COWPER. 



311 



Ccnvper. through its long eclipse, he came before the world, for 

 ''"" "Vr™" the first time, as an avowed author, at the age of 50. 

 The reception of Ins first volume was not so popular as 

 it deserved to be, considering the truth, originality, and 

 pathos, of many of his sentiments and descriptions, pro- 

 bably owing to the puritanical tone of religious auste- 

 rity, and the harshness of versification, which obscured 

 its beauties. In the same year (1781) that his volume 

 appeared, the accomplished Lady Austen came to Ol- 

 ney. Her vivacity and colloquial powers seem to have 

 fascinated Cowper, and her goodness of heart to have 

 gained his warmest friendship. At her instance he 

 commenced the poem of the Task. Cowper had com- 

 plained of the difficulty of finding a subject. Lady 

 Austen told him that lie could be in no want of a sub- 

 ject ,• you can write (said she) upon any thing, " write 

 upon this sopha." Cowper adopted the subject, proba- 

 bly intending at first (as the introductory lines seem to 

 shew) a mock heroic effusion ; but led by that bound- 

 less power of association, by which he could link the 

 most serious moral to trivial circumstances, he soon left 

 the insignificant subject from which he had started, to 

 expatiate over the whole field of moral sentiment and 

 picturesque description. It is painful to think, that the 

 jealousy of Mary Unwin compelled him to renounce 

 the friendship of Lady Austen. The Task was finished 

 in 1783, and he had scarcely finished it when he com- 

 menced translating Homer into blank verse, which was 

 finished in 1791 , and published by subscription. After 

 this he accepted of a literary engagement from Johnson 

 the bookseller, to make a version of Milton's Italian 

 poetry, and write a commentary on his whole works. 

 To this engagement he had, unfortunately, for the rest 

 of his life but little serenity of mind to apply. His 

 mental depression returned in 1792, and continued se- 

 verely during the following year. As Mary Unwin had 

 now become paralytic, Cowper's kinswoman, Lady 

 Hesketh, undertook, with great kindness, the manage- 

 ment of his household. In 179-i, Mr Hayley, a friend 

 in whom the poet had much delighted in the days 

 when he possessed his faculties, came to visit him ; but 

 Cowper was now so sunk in melancholy torpor, that he 

 expressed no joy at the sight of him ; and when the 

 news of his Majesty having settled a pension on the un- 

 happy sufferer was announced, it gave him no visible 

 pleasure. In 1 795 he was removed from Olney, together 

 with Mrs Unwin, to the house of his relation at Tud- 

 clenham, the Rev. Mr Johnson. Stopping on the jour- 

 ney at the village of Eaton near St Neofs, he walked 

 with his young kinsman in the church-yard by moon- 

 light, and talked of the poet Thomson with more com- 

 posure than he had shewn for several months. Soon 

 after he visited his cousin Mrs Bodham at Mattishall, 

 when he saw in her house his own portrait by Abbot ; 

 he clasped his hands in an agony of grief, wishing that 

 his present sensations could be what they were when 

 that picture was painted. 



Some dawnings of restoration shewed themselves in 

 the summer of 1796, but disappeared again in the au- 

 tumn. Mrs Unwin expired at the house of Mr John- 

 son at East Dereham in the December of that year. 

 Cowper had seen her about half an hour before her 

 expiration. In the dusk of the evening he accompanied 

 Mr Johnson to survey the corpse; but after looking at 

 it a few minutes, started away with an unfinished ex- 

 clamation of grief, and either from fear to trust his 

 lips with her name, or forgetting her from mental alie- 

 nation, never afterwards spoke of her. In 1 799, he re- 

 sumed some power of exertion ; he revised his* Homer, 



5 ■ 



made some translations, and composed his last and af- 

 fecting original poem the Cast-away. The dismally 

 despondent tone of that effusion shews that his melan- 

 choly was not abated by the last blaze of his intellec- 

 tual faculties. In 1 800 the dropsy, which had before 

 appeared, shewed fatal symptoms of progress in his 

 constitution, and lie expired, after a rapid decline, on 

 the 25th of April of the same year. 



Cowper's publication of the Task, set him at least upon 

 a par with any of his contemporaries in poetry, and 

 perhaps superior to them- all except Burns. Though 

 he has not aspired to the first rate powers of poetic crea- 

 tion, in inventing incident and embodying characters, 

 his pages are full of scenery and pictures of life and 

 manners, dignified by the highest sentiments, and made 

 interesting by the most tender touches of the social af- 

 fections. If we miss in him the fairy enchantment of 

 colouring which Thomson throws over the face of Na- 

 ture in his descriptions, we have a plain fidelity to those 

 minute features which are lost in the dazzling halo with 

 which the former poet surrounds her. All is rapture 

 and enthusiasm with Thomson. The result of Cowper's 

 views is a calmly pleasing entertainment. Before 

 Cowper, the English poets leant to the side of excessive 

 embellishment in describing nature, and seemed to be 

 shy of approaching rustic and ordinary life, except to 

 burlesque it on the stilts of mock heroic, or to mask her 

 homeliness either under Gothic antiquity of language, 

 or the still more disgusting form of Arcadian pastoral. 

 Cowper making an irresistible appeal to the interest 

 which the human heart feels in whatever is human, 

 took for subjects those humble and homely circum- 

 stances which create a pleasant association throughout 

 the whole range of life and manners, with a gravity 

 which gave them due importance, but with a familiarity 

 of style also which suited their plainness. He reserved 

 to himself, however, a chaste and sober dignity for 

 higher subjects, in which there is a freer admixture of 

 what is commonly called the language of poetry as dis- 

 tinguished from prose. This elevation, it is true, he 

 but occasionally exercises ; and we often find him. in 

 high regions of thought and sentiment, checking the 

 sublimity of his flight by vulgar and familiar phraseo- 

 logy. In taking away the polish and colouring of poe- 

 tical diction, he often leaves his style cadaverous and 

 rugged. His sketches from humble nature are also 

 frequently prolonged to tiresome minuteness, and lower- 

 ed to objects with which poetry disdains alliance. His 

 pictures of the Dung-bed, and the Gin Shop, and his 

 Snoring Sick Nurse, are in tins Dutch taste. A most 

 unfortunate fault is, that the highest fire of his enthu- 

 siasm is so frequently mixed with the clouds of metho- 

 dism and mysticism. The man was elevated and pure 

 himself, but he assumes a character not his own, 

 when he illustrates the depravity of the human race 

 by the dressy propensity of a country girl wearing or- 

 namental curls upon her head, for which she is " in- 

 debted to some smart wig-weaver's /mud." His contempt 

 of what he calls the vanity of philosophy, also betrays 

 an illiberality inexcusable even in a visionary recluse. 

 His lighter pieces evince the finest conformation of 

 social and domestic feelings which probably human be- 

 ings ever possessed, and an exquisite talent for humour. 

 His great translation has something of the bony and 

 muscular -greatness of the Grecian bard, but it is, in 

 general, less like Homer revived than Homer dug out. ■ 

 (if' his grave, (ri) 



COWPOX. Sec Vaccinatio-v. 



CRACKS.' See Veterinary Mrnn. ini:.- 



Cowper 



II 

 Cracks. 



