The Book of Gems: Pomfret to Bloomfield

A motley figure, of the Fribble tribe,

Which heart can scarce conceive, or pen describe,
Came simp'ring on; to ascertain whose sex
Twelve sage, impanell'd matrons would perplex.
Nor male, nor female; neither, and yet both;
Of neuter gender, though of Irish growth;
A six-foot suckling, mincing in its gait;
Affected, peevish, prim, and delicate;
Fearful it seem'd, though of athletic make,
Lest brutal breezes should too roughly shake
Its tender form, and savage motion spread,
O'er its pale cheeks, the horrid manly red.

Much did it talk, in its own pretty phrase,
Of genius and of taste, of play'rs and plays;
Much too of writings, which itself had wrote,
Of special merit, though of little note;
For Fate, in a strange humour, had decreed
That what it wrote, none but itself should read;
Much too it chatter'd of dramatic laws,
Misjudging critics, and misplac'd applause;
Then, with a self-complacent jutting air,
It smil'd, it smirk'd, it wriggled to the chair;
And, with an awkward briskness not its own,
Looking around, and perking on the throne,
Triumphant seem'd, when that strange savage dame,
Known but to few, or only known by name,
Plain Common-Sense appeared, by Nature there
Appointed, with plain Truth, to guard the chair.

In the first seat, in robe of various dyes,
A noble wildness flashing from his eyes,
Sat Shakspeare.-In one hand a wand he bore,
For mighty wonders fam'd in days of yore;
The other held a globe, which to his will
Obedient turn'd, and own'd the master's skill:
Things of the noblest kind his genius drew,
And look'd through Nature at a single view:
A loose he gave to his unbounded soul,
And taught new lands to rise, new seas to roll;
Call'd into being scenes unknown before,

And, passing Nature's bounds, was something more.

WILLIAM COWPER, the son of the Rev. Doctor Cowper, and grand nephew to the Lord Chancellor Cowper, was born on the 15th of November, 1731, in the Rectory, at Great Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, of which his father was the then incumbent. The mother of the poet, one of the most tender and affectionate of women, was a descendant of the famous Doctor Donne, and connected otherwise with some of the oldest and noblest families of England. She died when her son was only six years old, but he has immortalized her memory in one of his most beautiful poems; and such was the impression her tenderness had made, that, fifty years after her death, and after all the miseries that had bent their weight upon him, he observed to one of his friends, that scarcely a day had passed in which he did not think of her. At the age of six, Cowper was sent from home to a boarding school, though his infancy is said to have been "delicate in no common degree," and his constitution to have discovered, even at that early age, its morbid tendencies. From this school he was removed to Westminster, where he formed friendships with Lloyd, Churchill, Colman, and Cumberland; and from the sixth form at Westminster he was removed to a solicitor's office in London, where he had for a fellow-clerk the after Lord Chancellor Thurlow. On leaving this office, in 1752, he took chambers in the Middle Temple, of which Inn he had some years before been entered as a member; two years afterwards he was called to the bar; in 1756 he lost his father; and three years after his father's death he received an appointment as Commissioner of Bankrupts, and moved into the Inner Temple. Love and literature, however, now occupied him far more than law; he fell in love with one of those cousins with whom, in one of his delightful letters, he describes himself and Lord Thurlow as "giggling and making giggle " in his uncle's house in Southampton Row; and he amused himself with contributing light literature to the Magazines and Clubs that were set on foot in those days by Bonnell Thornton, Colman, Lloyd, and Hill. But his love was not fortunate; his literature only left him more dissatisfied with his fitness for a professional life; and his original tendencies to a morbid melancholy fearfully increased upon him. In 1763 he was placed with Doctor Cotton, a physician of St. Alban's. He never afterwards enjoyed perfect health; and his disorder was not lessened by the conduct of certain of the religious residents of Olney. When he had any rest he wrote poetry; and in 1782 his first volume appeared. A second appeared in 1785, and towards the close of his life he undertook a translation of Homer, with a view to occupy and relieve his mind with labour. He produced a great work, but he had experienced little or no relief. He died in misery, on the 25th of April, 1800.

Much misplaced comment has been made on the miseries of Cowper. His was not a "religious madness;" and to call it so is an unjust reproach to the best interests and objects of religion. His sufferings are not, after all, to be referred to the action of ordinary causes. He was, with a constitutional disposition to madness in the first instance, the victim of his poetical temperament. It was this which, in the absence of its natural outlet, (for, as we have seen, he wrote little or no poetry during the first forty years of his life,) pushed what might otherwise have been ordinary sensations, to the verge of agony or rapture. His madness may be described as the result of that preexisting faculty of imagination, which, when the slightest object is presented to the agitated senses, instantly distorts it to the shape of what they fear. And this feeling was the necessity, as well as the bane, of the life of Cowper. A portion of the stuff of which his existence was made, it might yet have been conducted to a healthful issue, had his delicate infancy known the peacefulness and security of home, or the constant tenderness of a wise and watchful mother. If Cowper had begun his way in gladness, despondency and madness would not have followed.

Cowper is one of the most delightful of poets, as he was the most affectionate and just-hearted of men. His worst weakness is yet elegant and amiable, his bitterness is always charitable, and nothing can be finer than his bursts of honest and virtuous indignation. His feeling of social beauty and enjoyment is not surpassed, perhaps not equalled, by any other poet in the language; his sense of natural imagery is unerringly true; and his feeling of domestic comfort gave him a wonderful power of domestic pathos. His satires are invariably excellent, and not less severe, because

COWPER.

FROM THE TASK.

HARD-FARING race!

They pick their fuel out of ev'ry hedge,

Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unquench'd The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide

Their flutt'ring rags, and shows a tawny skin,

The vellum of the pedigree they claim.
Great skill have they in palmistry, and more
To conjure clean away the gold they touch,
Conveying worthless dross into its place;

Loud when they beg, dumb only when they steal.

ordinary causes. He was, with a constitutional disposition to madness in the first instance, the victim of his poetical temperament. It was this which, in the absence of its natural outlet, (for, as we have seen, he wrote little or no poetry during the first forty years of his life,) pushed what might otherwise have been ordinary sensations, to the verge of agony or rapture. His madness may be described as the result of that preexisting faculty of imagination, which, when the slightest object is presented to the agitated senses, instantly distorts it to the shape of what they fear. And this feeling was the necessity, as well as the bane, of the life of Cowper. A portion of the stuff of which his existence was made, it might yet have been conducted to a healthful issue, had his delicate infancy known the peacefulness and security of home, or the constant tenderness of a wise and watchful mother. If Cowper had begun his way in gladness, despondency and madness would not have followed.