THERE is scarcely any ground in England so well known in imagination as the haunts of Cowper at Olney and Weston; there is little that is so interesting to the lover of moral and religious poetry. There the beautiful but unhappy poet seemed to have created a new world out of unknown ground, in which himself and his friends, the Unwins, Lady Austen and Lady Hesketh, the Throckmortons, and the rest, played a part of the simplest and most natural character, and which fascinated the whole public mind. The life, the spirit, and the poetry of Cowper present, when taken together, a most singular combination. He was timid in his habit, yet bold in his writing; melancholy in the tone of his mind, but full of fun and playfulness in his correspondence; wretched to an extraordinary degree, he yet made the whole nation merry with his John Gilpin and other humorous writings; despairing even of God's mercy and of salvation, his religious poetry is of the most cheerful and even triumphantly glad kind; "His soul exults, hope animates his lays, Filled with this joyous assurance, wherever he turns hiseye on the magnificent spectacle of creation, he finds themes of noblest gratulation. He looks into the heavens, and exclaims: "Tell me, ye shining host, And systems, of whose birth no tidings yet And many an aching wish, your beamy fires, That give assurance of their own success, And that, infused from heaven, must thither tend. Such is the buoyant and cordial tone of Cowper's poetry; how unlike that iron deadness that dared not and could not soften into prayer, which so often and so long oppressed him. Nay, it is not for himself that he rejoices only, but he feels in his glowing heart the gladness and the coming glory of the whole universe. "All creatures worship man, and all mankind One Lord, one Father. Error has no place; That creeping pestilence is driven away; The breath of Heaven has chased it. In the heart No passion touches a discordant string, But all is harmony and love. Disease Is not, the pure and uncontaminate blood And endless her increase. Thy rams are there, O Sion! an assembly such as earth Saw never, such as Heaven stoops down to see. Thus heavenward all things tend. For all were once So God has greatly purposed."-The Task, Book vi. Such was the lofty and all-embracing spirit of that man whom hard dogmatists could yet terrify and chill into utterest woe. Shrinking from the world, he yet dared to lash this world from which he shrunk, with the force of a giant, and the justice of more than an Aristides. Of the Church, he yet satirized severely its errors, and the follies of its ministers; in political opinion he was free and indignant against oppression. The negro warmed his blood into a sympathy that produced the most effective strains on his behalf the worm beneath his feet shared in his tenderness. Thus he walked through life, shunning its tumults and its highways, one of its mightiest laborers. In his poetry there was found no fear, no complaining; often thoroughly insane, nothing can surpass the sound mind of his compositions; haunted by delusions even to the attempt at suicide, there is no delusion in his page. All there is bright, clear, and consistent. Like his Divine Master, he may truly be said to have been bruised for our sakes. As a man, nervous terrors could vanquish him, and unfit him for active life; but as a poet, he rose above all nerves, all terrors, into the noblest heroism, and fitted and will continue to fit others for life, so long as just and vigorous thought, the most beautiful piety, and the truest human sympathies command the homage of mankind. There is no writer who surpasses Cowper as a moral and religious poet. Full of power and feeling, he often equals in solemn dignity Milton himself. He is as impressive as Young without his epigrammatic smartness; he is as fervently Christian as Montgomery, and in intense love of nature there is not one of our august band of illustrious writers who surpasses him. He shows the secret of his deep and untiring attachment to nature in the love of Him who made it. "He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, Are they not his by a peculiar right, And by an emphasis of interest his, Whose eye they fill with tears of holy joy, Whose heart with praise, and whose exalted mind In feast, or in the chase, in song or dance, The Task, Book v. The writings of Cowper testify every where to that grand sermon which is eternally preached in the open air; to that Gospel of the field and the forest, which, like the Gospel of Christ, is the voice of that love which overflows the universe; which puts down all sectarian bitterness in him who listens to it; which, being perfect, "casts out all fear,” against which the gloom of bigots and the terrors of fanatics can not stand. It was this which healed his wounded spirit beneath the boughs of Yardley Chase, and came fanning his temples with a soothing freshness in the dells of Weston. When we follow his footsteps there, we somewhat wonder that scenes so unambitious could so enrapture him; but the glory came from within, and out of the materials of an ordinary walk he could raise a brilliant superstructure for eternity. William Cowper was born in the parsonage of Great Berkhampstead. The Birmingham railway whirls you now past the spot; or you may, if you please, alight, and survey that house, hallowed by the love of a mother such as he has described, and by the record of it in those inimitable verses of the son on receiving her picture. |