goes through the brain;
You fall at once into a lower key—
That's worse the drone-pipe of an humble-bee.
The southern sash admits too strong a light;
You rise and drop the curtain-now 'tis night.
He shakes with cold-you stir the fire, and strive
To make a blaze-that's roasting him alive.
Serve him with venison, and he chooses fish ;
With sole-that's just the sort he would not wish.
He takes what he at first professed to loathe,
And in due time feeds heartily on both;
Yet still o'erclouded with a constant frown,
He does not swallow, but he gulps it down.
Your hope to please him vain on every plan,
Himself should work that wonder, if he can.
Alas! his efforts double his distress.
He likes yours little, and his own still less;
Thus always teasing others, always teased,
His only pleasure is to be displeased.

I pity bashful men, who feel the pain
Of fancied scorn and undeserved disdain,
And bear the marks upon a blushing face
Of needless shame and self-imposed disgrace.
Our sensibilities are so acute,

The fear of being silent makes us mute.
We sometimes think we could a speech produce
Much to the purpose, if our tongues were loose;
But being tied, it dies upon the lip,

Faint as a chicken's note that has the pip;
Our wasted oil unprofitably burns,
Like hidden lamps in old sepulchral urns.

On receiving his Mother's Picture.
Oh that those lips had language! Life has passed
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine-thy own sweet smiles I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else, how distinct they say:
'Grieve not, my child; chase all thy fears away!'
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes-
Blest be the art that can immortalise,
The art that baffles time's tyrannic claim
To quench it here shines on me still the same.
Faithful remembrancer of one so dear,

O welcome guest, though unexpected here!
Who bidd'st me honour, with an artless song
Affectionate, a mother lost so long.

I will obey, not willingly alone,
But gladly, as the precept were her own:
And while that face renews my filial grief,
Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief;