English Literature for Boys and Girls Part 68

Cowper was the son of a clergyman. He was born in 1731 and became a barrister, but it seemed a profession for which he was little fitted. He was shy and morbidly religious, and he also liked literature much better than law. Still he continued his way of life until, when he was thirty-two, he was offered a post as Clerk of the Journals of the House of Lords. He wished to accept the post, but was told he must stand an examination at the bar of the House of Lords.

This was more than his nervous sensitive nature could bear.

Rather than face the trial he decided to die. Three times he tried to kill himself. Three times he failed. Then the darkness of madness closed in upon him. Religious terrors seized him, and for many months he suffered agonies of mind. But at length his tortured brain found rest, and he became once more a sane man.

Then he made up his mind to leave London, and all the excitements of a life for which he was not fit, and after a few changes here and there he settled down to a peaceful life with a clergyman and his wife, named Unwin. And when after two years Mr. Unwin died, Cowper still lived with his widow. With her he moved to Olney in Buckinghams.h.i.+re. It was here that, together with the curate, John Newton, Cowper wrote the Olney hymns, many of which are still well loved to-day. Perhaps one of the best is that beginning--

"G.o.d moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm."

It was written when Cowper felt again the darkness of insanity closing in upon him. Once again he tried to end his life, but again the storm pa.s.sed.

Cowper was already a man of nearly fifty when these hymns first appeared. Shortly afterwards he published another volume of poems in the style of Pope.

It was after this that Cowper found another friend who brought some brightness into his life. Lady Austen, a widow, took a house near Cowper and Mrs. Unwin, and became a third in their friends.h.i.+p. It was she who told Cowper the story of John Gilpin.

The story tickled his fancy so that he woke in the night with laughter over it. He decided to make a ballad of the story, and the next day the ballad was finished. I think I need hardly give you any quotation here. You all know that--

"John Gilpin was a citizen Of credit and reknown, A train-band captain eke was he Of famous London town."

And you have heard his adventures on the anniversary of his wedding day.

John Gilpin was first published in a magazine, and there it was seen by an actor famous in his day, who took it for a recitation.

It at once became a success, and thousands of copies were sold.

It was Lady Austen, too, who urged Cowper to his greatest work, The Task. She wanted him to try blank verse, but he objected that he had nothing to write about. "You can write upon any subject," replied Lady Austen, "write upon the sofa."

So Cowper accepted the task thus set for him, and began to write.

The first book of The Task is called The Sofa, and through all the six books we follow the course of his simple country life.

It is the epic of simplicity, at once pathetic and playful. Its tuneful, easy blank verse never rises to the grandeur of Milton's, yet there are fine pa.s.sages in it. Though Cowper lived a retired and uneventful life, the great questions of his day found an echo in his heart. Canada had been won and the American States lost when he wrote--

"England, with all thy faults, I love thee still-- My Country! and, while yet a nook is left Where English minds and manners may be found, Shall be constrained to love thee.

Time was when it was praise and boast enough In every clime, and travel where we might, That we were born her children; praise enough To fill the ambition of a private man, That Chatham's language was his mother tongue, And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own.

Farewell those honours, and farewell with them The hope of such hereafter! they have fallen Each in his field of glory: one in arms, And one in council--Wolfe upon the lap Of smiling Victory that moment won, And Chatham heart-sick of his country's shame They made us many soldiers. Chatham, still Consulting England's happiness at home, Secured it by an unforgiving frown, If any wronged her. Wolfe, where'er he fought, Put so much of his heart into his act, That his example had a magnet's force, And all were swift to follow where all loved."

These lines are from the second book of The Task called The Timepiece. The third is called The Garden, the fourth The Winter Evening. There we have the well-known picture of a quiet evening by the cozy fireside. The post boy has come "with spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks." He has brought letters and the newspaper--

"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."

The poem ends with two books called The Winter Morning Walk and The Winter Walk at Noon. Though not grand, The Task is worth reading. It is, too, an easily read, and easily understood poem, and through it all we feel the love of nature, the return to romance and simplicity. In the last book we see Cowper's love of animals. There he sings, "If not the virtues, yet the worth, of brutes."

Cowper loved animals tenderly and understood them in a wonderful manner. He tamed some hares and made them famous in his verse.

And when he felt madness coming upon him he often found relief in his interest in these pets. One of his poems tells how Cowper scolded his spaniel Beau for killing a little baby bird "not because you were hungry," says the poet, "but out of naughtiness." Here is Beau's reply--

"Sir, when I flew to seize the bird In spite of your command, A louder voice than yours I heard, And harder to withstand.

"You cried 'Forbear!;--but in my breast A mightier cried 'Proceed!'-- 'Twas nature, sir, whose strong behest Impelled me to the deed.

"Yet much as nature I respect, I ventured once to break (As you perhaps may recollect) Her precept for your sake;

"And when your linnet on a day, Pa.s.sing his prison door, Had fluttered all his strength away And panting pressed the floor,

"Well knowing him a sacred thing Not destined to my tooth, I only kissed his ruffled wing And licked the feathers smooth.

"Let my obedience then excuse My disobedience now, Nor some reproof yourself refuse From your aggrieved Bow-wow;

"If killing birds be such a crime (Which I can hardly see),

What think you, sir, of killing Time With verse addressed to me?"

As Cowper's life went on, the terrible lapses into insanity became more frequent, but his sweet and kindly temper won him many friends, and he still wrote a great deal. And among the many things he wrote, his letters to his friends were not the least interesting. They are among the best letters in our language.

Perhaps Cowper's greatest accomplishment, though not his greatest work, was a translation of Homer. He had never considered Pope's Homer good, and he wished to leave to the world a better.

Cowper's version was published in 1791, and he fondly believed that it would take the place of Pope's. But although Cowper's may be more correct, it is plain and dry, and while Pope's is still read and remembered, Cowper's is forgotten.

Indeed, that Cowper is remembered at all is due more to his shorter poems such as Boadicea and The Wreck of the Royal George, and chiefly, perhaps, to John Gilpin, which in its own way is a treasure that we would not be without. Other of his shorter poems are full of a simple pathos and gentle humor. The last he wrote was called The Castaway, and the verse with which it ends describes not unfittingly the close of his own life. For his mind sank ever deeper into the shadow of madness until he died in April 1800--

"No voice divine the storm allayed, No light propitious shone; When, s.n.a.t.c.hed from all effectual aid, We perished, each alone: But I beneath a rougher sea, And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he."

Cowper was never a power in our literature, but he was a forerunner, "the forerunner of the great Restoration of our literature."* And unlike most forerunners he was popular in his own day. And although it is faint, like the scent of forgotten rose leaves, his poetry still keeps a charm and sweetness for those who will look for it.

*Macaulay.

Chapter LXXIV WORDSWORTH--THE POET OF NATURE

COWPER was as a straw blown along the path; he had no force in himself, he showed the direction of the wind. Now we come to one who was not only a far greater poet, but who was a force in our literature. This man was William Wordsworth. He was the apostle of simplicity, the prophet of nature. He sang of the simplest things, of the common happenings of everyday life, and that too a simple life.

His desire was to choose words only which were really used by men in everyday talk, "and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of the imagination."

He chose to sing of humble life because there men's thoughts and feelings were more free from art and restraint, there they spoke a plainer, more forceful language, there they were in touch with all that was lasting and true in Nature. Here then, you will say, is the poet for us, the poet who tells of simple things in simple words, such as we can understand. And yet, perhaps, strange as it may seem, there is no poet who makes less appeal to young minds than does Wordsworth.

In reading poetry, though we may not always understand every word of it, we want to feel the thrill and glamour of it. And when Wordsworth remembers his own rules and keeps to them there is no glamour, and his simplicity is apt to seem to us mere silliness.

When we are very young we cannot walk alone, and are glad of a kindly helping hand to guide our footsteps. In learning to read, as in learning to walk, it is at first well to trust to a guiding hand. And in learning to read poetry it is at first well to use selections chosen for us by those wiser than ourselves. Later, when we can go alone, we take a man's whole work, and choose for ourselves what we will most love in it. And it is only by making use of this power of choice that we can really enjoy what is best. But of all our great writers Wordsworth is perhaps the last in the reading of whose works we willingly go alone. He is perhaps the writer who gains most by being read in selections.

Indeed, for some of us there never comes a time when we care to read his whole works.

For if we take his whole works, at times we plow through pages of dry-as-dust argument where there is never a glimmer of that beauty which makes poetry a joy, till we grow weary of it. Then suddenly there springs to our eye a line of truest beauty which sets our senses atingle with delight, and all our labor is more than paid. And if our great poets were to be judged by single lines or single stanzas we may safely say that Wordsworth would be placed high among them. He is so placed, but it is rather by the love of the few than by the voice of the many.

I am not trying to make you afraid of reading Wordsworth, I am only warning you that you must not go to him expecting to gather flowers. You must go expecting to and willing to dig for gold.

Yet although Wordsworth gives us broad deserts of prose in his poetry, he himself knew the joy of words in lovely sequence.

He tells us that when he was ten years old, or less, already his mind--

"With conscious pleasure opened to the charm Of words in tuneful order, found them sweet For their own sakes, a pa.s.sion, and a power; And phrases pleased me chosen for delight, For pomp, or love."*