will, if he pleases, announce me to the world by the style and title of WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ. It was not till all preliminaries had been adjusted that Cowper acquainted Mr. Unwin with his intentions. "You may suppose," he said, "by the size of the publication, (an octavo volume price three shillings,) that the greatest part of the poems have been long kept secret, but the truth is that they are, most of them, except what you have in your possession, the produce of the last winter. The principal, I may say the only reason why I never mentioned to you till now, an affair which I am just going to make known to all the world, (if that Mr. All-the-world should think it worth his knowing,) has been this,—that till within these few days I had not the honour to know it myself. This may seem strange, but it is true; for not knowing where to find underwriters who would choose to insure them; and not finding it convenient to a purse like mine to run any hazard, even upon the credit of my own ingenuity, I was very much in doubt for some weeks whether any bookseller would be willing to subject himself to an ambiguity that might prove very expensive in case of a bad market. But Johnson has heroically set all peradventures at defiance and taken the whole charge upon himself. So out I come! 66 Mr. Newton had been a little jealous that his friend dealt more liberally with Mr. Unwin in the way of poetical export, than with him 22! It was now Unwin's turn to feel a jealousy of the same kind. 'I expected," says Cowper, "you would be grieved; if you had not been so, those sensibilities which attend you upon every other occasion, must have left you upon this. I am sorry that I have given you pain, but not sorry that you have felt it. A concern of that sort would be absurd, because it would be to regret your friendship for me, and to be dissatisfied with the effect of it. Allow yourself, however, three minutes only for reflection, and your penetration must necessarily dive into the motives of my conduct. In the first place, and by way of preface, remember that I do not (whatever your partiality may incline you to do) account it of much conse21 May 1, 1781. 20 To Mr. Newton, March 5, 1781. 22 July 30, 1781. quence to any friend of mine, whether he is or is not employed by me upon such an occasion. But all affected renunciations of poetical merit apart, (and all unaffected expressions of the sense I have of my own littleness in the poetical character too,) the obvious and only reason why I resorted to Mr. Newton, and not to my friend Unwin was this-that the former lived in London, the latter at Stock; the former was upon the spot to correct the press, to give instructions respecting any sudden alterations, and to settle with the publisher every thing that might possibly occur in the course of such a business: the latter could not be applied to for these purposes, without what would be a manifest encroachment on his kindness; because it might happen, that a troublesome office might cost him now and then a journey, which it was absolutely impossible for me to endure the thought of. "When I wrote to you for the copies you have sent me, I told you I was making a collection, but not with a design to publish. There is nothing truer than at that time I had not the smallest expectation of sending a volume of Poems to the press. I had several small pieces that might amuse, but I would not, when I publish, make the amusement of the reader my only object. When the winter deprived me of other employments, I began to compose, and seeing six or seven months before me which would naturally afford me much leisure for such a purpose, I undertook a piece of some length; that finished, another; and so on, till I had amassed the number of lines I mentioned in my last. "Believe of me what you please, but not that I am indifferent to you or your friendship for me on any occasion 23. " When Mr. Newton objected to any thing in the manuscript, Cowper seems generally to have justified, and then to have altered or expunged it, in deference to his friend. Upon occasion of some strong expression which had not been allowed to pass the censureship, he says, "I little suspected you would object to it. I am no friend to the use of words taken from what an uncle of mine called the diabolical dictionary: but it happens sometimes that a coarse expression is almost necessary to do justice to the indignation excited by an abominable subject." He thanked him, however, for his opinion, and said, that " though poetry is apt to betray one into a warmth that 23 May 10, 1781. one is not sensible of in writing prose, he should always desire to be set down by it"." Upon a similar occasion he replies to Mr. Newton, "The passage you object to I inserted merely by way of catch, and think it is not unlikely to answer the purpose. My design was to say as many serious things as I could, and yet to be as lively as was compatible with such a purpose. Do not imagine that I mean to stickle for it as a pretty creature of my own that I am loth to part with, but I am apprehensive that without the sprightliness of that passage to introduce it, the following paragraph would not show to advantage. If the world had been filled with men like myself, I should never have written it; but thinking myself in a measure obliged to tickle, if I meant to please, I therefore affected a jocularity I did not feel. As to the rest, wherever there is war, there is misery and outrage; notwithstanding which it is not only lawful to wish, but even a duty to pray for the success of one's country. And as to the neutralities, I really think the Russian virago an imper tinent puss for meddling with us, and engaging half a score kittens of her acquaintance to scratch the poor old lion, who, if he has been insolent in his day, has probably acted no otherwise than they themselves would have acted in his circumstances, and with his power to embolden them 25." This brought a rejoinder, and in a tone to which Cowper immediately yielded, saying, "I am sorry that I gave you the trouble to write twice upon so trivial a subject as the passage in question. I did not understand by your first objection to it that you thought it so exceptionable as you do; but being better informed, I immediately resolved to expunge it, and subjoin a few lines which you will oblige me by substituting in its place. I am not very fond of weaving a political thread into any of my pieces, and that for two reasons; first, because I do not think myself qualified in point of intelligence, to form a decided opinion on any such topics, and secondly, because I think them, though perhaps as popular as any, the most useless of all 26. Upon sending to Mr. Newton what he called his "Works complete, bound in brown paper," and numbered according to the series in which he would have them published, Cowper called upon his friend for farther assistance. "With respect 24 Feb. 18, 1781. 25 March 5. 26 March 18. to the poem called Truth,'" said he, it is so true, that it can hardly fail of giving offence to an unenlightened reader. Ithink, therefore, that in order to obviate in some measure those prejudices that will naturally erect their bristles against it, an explanatory preface27, such as you (and nobody so well as you) can furnish me with, will have every grace of propriety to recommend it. Or, if you are not averse to the task, and your avocations will allow you to undertake it, I should be glad to be indebted to you for a preface to the whole"." Mr. Newton demurred, upon the ground of his own incompetence for such a task; to this Cowper replied, that not having the least doubt himself upon that score, and being convinced that there ought to be none, he neither withdrew his requisition, nor abated one jot of the earnestness with which it was made. "I admit," said he, "the delicacy of the occasion, but am far from apprehending that you will therefore find it difficult to succeed. You can draw a hair-stroke, where another man would make a blot as broad as a sixpence"." 29 All preliminaries having thus, as it seemed, been arranged, Cowper thought that while the three first of his longer poems were under the printer's hands he might "be spinning and weaving the last," which in his own opinion, (" for an opinion," said he, "I am obliged to have about what I write, whether I will or no,") he was writing with more emphasis and energy than in either of his others. The whole he hoped would be ready for publication before the proper season should be past, .. for new books have their season, like most articles that are carried to market. He looked to this with a degree of pleasurable impatience. But if the art of printing had been in use in the land of Uz, Job, when he wished that his enemy had written a book, might have wished that he would print it also. When this hope had been two months delayed, Cowper writes thus to Mr. Unwin. "If a writer's friends have need of patience, how much 27 The origin of this request seems to be intimated in a letter written some two months before, just after one of Mr. Newton's publications, (probably his Cardiphonia,) had reached Olney: "I shall not repeat to you," says Cowper, "what I said to Mrs. Unwin after having read two or three of the letters. I admire the Preface, in which you have given an air of novelty to a worn out topic, and have actually engaged the favour of the reader by saying those things in a delicate and uncommon way, which in general are disgusting." Jan 21. 28 April 8, 1781. 29 April 23. more the writer! Your desire to see my Muse in public, and mine to gratify you, must both suffer the mortification of delay. I expected that my trumpeter would have informed the world by this time of all that is needful for them to know upon such an occasion; and that an advertising blast blown through every newspaper would have said "The poet is coming!'But man, especially man that writes verse, is born to disappointments, as surely as printers and booksellers are born to be the most dilatory and tedious of all creatures. The plain English of this magnificent preamble is, that the season of publication is just elapsed, that the town is going into the country every day, and that my book cannot appear till they return, that is to say, not till next winter. This misfortune, however, comes not without its attendant advantage; I shall now have, what I should not otherwise have had, an opportunity to correct the press myself; no small advantage upon any occasion, but especially important where poetry is concerned. A single erratum may knock out the brains of a whole passage, and that perhaps of which of all others the unfortunate poet is the most proud. Add to this, that now and then there is to be found in a printing-house a presumptuous intermeddler who will fancy himself a poet too, and what is still worse, a better than he that employs him. The consequence is, that with cobbling, and tinkering, and patching on here and there a shred of his own, he makes such a difference between the original and the copy, that an author cannot know his own work again. Now as I choose to be responsible for nobody's dulness but my own, I am a little comforted when I reflect, that it will be in my power to prevent all such impertinence." Before the expiration of that month, however, Johnson had begun to print. Much to the credit of his discernment, he manifested a more than ordinary interest in the contents of the volume which he was to publish, and perused them critically in the proof sheets. Cowper, when he was informed of this, replied, "I had rather submit to chastisement now, than be obliged to undergo it hereafter. If Johnson, therefore, will mark with a marginal Q, those lines that he, or his, object to as not sufficiently finished, I will willingly retouch them, or give a reason for my refusal. I shall moreover think myself |