COWPER 



1619 



COWSLIP 



soil near the water. In some places it is used 

 in place of celery; in others, merely as fodder. 

 In some parts of Siberia the stalks are fer- 

 mented and distilled into liquor. 



COWPER, kou'per, or koo'per, WILLIAM 

 (1731-1800), an English poet whose yerse 

 pointed the way toward a new epoch in Eng- 

 lish literature. Love for humanity and nature, 

 warmth of feeling and imaginative glow are 

 revealed in nis 

 work and show 

 him to have been 

 a pioneer in the 

 movement which 

 reached its height 

 in the poetry of 



Burns, 

 worth 

 other 

 poets 



Words- 

 and the 

 Romantic 

 (see R o - 



MANTIC i s M). 

 Having finished 

 his studies at 



WILLIAM COWPER 



Westminster School, Cowper became a clerk 

 in the office of a London solicitor, and in 1754 

 was admitted to the bar. He was of a nerv- 

 ous temperament and easily depressed, and 

 about this time he began to suffer from at- 

 tacks of melancholy that returned at intervals 

 all the rest of his life. A clerkship in the 

 House of Lords was procured for him, but the 

 thoughts of the preliminary examination so 

 unnerved him that he became insane and tried 

 to commit suicide. Upon his recovery he was 

 taken to Huntingdon, where he formed a 

 memorable friendship with the family of Mor- 

 ley Unwin, a clergyman. 



In 1767, shortly after Mr. Unwin's death, 

 Cowper accompanied Mrs. Unwin and her chil- 

 dren to Olney, where he remained for nine- 

 teen years. In this village he turned seriously 

 to literary work, making his appearance as a 

 writer in 1779 with the publication of the 

 Olney Hymns. Among these hymns is the one 

 containing the beautiful lines: 



Oh ! for a closer walk with God ; 



A^calm and heavenly frame ; 

 A light to shine upon the road 



That leads me to the Lamb ! 



Two other favorite songs belong to this group, 

 There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood and 

 God Moves in a Mysterious Way. 



In 1782 he issued a volume of verse con- 

 taining Table Talk, Truth, Expostulation and 

 other well-known poems, but it was the publi- 

 cation of The Task, three years later, that 



established his fame. This is a long poem 

 written in blank verse that is suggestive of 

 Wordsworth in its descriptions of natural 

 beauty. With it appeared what is perhaps his 

 best-known poem, The Diverting History of 

 John Gilpin. A translation of Homer, begun 

 in 1784, two years before, his removal to the 

 neighboring village of Weston Underwood, was 

 published in 1791. Three years later he suf- 

 fered from an attack of insanity that marked 

 the end of his creative work. 



Though Cowper does not rank with the most 

 distinguished poets of his country, he has an 

 important place in its literature, and many of 

 his lines, such as "I am monarch of all I sur- 

 vey," from Alexander Selkirk, and "O, for a 

 lodge in some va wilderness," from The 

 Task, are familiar quotations. B.M.W. 



COWRIE, or COWRY, kou'ri, the name of 

 a genus of mollusks comprising nearly 200 

 species, with oval highly-polished shells of 

 beautiful color. The fact that gives the cowrie 

 chief importance is that the shells are used in 

 many uncivilized 

 parts of the world 

 as money. Cow- 

 ries live in the 



A COWRIE 

 Viewed from both sides. 



warmer oceans 



under rocks and 



coral reefs and 



feed on polyps or 



sea anemones. 



The outer lip of the shell is thickened and 



reflected so that the aperture becomes long 



and narrow. Among uncivilized tribes cowries 



are used for personal adornment, and bands of 



cowrie shells are used to trim the harness of 



elephants and horses in India. Dainty little 



charms such as beads, bracelets and brooches 



are also made from the small blue-black money 



cowrie. 



The small shells used as money need only 

 to be strung to be used as currency, the value 

 differing in the region where they are used as 

 the medium of exchange. On the west coast 

 of Africa the value of 100 shells is one English 

 penny, and 6,000 cowries are of the value of 

 one dollar. See MOLLUSKS. 



COWSLIP, kou'slip, the "poet's flower of 

 spring." There are four distinct flowers of 

 different forms and colors which are called 

 by the name. In the United States and South- 

 ern Canada "the marsh mangold shines like 

 fire in fields and copses gray." It is a large, 

 yellow-flowered plant of the buttercup family, 

 and it is frequently called cowslip. It grows 



