have high merit, so fills the imagination, unoccupied before, with the story, characters, and embellishments, all identified with its peculiar phraseology, that even a superior work afterwards, embracing the same subjects, cannot rival it. If, in two of our great seminaries, Cowper's Homer were the reading book of the scholars at the one, and Pope's of those at the other, it is most probable, that the cleverest lads,those who really enjoyed the poetry of the translation, would, to their lives' end, prefer that which had made the first indelible impression upon their minds; and, in such a case, it would be as difficult to supersede Cowper by Pope, as it is generally to supersede Pope by Cowper. Celebrated as Pope's translation is, it may be questioned whether there are a thousand persons living who have read it through, since they were thirty years of age. As for Cowper's, it is scarcely known now, except as an unsaleable book in the trade catalogues. Between the school of Dryden and Pope, with their few remembered successors, not one of whom ranks now above a fourth-rate poet,-for Young, Thomson, Goldsmith, Gray, and Collins, though flourishing in the interval, were not of their school, but all, in their respective ways, originals;-between the school of Dryden and Pope, and our undisciplined, independent contemporaries, Cowper stands as having closed the age of the former illustrious masters, and commenced that of the eccentric leaders of the modern fashions in song. We cannot stop to trace the affinity which he bears to either of these generations, so dissimilar from each other; but it would xxvii be easy to show how little he owed to his immediate forerunners, and how much his immediate followers have been indebted to him. All the cant phrases, all the technicalities of the former school, he utterly threw away, and by his rejection of them they became obsolete. He boldly adopted cadences of verse unattempted before, which though frequently uncouth, and sometimes scarcely reducible to rhythm, were not seldom ingeniously significant, and signally energetic. He feared not to employ colloquial, philosophical, judicial idioms, and forms of argument, and illustrations, which enlarged the vocabulary of poetical terms, less by recurring to obsolete ones, (which has been too prodigally done since,) but by hazardous, and generally happy innovations of more recent origin, which have become graceful and dignified by usage, though Pope and his imitators durst not have touched them. The eminent adventurous revivers of English poetry about thirty years ago, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, in their blank verse trode directly in the steps of Cowper, and, in their early productions at least, were each, in a measure, what he had made them. Our Author may be legitimately styled the father of this triumvirate, who are, in truth, the living fathers of the innumerable race of moderns, whom no human ingenuity could well classify into their respective schools. The death of Cowper occurred in the year 1800, but nothing of a character to influence public taste had proceeded from his pen since 1785, his Homer having been too little noticed to add either to his fame or his authority as a poet. A few brief stric tures on his principal works, will best illustrate his peculiar claims to rank among the greatest benefactors of his country, in the peaceful walks of elegant literature. The larger portion of his first volume* consists of rhyming pieces in ten-syllable measure. The first of these, entitled TABLE TALK, is a dialogue in verse, of which the subjects are chiefly the commonplace politics of the day: and the Author, by an easy pedestrian pace, has got midway through his theme before he kindles into any thing like fury, or betrays any strong symptom of the diviner mood. indeed, comes a glorious burst, in which the patriot, the Christian, and the bard, all unite in a warning, sufficient to alarm the most supine statesman, touching the real perils, and false security, of a nation hastening unconsciously to ruin, through the undermining vices of luxury and licentiousness. They trust to navies, and their navies fail,- courage dies But all they trust in withers, as it must, ; When He commands, in whom they place no trust. A long despised, but now victorious, host; Gives liberty the last, the mortal shock; Then, * The words first and second volume, in the following pages, refer to the original edition, thus divided, but here collected into one. Cowper's versification in these ten-syllable rhymes is very irregular, frequently harsh, sometimes heavy, and only occasionally harmonious or fluent. The whole strain of his argumentation is rather rhetorical than poetic; the illustrations, however, are often exceedingly ingenious and sparkling: sentiments with the force of proverbs; couplets with the point of epigrams; similes, which are sometimes allegories, sometimes fables; short dramatic scenes, in which characters, sketched to the life, with a few slight strokes, enter, act, and converse. You see, you hear them, they vanish, and the reader is left alone with the Poet. These embellishments belong nearly as much to his blank verse as to his rhyme; the strictures on versification, its faults, imperfections, and ungraciousness, belong to the latter principally; but whether these deserve to be thus branded, may admit of some difference in opinion. Cowper adopted his system deliberately, perversely, it may be said,—but in truth, his ear having been unpractised in the artificial construction of verse for many years, might be defective in "nicely discerning" the delicacies of richly melodious numbers, winding through every possible variety of cadence, yet never languishing nor stumbling; never feeble, monotonous, or unnecessarily rugged. A poet, like our Author, who has to form the character of his versification at the age of fifty years, will almost certainly be satisfied with a measure less graceful and flowing, than if he had continued to follow the fine art of thus embodying thoughts, images, and feelings, through the glowing, enterprising days of youth, and "prime of man Besides this, Cowper hood, where youth ended." modelled his metre (so far as he was influenced by any precedent) after Churchill, in preference to Pope. Pope's reign of fashion in song had declined, and Churchill, coarse, vehement, and sententious, had assumed the dictatorship, while Cowper was yet a young man. The popularity of the former, at the time when the latter was most susceptible of poetical impressions, from another and a master mind, very naturally gave Churchill the ascendency over his more polished predecessor. But there is an ardour and impetuosity in the rough, bold, powerful numbers of the author of the Rosciad, which are seldom perceived in the calmer and more tempered strains of our Author. At the same time, Cowper well knew what good verse ought to be, and no poet has ever more successfully characterized and exemplified its peculiarities and requisites. Compared with the following lines, Pope's celebrated clause in the "Art of Criticism," (which Dr. Johnson has very honestly criticised,) "Soft be the strain when zephyr gently blows," &c. is mere puerile drivelling : "I know the mind, that feels indeed the fire Along the nerve of every feeling line. |