also in part on the study of the same writers for the attainment of its highest purposes (1)

XIX.

COWPER NO INVENTOR.

I have already said something of CowPER. I am drawn back to him by the remarks arising out of the character ascribed to Beattie's Minstrel. Campbell observes of Cowper, that « as an original writer, he left the ambitious and luxuriant subjects of Fiction and Passion, for those of real life and simple nature, and for the developement of his own earnest feelings, in behalf of moral and religious truth » — « He forms a striking instance of Genius writing the history of its own secluded feelings, reflections, and enjoyments, in a shape so interesting as to engage the imagination like a work of fiction. He has invented no character in fable, nor in the drama; but he has left a record of his own character, which forms not only an object of deep sympathy, but a subject for the study of human nature ».

Admitting this appropriate description of Cowper's poetry to be just: (and no one will probably be found to controvert it); we must reverse all the acknowleged tests of superiority in Genius, if we place him in a very high class. His life was innocent, virtuous; intellectual; and affords an admirable example of sentiment, reflection, and occupation, to the numbers of mankind whom their fate

(1) Edinb. Rev. July 1821, N.o LXX, p 493, in the Article on Sismondi's History of France.

throws into rural retirement supported by an humble competence. The distinction between such a delineation of domestic life, and a display of the grand scenes of history, or the magnificent forms of Imagination, is universally understood and undisputed in Painting. No one would put a Jansen, a Mireveldt, or even a Teniers, a Breughel, a Ruysdale, against a Raffaele, a Corregio, a Guido, or a Salvator Rosa. To copy Nature with exactness, even though the objects should be both diversified and selected for their beauty, is not the great effort of Genius.

Fancy may be conceded to Cowper;' fancy easy, clear gentle, elegant; yet seldom vigorous; -but, (if imagination implies invention), few poets have shewn less imagination.

There is, however, a passage in his Task, which always strikes me to have been the momentary flash of a fine imagination:

<< Tis morning; and the Sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires th' horizon; while the clouds,
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,

Seen through a leafless wood >>.

Perhaps it had been happier for Cowper, if he had indulged his imagination more! If he had wandered farther from Self; and forgot the sad realities which often oppressed him, amid the visions of a creative mind!

How striking must this appear, if we compare him with Tasso, shut in his dismal vault at Ferrara! What gleam of consolation could Tasso receive but by the light of his undimmed and magical imagination? How the heart of a reader sinks even at the distance of more than two cen

turies at these words in a Letter of Goselini to Aldus, dated Oct. 1582: « I have seen poor Tasso in a most miserable state, not in intellect, in which he appeared from a long conversation with him sound and entire ; but from nakedness and hunger, which he suffers in his captivity (1) ».

Of all the literary anecdotes, which I can recollect, this is the most soul-rending. It excites the most unqualified indignation; the most

Yet even here Imagination could supply a balm, and alleviate such unspeakable sufferings! If ever a deity inhabited a mere mortal frame, it must have been the spirit of a deity in Tasso, which such usage, (the crime that can never be washed out from the House of Ferrara), could not extinguish! I have seen (2) and entered that dark, damp, narrow, bare-walled, maddening vault; and never, while the memory of any human misery remains with me, shall I forget it!

Cowper possessed no part of Tasso's magnanimity of soul. He had the feebleness, as he had the simplicity, of infancy. The great tasks of human affairs are not performed by such qualities. The perilous ambition of sublime duties is stimulated by more daring and inventive genius. But I recollect that there are duties for all:

« God doth not need

Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,

(1) See Res Literaria, II, 142.

(2) On Thursday April 19, 1821, in a Journey from Rome to Venice.

And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve, who only stand and wait (1).

XX.

ON MORAL AND DOMESTIC POETRY.

Having in the last articles advocated the more energetic more sublime, and more fiery traits of poetry, I am willin to admit what has been most ingeniously and most eloquentl said on the mild, moral, and practical productions of th Muse; on that, which « comes home to every man's busines and bosom »,

I extract with pleasure therefore the following extraordi narily beautiful passages from the Edinburgh Review, March 1819, N.° LXII, p. 325.

CRITIQUE ON ROGERS'S POEM OF HUMAN LIFE.

The Life, which this poem endeavours to set before us, is not Life diversified with strange adventures, embodied in extraordinary character, or agitated with turbulent passions; but the ordinary, practical, and amiable life of social, intelligent, and affectionate men; such, in short, as multitudes may be seen living every day in this country »>.

The poet looks on Man, and teaches us to look on him, not merely with love but with reverence; and mingling a sort of considerate pity for the shortness of his busy,

(1) Milton's Sonnet On his Blindness.

ON MORAL AND DOMESTIC POETRY.

81

little career, and for the disappointments and weaknesses, by which it is beset, with a genuine admiration of the great capacities he unfolds, and the high destinies to which he seems to be reserved, works out very beautiful and engaging pictures both of the affections by which life ls endeared, the trials to which it is exposed, and peaceful enjoyments with which it may often be filled.

a

This, after all, we believe, is the tone of true wisdom and true virtue and that to which all good natures

draw nearer, as they approach to the close of life, and come to act less, and know and meditate more, on the varying and crowded scenes of human existence. When the inordinate hopes of early youth, which provoke their own disappointment, have been sobered down by longer experience and more extended views; when the keen contentions and eager rivalries, which employed our riper age, have expired or been abandoned, when we have seen year after year the objects of our fiercest hostility or of our fondest affections lie down together in the hallowed peace of the grave when ordinary pleasures and amusements begin to be insipid; and the gay derision which seasoned them to appear flat and importunate when we reflect how often we have mourned and been comforted what opposite opinions we have successively maintained and abandoned to what inconsistent habits we have gradually been formed and how often the ob jects of our pride have proved the sources of our shame; we are naturally led to recur to the careless days of our childhood; and to retrace the whole of our career and that of our cotemporaries, with feelings of far greater humility and indulgence, than those by which it had been accompanied to think all vain but affection and honour the simplest and cheapest pleasures the truest and most precious; and generosity of sentiment the only mental