obscurity. And it is no less an evidence, amongst a thousand other instances, that our heavenly Father "in judgment remembers mercy," and bestows this mitigation of the to its deadliest influence and themselves denied all access to the bright sources of happiness, are sometimes privileged to pour the streams of consolation over the path of others. How truly may it be said of such persons, “Sic vos, non vobis, mellificatis apes.” sive views of human nature. But perhaps every one of these qualities is oftener the growth of age than of youth; and is rather the tardy fruit of patient experience than the sudden shoot of untrained and undisciplined genius. still greater subject of surprise. In the account of his life we learn, that, after quitting Westminster school, at the age of eighteen, he spent three years in a solicitor's office; and passed from thence, at the age of twen-heaviest of all maladies, that those exposed ty-one, into chambers in the Inner Temple. Soon after this event, he says of himself, "I was struck, not long after my settlement in the Temple, with such a dejection of spirits, as none but they who have felt the same can have the least conception of. Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in horror, But whilst we speak of certain peculiarirising up in despair. I presently lost all rel- ties in the case of Cowper, as calculated to ish for the studies to which before I had been destroy all reasonable expectation of such closely attached. The classics had no longer poems as he has given to the public, we are any charm for me. I had need of something not sure that these very peculiarities have not more salutary than amusement, but I had no assisted to supply his poetry with some of one to direct me where to find it." This de- its characteristic and most valuable features. jection of mind, as our readers are aware, led Among the qualities, for example, by which him onward from depth to depth of misery his compositions are distinguished, are those and despair, till at length he was borne away, of strong sense-moderation on all the subhelpless and hopeless, in the year 1768, to an jects most apt to throw the mind off its balasylum for insane patients at St. Albans. ance-maturity in thought, reasoning and Released from the awful grasp of a perverted imagination-fulness without inflation-the imagination, chiefly by the power of that re-strength of the oak without its nodosities" ligion, which, in spite of every fact in his his--the "inspiration of the Sybil without her tory, has been, with malignant hatred to contortions"-the most profound and extenChristianity, charged as the cause of his madness, he spent the two happiest years of his life at Huntingdon. After this he retired with the Unwin family to Olney, in Buckinghamshire; and there, after passing through the most tremendous mental conflicts, sank again into a state of despondency; from which In like manner, the poetry of Cowper is he at length awoke, (if it might be called characterized by the most touching tenderawaking,) not indeed to be freed from his de- ness, by the deepest sympathy with the suf lusions, but, whilst under their dominion, to ferings of others, by a penetrating insight delight, instruct, and astonish mankind, with into the dark recesses of a tempted and troub some of the most original and enchanting led heart. But where are qualities such as poems in any language. The philosophical these so likely to be cultivated as in the work of Browne, dedicated to Queen Caro- shady places of a suffering mind, and in the line, and composed, as the author says, by a school of that stern mistress who teaches us man who had lost his "rational soul," has "from our own to melt at others' woe," and been always reputed the miracle of literature. to administer to others the medicines which But Browne's case is scarcely more remarka- have healed ourselves? A celebrated physible than that of Cowper. That a work cian is said to have inoculated himself with sparkling with the most childlike gayety and the virus of the plague, in order to practise brilliant wit; exhibiting the most cheerful with more efficacy in the case of others. Such views of the character of God, the face of na- voluntary initiation in sorrow was needless ture, and the circumstances of man, should in the case of Cowper;-another hand had proceed from a writer who at the time re-opened the wound which was to familiarize garded God as an implacable enemy; the him with the deepest trials of suffering huearth we live on as the mere porch to a world manity. of punishment; and human life, at least in It is time, however, that we should prohis own case, as the cloudy morning of a day | ceed to consider some of the claims of Cowof interminable anguish-all this is to be ex-per to the character of a poet. Large multiplained only by the fact that madness dis-tudes have found an almost irresistible charm dains all rules, and reconciles all contrarie-in his writings. In what peculiarities does ties. His history supplies an example, not this powerful influence mainly reside? without its parallel, of a mind-like some weapon drawn from its sheath to fight a particular battle, and then suspended on the walls again called forth to accomplish an important end, and then sent back again into In order to reply to this question, we would first direct the attention of our readers to the constitution of his mind. And here we may enter on our work by observing, that almost all critics have regarded an ardent love of nature as a sine qua non in the constitution of a poet. And nature, surely, never had a more enthusiastic admirer than the author of the Task. How feelingly does he write on this subject! "I have loved the rural walk through lanes Of grassy swarth, close cropp'd by nibbling sheep, And skirted thick with intertexture firm roarings of lions in Africa, or of bears in Russia, very pleasing; but I know of no beast in England, whose voice I do not account musical, save and except only the braying of an ass. The notes of all our birds and fowls please me, without one exing a goose in a cage, that I might hang him ception. I should not indeed think of keepup in the parlor for the sake of his melody, but the goose upon a common, or in a farmyard, is no bad performer. Seriously, however, it strikes me as a very observable instance of providential kindness to man, that When Homer describes his shepherd as such an exact accord has been contrived becontemplating the heavens and earth by the tween his ear and the sounds with which, at light of the moon and stars, and says, with least in a rural situation, it is almost every his accustomed simplicity and grace,-"The moment visited. The fields, the woods, the heart of the shepherd is glad;" our author gardens, have each their concerts; and the might seem to have sat for the portrait. Al-ear of man is forever regaled by creatures though unacquainted with nature in her sublimest aspect, every point in creation appears to have a charm for him. To no lips would the strain of another poet be more appropr.ate. I care not, fortune, what you me deny; You cannot rob me of free nature's grace; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, [face; Through which Aurora shows her brightening You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns by living stream at eve." It is true, that every enthusiastic lover of nature is not a poet: but a man can scarcely rise to the dignity of that high office who has not a touch of this enthusiasm. Poetry is essentially an imitative art; and he who is no lover of nature loses all the finest subjects of imitation. On the contrary, this attachment, especially if it be of an ardent character, supplies subjects to the muse everywhere. Winter or summer, the wilderness and the garden, the cedar of Libanus, and the hyssop on the wall; all that is dull and ineloquent to another has a voice for him, and rouses him to think, to feel, to admire, and to speak. The following lines are said to have been introduced into "The Task." to gratify Mrs. Unwin, after the first draught of the poem was finished. But what language can exhibit a more genuine attachment to nature? "And witness, dear companion of my walks, Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long. who seem only to please themselves. Even the ears that are deaf to the Gospel are continually entertained, though without knowing it, by sounds for which they are solely in debted to its Author."* It is interesting to compare with this the poetical expression of the same thought. Exhilarate the spirit, and restore Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds, Another poetical quality in the mind of Cowper is his ardent love of his species-a love which led him to contemplate, with the most solicitous regard, their wants, tastes, passions; their diseases, and the appropriate remedies for them. It has been justly observed, that, if there are some who have little taste for the poetry which delineates only inanimate beings or objects, there is hardly any one who does not listen, with sympathy and delight, to that which exhibits the fortunes and feelings of man. The truth is, we suppose, that this last order of topics is most easily brought home to our own business and bosoms. Aristotle considers that the imitation or delineation of human action is one of the main objects of poetry. But if this be true, if the "proper study of mankind is man," and one of the highest offices of poetry be to exhibit, as upon the stage, the fortunes and passions of his fellow beingsfew have attained such eminence in his art as Cowper. His hymns are the close tran *Letter to Mr. Newton. scripts of his own soul. His rhymed poems have more of a didactic character; but they are for the most part exhibitions of man in all his attitudes of thought and action. They are mirrors in which every man may contemplate his own mind. In the " Task," he passes every moment from the contemplation of nature to that of the being who inhabits this fair, though fallen, world. He lashes the vices, laughs at the follies, mourns over the guilt of his species; he spares no pains to conduct the guilty to the feet of their only true Friend, and to land the miserable amidst the green pastures and still waters of heavenly consolation. Another property in the mind of Cowper, which has given birth to some of the noblest passages in his poems, is his intense love of freedom. The political state of this country was scarcely ever more degraded than at the period when he began to write; and every real patriot who could wield the pen, or lift the voice in the cause of legitimate and regulated freedom, had plenty to do at home. At the same period also the profligacy and tyranny of the privileged orders in France, and other of the old European dynasties, were such as to provoke the indignation of every lover of liberty. And lastly, at this time, that horrible traffic in human flesh, that capital crime, disgrace, and curse of the human species, the Slave Trade, prevailed in all its horrors. How splendid are many of the passages scattered so prodigally through his poems, in which the author rebukes the crimes of despotism and cruelty at home or abroad, and claims for mankind the high privileges with which God, by an everlasting charter, had endowed them. What lines can breathe a deeper indignation than those quoted with such admiration by Mr. Fox, in the House of Commons, on the Bastile? "Ye horrid towers, th' abode of broken hearts, And what passage in any uninspired writer is more noble and heart-stirring, than that on the decision in the case tried by the illustrious Granville Sharpe, to establish the liberty of all who touched the soil of England-a passage confessedly the foundation of the noblest effort of Curran, in his great speech on the liberty of the subject! "I would not have a slave to till my ground, Just estimation priz'd above all price, But after all, perhaps, the peculiarity in the mind of Cowper, which gives the chief charm to his poetry, is the depth and ardor of his piety. It is impossible not to be aware of the severance which critics have labored to effect between religion and poetry,-between the character of the prophet and the poet: and that Johnson's decision is thought by some to be final on the subject. Cowper himself admits that the connection has been rare be tween the two characters-as witness the following lines Touch'd with a coal from heaven, assume the lyre, And tell the world, still kindling as he sung, With more than mortal music on his tongue, That he who died below, and reigns above, Inspires the song, and that his name is Love.'” Indeed no theory can have less foundation either in philosophy or in fact, than that poetry and religion have too little in common, for either to gain by an attempt to unite them. They seem to us born for each other. And, so important is this topic, that, although at the risk of repeating what has been said elsewhere, it may be well for a moment, to dwell upon it. The theory which endeavors to secure a perpetual divorce between religion and po etry has not the authority of the great critics of antiquity. Longinus maintains, in one place, that "he who aims at the reputation of a sublime writer must spare no labor to educate his soul to grandeur, and to impreg nate it with great and generous ideas.” ́And he affirms, in another, that "the faculties of the soul will grow stupid, the spirit be lost, and good sense and genius lie in ruins, when the care and study of man is engaged about the mortal and worthless part of himself, and he has ceased to cultivate virtue, and polish up the nobler part, his soul." Quintilian has a whole chapter to prove that a great writer must be a good man. And the greatest modern critics hold the same language. But, perhaps, in no passage is the truth upon this subject more nobly expressed, and a difficulty connected with it more ably explained, than in the following verses of a poem now difficult of access: "But, of our souls, the high-born loftier part, Nor does this sentiment stand on the mere authority of critics; but appears to be founded on just views of the constitution of our nature. Lighter themes can be expected to awaken only light and transient feelings in the bosom. The profounder topics of religion sink deeper; touch all the hidden springs of thought and action; and awaken emotions, which have all the force and permanence of the great principles and interests in which they originate. To us, no assertion would seem to have less warrant, than that taste suffers by its alliance with religion. The proper objects of taste are beauty and sublimity; and if (as a modern critic seems to us to have incontrovertibly established) beauty and sublimity do not reside in the mere forms and colors of the objects we contemplate, but in the associations which they suggest to the mind, it cannot be questioned that the associations suggested to a man of piety, exceed both in beauty and sublimity those of every other class. God, as a Father, is the most lovely of all objects-God, as an avenger, is the most terrible; and it is to the religious man exclusively, that this at once most tender and most terrible Being is disclosed, in all the beauty and majesty of holiness, by every object which he contemplates Præsentiorem conspicimus Deum With a propriety that none can feel, It is striking to what an extent the greatest poets of all ages and countries have called in religion, under some form or other, to their assistance. How are the Iliad and Odyssey ennobled by their mythological machinery by the scales of Fate, the frown of Jove, and the intercession of Minerva! How anxiously does Virgil labor to give a moral and relig ious character to his Georgies and Æneid! And how nobly do these kindred spirits, by a bold fiction bordering upon truth, display the eternal mansions of joy and of misery, of reward and of punishment; thus disclosing, not by the light of revelation, but by the blended flashes of genius and tradition, the strongest incentives to virtue, and the most terrific penalties of crime. Nor The same may be affirmed of many of our own most distinguished poets; of "the sage and serious Spenser," and the immortal author of "the Paradise Lost" himself. can we hesitate to trace the deep interest continually excited by the poetry of Cowper in great measure, to the same source. Though often careless in the structure of his verse; though sometimes lame, and lengthy, and prosaic in his manner; though frequently employed about unpopular topics; he is perhaps the most popular, with the exception of one, of all the English poets: and we believe that the main source of his general acceptance is the fact that he never fails to introduce the Creator into the scenes of his own universe; that, by the soarings of his own mind, he lifts us from earth to heaven, and "makes us familiar with a world unseen;" that he draws largely from the mine of Scripture, and thus exhibits the majesty and love of the Divine Being, in words and imagery which the great object of his wonder and love Himself provides. It is wholly needless for us to refer to any particular parts of the works of our author, as illustrative of his deep and sanguine spirit of piety. That spirit breathes through every line and letter. It is, if we may so speak, The mind the animating soul of his verses. of the Christian reader is refreshed, in every step of his progress, by the conviction that the songs thus sung on earth were taught from Heaven; and that, in resigning himself to the sweetest associate for this world, he is choosing the very best guide to another. Or, as the same sentiment is expressed by Indeed, few have been disposed to deny to Cowper, "His are the mountains, and the valleys his And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy Grant's (now Lord Glenelg) prize poem on "Restoration of Learning in the East." Cowper the highest of all poetical titlesthat of The Poet of Christianity. In this field he has but one rival, the author of the 'Paradise Lost." And happily the provinces which they have chosen for themselves within the sacred enclosure are, for the most part, in profligacy, but occupied them for their Mas ter's service; and we trust have both entered into his joy. Their unfading labors, (not subto the fashion of this world, but being of equal and eternal interest to man in all ages) have disproved the idle and impious position which vain philosophy, hating all godliness, has endeavored to establish,-that religion can neither be adorned by poetry, nor poetry ennobled by religion."* so distinct, that it is scarcely necessary to bring them into comparison. The distinguishing qualities of Milton are a surpassing elevation of thought and energy of expres-ject to change, from being formed according sion, which leave the mind scarcely able to breathe under the pressure of his majesty, courage, and sublimity. The main defect of his poetry, as has been justly stated by an anonymous critic, is "the absence of a charm neither to be named nor defined, which would render the whole as lovely as it is beautiful, and as captivating as it is sublime." "His poetry," it is added by the same critic, "will be ever praised by the many, and read by the few. The weakest capacity may be offended by its faults, but it requires a genius equal to his own to comprehend and enjoy all his merits. Having thus noticed some of those grand peculiarities in the mind of Cowper, which appear to have mainly contributed to place him among the highest order of poets, we proceed to point out some subordinate qualifications, without which, those already re ferred to would have failed to raise him to "Cowper rarely equals Milton in sublimity, his present elevation. Even the buoyant spir to which his subjects but seldom led; he ex-it of a poet has certain inferior members by cels him in easy expression, delicate pleas- which it is materially assisted in its upward antry, and generous satire; and he resembles flight. him in the temperate use of all his transcend- In the first place, then, he was one of the ent abilities. He never crushes his subject most simple and natural of all writers. With by falling upon it, nor permits his subject to the exception of the sacred volume, it would crush him by falling beneath it. Invested perhaps be impossible to name any composi with a sovereign command of diction, and en- tions with so large a proportion of simple joying unlimited freedom of thought, he is ideas and Saxon monosyllables. He began never prodigal of words, and he never riots to be an author when Pope, with his admiraamidst the exuberance of his conceptions; ble critic Johnson, had established a taste for his economy displays his wealth, and his mod- all that was most ornate, pompous, and comeration is the proof of his power; his richest plicated in phraseology. But, with due rephrases seem the most obvious expression of spect for the genius and power of this class his ideas, and his mightiest exertions are made of writers, he may be said to have hewn out apparently without toil. This, as we have for himself a new path to glory. It has been already observed, is one of the grandest char-justly said by an accomplished modern critie acteristics of Milton. It would be difficult to name a third poet of our country who could claim a similar distinction. Öthers, Hike Cowley, overwhelm their theme with their eloquence, or, like Young, sink exhausted beneath it, by aiming at magnificent, but unattainable compression; a third class, like Pope, whenever they write well, write their best, and never win but at full speed, and with all their might; while a fourth, like Dryden and Churchill, are confident of their strength, yet so careless of their strokes, that when they conquer, it seems a matter of course, and when they fall, a matter of no consequence, for they can rise again as soon as they please. Milton and Cowper alone appear always to walk within the limits of their genius, yet up to the height of their great argument. We are not pretending to exalt them above all other British poets; we have only compared them together on one point, wherein they accord with each other, and differ from the rest. But there is one feature of resemblance between them of a nobler kind. These good and faithful servants, who had received ten talents each, neither buried them in the earth, nor expended them for their own glory, nor lavished them and poet, that, "between the school of Dry- *Eclectic Review. This criticism it has been ascer tained is from the pen of Mr. James Montgomery and the desire inseparably to connect what is so just and able with the works of Cowper has been the inducement, notwithstanding its length, to introduce it here. |