The genius of Cowper and its fruits we reserve for an after prefatory essay. Nor need we dwell at length upon his private character. He was confessedly an amiable, modest, generous, temperate, honest, upright, and pious man. He had faults indeed, but they seemed all more or less related to his dark life-long companion-disease. He was somewhat testy in temper, and his feelings were easily wounded. He had a morbid craving, latterly, for stimulus, and his excessive use of tea decidedly tended to increase his melancholy. In his youth he had probably dipped his shoe in the prevailing licentiousness of the London of that age. But subtracting all this, he was confessedly one of the best of mortal men, and might be said to have lived and died without an enemy. And yet he was supremely, unutterably, demoniacally wretched! What a paradox this would appear, if it were not a stern fact! Many explanations have been attempted. Many have cried out "Calvinism," and have sought to attach Cowper's case as a blot to the countenance of a sublime theological system. This is altogether unfair. Cowper was not at all a rigid Calvinist. He maintained, for example, strongly the salvation of the virtuous heathen-and besides, his special delusion had no connexion with the general doctrines of the system of Calvin. Calvinism admits of no such arbitrary and capricious decree, as Cowper imagined to be hanging over his single head. Others have laid all the blame on John Newton. We do not certainly think that he displayed the profoundest wisdom in his management of the poet. But his intentions were good, and even when Cowper, latterly, escaped from his influence, it was with no better result, and he might have said of all who sought to cure and cheer him, "Miserable comforters are ye all." His case, from the beginning, admitted of but one thorough cure, namely, Death. The dark disarrangement of his being could not be altered, unless by being taken down. We grant that the disease in his blood was susceptible of increase, as well as of modification. Some have said that the "Watercure," had it then existed, might have made him a happy No doubt it might have modified the symptoms, but the whole case lay beyond it. That was, in a single sentence, the case of an entirely and ab origine deranged nervous sys man. tem, much tried by circumstances, often ill-managed by his friends, and by himself, and sustained so long in existence, chiefly by his profound sense of religion, by the force of a most masculine understanding, and by one of the best bodily constitutions that poet ever possessed. At this last, we especially wonder. He lived seventy years in that atmosphere of misery; and not only lived, but wrote thousands of the most humorous, refined, and beautiful letters; translated into stern, clear verse, the two masterpieces of Grecian poetry; and created a mass of original song, as remarkable for its healthy tone, as for its richness, vigour, simplicity, and freedom! Truly William Cowper was still more a marvellous, than he was a mild and gentle spirit,-stronger, even, than he was amiable -a very Prometheus chained to his rock, let us call him,—the rock being his rugged, deep-rooted woe; the chain his lengthened life; and himself the Titan, in his earnestness, lofty purpose, and poetic power. |