tranquillity," as if in his gloom of solitude he had little to fear or hope from censure or from praise. That feeling, darkened by his own distempered melancholy, possessed him when he wrote thus to Mr. Newton: MY DEAR FRIEND, August 6, 1785. I found your account of what you experienced in your state of maiden authorship very entertaining, because very natural. I suppose that no man ever made his first sally from the press without a conviction that all eyes and ears would be engaged to attend him; at least, without a thousand anxieties lest they should not. But, however arduous and interesting such an enterprise may be in the first instance, it seems to me that our feelings on the occasion soon become obtuse. I can answer, at least, for one. Mine are by no means what they were when I published my first volume. I am even so indifferent to the matter, that I can truly assert myself guiltless of the very idea of my book sometimes whole days together. God knows that my mind having been occupied more than twelve years in the contemplation of the most distressing subjects, the world, and its opinion of what I write, is become as unimportant to me as the whistling of a bird in a bush. Despair made amusement necessary, and I found poetry the most agreeable amusement. Had I not endeavoured to perform my best, it would not have amused me at all. The mere blotting of so much paper would have been but indifferent sport. God gave me grace also to wish that I might not write in vain. Accordingly, I have mingled much truth with much trifle; and such truths as deserved, at least, to be clad as well and as handsomely as I could clothe them. If the world approve me not, so much the worse for them, but not for me. I have only endeavoured to serve them, and the loss will be their own. And as to their commendations, if I should chance to win them, I feel myself equally invulnerable there. The view that I have had of myself, for many years, has been so truly humiliating, that I think the praises of all mankind could not hurt God knows that I speak my present sense of the matter at least most truly, when I say, that the admiration of creatures like myself seems to me a weapon the least dangerous that my worst enemy could employ against me. I am fortified against it by such solidity of real self-abasement, that I deceive myself me. most egregiously if I do not heartily despise it. Praise belongeth to God; and I seem to myself to covet it no more than I covet divine honours. Could I assuredly hope that God would at last deliver me, I should have reason to thank him for all that I have suffered, were it only for the sake of this single fruit of my affliction,—that it has taught me how much more contemptible I am in myself than I ever before suspected, and has reduced my former share of self-knowledge (of which at that time I had a tolerable good opinion) to a mere nullity, in comparison with what I have acquired since. Self is a subject of inscrutable misery and mischief, and can never be studied to so much advantage as in the dark: for as the bright beams of the sun seem to impart a beauty to the foulest objects, and can make even a dunghill smile, so the light of God's countenance, vouchsafed to a fallen creature, so sweetens him and softens him for the time, that he seems, both to others and to himself, to have nothing savage or sordid about him. But the heart is a nest of serpents, and will be such while it continues to beat. If God cover the mouth of that nest with his hand, they are hush and snug; but if he withdraw his hand, the whole family lift up their heads and hiss, and are as active and venomous as ever. This I always professed to believe from the time that I had embraced the truth, but never knew it as I know it now. To what end I have been made to know it as I do, whether for the benefit of others or for my own, or for both, or for neither, will appear hereafter. The first encouragement which he received was from his old schoolfellow Lord Dartmouth, to whom he had sent the volume. He had read only a part of it; of that part, however, says Cowper, he expresses himself in terms with which my authorship has abundant cause to be satisfied, and adds that the specimen has made him impatient for the whole. He had ordered a copy also to Mr. Bacon, the sculptor, who being a friend of Mr. Newton's, and an admirer of his first volume, had made himself known to Cowper by sending him a print of Lord Chatham's monument. The poet had been greatly pleased with it: "I have most of the monuments in the Abbey by heart," he says, "but I recollect none that ever gave me so much pleasure" and while this impression was yet warm, he tr introduced the artist and his work into the Task 16. Mr. Bacon's reply is one of the few letters to Cowper which have escaped destruction. After thanking him for the present, he says", "I should not have room in my paper for observations on the different places that struck me; this might serve for an excuse, as well as another equally true, that indeed I feared I might sink in your opinion, with respect to my taste. There is a disadvantage attending a reputation somewhat higher than one's deserts, that it puts one upon the stretch, and sometimes upon shifts, to support it. But indeed it is nothing more than the truth when I say, that I am heartily glad your book was written, not only on my own account, but because I trust the best interests of mankind will be promoted by it. There are many that will not read a professedly religious book: the name of a clergyman to a treatise makes them cry out 'priestcraft,' and shut the book immediately. The peculiar phraseology of Christians excites in such persons the idea of Methodism, which includes in it those of enthusiasm and nonsense; so that a bar is raised at the very threshold, which usually prevents their entrance entirely. A writer on whom God has bestowed superior talents, commands their respect and attention; he will meet them on their own ground; he touches the springs of human nature, and sets them about what they so seldom do,—a thinking. This is a great point gained, for we are lost for want of consideration; and while they are detained by the liveliness and strength of the imagery, the beauty of the language and melody of the verse 18, who knows but the sentiment may enter into the soul? We pretend not to change the heart, but He who can, has made the use of probable means our duty; and having this single eye, we can never en Gives more than female beauty to a stone, And Chatham's eloquence to marble lips.-Book I. 17 July 18, 1785. 18 Perhaps Mr. Bacon remembered the first stanza in Herbert's Church Porch: Thou whose sweet youth and early hopes enhance Rhyme thee to good, and make a bait of pleasure. tirely miss our aim. If the son of peace be there, our peace shall rest upon them; otherwise it shall return to us again.' "My dear sir, it is in vain my saying I have often wished to see you in London; if we can believe a poet, you are too much attached to sylvan scenes to venture into the suffocating air I am forced to breathe. In truth, I was obliged to remember it was the language of poetry, for I had in imagination packed up my alls, and reared my cottage in the midst of some fertile valley, on the border of some scarce-penetrable wood. I dreamed that there the weary might be at rest; but awaking, I recollected that I should carry that of which sometimes I think I am most weary, along with me. Alas, it is only in the grave that this wicked heart will cease from troubling! "Well, I humbly hope that you and I are both placed by the Divine Hand, not only as we shall answer his great design, (for that all creatures must do,) but as our present situations shall best advance our final felicity. Our present happiness depends upon such an extensive concurrence of circumstances, as makes it absolutely beyond the calculation of mortals; but when we consider ourselves as in a state of discipline for another mode of existence, the question is involved in twofold darkness. "I have rambled so much as to have left myself scarce room to thank you for the kind partiality with which you have mentioned my name in your book. What you said, I was very near believing, for I wished it true; and I could almost forgive myself for being pleased with it. If I am censured, I will throw it upon the verse: perhaps I should blush to have as much said of me in prose. Indeed it was so well said, it is most likely to be fiction, which, according to Waller, the Muses most delight in. "You will easily perceive I have wrote what comes uppermost. I confide in your candour, and to the feelings of my heart, which cannot have dictated any thing incompatible with that sincere respect and esteem with which I am, dear sir, Your obliged and obedient servant, J. BACON. In this letter19 Mr. Bacon touched upon one of those causes 19 This letter is one of the valuable communications for which the Editor and the public are obliged to Mr. Upcott. to which the immediate popularity that the publication of the Task obtained for its author may be ascribed. The most impassioned and imaginative of our devotional writers has pronounced a severe but well-founded condemnation upon the generality of our books of devotion, saying, that they are, in a large degree, the occasion of that great indevotion which prevails among nominal Christians. They administer as physic that which never can be willingly taken nor well assimilated unless it be received as food. But never were intellectual delight, and moral instruction, and religious feeling more happily blended than in this poem: never was any purpose more effectually accomplished than that which Cowper proposed to himself in composing it; and the hope which Mr. Bacon expressed was speedily fulfilled. : Undoubtedly John Gilpin led the way to this popularity. Those who remember the effect of Henderson's recitation have attested this and if Johnson had persisted in his first intention of excluding that ballad from the volume, because it had already been printed in so many forms and dispersed every where through town and country, he would have committed a greater mistake than when he suppressed Mr. Newton's preface. Upon second thoughts he not only admitted it, but specified it in the title page and in the advertisement. Cowper was fully sensible of the service it had rendered him. He says to Mr. Newton, "I know no more than you what kind of a market my book has found; but this I believe, that had not Henderson died, and had it been worth my while to have given him a hundred pounds to have read it in public, it would have been more popular than it is 20" The first volume had sold so slowly that it was not thought prudent to publish the Task and its appendants as a second; but the first, with a complete list of its contents, was advertised at the end of the book; and of the many who were induced to read the Task because it was written by the author of John Gilpin, not a few were led to inquire for the previous volume because it was by the author of the Task. In the second edition, which was called for in the ensuing year, the two volumes were connected as first and second, and in the numerous editions that have succeeded each other they have never been disunited. 20 Dec. 10, 1785. |