AUTHORSHIP. THE MORAL SATIRES.
Since his recovery, Cowper had been looking out for what he most
needed, a pleasant occupation. He tried drawing, carpentering,
gardening. Of gardening he had always been fond; and he understood it
as shown by the loving though somewhat "stercoraceous" minuteness of
some passages in _The Task_. A little greenhouse, used as a parlour in
summer, where he sat surrounded by beauty and fragrance, and lulled by
pleasant sounds, was another product of the same pursuit, and seems
almost Elysian in that dull dark life. He also found amusement in
keeping tame hares, and he fancied that he had reconciled the hare to
man and dog. His three tame hares are among the canonized pets of
literature, and they were to his genius what "Sailor" was to the genius
of Byron. But Mrs. Unwin, who had terrible reason for studying his
case, saw that the thing most wanted was congenial employment for the
mind, and she incited him to try his hand at poetry on a larger scale.
He listened to her advice, and when he was nearly fifty years of age
became a poet. He had acquired the faculty of verse-writing, as we
have seen; he had even to some extent formed his manner when he was
young. Age must by this time have quenched his fire, and tamed his
imagination, so that the didactic style would suit him best. In the
length of the interval between his early poems and his great work he
resembles Milton; but widely different in the two cases had been the
current of the intervening years. Poetry written late in life is of
course free from youthful crudity and extravagance. It also escapes
the youthful tendency to imitation. Cowper's authorship is ushered in
by Southey with a history of English poetry; but this is hardly in
place; Cowper had little connexion with anything before him. Even his
knowledge of poetry was not great. In his youth he had read the great
poets, and had studied Milton especially with the ardour of intense
admiration. Nothing ever made him so angry as Johnson's Life of
Milton. "Oh!" he cries, "I could thrash his old jacket till I made his
pension jingle in his pocket." Churchill had made a great--far too
great--an impression on him, when he was a Templar. Of Churchill, if
of anybody, he must be regarded as a follower, though only in his
earlier and less successful poems. In expression he always regarded as
a model the neat and gay simplicity of Prior. But so little had he
kept up his reading of anything but sermons and hymns, that he learned
for the first time from Johnson's Lives the existence of Collins. He
is the offspring of the Religious Revival rather than of any school of
art. His most important relation to any of his predecessors is, in
fact, one of antagonism to the hard glitter of Pope.
In urging her companion to write poetry, Mrs. Unwin was on the right
path, her puritanism led her astray in the choice of a theme. She
suggested _The Progress of Error_ as a subject for a "Moral Satire." It
was unhappily adopted, and _The Progress of Error_ was followed by
_Truth_, _Table Talk_, _Expostulation_, _Hope_, _Charity_,
_Conversation_, and _Retirement_. When the series was published,
_Table Talk_ was put first, being supposed to be the lightest and the
most attractive to an unregenerate world. The judgment passed upon
this set of poems at the time by the _Critical Review_ seems
blasphemous to the fond biographer, and is so devoid of modern
smartness as to be almost interesting as a literary fossil. But it
must be deemed essentially just, though the reviewer errs, as many
reviewers have erred, in measuring the writer's capacity by the
standard of his first performance. "These poems," said the _Critical
Review_, "are written, as we learn from the title-page, by Mr. Cowper
of the Inner Temple, who seems to be a man of a sober and religious
turn of mind, with a benevolent heart, and a serious wish to inculcate
the precepts of morality; he is not, however, possessed of any superior
abilities or the power of genius requisite for so arduous an
undertaking. . . . . He says what is incontrovertible and what has
been said over and over again with much gravity, but says nothing new,
sprightly or entertaining; travelling on a plain level flat road, with
great composure almost through the whole long and tedious volume, which
is little better than a dull sermon in very indifferent verse on Truth,
the Progress of Error, Charity, and some other grave subjects. If this
author had followed the advice given by Caraccioli, and which he has
chosen for one of the mottoes prefixed to these poems, he would have
clothed his indisputable truths in some more becoming disguise, and
rendered his work much more agreeable. In its present shape we cannot
compliment him on its beauty; for as this bard himself sweetly sings:--
"The clear harangue, and cold as it is clear,
Falls soporific on the listless ear."
In justice to the bard it ought to be said that he wrote under the eye
of the Rev. John Newton, to whom the design had been duly submitted,
and who had given his _imprimatur_ in the shape of a preface which took
Johnson the publisher aback by its gravity. Newton would not have
sanctioned any poetry which had not a distinctly religious object, and
he received an assurance from the poet that the lively passages were
introduced only as honey on the rim of the medicinal cup, to commend
its healing contents to the lips of a giddy world. The Rev. John
Newton must have been exceedingly austere if he thought that the
quantity of honey used was excessive.
A genuine desire to make society better is always present in these
poems, and its presence lends them the only interest which they possess
except as historical monuments of a religious movement. Of satirical
vigour they have scarcely a semblance. There are three kinds of
satire, corresponding to as many different views of humanity and life,
the Stoical, the Cynical, and the Epicurean. Of Stoical satire, with
its strenuous hatred of vice and wrong, the type is Juvenal. Of
Cynical satire, springing from bitter contempt of humanity, the type is
Swift's Gulliver, while its quintessence is embodied in his lines on
the Day of Judgment. Of Epicurean satire, flowing from a contempt of
humanity which is not bitter, and lightly playing with the weakness and
vanities of mankind, Horace is the classical example. To the first two
kinds, Cowper's nature was totally alien, and when he attempts anything
in either of those lines, the only result is a querulous and censorious
acerbity, in which his real feelings had no part, and which on mature
reflection offended his own better taste. In the Horatian kind he
might have excelled, as the episode of the _Retired Statesman_ in one
of these poems shows. He might have excelled, that is, if like Horace
he had known the world. But he did not know the world. He saw the
"great Babel" only "through the loopholes of retreat," and in the
columns of his weekly newspaper. Even during the years, long past,
which he spent in the world, his experience had been confined to a
small literary circle. Society was to him an abstraction on which he
discoursed like a pulpiteer. His satiric whip not only has no lash, it
is brandished in the air.
No man was ever less qualified for the office of a censor; his judgment
is at once disarmed, and a breach in his principles is at once made by
the slightest personal influence. Bishops are bad, they are like the
Cretans, evil beasts and slow bellies; but the bishop whose brother
Cowper knows is a blessing to the Church. Deans and Canons are lazy
sinecurists, but there is a bright exception in the case of the Cowper
who held a golden stall at Durham. Grinding India is criminal, but
Warren Hastings is acquitted, because he was with Cowper at
Westminster. Discipline was deplorably relaxed in all colleges except
that of which Cowper's brother was a fellow. Pluralities and
resignation bonds, the grossest abuses of the Church, were perfectly
defensible in the case of any friend or acquaintance of this Church
Reformer. Bitter lines against Popery inserted in _The Task_ were
struck out, because the writer had made the acquaintance of Mr. and
Mrs. Throckmorton, who were Roman Catholics. Smoking was detestable,
except when practised by dear Mr. Bull. Even gambling, the blackest
sin of fashionable society, is not to prevent Fox, the great Whig, from
being a ruler in Israel. Besides, in all his social judgments, Cowper
is at a wrong point of view. He is always deluded by the idol of his
cave. He writes perpetually on the twofold assumption that a life of
retirement is more favourable to virtue than a life of action, and that
"God made the country, while man made the town." Both parts of the
assumption are untrue. A life of action is more favourable to virtue,
as a rule, than a life of retirement, and the development of humanity
is higher and richer, as a rule, in the town than in the country. If
Cowper's retirement was virtuous, it was so because he was actively
employed in the exercise of his highest faculties: had he been a mere
idler, secluded from his kind, his retirement would not have been
virtuous at all. His flight from the world was rendered necessary by
his malady, and respectable by his literary work; but it was a flight
and not a victory. His misconception was fostered and partly produced
by a religion which was essentially ascetic, and which, while it gave
birth to characters of the highest and most energetic beneficence,
represented salvation too little as the reward of effort, too much as
the reward of passive belief and of spiritual emotion.
The most readable of the Moral Satires is _Retirement_, in which the
writer is on his own ground expressing his genuine feelings, and which
is, in fact, a foretaste of _The Task_. _Expostulation_, a warning to
England from the example of the Jews, is the best constructed: the rest
are totally wanting in unity, and even in connexion. In all there are
flashes of epigrammatic smartness.
How shall I speak thee, or thy power address,
Thou God of our idolatry, the press?
By thee, religion, liberty, and laws
Exert their influence, and advance their cause;
By thee, worse plagues than Pharaoh's land befel,
Diffused, make earth the vestibule of hell:
Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise,
Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies,
Like Eden's dread probationary tree,
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
Occasionally there are passages of higher merit. The episode of
statesmen in _Retirement_ has been already mentioned. The lines on the
two disciples going to Emmaus in _Conversation_, though little more
than a paraphrase of the Gospel narrative, convey pleasantly the
Evangelical idea of the Divine Friend. Cowper says in one of his
letters that he had been intimate with a man of fine taste who had
confessed to him that though he could not subscribe to the truth of
Christianity itself, he could never read this passage of St. Luke
without being deeply affected by it, and feeling that if the stamp of
divinity was impressed upon anything in the Scriptures, it was upon
that passage.
It happen'd on a solemn eventide,
Soon after He that was our surety died,
Two bosom friends, each pensively inclined,
The scene of all those sorrows left behind,
Sought their own village, busied as they went
In musings worthy of the great event:
They spake of him they loved, of him whose life,
Though blameless, had incurr'd perpetual strife,
Whose deeds had left, in spite of hostile arts,
A deep memorial graven on their hearts.
The recollection, like a vein of ore,
The farther traced enrich'd them still the more;
They thought him, and they justly thought him, one
Sent to do more than he appear'd to have done,
To exalt a people, and to place them high
Above all else, and wonder'd he should die.
Ere yet they brought their journey to an end,
A stranger join'd them, courteous as a friend,
And ask'd them with a kind engaging air
What their affliction was, and begg'd a share.
Inform'd, he gathered up the broken thread,
And truth and wisdom gracing all he said,
Explain'd, illustrated, and search'd so well
The tender theme on which they chose to dwell,
That reaching home, the night, they said is near,
We must not now be parted, sojourn here.--
The new acquaintance soon became a guest,
And made so welcome at their simple feast,
He bless'd the bread, but vanish'd at the word,
And left them both exclaiming, 'Twas the Lord!
Did not our hearts feel all he deign'd to say,
Did they not burn within us by the way?
The prude going to morning church in _Truth_ is a good rendering of
Hogarth's picture:--
Yon ancient prude, whose wither'd features show
She might, be young some forty years ago,
Her elbows pinion'd close upon her hips,
Her head erect, her fan upon her lips,
Her eyebrows arch'd, her eyes both gone astray
To watch yon amorous couple in their play,
With bony and unkerchief'd neck defies
The rude inclemency of wintry skies,
And sails with lappet-head and mincing airs
Daily at clink of hell, to morning prayers.
To thrift and parsimony much inclined,
She yet allows herself that boy behind;
The shivering urchin, bending as he goes,
With slipshod heels, and dew-drop at his nose,
His predecessor's coat advanced to wear,
Which future pages are yet doom'd to share,
Carries her Bible tuck'd beneath his arm,
And hides his hands to keep his fingers warm.
Of personal allusions there are a few; if the satirist had not been
prevented from indulging in them by his taste, he would have been
debarred by his ignorance. Lord Chesterfield, as the incarnation of
the world and the most brilliant servant of the arch-enemy, comes in
for a lashing under the name of Petronius.
Petronius! all the muses weep for thee,
But every tear shall scald thy memory.
The graces too, while virtue at their shrine
Lay bleeding under that soft hand of thine,
Felt each a mortal stab in her own breast,
Abhorr'd the sacrifice, and cursed the priest.
Thou polish'd and high-finish'd foe to truth,
Gray-beard corruptor of our listening youth,
To purge and skim away the filth of vice,
That so refined it might the more entice,
Then pour it on the morals of thy son
To taint _his_ heart, was worthy of _thine own_.
This is about the nearest approach to Juvenal that the Evangelical
satirist ever makes. In _Hope_ there is a vehement vindication of the
memory of Whitefield. It is rather remarkable that there is no mention
of Wesley. But Cowper belonged to the Evangelical rather than to the
Methodist section. It may be doubted whether the living Whitefield
would have been much to his taste.
In the versification of the moral satires there are frequent faults,
especially in the earlier poems of the series, though Cowper's power of
writing musical verse is attested both by the occasional poems and by
_The Task_.
With the Moral Satires may be coupled, though written later,
_Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools_. Here Cowper has the advantage of
treating a subject which he understood, about which he felt strongly,
and desired for a practical purpose to stir the feelings of his
readers. He set to work in bitter earnest. "There is a sting," he
says, "in verse that prose neither has nor can have; and I do not know
that schools in the gross, and especially public schools, have ever
been so pointedly condemned before. But they are become a nuisance, a
pest, an abomination, and it is fit that the eyes and noses of mankind
should be opened if possible to perceive it." His descriptions of the
miseries which children in his day endured, and, in spite of all our
improvements, must still to some extent endure in boarding schools, and
of the effects of the system in estranging boys from their parents and
deadening home affections, are vivid and true. Of course the Public
School system was not to be overturned by rhyming, but the author of
_Tirocinium_ awakened attention to its faults, and probably did
something towards amending them. The best lines, perhaps, have been
already quoted in connexion with the history of the writer's boyhood.
There are, however, other telling passages such as that on the
indiscriminate use of emulation as a stimulus:--
Our public hives of puerile resort
That are of chief and most approved report,
To such base hopes in many a sordid soul
Owe their repute in part, but not the whole.
A principle, whose proud pretensions pass
Unquestion'd, though the jewel be but glass,
That with a world not often over-nice
Ranks as a virtue, and is yet a vice,
Or rather a gross compound, justly tried,
Of envy, hatred, jealousy, and pride,
Contributes moat perhaps to enhance their fame,
And Emulation is its precious name.
Boys once on fire with that contentious zeal
Feel all the rage that female rivals feel;
The prize of beauty in a woman's eyes
Not brighter than in theirs the scholar's prize.
The spirit of that competition burns
With all varieties of ill by turns,
Each vainly magnifies his own success,
Resents his fellow's, wishes it were less,
Exults in his miscarriage if he fail,
Deems his reward too great if he prevail,
And labours to surpass him day and night,
Less for improvement, than to tickle spite.
The spur is powerful, and I grant its force;
It pricks the genius forward in its course,
Allows short time for play, and none for sloth,
And felt alike by each, advances both,
But judge where so much evil intervenes,
The end, though plausible, not worth the means.
Weigh, for a moment, classical desert
Against a heart depraved, and temper hurt,
Hurt, too, perhaps for life, for early wrong
Done to the nobler part, affects it long,
And you are staunch indeed in learning's cause,
If you can crown a discipline that draws
Such mischiefs after it, with much applause.
He might have done more, if he had been able to point to the
alternative of a good day school, as a combination of home affections
with the superior teaching hardly to be found, except in a large
school, and which Cowper, in drawing his comparison between the two
systems, fails to take into account.
To the same general class of poems belongs _Anti-Thelypthora_, which it
is due to Cowper's memory to say was not published in his lifetime. It
is an angry pasquinade on an absurd book advocating polygamy on
Biblical grounds, by the Rev. Martin Madan, Cowper's quondam spiritual
counsellor. Alone among Cowper's works it has a taint of coarseness.
The Moral Satires pleased Franklin, to whom their social philosophy was
congenial, as at a later day, in common with all Cowper's works, they
pleased Cobden, who no doubt specially relished the passage in
_Charity_, embodying the philanthropic sentiment of Free Trade. There
was a trembling consultation as to the expediency of bringing the
volume under the notice of Johnson. "One of his pointed sarcasms, if
he should happen to be displeased, would soon find its way into all
companies and spoil the sale." "I think it would be well to send in
our joint names, accompanied with a handsome card, such an one as you
will know how to fabricate, and such as may predispose him to a
favourable perusal of the book, by coaxing him into a good temper, for
he is a great bear, with all his learning and penetration." Fear
prevailed; but it seems that the book found its way into the dictator's
hands, that his judgment on it was kind, and that he even did something
to temper the wind of adverse criticism to the shorn lamb. Yet parts
of it were likely to incur his displeasure as a Tory, as a Churchman,
and as one who greatly preferred Fleet Street to the beauties of
nature; while with the sentimental misery of the writer, he could have
had no sympathy whatever. Of the incompleteness of Johnson's view of
character there could be no better instance than the charming weakness
of Cowper. Thurlow and Colman did not even acknowledge their copies,
and were lashed for their breach of friendship with rather more vigour
than the Moral Satires display, in _The Valedictory_, which unluckily
survived for posthumous publication, when the culprits had made their
peace.
Cowper certainly misread himself if he believed that ambition, even
literary ambition, was a large element in his character. But having
published, he felt a keen interest in the success of his publication.
Yet he took its failure and the adverse criticism very calmly. With
all his sensitiveness, from irritable and suspicious egotism, such as
is the most common cause of moral madness, he was singularly free. In
this respect his philosophy served him well.
It may safely be said that the Moral Satires would have sunk into
oblivion if they had not been buoyed up by _The Task_.