Cowper Part 2

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 in _The Task_ were 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 a.s.sumption that a life of retirement is more favourable to virtue than a life of action, and that "G.o.d made the country, while man made the town." Both parts of the a.s.sumption 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 pa.s.sive belief and of spiritual emotion.

The most readable of the Moral Satires is _Retirement_, in which the writer is on his own ground expressing his genuine feelings, and which is, in fact, a foretaste of _The 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 G.o.d of our idolatry, the press?

By thee, religion, liberty, and laws Exert their influence, and advance their cause; By thee, worse plagues than Pharaoh's land befel, Diffused, make earth the vestibule of h.e.l.l: 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 pa.s.sages of higher merit. The episode of statesmen in _Retirement_ has been already mentioned. The lines on the two disciples going to Emmaus in _Conversation_, 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage.

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 went In 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, one Sent to do more than he appear'd to have done, To exalt a people, and to place them high Above 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 air What 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, ill.u.s.trated, and search'd so well The 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 in _Truth_ is a good rendering of Hogarth's picture:--

Yon ancient prude, whose wither'd features show She 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 astray To watch yon amorous couple in their play, With bony and unkerchief'd neck defies The rude inclemency of wintry skies, And sails with lappet-head and mincing airs Daily at clink of h.e.l.l, to morning prayers.

To thrift and parsimony much inclined, She yet allows herself that boy behind; The s.h.i.+vering 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 las.h.i.+ng 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 shrine Lay 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 son To taint _his_ heart, was worthy of _thine own_.

This is about the nearest approach to Juvenal that the Evangelical satirist ever makes. In _Hope_ there 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 by _The 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 of _Tirocinium_ awakened 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 pa.s.sages such as that on the indiscriminate use of emulation as a stimulus:--

Our public hives of puerile resort That are of chief and most approved report, To such base hopes in many a sordid soul Owe their repute in part, but not the whole.

A principle, whose proud pretensions pa.s.s Unquestion'd, though the jewel be but gla.s.s, That with a world not often over-nice Ranks 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 zeal Feel all the rage that female rivals feel; The prize of beauty in a woman's eyes Not brighter than in theirs the scholar's prize.

The spirit of that compet.i.tion burns With 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 surpa.s.s him day and night, Less for improvement, than to tickle spite.

The spur is powerful, and I grant its force; It p.r.i.c.ks 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, cla.s.sical desert Against a heart depraved, and temper hurt, Hurt, too, perhaps for life, for early wrong Done to the n.o.bler part, affects it long, And you are staunch indeed in learning's cause, If you can crown a discipline that draws Such 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 cla.s.s of poems belongs _Anti-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 coa.r.s.eness.

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 pa.s.sage in _Charity_, 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 friends.h.i.+p with rather more vigour than the Moral Satires display, in _The 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 by _The Task_.

CHAPTER V.

THE TASK.

Mrs. Unwin's influence produced the Moral Satires. _The Task_ was 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 friends.h.i.+p at once sprang up, and before long Lady Austen had verses addressed to her as Sister Anne. Her ladys.h.i.+p, 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 d.i.c.k Coleman, his wife and child, and a thousand rats." That a woman of fas.h.i.+on, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 a _de profundis_, and towards the end forget his sorrows, glide into commonplace topics, and write about them in the ordinary strain. Lady Austen inspired _John 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 the _Progress 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; and _The Sofa_ grew into _The Task_; the t.i.tle of the song reminding us that it was "commanded by the fair." As _Paradise Lost_ is to militant Puritanism, so is _The Task_ to 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 wors.h.i.+p 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. But _The Task_ has 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 pa.s.sage, 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, a.s.suredly, _The Task_ has 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 pa.s.sage. 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 pa.s.sages: 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 sh.o.r.e his storm-tost barque." But they are pure joys, and they present themselves in compet.i.tion with those of Ranelagh and the Ba.s.set Table, which are not heroic or even masculine, any more than they are pure.

The well-known pa.s.sages at the opening of _The 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 urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That 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 holds Inquisitive attention while I read Fast 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 retreat To peep at such a world. To see the stir Of the great Babel and not feel the crowd.

To hear the roar she sends through all her gates At a safe distance, where the dying sound Falls a soft murmur on the injured ear.

Thus sitting and surveying thus at ease The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced To some secure and more than mortal height, That liberates and exempts me from them all.

It turns submitted to my view, turns round With all its generations; I behold The tumult and am still. The sound of war Has lost its terrors ere it reaches me, Grieves but alarms me not. I mourn the pride And avarice that make man a wolf to man, Hear the faint echo of those brazen throats By which he speaks the language of his heart, And sigh, but never tremble at the sound.

He travels and expatiates, as the bee From flower to flower, so he from land to land, The manners, customs, policy of all Pay contribution to the store he gleans; He sucks intelligence in every clime, And spreads the honey of his deep research At his return, a rich repast for me, He travels, and I too. I tread his deck, Ascend his topmast, through his peering eyes Discover countries, with a kindred heart Suffer 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 cheeks Fringed with a beard made white with other snows Than those of age; thy forehead wrapt in clouds, A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne A 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 sun A prisoner in the yet undawning East, Shortening his journey between morn and noon, And hurrying him impatient of his stay Down to the rosy West. But kindly still Compensating his loss with added hours Of social converse and instructive ease, And gathering at short notice in one group The 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 roof Of undisturb'd retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening know.

The writer of _The Task_ also 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 perceive Fast lock'd in mine, with pleasure such as love, Confirm'd by long experience of thy worth And 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 up To serve occasions of poetic pomp, But genuine, and art partner of them all.

How oft upon yon eminence our pace Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne The 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 discerned The distant plough slow moving, and beside His labouring team that swerved not from the track, The st.u.r.dy swain diminish'd to a boy!

Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain Of s.p.a.cious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er, Conducts the eye along his sinuous course Delighted. 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 gla.s.s, inlays the vale, The sloping land recedes into the clouds; Displaying on its varied side the grace Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower, Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells Just undulates upon the listening ear, Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote.

Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily viewed, Please daily, and whose novelty survives Long 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 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 sh.o.r.e_, 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.