WILLIAM COWPER.* (1855.) [The chief source of Bagehot's facts in this article, though not referred to below, was Southey's admirable memoir and edition of Cowper's correspondence. ED.] FOR the English, after all, the best literature is the English we understand the language; the manners are familiar to us, the scene at home, the associations our own. Of course a man who has not read Homer is like a man who has not seen the ocean : there is a great object of which he has no idea. But we cannot be always seeing the ocean its face is always large, its smile is bright, the ever-sounding shore sounds on, yet we have no property in them; we stop and gaze, we pause and draw our breath, we look and wonder at the grandeur of the other world, but we live on shore. We fancy associations of unknown things and distant climes, of strange men and strange manners, but we are ourselves. Foreigners do not behave as we should, nor do the Greeks. What a strength of imagination, what a long practice, what a facility in the details of fancy is required to picture their past and unknown world! They are deceased. They are said to be immortal, because they have written a good epitaph: but they are gone; their life and their manners have passed away. We read with interest in the "Catalogue of the Ships" *Poetical Works of William Cowper. Edited by Robert Bell. J. W. Parker & Son. The Life of William Cowper, with Selections from his Correspondence. Being Vol. i. of the Library of Christian Biography, superintended by the Rev. Robert Bickersteth. Seeley, Jackson & Co. : "The men of Argos and Tiryntha next, And from Caristus and from Styra came To split the hauberk with the shortened spear." But they are dead. "So am not I,' said the foolish fat scullion." We are the English of the present day we have cows and calves, corn and cotton; we hate the Russians; we know where the Crimea is; we believe in Manchester the great. A large expanse is around us: a fertile land of corn and orchards and pleasant hedge-rows and rising trees. and noble prospects and large black woods and old church towers. The din of great cities comes mellowed from afar. The green fields, the half-hidden hamlets, the gentle leaves soothe us "with a soft inland murmur." We have before us a vast seat of interest and toil and beauty and power, and this Here is our home. The use of foreign literature is like the use of foreign travel, -it imprints in early and susceptible years a deep impression of great and strange and noble objects; but we cannot live with these. They do not resemble our familiar life; they do not bind themselves to our intimate affection; they are picturesque and striking, like strangers and wayfarers, but they are not of our home, or homely; they cannot speak to our “business # ‘Iliad,” Book ii., Cowper's translation, revised by Southey. "Tristram Shandy," Book iv., Chap. vii. Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey." * and bosoms"; they cannot touch the hearth of the soul. It would be better to have no outlandish literature in the mind than to have it the principal thing we should be like accomplished vagabonds without a country, like men with a hundred acquaintances and no friends. We need an intellectual possession analogous to our own life, which reflects, embodies, improves it; on which we can repose; which will recur to us in the placid moments — which will be a latent principle even in the acute crisesof our life. Let us be thankful if our researches in foreign literature enable us, as rightly used they will enable us, better to comprehend our own. Let us venerate what is old, and marvel at what is far; let us read our own books, let us understand ourselves. - With these principles (if such they may be called) in our minds, we gladly devote these early pages of our journal to the new edition of Cowper, with which Mr. Bell has favored us. There is no writer more exclusively English; there is no one-or hardly one, perhaps - whose excellences are more natural to our soil, and seem so little able to bear transplantation. We do not remember to have seen his name in any Continental book. Professed histories of English literature, we dare say, name him; but we cannot recall any such familiar and cursory mention as would evince a real knowledge and hearty appreciation of his writings. The edition itself is a good one. The life of Cowper which is prefixed to it, though not striking, is sensible. The notes are clear, explanatory, and so far as we know accurate. The special introductions to each of the poems are short and judicious, and bring to the mind at the proper moment the passages in Cowper's letters most clearly relating to the work in hand. The typography is not very elegant, but it * Bacon, Dedication to Essays. This was the second article in the first number of the National Review. is plain and business-like: there is no affectation of cheap ornament. The little book which stands second on our list belongs to a class of narratives written for a peculiar public, inculcating peculiar doctrines, and adapted (at least in part) to a peculiar taste. We dissent from many of these tenets, and believe that they derive no support, but rather the contrary, from the life of Cowper. In previous publications, written for the same persons, these opinions have been applied to that melancholy story in a manner which it requires strong writing to describe; in this little volume they are more rarely expressed, and when they are, it is with diffidence, tact, and judgment. Only a most pedantic critic would attempt to separate the criticism on Cowper's works from a narrative of his life; indeed, such an attempt would be scarcely intelligible. Cowper's poems are almost as much connected with his personal circumstances as his letters, and his letters are as purely autobiographical as those of any man can be. If all information concerning him had perished save what his poems contain, the attention of critics would be diverted from the examination of their interior characteristics to a conjectural dissertation on the personal fortunes of the author. The Germans would have much to say. It would be debated in Tübingen who were the Three Hares, why "The Sofa" was written, why John Gilpin was not called William. Halle would show with great clearness that there was no reason why he should be called William; that it appeared by the bills of mortality that several other persons born about the same period had also been called John and the ablest of all the professors would finish the subject with a monograph showing that there was a special fitness in the name John, and that any one with the æsthetic sense, who (like the professor) had devoted many years exclusively to the perusal of the poem, would be certain that any other name would be quite "paralogistic, and in every manner impossible and inappropriate." It would take a German to write upon the Hares. William Cowper, the poet, was born on Nov. 26, 1731, at his father's parsonage at Berkhampstead. Of his father, who was chaplain to the king, we know nothing of importance. Of his mother, who had been named Donne, and was a Norfolk lady, he has often made mention; and it appears that he regarded the faint recollection which he retained of her for she died early-with peculiar tenderness. In later life, and when his sun was going down in gloom and sorrow, he recurred eagerly to opportunities of intimacy with her most distant relatives, and wished to keep alive the idea of her in his mind. That idea was not of course very definite, - indeed, as described in his poems, it is rather the abstract idea of what a mother should be than anything else; but he was able to recognize her picture, and there is a suggestion of cakes and sugar-plums which gives a life and vividness to the rest. Soon after her death he was sent to a school kept by a man named Pitman, at which he always described himself as having suffered exceedingly from the cruelty of one of the boys, he could never see him or think of him, he has told us, without trembling; and there must have been some solid reason for this terror, since — even in those days, when TUTTO meant "I strike," and "boy" denoted a thing to be beaten-this juvenile inflicter of secret stripes was actually expelled. From Mr. Pitman, Cowper, on account of a weakness in the eyes which remained with him through life, was transferred to the care of an oculist, a dreadful fate even for the most cheerful boy, and certainly not likely to cure one with any disposition to melancholy; hardly indeed can the boldest mind, in its toughest hour of manly fortitude, endure to be domesticated with an operation chair. Thence he went to Westminster, of which he has left us |