I can say neither more nor less than this, that when our dear friend, the General, sent me his opinion on the specimen, quoting those very words from it, he added—"With this part I was particularly pleased: there is nothing in poetry more descriptive." Such were his very words. Taste, my dear, is various; there is nothing so various; and even between persons of the best taste there are diversities of opinion on the same subject, for which it is not possible to account. So much for these matters.
You advise me to consult the General and to confide in him. I follow your advice, and have done both. By the last post I asked his permission to send him the books of my Homer, as fast as I should finish them off. I shall be glad of his remarks, and more glad, than of any thing, to do that which I hope may be agreeable to him. They will of course pass into your hands before they are sent to Johnson. The quire that I sent is now in the hands of Johnson's friend. I intended to have told you in my last, but forgot it, that Johnson behaves very handsomely in the affair of my two volumes. He acts with a liberality not often found in persons of his occupation, and to mention it when occasion calls me to it is a justice due to him.
I am very much pleased with Mr. Stanley's letter—several compliments were paid me on the subject of that first volume by my own friends, but I do not recollect that I ever knew the opinion of a stranger about it before, whether favourable or otherwise; I only heard by a side wind that it was very much read in Scotland, and more than here.
Farewell, my dearest cousin, whom we expect, of whom we talk continually, and whom we continually long for.
W. C.
P. S. Your anxious wishes for my success delight me, and you may rest assured, my dear, that I have all the ambition on the subject that you can wish me to feel. I more than admire my author. I often stand astonished at his beauties: I am for ever amused with the translation of him, and I have received a thousand encouragements. These are all so many happy omens that I hope shall be verified by the event.
Olney, March 13, 1786.
My dear Friend,—I seem to be about to write to you, but I foresee that it will not be a letter, but a scrap that I shall send you. I could tell you things, that, knowing how much you interest yourself in my success, I am sure would please you, but every moment of my leisure is necessarily spent at Troy. I am revising my translation, and bestowing on it more labour than at first. At the repeated solicitation of General Cowper, who had doubtless irrefragable reason on his side, I have put my book into the hands of the most extraordinary critic that I have ever heard of. He is a Swiss; has an accurate knowledge of English, and, for his knowledge of Homer, has I verily believe no fellow. Johnson recommended him to me. I am to send him the quires as fast as I finish them off, and the first is now in his hands. I have the comfort to be able to tell you that he is very much pleased with what he has seen: Johnson wrote to me lately on purpose to tell me so. Things having taken this turn, I fear that I must beg a release from my engagement to put the MS. into your hands. I am bound to print as soon as three hundred shall have subscribed, and consequently have not an hour to spare.
People generally love to go where they are admired, yet Lady Hesketh complains of not having seen you.
Yours,
W. C.
Olney, April 1, 1786.
My dear Friend,—I have made you wait long for an answer, and am now obliged to write in a hurry. But, lest my longer silence should alarm you, hurried as I am, still I write. I told you, if I mistake not, that the circle of my correspondence has lately been enlarged, and it seems still increasing; which, together with my poetical business, makes an hour a momentous affair. Pardon an unintentional pun. You need not fear for my health: it suffers nothing by my employment.
We who in general see no company are at present in expectation of a great deal, at least, if three different visits may be called so. Mr. and Mrs. Powley, in the first place, are preparing for a journey southward. She is far from well, but thinks herself well enough to travel, and feels an affectionate impatience for another sight of Olney.[325]
In the next place, we expect, as soon as the season shall turn up bright and warm, General Cowper and his son. I have not seen him these twenty years and upwards, but our intercourse, having been lately revived, is likely to become closer, warmer, and more intimate than ever.
Lady Hesketh also comes down in June, and if she can be accommodated with any thing in the shape of a dwelling at Olney, talks of making it always, in part, her summer residence. It has pleased God that I should, like Joseph, be put into a well, and, because there are no Midianites in the way to deliver me, therefore my friends are coming down into the well to see me.
I wish you, we both wish you, all happiness in your new habitation: at least you will be sure to find the situation more commodious. I thank you for all your hints concerning my work, which shall be duly attended to. You may assure all whom it may concern, that all offensive elisions will be done away. With Mrs. Unwin's love to yourself and Mrs. Newton, I remain, my dear friend, affectionately yours,
W. C.
The friends of Cowper were not without alarm at his engaging in so lengthened and perilous an undertaking as a new version of the Iliad, when the popular translation of Pope seemed to render such an attempt superfluous. To one of his correspondents, who urged this objection, he makes the following reply.
Olney, April 5, 1786.
I did, as you suppose, bestow all possible consideration on the subject of an apology for my Homerican undertaking. I turned the matter about in my mind a hundred different ways, and, in every way in which it would present itself, found it an impracticable business. It is impossible for me, with what delicacy soever I may manage it, to state the objections that lie against Pope's translation, without incurring odium and the imputation of arrogance; foreseeing this danger, I choose to say nothing.
W. C.
P. S. You may well wonder at my courage, who have undertaken a work of such enormous length. You would wonder more if you knew that I translated the whole Iliad with no other help than a Clavis. But I have since equipped myself better for this immense journey, and am revising the work in company with a good commentator.
The motives which induced Cowper to engage in a new version of the Iliad originated in the conviction, that, however Pope's translation might be embellished with harmonious numbers, and all the charm and grace of poetic diction, it failed in being a correct and faithful representation of that immortal production. Its character is supposed to be justly designated by its title of "Pope's Homer." It is not the Homer of the heroic ages; it does not express his majesty—his unadorned, yet sublime simplicity. It is Homer in modern costume, decked in a court dress, and in the trappings of refined taste and fashion. His sententious brevity, which possesses the art of conveying much compressed in a short space, is also expanded and dilated, till it resembles a paraphrase, and an imitation, rather than a just and accurate version of its expressive and speaking original. We believe this to be the general estimate of the merits of Pope's translation. Profound scholars, and one especially, whose discriminating taste and judgment conferred authority on his decision, Dr. Cyril Jackson, (formerly the well-known Dean of Christ Church, Oxford,) concur in this opinion. But notwithstanding this redundance of artificial ornament, and the "laboured elegance of polished version," the translation of Pope will perhaps always retain its pre-eminence, and be considered what Johnson calls it, "the noblest version of poetry which the world has ever seen," and "its publication one of the greatest events in the annals of learning."[326]
Of the merits of Cowper's translation, we shall have occasion hereafter to speak. But it is due to the cause of sound criticism, and to the merited claims of his laborious undertaking, to declare that he who would wish to know and understand Homer must seek for him in the expressive and unadorned version of Cowper.
In the course of the following letters we shall discover many interesting particulars of the progress of this undertaking.
Cowper was now looking forward with great anxiety, to the promised visit of Lady Hesketh. The following letter adverts to the preparations making at the vicarage at Olney for her reception; and to her delicate mode of administering to his personal comforts and enjoyments.
Olney, April 17, 1786.
My dearest Cousin,—If you will not quote Solomon, my dearest cousin, I will. He says, and as beautifully as truly—"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life!" I feel how much reason he had on his side when he made this observation, and am myself sick of your fortnight's delay.
The vicarage was built by Lord Dartmouth, and was not finished till some time after we arrived at Olney, consequently it is new. It is a smart stone building, well sashed, by much too good for the living, but just what I would wish for you. It has, as you justly concluded from my premises, a garden, but rather calculated for use than ornament. It is square, and well walled, but has neither arbour nor alcove nor other shade, except the shadow of the house. But we have two gardens, which are yours. Between your mansion and ours is interposed nothing but an orchard, into which a door, opening out of our garden, affords us the easiest communication imaginable, will save the round about by the town, and make both houses one. Your chamber windows look over the river, and over the meadows, to a village called Emberton, and command the whole length of a long bridge, described by a certain poet, together with a view of the road at a distance.[327] Should you wish for books at Olney, you must bring them with you, or you will wish in vain, for I have none but the works of a certain poet, Cowper, of whom perhaps you have heard, and they are as yet but two volumes. They may multiply hereafter, but at present they are no more.
You are the first person for whom I have heard Mrs. Unwin express such feelings as she does for you. She is not profuse in professions, nor forward to enter into treaties of friendship with new faces, but when her friendship is once engaged, it may be confided in, even unto death. She loves you already, and how much more will she love you before this time twelvemonth! I have indeed endeavoured to describe you to her, but, perfectly as I have you by heart, I am sensible that my picture cannot do you justice. I never saw one that did. Be you what you may, you are much beloved, and will be so at Olney, and Mrs. U. expects you with the pleasure that one feels at the return of a long absent, dear relation; that is to say, with a pleasure such as mine. She sends you her warmest affections.
On Friday, I received a letter from dear Anonymous,[328] apprizing me of a parcel that the coach would bring me on Saturday. Who is there in the world that has, or thinks he has, reason to love me to the degree that he does? But it is no matter. He chooses to be unknown, and his choice is, and ever shall be so sacred to me, that, if his name lay on the table before me reversed, I would not turn the paper about, that I might read it. Much as it would gratify me to thank him, I would turn my eyes away from the forbidden discovery. I long to assure him that those same eyes, concerning which he expresses such kind apprehensions, lest they should suffer by this laborious undertaking, are as well as I could expect them to be, if I were never to touch either book or pen. Subject to weakness and occasional slight inflammations it is probable that they will always be, but I cannot remember the time when they enjoyed anything so like an exemption from those infirmities as at present. One would almost suppose that reading Homer were the best ophthalmic in the world. I should be happy to remove his solicitude on the subject, but it is a pleasure that he will not let me enjoy. Well then, I will be content without it; and so content, that though I believe you, my dear, to be in full possession of all this mystery, you shall never know me, while you live, either directly, or by hints of any sort, attempt to extort or to steal the secret from you: I should think myself as justly punishable as the Bethshemites, for looking into the ark, which they were not allowed to touch.
I have not sent for Kerr,[329] for Kerr can do nothing but send me to Bath, and to Bath I cannot go for a thousand reasons. The summer will set me up again; I grow fat every day, and shall be as big as Gog or Magog, or both put together, before you come.
I did actually live three years with Mr. Chapman, a solicitor, that is to say, I slept three years in his house, but I lived, that is to say, I spent my days in Southampton Row, as you very well remember. There was I, and the future Lord Chancellor, constantly employed from morning to night in giggling and making giggle, instead of studying the law. Oh fie, cousin! how could you do so? I am pleased with Lord Thurlow's inquiries about me. If he takes it into that inimitable head of his, he may make a man of me yet. I could love him heartily, if he would deserve it at my hands. That I did so once is certain. The Duchess of ——, who in the world set her agoing? But if all the duchesses in the world were spinning, like so many whirligigs, for my benefit, I would not stop them. It is a noble thing to be a poet, it makes all the world so lively. I might have preached more sermons than even Tillotson did, and better, and the world would have been still fast asleep, but a volume of verse is a fiddle that puts the universe in motion.
Yours,
My dear friend and cousin,
W. C.
Olney, April 24, 1786.
Your letters are so much my comfort, that I often tremble lest by accident I should be disappointed; and the more, because you have been, more than once, so engaged in company on the writing day, that I have had a narrow escape. Let me give you a piece of good counsel, my cousin: follow my laudable example, write when you can, take time's forelock in one hand, and a pen in the other, and so make sure of your opportunity. It is well for me that you write faster than anybody, and more in an hour than other people in two, else I know not what would become of me. When I read your letters, I hear you talk, and I love talking letters dearly, especially from you. Well! the middle of June will not be always a thousand years off, and when it comes I shall hear you, and see you too, and shall not care a farthing then if you do not touch a pen in a month. By the way, you must either send me or bring me some more paper, for before the moon shall have performed a few more revolutions, I shall not have a scrap left, and tedious revolutions they are just now, that is certain.
I give you leave to be as peremptory as you please, especially at a distance; but, when you say that you are a Cowper, (and the better it is for the Cowpers that such you are, and I give them joy of you, with all my heart,) you must not forget, that I boast myself a Cowper too, and have my humours, and fancies, and purposes, and determinations, as well as others of my name, and hold them as fast as they can. You indeed tell me how often I shall see you when you come. A pretty story truly. I am an he Cowper, my dear, and claim the privileges that belong to my noble sex. But these matters shall be settled, as my cousin Agamemnon used to say, at a more convenient time.
I shall rejoice to see the letter you promise me, for, though I met with a morsel of praise last week, I do not know that the week current is likely to produce me any, and having lately been pretty much pampered with that diet, I expect to find myself rather hungry by the time when your next letter shall arrive. It will therefore be very opportune. The morsel above alluded to came from—whom do you think? From ——, but she desires that her authorship may be a secret. And in my answer I promised not to divulge it, except to you. It is a pretty copy of verses, neatly written and well turned, and when you come you shall see them. I intend to keep all pretty things to myself till then, that they may serve me as a bait to lure you hither more effectually. The last letter that I had from —— I received so many years since, that it seems as if it had reached me a good while before I was born.
I was grieved at the heart that the General could not come, and that illness was in part the cause that hindered him. I have sent him, by his express desire, a new edition of the first book and half of the second. He would not suffer me to send it to you, my dear, lest you should post it away to Maty at once. He did not give that reason, but being shrewd I found it.
The grass begins to grow, and the leaves to bud, and every thing is preparing to be beautiful against you come.
Adieu!
W. C.
P. S. You inquire of our walks, I perceive, as well as our rides. They are beautiful. You inquire also concerning a cellar. You have two cellars. Oh! what years have passed since we took the same walks, and drank out of the same bottle! but a few more weeks, and then!
Olney, May 8, 1786.
I did not at all doubt that your tenderness for my feelings had inclined you to suppress in your letters to me the intelligence concerning Maty's critique, that yet reached me from another quarter. When I wrote to you, I had not learned it from the General, but from my friend Bull, who only knew it by hearsay. The next post brought me the news of it from the first mentioned, and the critique itself inclosed. Together with it came also a squib discharged against me in the "Public Advertiser." The General's letter found me in one of my most melancholy moods, and my spirits did not rise on the receipt of it. The letter indeed that he had cut from the newspaper gave me little pain, both because it contained nothing formidable, though written with malevolence enough, and because a nameless author can have no more weight with his readers than the reason which he has on his side can give him. But Maty's animadversions hurt me more. In part they appeared to me unjust, and in part ill-natured, and yet, the man himself being an oracle in every body's account, I apprehended that he had done me much mischief. Why he says that the translation is far from exact is best known to himself. For I know it to be as exact as is compatible with poetry; and prose translations of Homer are not wanted, the world has one already. But I will not fill my letter to you with hypercriticisms, I will only add an extract from a letter of Colman's, that I received last Friday, and will then dismiss the subject. It came accompanied by a copy of the specimen which he himself had amended, and with so much taste and candour that it charmed me. He says as follows:—
"One copy I have returned, with some remarks prompted by my zeal for your success, not, Heaven knows, by arrogance or impertinence. I know no other way, at once so plain and so short, of delivering my thoughts on the specimen of your translation, which on the whole, I admire exceedingly, thinking it breathes the spirit and conveys the manner of the original; though having here neither Homer, nor Pope's Homer, I cannot speak precisely of particular lines or expressions, or compare your blank verse with his rhyme, except by declaring that I think blank verse infinitely more congenial to the magnificent simplicity of Homer's hexameters, than the confined couplets and the jingle of rhyme."
His amendments are chiefly bestowed on the lines encumbered with elisions, and I will just take this opportunity to tell you, my dear, because I know you to be as much interested in what I write as myself, that some of the most offensive of those elisions were occasioned by mere criticism. I was fairly hunted into them, by vexatious objections made without end, by —— and his friend, and altered, and altered, till at last I did not care how I altered. Many thanks for ——'s verses, which deserve just the character you give of them. They are neat and easy—but I would mumble her well, if I could get at her, for allowing herself to suppose for a moment that I praised the chancellor with a view to emolument.[330] I wrote those stanzas merely for my own amusement, and they slept in a dark closet years after I composed them; not in the least designed for publication. But when Johnson had printed off the longer pieces, of which the first volume principally consists, he wrote me word that he wanted yet two thousand lines to swell it to a proper size. On that occasion it was that I collected every scrap of verse that I could find, and that among the rest. None of the smaller poems had been introduced, or had been published at all with my name, but for this necessity.
Just as I wrote the last word, I was called down to Dr. Kerr, who came to pay me a voluntary visit. Were I sick, his cheerful and friendly manner would almost restore me. Air and exercise are his theme; them he recommends as the best physic for me, and in all weathers. Come, therefore, my dear, and take a little of this good physic with me, for you will find it beneficial as well as I; come and assist Mrs. Unwin in the re-establishment of your cousin's health. Air and exercise, and she and you together, will make me a perfect Samson. You will have a good house over your head, comfortable apartments, obliging neighbours, good roads, a pleasant country, and in us, your constant companions, two who will love you, and do already love you dearly, and with all our hearts. If you are in any danger of trouble, it is from myself, if any fits of dejection seize me; and, as often as they do, you will be grieved for me; but perhaps by your assistance I shall be able to resist them better. If there is a creature under heaven, from whose co-operations with Mrs. Unwin I can reasonably expect such a blessing, that creature is yourself. I was not without such attacks when I lived in London, though, at that time, they were less oppressive, but in your company I was never unhappy a whole day in all my life.
Of how much importance is an author to himself! I return to that abominable specimen again, just to notice Maty's impatient censure of the repetition that you mention. I mean of the word hand. In the original there is not a repetition of it. But to repeat a word in that manner, and on such an occasion, is by no means (what he calls it) a modern invention. In Homer I could show him many such, and in Virgil they abound. Colman, who in his judgment of classical matters is inferior to none, says, "I know not why Maty objects to this expression." I could easily change it. But, the case standing thus, I know not whether my proud stomach will condescend so low. I rather feel myself disinclined to it.
One evening last week, Mrs. Unwin and I took our walk to Weston, and, as we were returning through the grove opposite the house, the Throckmortons presented themselves at the door. They are owners of a house at Weston, at present empty. It is a very good one, infinitely superior to ours. When we drank chocolate with them, they both expressed their ardent desire that we would take it, wishing to have us for nearer neighbours. If you, my cousin, were not so well provided for as you are, and at our very elbow, I verily believe I should have mustered all my rhetoric to recommend it to you. You might have it for ever without danger of ejectment, whereas your possession of the vicarage depends on the life of the vicar, who is eighty-six.[331] The environs are most beautiful, and the village itself one of the prettiest I ever saw. Add to this, you would step immediately into Mr. Throckmorton's pleasure-ground, where you would not soil your slipper even in winter. A most unfortunate mistake was made by that gentleman's bailiff in his absence. Just before he left Weston last year for the winter, he gave him orders to cut short the tops of the flowering shrubs, that lined a serpentine walk in a delightful grove, celebrated by my poetship in a little piece, that (you remember) was called "The Shrubbery."[332] The dunce, misapprehending the order, cut down and fagoted up the whole grove, leaving neither tree, bush, nor twig; nothing but stumps about as high as my ancle, Mrs. T. told us that she never saw her husband so angry in his life. I judge indeed by his physiognomy, which has great sweetness in it, that he is very little addicted to that infernal passion. But, had he cudgelled the man for his cruel blunder and the havoc made in consequence of it, I could have excused him.
I felt myself really concerned for the chancellor's illness, and, from what I learned of it, both from the papers and from General Cowper, concluded that he must die. I am accordingly delighted in the same proportion with the news of his recovery. May he live, and live to be still the support of government! If it shall be his good pleasure to render me personally any material service, I have no objection to it. But Heaven knows that it is impossible for any living wight to bestow less thought on that subject than myself.
May God be ever with you, my beloved cousin!
W. C.
The mingled feelings with which we meet a long absent friend, and the alternate sensations of delight and nervous anxiety experienced as the long wished for moment approaches, are expressed with singular felicity in the following letter.
Olney, May 15, 1786.
My dearest Cousin,—From this very morning I begin to date the last month of our long separation, and confidently and most comfortably hope, that before the 15th of June shall present itself we shall have seen each other. Is it not so? And will it not be one of the most extraordinary eras of my extraordinary life? A year ago, we neither corresponded nor expected to meet in this world. But this world is a scene of marvellous events, many of them more marvellous than fiction itself would dare to hazard;[333] and, blessed be God! they are not all of the distressing kind. Now and then, in the course of an existence whose hue is for the most part sable, a day turns up that makes amends for many sighs and many subjects of complaint. Such a day shall I account the day of your arrival at Olney.
Wherefore is it (canst thou tell me?) that, together with all those delightful sensations to which the sight of a long absent dear friend gives birth, there is a mixture of something painful, flutterings, and tumults, and I know not what accompaniments of our pleasure, that are in fact perfectly foreign from the occasion? Such I feel, when I think of our meeting, and such, I suppose, feel you; and the nearer the crisis approaches, the more I am sensible of them. I know, beforehand, that they will increase with every turn of the wheels that shall convey me to Newport, when I shall set out to meet you, and that, when we shall actually meet, the pleasure, and this unaccountable pain together, will be as much as I shall be able to support. I am utterly at a loss for the cause, and can only resolve it into that appointment by which it has been foreordained that all human delights shall be qualified and mingled with their contraries. For there is nothing formidable in you. To me at least there is nothing such, no, not even in your menaces, unless when you threaten me to write no more. Nay, I verily believe, did I not know you to be what you are, and had less affection for you than I have, I should have fewer of these emotions, of which I would have none, if I could help it. But a fig for them all! Let us resolve to combat with and to conquer them. They are dreams. They are illusions of the judgment. Some enemy, that hates the happiness of human kind, and is ever industrious to dash it, works them in us; and their being so perfectly unreasonable as they are is a proof of it. Nothing that is such can be the work of a good agent. This I know too by experience, that, like all other illusions, they exist only by force of imagination, are indebted for their prevalence to the absence of their object, and in a few moments after its appearance cease. So then this is a settled point, and the case stands thus. You will tremble as you draw near to Newport, and so shall I. But we will both recollect that there is no reason why we should; and this recollection will at least have some little effect in our favour. We will likewise both take the comfort of what we know to be true, that the tumult will soon cease, and the pleasure long survive the pain, even as long, I trust, as we ourselves shall survive it.
What you said of Maty gives me all the consolation that you intended. We both think it highly probable that you suggest the true cause of his displeasure, when you suppose him mortified at not having had a part of the translation laid before him, ere the specimen was published. The General was very much hurt, and calls his censures harsh and unreasonable. He likewise sent me a consolatory letter on the occasion, in which he took the kindest pains to heal the wound that (he supposed) I might have suffered. I am not naturally insensible, and the sensibilities that I had by nature have been wonderfully enhanced by a long series of shocks given to a frame of nerves that was never very athletic. I feel accordingly, whether painful or pleasant, in the extreme, am easily elevated, and easily cast down. The frown of a critic freezes my poetical powers, and discourages me to a degree that makes me ashamed of my own weakness. Yet I presently recover my confidence again. The half of what you so kindly say in your last would, at any time, restore my spirits; and, being said by you, is infallible. I am not ashamed to confess, that, having commenced an author, I am most abundantly desirous to succeed as such. I have (what perhaps you little suspect me of) in my nature an infinite share of ambition. But with it I have, at the same time, as you well know, an equal share of diffidence. To this combination of opposite qualities it has been owing that, till lately, I stole through life without undertaking any thing, yet always wishing to distinguish myself. At last I ventured, ventured too in the only path that, at so late a period, was yet open to me; and am determined, if God have not determined otherwise, to work my way, through the obscurity that has been so long my portion, into notice. Every thing, therefore, that seems to threaten this my favourite purpose with disappointment affects me nearly. I suppose that all ambitious minds are in the same predicament. He who seeks distinction must be sensible of disapprobation, exactly in the same proportion as he desires applause. And now, my precious cousin, I have unfolded my heart to you in this particular, without a speck of dissimulation. Some people, and good people too, would blame me. But you will not; and they (I think) would blame without just cause. We certainly do not honour God, when we bury, or when we neglect to improve, as far as we may, whatever talent he may have bestowed on us, whether it be little or much. In natural things, as well as in spiritual, it is a never-failing truth, that to him who hath (that is, to him who occupies what he hath diligently and so as to increase it) more shall be given. Set me down, therefore, my dear, for an industrious rhymer, so long as I shall have the ability. For in this only way is it possible for me, so far as I can see, either to honour God, or to serve man, or even to serve myself.
I rejoice to hear that Mr. Throckmorton wishes to be on a more intimate footing. I am shy, and suspect that he is not very much otherwise, and the consequence has been, that we have mutually wished an acquaintance without being able to accomplish it. Blessings on you for the hint that you dropped on the subject of the house at Weston! For the burthen of my song is—"Since we have met once again, let us never be separated, as we have been, more."
W. C.
Olney, May 20, 1786.
My dear Friend,—About three weeks since I met your sister Chester[334] at Mr. Throckmorton's, and from her learned that you are at Blithfield,[335] and in health. Upon the encouragement of this information it is that I write now; I should not otherwise have known with certainty where to find you, or have been equally free from the fear of unseasonable intrusion. May God be with you, my friend, and give you a just measure of submission to his will, the most effectual of all remedies for the evils of this changing scene. I doubt not that he has granted you this blessing already, and may he still continue it!
Now I will talk a little about myself: for except myself, living in this terrarum angulo, what can I have to talk about? In a scene of perfect tranquillity and the profoundest silence, I am kicking up the dust of heroic narrative and besieging Troy again. I told you that I had almost finished the translation of the Iliad, and I verily thought so. But I was never more mistaken. By the time when I had reached the end of the poem, the first book of my version was a twelvemonth old. When I came to consider it after having laid it by so long, it did not satisfy me. I set myself to mend it, and I did so; but still it appeared to me improveable, and that nothing would so effectually secure that point as to give to the whole book a new translation. With the exception of a very few lines I have so done, and was never in my life so convinced of the soundness of Horace's advice, to publish nothing in haste; so much advantage have I derived from doing that twice which I thought I had accomplished notably at once. He indeed recommends nine years' imprisonment of your verses before you send them abroad; but the ninth part of that time is, I believe, as much as there is need of to open a man's eyes upon his own defects, and to secure him from the danger of premature self-approbation. Neither ought it to be forgotten, that nine years make so wide an interval between the cup and the lip, that a thousand things may fall out between. New engagements may occur, which may make the finishing of that which a poet has begun impossible. In nine years he may rise into a situation, or he may sink into one, utterly incompatible with his purpose. His constitution may break in nine years, and sickness may disqualify him for improving what he enterprised in the days of health. His inclination may change, and he may find some other employment more agreeable, or another poet may enter upon the same work, and get the start of him. Therefore, my friend Horace, though I acknowledge your principle to be good, I must confess that I think the practice you would ground upon it carried to an extreme. The rigour that I exercised upon the first book I intend to exercise upon all that follow, and have now actually advanced into the middle of the seventh, no where admitting more than one line in fifty of the first translation. You must not imagine that I had been careless and hasty in the first instance. In truth I had not; but, in rendering so excellent a poet as Homer into our language, there are so many points to be attended to, both in respect of language and numbers, that a first attempt must be fortunate indeed if it does not call loud for a second. You saw the specimen, and you saw (I am sure) one great fault in it; I mean the harshness of some of the elisions. I do not altogether take the blame of these to myself; for into some of them I was actually driven and hunted by a series of reiterated objections made by a critical friend, whose scruples and delicacies teazed me out of all my patience. But no such monsters will be found in the volume.
Your brother Chester has furnished me with Barnes's Homer, from whose notes I collect here and there some useful information, and whose fair and legible type preserves from the danger of being as blind as was my author. I saw a sister of yours at Mr. Throckmorton's, but I am not good at making myself heard across a large room, and therefore nothing passed between us. I however felt that she was my friend's sister, and much esteemed her for your sake.
Ever yours,
W. C.
P.S.—The swan is called argutus (I suppose) a non arguendo, and canorus a non canendo. But whether he be dumb or vocal, more poetical than the eagle or less, it is no matter. A feather of either, in token of your approbation and esteem, will never, you may rest assured, be an offence to me.
Cowper seems to have reserved for the tried friendship of Newton the disclosure of those secret sorrows which he so seldom intruded on others. The communications which he makes on these occasions are painfully affecting. The mind labours, and the language responds to the intensity of the inward emotion. Sorrow is often sublime and eloquent, because the source of eloquence is not so much to be found in the powers of the intellect as in the acute feelings of an ardent and sensitive heart. It is the heart that unlocks the intellect.
These remarks will prepare the reader for the following letter.
Olney, May 20, 1786.
My dear Friend,—Within this hour arrived three sets of your new publication,[337] for which we sincerely thank you. We have breakfasted since they came, and consequently, as you may suppose, have neither of us had yet an opportunity to make ourselves acquainted with the contents. I shall be happy (and when I say that, I mean to be understood in the fullest and most emphatical sense of the word) if my frame of mind shall be such as may permit me to study them. But Adam's approach to the tree of life, after he had sinned, was not more effectually prohibited by the flaming sword that turned every way, than mine to its great Antitype has been now almost these thirteen years, a short interval of three or four days, which passed about this time twelvemonth, alone excepted. For what reason it is that I am thus long excluded, if I am ever again to be admitted, is known to God only. I can say but this; that if he is still my Father, this paternal severity has toward me been such as that I have reason to account it unexampled. For though others have suffered desertion, yet few, I believe, for so long a time, and perhaps none a desertion accompanied with such experiences. But they have this belonging to them, that, as they are not fit for recital, being made up merely of infernal ingredients, so neither are they susceptible of it; for I know no language in which they could be expressed. They are as truly things which it is not possible for man to utter as those were which Paul heard and saw in the third heaven. If the ladder of Christian experience reaches, as I suppose it does, to the very presence of God, it has nevertheless its foot in the abyss. And if Paul stood, as no doubt he did, in that experience of his to which I have just alluded, on the topmost round of it, I have been standing, and still stand, on the lowest, in this thirteenth year that has passed since I descended. In such a situation of mind, encompassed by the midnight of absolute despair, and a thousand times filled with unspeakable horror, I first commenced as an author. Distress drove me to it, and the impossibility of subsisting without some employment still recommends it. I am not, indeed, so perfectly hopeless as I was; but I am equally in need of an occupation, being often as much, and sometimes even more, worried than ever. I cannot amuse myself as I once could, with carpenters' or with gardeners' tools, or with squirrels and guinea-pigs. At that time I was a child. But since it has pleased God, whatever else he withholds, to restore to me a man's mind, I have put away childish things. Thus far, therefore, it is plain that I have not chosen or prescribed to myself my own way, but have been providentially led to it; perhaps I might say with equal propriety, compelled and scourged into it; for certainly, could I have made my choice, or were I permitted to make it even now, those hours which I spend in poetry I would spend with God. But it is evidently his will that I should spend them as I do, because every other way of employing them he himself continues to make impossible. If in the course of such an occupation, or by inevitable consequence of it, either my former connexions are revived or new ones occur, these things are as much a part of the dispensation as the leading points of it themselves; the effect as much as the cause. If his purpose in thus directing me are gracious, he will take care to prove them such in the issue, and in the meantime will preserve me (for he is able to do that in one condition of life as in another) from all mistakes in conduct that might prove pernicious to myself, or give reasonable offence to others. I can say it as truly as it was ever spoken—Here I am: let him do with me as seemeth him good.
At present, however, I have no connexions at which either you, I trust, or any who love me and wish me well, have occasion to conceive alarm. Much kindness indeed I have experienced at the hands of several, some of them near relations, others not related to me at all; but I do not know that there is among them a single person from whom I am likely to catch contamination. I can say of them all with more truth than Jacob uttered when he called kid venison, "The Lord thy God brought them unto me." I could show you among them two men whose lives, though they have but little of what we call evangelical light, are ornaments to a Christian country; men who fear God more than some who even profess to love him. But I will not particularize farther on such a subject. Be they what they may, our situations are so distant, and we are likely to meet so seldom, that, were they, as they are not, persons of even exceptionable manners, their manners would have little to do with me. We correspond at present only on the subject of what passed at Troy three thousand years ago; and they are matters that, if they can do no good, will at least hurt nobody.
Your friendship for me, and the proof that I see of it in your friendly concern for my welfare on this occasion, demanded that I should be explicit. Assure yourself that I love and honour you, as upon all accounts, so especially for the interest that you take and have ever taken in my welfare, most sincerely. I wish you all happiness in your new abode, all possible success in your ministry, and much fruit of your newly-published labours, and am, with Mrs. Unwin's love to yourself and Mrs. Newton,
Most affectionately yours,
My dear friend,
W. C.
Of all the letters, addressed by Cowper to Newton, that we have yet laid before the reader, we consider the last to be the fullest development of the afflicting and mysterious dispensation under which he laboured. These are indeed the deep waters, the sound of the terrible storm and tempest. We contemplate this state of mind with emotions of solemn awe, deep interest, and merited admiration, when we observe the spirit of patient resignation by which it is accompanied. "Here I am," exclaims Cowper, "let him do with me as seemeth him good." To acquiesce in submissive silence, under circumstances the most opposed to natural feeling, to bear an oppressive load daily, continuously, and with little hope of intermission, and amidst this pressure and anguish of the soul to have produced writings characterised by sound judgment, exalted morality, and a train of lucid and elevated thought, is a phenomenon that must ever remain a mystery; but the poet's submission is the faith of a suffering martyr, and will finally meet with a martyr's triumphant crown.
But, after all, who does not see, in the case of Cowper, the evident marks of an aberration of mind on one particular subject, founded on the delusion of supposing himself excluded from the mercy of God, when his fear of offending him, the blameless tenor of his life, and his anxiety to render his works subservient to the amelioration of the age, prove the fallacy of the persuasion? How can a tree be corrupt which produces good fruits? How can a gracious Lord cast off those who delight in fearing and serving him? The supposition is repugnant to every just and sound view of the equity of the Divine government: God cannot act inconsistently with his own character and attributes. The Bible is the record of what He is, of his declarations to man, of his moral government, and of his dealings with his people. And what does the Bible proclaim? It tells us, "God is love;" "he delighteth in mercy;" he "does not willingly afflict the children of men;" "in all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them." "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee." "Fear not, thou worm Jacob; I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel."[338] His moral government and the history of his dealings towards the most eminent saints is a powerful illustration of these truths. He may indeed infuse bitter ingredients in the cup of his children: all of them, in due time, taste the wormwood and the gall. It is a part of the covenant; the token of his love, and essential to the trial of their faith and to their purification. But that he ever administers what Cowper here painfully calls infernal ingredients is impossible. These elements of evil spring not from above but from below. They may occur, as in the case of Job, by a permissive Providence, but sooner or later a divine power interposes, and vindicates his own wisdom and equity. We know from various sources of information, that Cowper fully admitted the force of this reasoning, and the justness of its application in every other possible instance, himself alone excepted. The answer to this objection is that the equity of God's moral dealings admits of no exception. Men may change; they may act in opposition to their own principles, falsify their judgment, violate their most solemn engagements, and be influenced by the variation of time and circumstances. But this can never be true of the Divine nature. "I, the Lord, change not." "The same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." "With him is no variableness, nor shadow of turning." "Have I ever been a wilderness unto Zion?"
We have indulged in this mode of reasoning, because it has been our lot to meet with some examples of this kind, and to have applied the argument with success. If the consolations of the Gospel, administered by an enlightened, tender, and judicious minister, formed a more prominent part in the treatment of cases of disordered intellect and depressed spirit, we feel persuaded that the instances of recovery would be far more numerous than they are found to be under existing circumstances—that suicides would be diminished, and the ills of life be borne with more submissive resignation. We consider the ambassador of Christ to be as essential as the medical practitioner. The afflicted father, recorded in the Gospel,[339] as having a lunatic son, "sore vexed," tried all means for his recovery, but without success. It is emphatically said, "they could not cure him;" every thing failed. What followed? Jesus said, "Bring him hither to me." The same command is still addressed to us, and there is still the same Lord, the same healing balm and antidote, and the same Almighty power and will to administer it. What was the final result? "And the child was cured from that very hour," or, as the narrative adds in another account of the same event,[340] "Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up, and he arose."
The miracles of Christ, recorded in the New Testament, are but so many emblems of the spiritual power and mercy that heals the infirmities of a wounded spirit.
Other opportunities will occur in the course of the ensuing history to resume the consideration of this important subject.
The strain of affectionate feeling that pervades the following letters to Lady Hesketh, is strongly characteristic of the stability of Cowper's friendships.
Olney, May 25, 1786.
I have at length, my cousin, found my way into my summer abode. I believe that I described it to you some time since, and will therefore now leave it undescribed. I will only say that I am writing in a band-box, situated, at least in my account, delightfully, because it has a window on one side that opens into that orchard through which, as I am sitting here, I shall see you often pass, and which, therefore I already prefer to all the orchards in the world. You do well to prepare me for all possible delays, because in this life all sorts of disappointments are possible, and I shall do well, if any such delay of your journey should happen, to practise that lesson of patience which you inculcate. But it is a lesson which, even with you for my teacher, I shall be slow to learn. Being sure however that you will not procrastinate without cause, I will make myself as easy as I can about it, and hope the best. To convince you how much I am under discipline and good advice, I will lay aside a favourite measure, influenced in doing so by nothing but the good sense of your contrary opinion. I had set my heart on meeting you at Newport: in my haste to see you once again, I was willing to overlook many awkwardnesses I could not but foresee would attend it. I put them aside so long as I only foresaw them myself, but since I find that you foresee them too, I can no longer deal so slightly with them: it is therefore determined that we meet at Olney. Much I shall feel, but I will not die if I can help it, and I beg that you will take all possible care to outlive it likewise, for I know what it is to be balked in the moment of acquisition, and should be loath to know it again.
Last Monday, in the evening, we walked to Western, according to our usual custom. It happened, owing to a mistake of time, that we set out half an hour sooner than usual. This mistake we discovered while we were in the Wilderness: so finding that we had time before us, as they say, Mrs. Unwin proposed that we should go into the village, and take a view of the house that I had just mentioned to you. We did so, and found it such a one as in most respects would suit you well.[341] But Moses Brown, our vicar, who, as I told you, is in his eighty-sixth year, is not bound to die for that reason. He said himself, when he was here last summer, that he should live ten years longer, and for aught that appears so he may. In which case, for the sake of its near neighbourhood to us, the vicarage has charms for me that no other place can rival. But this, and a thousand things more, shall be talked over when you come.
We have been industriously cultivating our acquaintance with our Weston neighbours since I wrote last, and they on their part have been equally diligent in the same cause. I have a notion that we shall all suit well. I see much in them both that I admire. You know perhaps that they are Catholics.
It is a delightful bundle of praise, my cousin, that you have sent me: all jasmine and lavender. Whoever the lady is, she has evidently an admirable pen and a cultivated mind. If a person reads, it is no matter in what language, and if the mind be informed, it is no matter whether that mind belongs to a man or a woman: the taste and the judgment will receive the benefit alike in both. Long before the Task was published, I made an experiment one day, being in a frolicsome mood, upon my friend:—we were walking in the garden, and conversing on a subject similar to these lines—