WILLIAM COWPER. 1731-1749. WILLIAM COWPER was born at Great Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, Nov. 26, 1731. His father, the rector of that place, was a descendant of Sir William Cowper, the friend of Hooker. His mother, whose maiden name was Anne Donne, could trace her pedigree back to a royal house (see On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture, l. 108). For the pronunciation of his surname, up to the beginning of the 17th century, says his latest biographer, 'the name had been spelt Cooper, and it has never been pronounced otherwise by the family.' John Cowper of James I.'s time altered it probably in affectation of the Norman spelling "Cupere" or "Coupre," as the names appear in the roll of Battle Abbey. Many of the family, however, retained the old spelling for some time after. In Lord Campbell's Life of Chancellor Cowper, we have one or two letters signed "Wm. Cooper." (Globe Ed. of Cowper's Works, xxi. note). It was the future poet's misfortune to lose his mother when he was but six years old; but he never lost the fondest memory of her. He was presently sent to a school at Market Street, and then to Westminster. Amongst his Westminster schoolfellows were Thornton, Lloyd, Colman and Churchill. His experience of public school life seems to have been bitter; see his Tirocinium. His bodily frame was not robust; he was of a highly sensitive disposition. Such a boy was ill fitted for the public school life of that time, perhaps for the public school life of any time. 2. 1749-1763. After leaving school, he was articled to an attorney for three years, but he preferred 'giggling and making giggle' with certain lady cousins to law studies. Then he took chambers in the Temple with the design of continuing, or really beginning those studies. Here some twelve years drifted away. At last his friends procured him an appointment in the Civil Service; this from nervousness he resigned; they procured him another-that of clerk of the journals to the House of Lords. A parliamentary dispute made it necessary for him to appear at the bar of the House of Lords to entitle him to the office. Before this necessity his strangely nervous nature succumbed. Towards the end of 1763, his reason giving way, it became advisable to commit him to complete medical care and supervision. 3. 1763-1780. After remaining some seven months in the house of Dr Cotton, at St Albans, his mind in some degree recovered its balance; but he was a changed man. He had undergone a great reaction. He had discovered with shame and remorse the frivolousness of his London life, and altogether shrunk from renewing it. Not unnaturally, he ran now into an opposite extreme, and was for a life devoted to religious exercises. At Huntingdon he became acquainted with the Unwins-a clergyman, his wife, and a son. In 1765 he became an inmate of their house. Mr Unwin being thrown from his horse and killed the following year, in 1767 Cowper and Mrs Unwin removed to Olney, a village on the Ouse in Buckinghamshire, well known by the poet's subsequent descriptions, that they might enjoy there the ghostly ministrations and counsel of the Rev. John Newton, There can be little doubt that Newton's society was harmful for Cowper. Newton was a man of a vigorous mind, of sincere piety, of genuine kindliness; he was certainly attached to Cowper; but, as compared with Cowper, it must be allowed that he was of a hard and unsensitive nature. In his earlier life he had been a slave-dealer. Such a man was ill-fitted to deal with so delicate a temperament as that of his new parishioner. He might know how to train trees, but his hands were too robust and rude for flowers. Cowper's old disorder soon began to threaten him with a second attack. In 1773 the threat was fulfilled. 'Calvinistic doctrine and religious excitements threw an already trembling mind off its balance, and aggravated a malady which but for them might probably have been cured' (see 'Introductory Memoir' to Globe Cowper, p. xlii). Some six years passed before Cowper was himself again. In 1779 he was delivered from his well-meaning but injudicious director and friend, by that gentleman's presentation to the living of St Mary Woolnoth, London. It was after his Newton's departure, that Cowper, finding much leisure at his disposal, commenced writer. 4. 1780-1800. The decad beginning with the year 1780 was the great productive period of Cowper's life. In 1780 he wrote The Progress of Error; in the winter, 1780—1, Truth, Table-Talk, Expostulation. His first volume of Poems was published in 1782. It was when he was in the midst of these literary labours that Lady Austen first visited Olney. Their acquaintance ripened into the warmest friendship. In 1782 her ladyship came to reside in the village, and for some two years made Cowper's life bright with her gay sprightly presence. Would that that good angel had come to him sooner, and abode with him longer! The evil spirits that haunted Cowper were banished for the time. There was no hour for them, when Lady Austen played her harpsichord and sang, or enlivened the very air with her pleasant converse and sympathetic humour. It was she who told him the story of John Gilpin; and gave him the Sofa for a theme. Unhappily, this cheerful intimacy was abruptly ended in 1784. It would seem that there arose some jealousy between Lady Austen and Mrs Unwin; and Cowper, having to choose between his old friend and the new, did his duty firmly, with whatever sorrow. The Task was published in 1785, along with the Tirocinium. His next great work was his translation of Homer; this was published in 1791. Meanwhile, Mrs Unwin and he had removed to Weston, about two miles from Olney. Presently his old malady began to return. During the last six years of his life it prevailed almost without intermission. In 1796 Mrs Unwin died, but he seemed almost unmoved; indeed his gloom could not be made deeper. In March, 1779, he wrote that most forlorn and unhoping poem, The Castaway. On April the 25th, 1800, his troubles ceased for ever. Cowper was distinguished not only as a poet but as a letter-writer; indeed, in the epistolary literature of England he deserves and occupies the first place. His only rival is Horace Walpole; and when we consider first how different their lives were, how much fuller of suggestion and material Walpole's was, how seemingly dull and uninspiriting Cowper's, and, secondly, what license Walpole allows himself in his remarks and criticisms, how to be piquant he spares nothing and nobody, how, on the other hand, Cowper will not let an ill-natured word escape his pen, one cannot but claim for Cowper the praise of superior originality. He has succeeded in making the most eventless and unsuggestive life interesting, and this by no meretricious means-by no false colouring or extravagant orna ment. In his poems as in his letters truthfulness is one great characteristic charm of Cowper. The service he did to English literature by this thorough sincerity can scarcely be exaggerated. Perhaps his place in the history of our literature is higher than that he holds in that literature itself. In an age of poetic conventionality, of shallow theories, of soul-less practice, it was Cowper that inspired our poetry with a higher and nobler tone. Cowper began the needed reformation, which Wordsworth and Coleridge and Scott achieved. In this work he had one great coadjutor-Burns. The Ayrshire ploughman and the Buckinghamshire recluse, differing widely in character and genius, were in fact great allies. Their lives are alike in nothing but sadness. As poets they lived and worshipped the same sovereign mistress Truth. They would not prate of nature without knowing her; they would not pretend to passions of which they were unconscious; they would not take any part in the tricked-out masquerades of their day. It is pleasant to know that before his last attack of despondency overcame him, Cowper read Burns' volume of poems with much enjoyment. Lightness and grace may sometimes be wanting in Cowper's poetry, but that virtue of truthfulness is never wanting. Perhaps no writer is so absolutely free from affectation of every sort. Indeed his language occasionally suffers from his anxiety to be quite unartificial. HEROISM. This piece was published in Cowper's 1st volume, 1782. 124. 1 & 2. [Is there anything pleonastic here?] 7. unctuous. The metaphorical use of this word [what is that use?] is now-a-days almost superseding the primitive use. Johnson in his Dict. gives no instance of the secondary use. 9. [What part of the sentence is hopes ?] II. on a day. See L'Alleg. 14. 13. teem'd. So King Lear, I. iv. 303 : "If she must teem, Create her child of spleen," c. Esp. comp. 1 Hen. IV. III. i. 26: "Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth See Hymn Nat. 240. thal. 63. From teem is derived team, or teeme as Spenser spells t. See Pro 15. See the famous letter of the younger Pliny to Tacitus on his uncle's death (vi. 16). 21. van is from the Fr. avant. = 25. uninform'd uninspired with life, containing and developing no seeds. Comp. inform'd, Par. Lost, iii. 593: "Not all parts like, but all alike inform'd With radiant light, as glowing iron with fire." and o'erinformed in Abs. and Achit, Part i.: "And o'er-informed the tenement of clay." idle. Comp. Virgil's use of segnis in Georg. i. 72: "Et segnem patiere situ durescere campum." 125. 32. Strictly (but pictoribus atque poetis, &c.) he should have said herds, not flocks, or should have used some other part. than ruminating. [What is meant by ruminant? What animals belong to the genus Ruminants?] 65. scourges. It will be remembered that Alaric frankly assumed the title of the Scourge of God. ON THE RECEIPT OF MY MOTHER'S PICTURE OUT OF 66 NORFOLK. Cowper says that he had more pleasure in writing this poem than any other of his except one, that one Addressed to a lady who has supplied to me the place of my own mother-my own invaluable mother-these six-and-twenty years (Probably the lines to Mrs Unwin, beginning Mary! I want a lyre of other strings.) 99 The letter, acknowledging the receipt of the Picture, is dated Weston, Feb. 27, 1790: "My dearest Rose whom I thought withered, and fallen from the stalk, but whom I find still alive: nothing could give me greater pleasure than to know it, and to learn it from yourself. I loved you dearly when you were a child, and love you not a jot the less for having ceased to be so. Every creature that bears any affinity to my mother is dear to me, and you, the daughter of her brother, are but one remove distant from her. I love you therefore, and love you much, both for her sake, and for your own. The world could not have furnished you with a present so acceptable to me, as the picture which you have so kindly sent me. I received it the night before last, and viewed it with a trepidation of nerves and spirits somewhat akin to what I should have felt, had the dear original presented herself to my embraces. I kissed it and hung it where it is the last object that I see at night, and of course the first on which I open my eyes in the morning. She died when I completed my sixth year; yet I remember her well, and am an ocular witness of the great fidelity of the copy. I remember too, a multitude of the maternal tendernesses which I received from her, and which have endeared her memory to me beyond expression. There is in me I believe more of the Donne than of the Cowper; and though I love all of both names, and have a thousand reasons to love those of my own name, yet I feel the bond of nature draw me vehemently to your side. I was thought in the days of my childhood much to resemble my mother, and in my natural temper, of which at the age of fifty-eight I must be supposed to be a competent judge, can trace both her and my late uncle, your father, somewhat of his irritability; and a little I would hope both of his and of her-I know not what to call it, without seeming to praise myself, which is not my intention, but speaking to you I will even speak out, and say-good nature. Add to all this, I deal much in poetry, as did our venerable ancestor, the Dean of St Paul's, and I think I shall have proved myself a Donne at all points. The truth is, that whatever I am, I love you all," &c. &c. 126. 1. O that, &c. This is an elliptic phrase for "how I wish that, &c." So in Lat. si, in Greek ei, are used, the principal verb being understood. "O" here is in fact a sign expressing a longing—a written representative of a sigh-a simpler, less developed way of uttering an emotion of regret; it has really contained in it both subject and predicate. 2. but roughly. In this and like phrases of recent and present English, the but has scarcely its full force. It rather tempers and qualifies the adverb or adj. with which it is used; whereas, radically, it should intensify. Thus "but roughly" is a softened way of saying "roughly;" strictly, it should be a more violent way; it should mean "roughly and nothing else" = - altogether roughly. But then in such uses strictly nothing but the Northern nought but or nobbut = only, merely. For instances of the pleonastic introduction of these last-mentioned equivalents into the same sentence with it, see Shakespearian Grammar, § 130. To this elliptic use of but there is something similar in that of the Greek ada in such passages as ὦ θεοὶ πατρῷοι, συγγένεσθέ γ' ἀλλα νῦν. 10. [For what substantive does it stand here ?] 127. 16. as. This the common old usage, though now confined to poetry. In fact what is now expressed by the addition of if was once expressed by the subjunctive mood. See note to Hymn Nat. 81. For another instance in modern poetry see Hood's lines, "We watched her," &c. : "So silently we seemed to speak, So slowly moved about, As we had lent her half our powers To eke her being out." = 19. reverie is derived from the French rêver, and so radically dream; but is limited to mean a waking dream," the Gr. ürар. 29. hearse. See note to Lyc. 151. 33. Adieus. So beaus, Rape of the L. 653. 35. pass my lips. Comp. the Homeric phrase : ποιόν σε ἔπος φύγεν ἕρκος οδόντων. 37. Comp. Tacitus' "Quod quisque vult, credit facillime." 46. Cowper's father d. 1756. Southey does not mention the date. 50. bauble is ultimately connected with babe. coach is cognate with couch. 56. "I can truly say," said Cowper, nearly fifty years after his mother's death, "that not a week passes (perhaps I might with equal veracity say a day) in which I do not think of her such was the impression her tenderness made upon me, though the opportunity she had for showing it was so short." 128. 58. nightly. See note to Hymn Nat. 179. 67. [What is meant by humour here ?] 71. numbers. This was a conspicuous word in the poetic verbiage of the last century, which was attacked, by precept and also in his earlier works by example, by Wordsworth. See Johnson's Lives of the Poets, passim. 97. This line is taken, as Cowper points out, from Garth's Dispensary. 98. [What part of the sentence is on the dangerous tide of life?] 108. Cowper's mother, through the Hippesleys, of Throughley, in Sussex, and the Pellats, of Bolney, in the same county, was "descended from the several noble houses of West, Knollys, Carey, Bullen, Howard, and Mowbray; and so by four different lines from Henry III., King of England." |