over him, her sprightly powers were exerted to dispel it. One afternoon, when he appeared more than usually depressed, she told him the story of John Gilpin, which had been told to her in her childhood, and which, in her relation, tickled his fancy as much as it has that of thousands and tens of thousands since, in his. The next morning he said to her that he had been kept awake during the greater part of the night by thinking of the story and laughing at it, and that he had turned it into a ballad. The ballad was sent to Mr. Unwin 40, who said, in reply, that it had made him laugh tears. "As to the famous horseman," Cowper replied, "he and his feats are an inexhaustible source of merriment. At least we find him so; and seldom meet without refreshing ourselves with the recollection of them. You are perfectly at liberty to deal with them as you please. Auctore tantum anonymo, imprimantur; and when printed, send me a copy" It was sent accordingly to the Public Advertiser. "I little thought," said Cowper, "when I was writing the history of John Gilpin, that he would appear in print; I intended to laugh and to make two or three others laugh, of whom you were one. But now all the world laugh, at least if they have the same relish for a tale ridiculous in itself, and quaintly told as we have. Well, they do not always laugh so innocently, and at so small an expense, -for in a world like this, abounding with subjects for satire, and with satirical wits to mark them, a laugh that hurts nobody has at least the grace of novelty to recommend it. Swift's darling motto was, Vive la bagatelle; a good wish for a philosopher of his complexion, the greater part of whose wisdom, whencesoever it came, most certainly came not from above. La bagatelle has no enemy in me, though it has neither so warm a friend nor so able a one, as it had in him. If I trifle, and merely trifle, it is because I am reduced to it by necessity; a melancholy that nothing else so effectually disperses, engages me sometimes in the arduous task of being merry by force. And, strange, as it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been written in the saddest mood, and but for that saddest mood, perhaps, had never been written at all.” Gilpin did not immediately become glorious, and Cowper, satisfied with amusing himself and his friend, little anticipated 38 Hayley, i. 312. 40 This manuscript. in Cowper's beautiful hand, is one of the treasures with which I have been entrusted. 39 Oct. 1782. 41 Nov. 4. what a race of popularity the famous horseman was to run. The ballad was a species of poetry of which he had ever been fond, and to which, he said, more than to any other he should have addicted himself, if graver matters had not called him another way. His only tragic piece of this kind is the Dirge for the Royal George, and he was beholden to Lady Austen, if not for this subject also, for the occasion which induced him to choose it. It was composed to suit an air which she frequently played on the harpsichord; and he thought it a disadvantage that the air obliged him to write in Alexandrines, a measure which he supposed could suit no ear but a French one. In this he was mistaken; and though he intended nothing more than that the subject and the words should be sufficiently accommodated to the music, he pleased himself, and has pleased, and will please, all to whom it has or hereafter shall be recited or sung. Another, and it is one of the playfullest and most characteristic of his pieces, was in like manner composed to be set and sung by the Sister Anne of those halcyon days. No other woman was ever made the subject of two poems so different, and each so original and perfect in its kind, as the Mary of this ballad. THE DISTRESSED TRAVELLERS; OR, LABOUR IN VAIN 42. An excellent New Song, to a Tune never sung before. 42 This poem, which was published in the Monthly Magazine for January, 1808, has been overlooked in every edition of Cowper's poems from that time. Wheels, no doubt, Go briskly about, But they clatter and rattle, and make such a rout. 3. SHE. Well! now I protest it is charming; Pshaw! never mind; 'Tis not in the wind; We are travelling south, and shall leave it behind. 7. SHE. But should we get there, how shall we get home? Now it is plain That struggling and striving is labour in vain. 8. HE. Stick fast there, while I go and look. SHE Don't go away, for fear I should fall! HE. I have examined it every nook, And what you have here is a sample of all. The dirt we have found, Would be an estate at a farthing a pound. 9. Now, Sister Anne, the guitar you must take; Which critics won't blame, For the sense and the sound, they say, should be the same. Lady Austen has the honour also of having suggested at this time to Cowper the subject of that work which made him the most popular poet of his age, and raised him to a rank in English poetry from which no revolution of taste can detrude him. She had often urged him to try his powers in blank verse at last he promised to comply with her request, if she would give him a subject. "Oh," she replied, "you can never be in want of a subject; you can write upon any ;write upon this Sofa 3!" The answer was made with a wo43 The Elbow Chair, a Rhapsody, by the Rev. E. Cooper, of Droitwyche, Worcestershire, was published in 1765. The coincidence of the nominal subject of the two poems, and of the manner in which both poets treated it, and of their names also, is very remarkable. I know the one poem only by the account of it in the Monthly Review for October, 1765. "We never," says the Reviewer, " met with a more rhapsodical rhapsody than 43 man's readiness, and the capabilities of such a theme were apprehended by Cowper with a poet's quickness of perception. The Task was begun early in the summer of 1783. He never mentioned it to Mr. Unwin till it was finished, and ready for the press. The same silence was observed towards Mr. Newton, who visited Olney in the August of that year, for the second time after his removal. Mr. Newton, in writing from that place, says nothing more of him than that he and Mrs. Unwin were pretty well; but the visit had an unfavourable effect upon Cowper, and the next letter to his friend describes the painful influence which his presence had upon the latent disease. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. MY DEAR FRIEND, Sept. 8, 1783. I have been lately more dejected and more distressed than usual; more harassed by dreams in the night, and more deeply poisoned by them in the following day. I know not what is portended by an alteration for the worse, after eleven years of misery; but firmly believe that it is not designed as the introduction of a change for the better. You know not what I suffered while you were here, nor was there any need you should. Your friendship for me would have made you in some degree a partaker of my woes; and your share in them would have been increased by your inability to help me. Perhaps, indeed, they took a keener edge from the consideration of your presence. The friend of my heart, the person with whom I had formerly taken sweet counsel, no longer useful to me as a minister, no longer pleasant to me as a Christian, was a spectacle that must necessarily add the bitterness of mortification to the sadness of despair. I now see a long winter before me, and am to get through it as I can. this of an honest Welsh parson, in praise of his own country: seated in his Elbow Chair, smoking his pipe, and ruminating on love and liberty and rural prospects, on the marriage act, on angling, on churchyards, on hunting, on patriotism, and on the Scotch favourite." The poem is in blank verse, and the specimen which the reviewer has selected will be found in the supplementary notes. 44 August 3, he writes to Mr. Bull," The I Sofa is ended, but not finished,-a paradox which your natural acumen, sharpened by habits of logical attention, will enable you to reconcile in a moment. Do not imagine, however, that I lounge over it; on the contrary, I find it severe exercise to mould and fashion it to my mind." |