precisely those which were most applauded, and on which critic after critic dwelt with one cuckoo note of admiration. They who found nothing imitable in Dryden, could imitate this. The art of poetry, or rather the art of versification, which was now the same thing, was "made easy to the meanest capacity." It was said of Blackmore's verses, that if they "rhymed and rattled, all was well." In the fashion which was now established as a standard, the lines rhymed more exactly, and rattled more; and to question that standard was accounted a heresy in criticism. The point of perfection had been reached. Bishop Hurd said, "that Pope had shut the door against poetry, as Addison had by his Drummer against comedy." 20 Without disparaging the Drummer, it may be truly said, that we have later comedies which are quite as good; and if Pope shut the door, Cowper opened it. Before Cowper's time, there were several who found admittance through the wicket. And it is a noticeable fact, that of all the poets in the intermediate half century, not one who attained to any distinction which he has since held, or is likely to hold, was of the school of Pope.21 That school has produced versifiers in abundance, but no poet. No man of genius, nor even of original talents, acknowledged his supremacy, while his authority was paramount with the public, and its blind guides. But it is not less remarkable, that among the poets of that interval, whose works have lived and deserved to live, there were none who produced such an effect upon their contemporaries or successors, that their influence can be perceived in the literature of the age, none from whom young minds received an impulse strong enough to bias in the slightest degree their future course. Except Pope himself, there is no one whose name is so generally known in other countries as the author of the Night Thoughts, and Pope is 20 Cradock's Recollections, vol. iv. p. 199. 21 One of the greatest poets of this century, says Beattie, the late and much-lamented Mr Gray of Cambridge, modestly declared to me, that if there was in his own numbers any thing that deserved approbation, he had learned it all from Dryden. VOL. II. 3 known only by name where that work has been rendered popular by translation. Yet though the strain of this poem is stamped with the strongest mannerism, and both the matter and the manner are of a kind to affect the reader powerfully and deeply, Blair's Grave is the only poem I can call to mind which has been composed in imitation of it. Milton has had many imitators, the best of whom have borne no happier resemblance to him, than a monumental effigy bears to the life; but a style so full of point and epigram, as Young's, deterred copyists; whereas an imitator of Milton, if he succeeded in producing a dead likeness, might satisfy himself,- for one who was capable of perceiving that the life was wanting, would never have ventured upon the audacious attempt. They who would imitate Tacitus, or Sir Thomas Brown, must be able to think like them; and Young's poetry presents a difficulty of the same kind.22 Thomson is another poet of the same age, who had no productive influence in this sense, though in another and better way, he had a wider one than Young; for Thomson brought with him, from his own beautiful country, a deep perception and true love of the beauties of nature, for which the English poets, from Dryden to Pope, seem to have had neither eye, nor ear, nor heart. Cowper thought Thomson admirable in description,23 and no man's judgment could carry with it more authority on this point, for his own descriptions were all from nature; not one of them secondhanded; he has told us this,24 and they carry their evidence with them. "But it always seemed to him," he said, “that there was something of affectation in Thomson's style, and that his numbers are sometimes not well harmonized." 23 He considered him, however, as a true poet, and that his lasting fame had proved it. The opinion rested upon better ground than the proof, for Thomson's fame was not then of more than a single life's duration; and older reputations, 22 Dr. Johnson had forgotten the Night Thoughts, when he said in his life of Milton, that "the good and evil of eternity are too ponderous for the wings of wit." 23 To Mrs. King, June 19, 1788. which for a while had spread wider and flourished more, have since that time passed away. 66 26 Little can be ascertained concerning Cowper's youthful reading and first predilections in poetry. The earliest of his poems which has been preserved, is an imitation of the Splendid Shilling, written in his seventeenth year; and certainly none but a boy of great power, as well as great promise, could have produced it, nor without considerable practice in verse. Hudibras and Prior's Alma were both favorites with him in early life, and at that time he often read them.25 But he thought that Solomon was Prior's best poem, whether we consider the subject or the execution; and that he is an author 27 who, with much labor indeed, but with admirable success, has embellished all his poems with the most charming ease. 'Every man conversant with versewriting," he says, "knows, and knows by painful experience, that the familiar style is of all styles the most difficult to succeed in. To make verse speak the language of prose without being prosaic, to marshal the words of it in such an order as they might naturally take in falling from the lips of an extemporary speaker, yet without meanness, harmoniously, elegantly, and without seeming to displace a syllable for the sake of the rhyme, is one of the most arduous tasks a poet.can undertake. He that could accomplish this task was Prior: many have imitated his excellence in this particular, but the best copies have fallen far short of the original." This admiration of a poet with whom he had little that was congenial in his own mind, he probably learned from Lloyd, for his taste had been very much influenced by the set with which he associated in early life. He thought too meanly of Gray and Mason when his friends ridiculed them ; but like those friends, he lived to perceive that he had been 25 To Mr. Unwin, March 21, 1784. He asks, and with good reason, what could have suggested to Johnson the thought that Alma was written in imitation of Hudibras? often as he had read them in former years, he says, he never saw in them the least resemblance to each other, except that they are composed in verse of the same measure, nor could he now. 26 To Mr. Unwin, Jan. 5, 1782. To Mr. Unwin, Jan. 17, 1782. 66 misled by youthful presumption,28 and to make honorable amends. With Churchill he admired Dryden; but he bad none of that dislike for Pope, which in Churchill seems to have produced a feeling of personal animosity. "I could never," says Cowper, agree with those who preferred him to Dryden; nor with others, (I have known such, and persons of taste and discernment too,) who could not allow him to be a poet at all. He was certainly a mechanical maker of verses; and in every line he ever wrote we see indubitable marks of most indefatigable industry and labor. Writers who find it necessary to make such strenuous and painful exertions, are generally as phlegmatic as they are correct; but Pope was, in this respect, exempted from the common lot of authors of that class. With the unwearied application of a plodding Flemish painter, who draws a shrimp with the most minute exactness, he had all the genius of one of the first masters. Never, I believe, were such talents and such drudgery united. But I admire Dryden most, who has succeeded by mere dint of genius, and in spite of a laziness and carelessness almost peculiar to himself. His faults are numberless, and so are his beauties. His faults are those of a great man; and his beauties are such (at least sometimes) as Pope, with all his touching and retouching, could never equal." 29 While his first volume was in the press, he told Mr. Unwin 30 that he had not read an English poet for thirteen years, and but one for twenty years; who that one may have been, there is nothing either in his correspondence or his poems that can lead us to surmise. He reckoned this among his principal advantages as a composer of verses. "Imitation," said he, "even of the best models, is my aversion; it is servile and mechanical; a trick that has enabled many to usurp the name of author, who could not have written at all, if they had not written upon the pattern. of somebody indeed original. But when the ear and the taste have been much accustomed to the manner of others, it is almost impossible to avoid it; and we imitate in spite 26 See Vol. i. p. 194. 29 To Mr. Unwin, Jan. 5, 1782. 30 Nov. 24, 1781. of ourselves, just in proportion as we admire. Two years afterwards it appears that he persisted in the same opinion: "Poetry," said he, "English poetry, I never touch, being pretty much addicted to the writing of it, and knowing that much intercourse with those gentlemen betrays us unavoidably into a habit of imitation, which I hate and despise most cordially." 31 When Cowper said that he had read no English poetry for so many years, the words must not be too literally taken; he can only have meant that he had perused none with that degree of attention, or that frequency, which might have affected his own compositions. When Johnson's edition of the British Poets appeared, Mr. Unwin lent them to him. His remark, when he had merely looked into some of the volumes, was, "A few things I have met with, which if they had been burnt the moment they were written, it would have been better for the author, and at least as well for his readers. There is not much of this, but a little is too much. I think it a pity the editor admitted any; the English muse would have lost no credit by the omission of such trash." 32 England, I believe, is the only country in which any general collection of its poets has been attempted. The first was brought forward by a noted bookseller, named John Bell, to whom the artists of that time were beholden for some opportunities of making themselves known, and of whom, more than of any other publisher, it may be said that he introduced a taste for fine printing. He, in the year 1777, announced an edition of the Poets of Great Britain, complete, from Chaucer to Churchill. The more respectable of the London booksellers,33 regarding this as an inva 31 To Mr. Hill, Nov. 23, 1783. 32 To Mr. Unwin, May 26, 1779. 33 Mr. Dilly, the bookseller, who states these circumstances at the time in a letter to Boswell, calls Bell's a little trifling edition; and says that the type was so extremely small that many persons could not read it, and not only this inconvenience attended it, but the inaccuracy of the press was very conspicuous." Croker's Boswell, vol. iii. p. 474. I know not whether Johnson's edition was more accurate; but this I know, that unless the press be carefully compared with the last |