Though fools spurn Hymen's gentle powers, We, who improve his golden hours, By sweet experience know, That marriage, rightly understood, Our babes shall richest comforts bring; Whence pleasures ever rise: We'll form their minds, with studious care, To all that's manly, good, and fair, And train them for the skies. While they our wisest hours engage, No borrowed joys, they 're all our own, Monarchs! we envy not your state; Our portion is not large, indeed; We'll therefore relish with content Nor aim beyond our power; Nor lose the present hour. To be resigned when ills betide, And pleased with favours given; Whose fragrance smells to heaven. Thus, hand in hand, through life we'll go ; With cautious steps we 'll tread; Quit its vain scenes without a tear, Without a trouble or a fear, And mingle with the dead: While conscience, like a faithful friend, And smooth the bed of death. WILLIAM COWPER. WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800), 'the most popular poet of his generation, and the best of English letter-writers,' as Southey has designated him, belonged emphatically to the aristocracy of England. His father, the Rev. Dr Cowper, chaplain to George II., was the son of con Spencer Cowper, one of the judges of the court of Common Pleas, and a younger brother of the first Earl Cowper, lord chancellor. His mother was allied to some of the noblest families in England, descended by four different lines from King Henry III. This lofty lineage cannot add to the lustre of the poet's fame, but it sheds additional grace on his piety and humility. Dr Cowper, besides his royal chaplaincy, held the rectory of Great Berkhamstead, in the county of Hertford, and there the poet was born, November 15, 1731. In his sixth year he lost his motherwhom he tenderly and affectionately remembered through all his life—and was placed at a boardingschool, where he continued two years. The tyranny of one of his school-fellows, who held in complete subjection and abject fear the timid and home-sick boy, led to his removal from this seminary, and undoubtedly prejudiced him against the whole system of public education. He was next placed at Westminster School, where he had Churchill and Warren Hastings as schoolfellows, and where, as he says, he served a seven years' apprenticeship to the classics. At the age of eighteen he was removed, in order to be articled to an attorney. Having passed through this training—with the future Lord Chancellor Thurlow for his fellow-clerk-Cowper, in 1754, was called to the bar. He never made the law a study: in the solicitor's office he and Thurlow were stantly employed from morning to night in giggling and making giggle,' and in his chambers in the Temple he wrote gay verses, and associated with Bonnel 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. Darker days were at hand. Cowper's father was now dead, his patrimony was small, and he was in his thirty-second year, almost unprovided with an aim,' for the law was with him a mere nominal profession. In this crisis of his fortunes 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 qualifying himself by appearing at the bar of the House of Lords, plunged him in the deepest misery and distress. The seeds of insanity were then in his frame; and after brooding over his fancied ills till reason had fled, he attempted to commit suicide. Happily this desperate effort failed; the appointment was given up, and Cowper was removed to a private madhouse at St Albans, kept by Dr Cotton. The cloud of horror gradually passed away, and on his recovery, he resolved to withdraw entirely from the society and business of the world. He had still a small portion of his funds left, and his friends subscribed a further sum, to enable him to live frugally in retirement. The bright hopes of Cowper's youth seemed thus to have all vanished: his prospects of advancement in the world were gone; and in the new-born zeal of his religious fervour, his friends might well doubt whether his reason had been completely restored. He retired to the town of Huntingdon, near Cambridge, where his brother resided, and there formed an intimacy with the family of the Rev. Morley Unwin, a clergyman resident in the place. He was adopted as one of the family; and when Mr Unwin him self was suddenly removed, the same conection was continued with his widow. Death only could sever a tie so strongly knit-cemented by mutual faith and friendship, and by sorrows of which the world knew nothing. To the latest generation the name of Mary Unwin will be united with that of Cowper, partaker of his fame as of his sad decline: pared with The Task, are like formal gardens in comparison with woodland scenery. As soon as he had completed his labours for the publication of his second volume, Cowper entered upon an undertaking of a still more arduous nature-a translation of Homer. He had gone through the great Grecian at Westminster School, and afterwards read him critically in the Temple, and he By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light. was impressed with but a poor opinion of the translation of Pope. Setting himself to a daily After the death of Mr Unwin in 1767, the task of forty lines, he at length accomplished the family were advised by the Rev. John Newton- forty thousand verses. He published by subscripa remarkable man in many respects-to fix their tion, in which his friends were generously active. abode at Olney, in the northern division of Bucking- The work appeared in 1791, in two volumes quarto. hamshire, where Mr Newton himself officiated as In the interval the poet and Mrs Unwin had recurate. This was accordingly done, and Cowper moved to Weston, a beautiful village about a mile removed with them to a spot which he has from Olney. His cousin, Lady Hesketh, a woman consecrated by his genius. He had still the river of refined and fascinating manners, had visited Ouse with him, as at Huntingdon, but the scenery him; he had also formed a friendly intimacy with is more varied and attractive, and abounds in the family of the Throckmortons, to whom Weston fine retired walks. His life was that of a religious belonged, and his circumstances were comparrecluse; he ceased corresponding with his friends, atively easy. His malady, however, returned and associated only with Mrs Unwin and Newton. upon him with full force, and Mrs Unwin being The latter engaged his assistance in writing a rendered helpless by palsy, the task of nursing her volume of hymns, but his morbid melancholy fell upon the sensitive and dejected poet. A caregained ground, and in 1773 it became a case of ful revision of his Homer, and an engagement to decided insanity. About two years were passed edit a new edition of Milton, were the last literary in this unhappy state. The poet, as appears undertakings of Cowper. The former he comfrom a diary kept by Newton, would have been pleted, but without improving the first edition : married to Mrs Unwin but for this calamity. On his second task was never finished. A deepening his recovery, Cowper took to gardening, rearing gloom settled on his mind, with occasionally hares, drawing landscapes, and composing poetry. bright intervals. A visit to his friend Hayley, at The latter was fortunately the most permanent Eartham, produced a short cessation of his mental enjoyment; and its fruits appeared in a volume suffering, and in 1794 a pension of £300 was of poems published in 1782. The sale of the granted to him from the crown. He was induced, work was slow; but his friends were eager in its in 1795, to remove with Mrs Unwin to Norfolk, on praise, and it received the approbation of Johnson a visit to some relations, and there Mrs Unwin and Franklin. His correspondence was resumed, died on the 17th of December 1796. The unhappy and cheerfulness again became an inmate of his poet would not believe that his long-tried friend retreat at Olney. This happy change was aug- was actually dead; he went to see the body, and mented by the presence of a third party, Lady on witnessing the unaltered placidity of death, Austen, a widow, who came to reside in the flung himself to the other side of the room with a immediate neighbourhood of Olney, and whose passionate expression of feeling, and from that conversation for a time charmed away the melan- time he never mentioned her name or spoke of her choly spirit of Cowper. She told him the story again. He lingered on for more than three years, of John Gilpin, and 'the famous horseman and still under the same dark shadow of religious his feats were an inexhaustible source of merri- despondency and terror, but occasionally writing, ment.' Lady Austen also prevailed upon the poet and listening attentively to works read to him by to try his powers in blank verse, and from her his friends. His last poem was the Castaway, a suggestion sprung the noble poem of The Task. strain of touching and beautiful verse, which This memorable friendship was at length dis-shewed no decay of his poetical powers: at length solved. The lady exacted too much of the time and attention of the poet-perhaps a shade of jealousy on the part of Mrs Unwin, with respect to the superior charms and attractions of her rival, intervened to increase the alienation-and before The Task was finished, its fair inspirer had left Olney without any intention of returning to it. In 1785 the new volume was published. Its success was instant and decided. The public were glad to hear the true voice of poetry and of nature, and in the rural descriptions and fireside scenes of The Task, they saw the features of English scenery and domestic life faithfully delineated. 'The Task,' says 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 com- | death came to his release on the 25th of April 1800. So sad and strange a destiny has never before or since been that of a man of genius. With wit and humour at will, he was nearly all his life plunged in the darkest melancholy. Innocent, pious, and confiding, he lived in perpetual dread of everlasting punishment: he could only see between him and heaven a high wall which he despaired of ever being able to scale; yet his intellectual vigour was not subdued by affliction. What he wrote for amusement or relief in the midst of 'supreme distress,' surpasses the elaborate efforts of others made under the most favourable circumstances; and in the very winter of his days, his fancy was as fresh and blooming as in the spring and morning of existence. That he was constitutionally prone to melancholy and insanity, seems undoubted; but the predisposing causes were as surely aggravated by his strict and secluded mode of life. Lady Hesketh was a better guide and companion than John Newton; and no one can read his letters without observing that cheerfulness was inspired by the one, and terror by the other. The iron frame of Newton could stand unmoved amidst shocks that destroyed the shrinking and apprehensive mind of Cowper. All, however, have now gone to their account-the stern yet kind minister, the faithful Mary Unwin, the gentle high-born relations who forsook ease, and luxury, and society to soothe the misery of one wretched being, and that immortal being himself has passed away, scarcely conscious that he had bequeathed an imperishable treasure to mankind. We have greater and loftier poets than Cowper, but none so entirely incorporated, as it were, with our daily existence-none so completely a friend our companion in woodland wanderings, and in moments of serious thought-ever gentle and affectionate, even in his transient fits of ascetic gloom-a pure mirror of affections, regrets, feelings, and desires which we have all felt or would wish to cherish. Shakspeare, Spenser, and Milton are spirits of ethereal kind: Cowper is a steady and valuable friend, whose society we may sometimes neglect for that of more splendid and attractive associates, but whose unwavering principle and purity of character, joined to rich intellectual powers, overflow upon us in secret, and bind us to him for ever. It is scarcely to be wondered at that Cowper's first volume was coldly received. The subjects of his poems (Table Talk, the Progress of Error, Truth, Expostulation, Hope, Charity, &c.) did not promise much, and his manner of handling them was not calculated to conciliate a fastidious public. He was both too harsh and too spiritual for general readers. Johnson had written moral poems in the same form of verse, but they possessed a rich declamatory grandeur and brilliancy of illustration which Cowper did not attempt, and probably would, from principle, have rejected. There are passages, however, in these evangelical works of Cowper of masterly excution and lively fancy. His character of Chatham has rarely been surpassed even by Pope or Dryden : A. Patriots, alas! the few that have been found, law. Felt himself crushed at the first word he spoke. Neither has the fine simile with which the following retrospect closes : Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared, 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. The poem of Conversation in this volume is rich in Addisonian humour and satire, and formed no unworthy prelude to The Task. In Hope and Retirement, we see traces of the descriptive powers and natural pleasantry afterwards so finely developed. The highest flight in the whole, and the one most characteristic of Cowper, is his sketch of The Greenland Missionaries. That sound bespeaks salvation on her way, O blest within the inclosure of your rocks, ; In this mixture of argument and piety, poetry and plain sense, we have the distinctive traits of Cowper's genius. The freedom acquired by composition, and especially the presence of Lady Austen, led to more valuable results; and when he entered upon The Task, he was far more disposed to look at the sunny side of things, and to launch into general description. His versification underwent a similar 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. No poet has 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 inimitable grace and melody. In this respect, Cowper, as already mentioned, has greatly the advantage of Thomson, whose stately 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 is a fine specimen of his humour, and from this he slides into rural description and moral reflection so naturally and easily, that the reader is carried along apparently without an effort. The scenery of the Ouse-its level plains and spacious meads-is described with the vividness of painting, and the poet then elevates the character of his picture by a rapid sketch of still nobler features: Rural Sounds. 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 displays 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 freedom of this versification, and the admirable variety of pause and cadence, must strike the most uncritical reader. With the same playful strength and equal power of landscape-painting, he describes The Diversified Character of Creation. 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 inclosures 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 From the begining to the end of The Task we never lose sight of the author. His love of country rambles, when a boy, O'er hills, through valleys, and by river's brink; 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 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 and taste of the master, yet with a modesty that shrinks from the least obtrusiveness and display. The very rapidity of his transitions, where things light and sportive are drawn up with the most solemn truths, and satire, pathos, and reproof alternately mingle or repel each other, are characteristic of his mind and temperament in ordinary life. His inimitable ease and colloquial freedom, which lends such a charm to his letters, is never long absent from his poetry; and his peculiar tastes, as seen in that somewhat grandiloquent line, Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too, are all pictured in the pure and lucid pages of The Task. It cannot be said that Cowper ever abandoned his sectarian religious tenets, yet they are little seen in his great work. His piety is that which all should feel and venerate; and if his sad experience of the world had tinged the prospect of life, its fluctuations and its vast concerns,' with a deeper shade than seems consonant with the general welfare and happiness, it also imparted a higher authority and more impressive wisdom to his earnest and solemn appeals. He was 'a stricken deer that left the herd,' conscious of the follies and wants of those he left behind, and inspired with power to minister to the delight and instruction of the whole human race. From Conversation. The emphatic speaker dearly loves to oppose, A graver coxcomb we may sometimes see, A shallow brain behind a serious mask, Owes all its weight, like loaded dice, to lead. But when unpacked, your disappointment groans A doctor's trouble, but without the fees; Some fretful tempers wince at every touch, That's worse-the drone-pipe of a humble-bec. He likes yours little, and his own still less ; I pity bashful men, who feel the pain The fear of being silent makes us mute. On the Receipt of his Mother's Picture. Oh that those lips had language! Life has passed 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: A momentary dream, that thou art she. My mother! when I learned that thou wast dead, Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed? Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, Wretch even then, life's journey just begun? Perhaps thou gavest me, though unseen, a kiss ; Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in blissAh, that maternal smile! it answers-yes. I heard the bell tolled on thy burial-day, I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away, And turning from my nursery window, drew A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu ! But was it such? It was. Where thou art gone, Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, The parting sound shall pass my lips no more! Thy maidens grieved themselves at my concern, Oft gave me promise of a quick return: What ardently I wished, I long believed, And, disappointed still, was still deceived; By disappointment every day beguiled, Dupe of to-morrow even from a child. Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went, Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent, I learned at last submission to my lot, But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot. Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more, The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestowed Not scorned in heaven, though little noticed here. I pricked them into paper with a pin- Thou, as a gallant bark from Albion's coast- |