when the accent and the phrases of the " Spectator" and the "Tatler" still lingered upon the public tongue. Milton he read in boyhood with a passion of delight; and the ear is often reminded in the "Task" of his majestic pauses. The writers, however, who chiefly coloured and shaped his poetry, were unquestionably Churchill and Young. His admiration of Churchill never wavered. Cowper was about fourteen years old when the concluding portion of the "Night Thoughts" appeared; and they had reached the height of their fame during his sojourn in the Temple. The resemblance to Young is not to be looked for in direct imitations, but in certain peculiarities of thought and utterance, scattered over the poems. To this class may be assigned the description of the gipsy encampment: -the sportive wind blows wide Their flutt'ring rags, and shows a tawny skin, And all these charms of fancy, tenderness, and wisdom are reflected through language nearly without a stain or a flaw. Purer, sweeter, simpler English never was written. La Fontaine gives the best idea of it to a French, as Wordsworth to a native reader. Several of the shorter poems are remarkable, as we see in Herbert, for the monosyllabic flow of the words, which not only enriches their music, but imparts to it the hearty Saxon tone. This, like every other excellence, he improved by labour. He did not take his pen from a line while there was the faintest hope of rendering it better; completing his work slowly, with many backward and forward steps of the artist, to judge of the effect of distance, combination, and colour. And so by genius and by toil, he has climbed to no mean seat in that Temple of Fame which he honoured and sought. Seven years before his death, he dreamed a dream of Pindus, and related it to Hayley. He seemed to be in a house in the city of London, with much company assembled in the room, when, looking to the further end of it, he saw a figure which he immediately knew to be that of Milton. He was gravely attired in the fashion of the times. Cowper, after the transport of astonishment and delight had passed away, determined to accost him, and was received with a welcome of mingled dignity and sweetness, and listened to with a smile and a gentle bending of the head, as he spoke of the "Paradise Lost." Milton then took his hand affectionately, and said, "Well, you, for your part, will do well also." The dream melted with the sun, but its interpretation is known. THE 4 POEMS OF COWPER. VERSES WRITTEN AT BATH, ON FINDING [THE opinion long prevailed that Cowper began to be a poet late in life. It was an error which he himself encouraged:-"At fifty years of age," he told Mr. Park (1792), "I commenced author; it is a whim that has served me longest and best, and will probably be my last." This was a mere extravagance of the pen. He had been a rhymer from boyhood, and mentions a translation from Tibullus, done in his fifteenth year. In one of his letters he alludes to the ballads which he composed, while in the Temple, upon the model of Rowe, Congreve, and Prior, and of which "two or three had the honour to be popular." The poem on the "Heel of a Shoe" is the earliest specimen of his genius that has reached us, and it shows the music of the "Task" to have been, not an invented, but a recollected tune. The manner of Milton was not copied and burlesqued with more happiness by Philips; while in the moral of the verse "The Splendid Shilling" is greatly excelled.] FORTUNE! I thank thee: gentle Goddess! thanks! She would have thank'd thee rather, hadst thou cast And bowel-raking pains of emptiness, Nor noontide feast, nor ev'ning's cool repast, Hopes she from this-presumptuous, tho', perhaps, B Vainglorious fool! unknowing what he found, His AN ODE. ON READING SIR CHARLES GRANDISON, IN 1753 SAY, ye apostate and profane, Did e'er your idly-wasted love And lift you from the crowd? Would you the race of glory run, The labours of the illustrious course To arm against repeated ill To rescue from the tyrant's sword From lawless insult to defend These, these distinguish from the crowd, Whose bosoms with these virtues heave, Then ask ye, from what cause on earth To call the blessing down. |