The Author, published almost contemporaneously with the Duellist, had the rare good fortune to please even his critics. Horace Walpole could now admit, that even when the satirist was not assailing a Holland or a Warburton, the world were "transported" with his works, and his numbers were indeed "like Dryden's." The Monthly Reviewers sent forth a frank eulogium, while even the Critical found it best to forget their ancient grudge. And in the admirable qualities not without reason assigned to it, the Author seems to us to have been much surpassed by his next performance, Gotham. If brighter beams than all he threw not forth, 'Twas negligence in him, not want of worth. Surly and slovenly and bold and coarse, Too proud for art, and trusting in mere force; Spendthrift alike of money and of wit, Always at speed, and never drawing bit, He struck the lyre in such a careless mood, And so disdain'd the rules he understood, The laurel seem'd to wait on his command,

He snatch'd it rudely from the Muse's hand."

I subjoin also, from Cowper's delightful correspondence, what he wrote to Mr. Unwin in 1786, on the appearance of a new edition of the English Poets. "It is a great thing to be indeed a poet, and does not happen to more than one man in a century. Churchill, the great Churchill, deserved the name of poet: I have read him twice, and some of his pieces three times over, and the last time with more pleasure than the first. The pitiful scribbler of his life seems to have undertaken that task, for which he was entirely unqualified, merely because it afforded him an opportunity to traduce him. He has inserted in it but one anecdote of conse

When Cowper fondly talked, as it was his pleasure and his pride to do, of "Churchill, the great Churchill, for he well deserved the name," it was proof of his taste that he dwelt with delight on this "noble and beautiful poem." Its object was not clearly comprehended at the first, but, as it proceeded, became evident. It was an Idea of a Patriot King, in verse; and in verse of which, with all its carelessness, we hold with Cowper that few exacter writers of his class have equalled, for its "bold and daring strokes of fancy; its numbers so quence, for which he refers you to a novel, and introduces the story with doubts about the truth of it. But his barrenness as a biographer I could forgive, if the simpleton had not thought himself a judge of his writings, and, under the erroneous influence of that thought, informed his reader that Gotham, Independence, and the Times, were catchpennies. Gotham, unless I am a greater blockhead than he, which I am far from believing, is a noble and beautiful poem, and a poem with which I make no doubt the author took as much pains as with any he ever wrote. Making allowance (and Dryden, in his Absalom and Achitophel, stands in need of the same indulgence) for an unwarrantable use of Scripture, it appears to me to be a masterly performance. Independence is a most animated piece, full of strength and spirit, and marked with that bold masculine character which, I think, is the great peculiarity of this writer. And the Times (except that the subject is disgusting to the last degree) stands equally high in my opinion. He is indeed a careless writer for the most part; but where shall we find, in any of those authors who finish their works with the exactness of a Flemish pencil, those bold and daring strokes of fancy, those numbers so hazardously ventured upou and so happily finished, the matter so compressed, and yet

COWPER'S ADMIRATION.

101

hazardously ventured upon, and so happily finished; its matter so compressed, and yet so clear; its colouring so sparingly laid on, and yet with such a beautiful effect." We would have added largely to the quotations already given (p. 88) from this poem, and regret that we can but quote one passage more. It is a piece of descriptive poetry of a very high class. The reader's national pride, if he be a Scotchman, will not intercept his admiration of the wit of the verse which precedes the fine picture

so clear, and the colouring so sparingly laid on, and yet with such a beautiful effect? In short, it is not his least praise that he is never guilty of those faults as a writer, which he lays to the charge of others. A proof that he did not judge by a borrowed standard, or from rules laid down by critics, but that he was qualified to do it by his own native powers, and his great superiority of genius. For he that wrote so much, and so fast, would, through inadvertency and hurry, unavoidably have departed from rules which he might have found in books; but his own truly practical talent was a guide which could not suffer him to err. A race-horse is graceful in his swiftest pace, and never makes an awkward motion though he is pushed to his utmost speed. A cart-horse might perhaps be taught to play tricks in the ridingschool, and might prance and curvet like his betters, but at some unlucky time would be sure to betray the baseness of his original. It is an affair of very little consequence perhaps to the well-being of mankind, but I cannot help regretting that he died so soon. Those words of Virgil, upon the immature death of Marcellus, might serve for his epitaph:

'Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultrà
Esse sinent."

Southey's Cowper, Vol. vi. p. 9-11.

of the cedar; and he will admire through all the lines,

but especially at their close, the excellent and subtle art with which the verse seconds the sense.

"Forming a gloom, through which to spleen-struck minds Religion, horror-stamp'd, a passage finds,

The Ivy crawling o'er the hallow'd cell,

Where some old hermit's wont his beads to tell

By day, by night; the Myrtle ever green,
Beneath whose shade love holds his rites unseen;
The Willow, weeping o'er the fatal wave
Where many a lover finds a watery grave;
The Cypress sacred held, when lovers mourn
Their true love snatch'd away; the Laurel worn
By poets in old time, but destin❜d now,
In grief to wither on a Whitehead's brow;
The Fig, which, large as what in India grows,
Itself a grove, gave our first parents cloaths;
The Vine, which, like a blushing new-made bride,
Clustering, empurples all the mountain's side;
The Yew, which, in the place of sculptur'd stone,
Marks out the resting-place of men unknown;
The hedge-row Elm; the Pine of mountain race;
The Fir, the Scotch Fir, never out of place;
The Cedar, whose top mates the highest cloud,
Whilst his old father Lebanon grows proud
Of such a child, and his vast body laid
Out many a mile, enjoys the filial shade;

The Oak, when living, monarch of the wood;

The English Oak, which, dead, commands the flood;

All, one and all, shall in this Chorus join,

And, dumb to others' praise, be loud in mine.

The Showers, which make the young hills, like young lambs,
Bound and rebound, the old hills, like old rams,

GOTHAM.

Unwieldy, jump for joy; the Streams, which glide,
Whilst Plenty marches smiling by their side,

And from their bosom rising Commerce springs;
The Winds which rise with healing on their wings,
Before whose cleansing breath contagion flies;
The Sun, who, travelling in eastern skies,
Fresh, full of strength, just risen from his bed,
Though in Jove's pastures they were born and bred,
With voice and whip can scarce make his steeds stir,
Step by step up the perpendicular;

Who, at the hour of eve, panting for rest,
Rolls on amain, and gallops down the west,
As fast as Jehu, oil'd for Ahab's sin,

Drove for a crown, or postboys for an inn;
The Moon, who holds o'er night her silver reign,
Regent of tides, and mistress of the brain,
Who to her sons, those sons who own her power,
And do her homage at the midnight hour,

Gives madness. as a blessing, but dispenses

Wisdom to foots, and damns them with their senses;
The Stars, who, by I know not what strange right,
Preside o'er mortals in their own despite,

Who without reason govern those, who most
(How truly judge from hence !) of reason boast,
And, by some mighty magic yet unknown,
Our actions guide, yet cannot guide their own;
All, one and all, shall in this Chorus join,

And, dumb to others' praise, be loud in mine."

103

Gotham was less successful than the more personal satires, and the author might have felt, as his "great high priest of all the nine" did, when he remembered the success of MucFlecknoe, amid the evil days on which the Religio Laici and Hind and Panther had fallen. No