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There is scarcely any ground in England so well known in imagination as
the haunts of Cowper at Olney and Weston; there is little that is so
interesting to the lover of moral and religious poetry. There the
beautiful but unhappy poet seemed to have created a new world out of
unknown ground, in which himself and his friends, the Unwins, Lady
Austen and Lady Hesketh, the Throckmortons, and the rest, played a part
of the simplest and most natural character, and which fascinated the
whole public mind. The life, the spirit, and the poetry of Cowper
present, when taken together, a most singular combination. He was timid
in his habit, yet bold in his writing; melancholy in the tone of his
mind, but full of fun and playfulness in his correspondence; wretched to
an extraordinary degree, he yet made the whole nation merry with his
John Gilpin and other humorous writings; despairing even of God's mercy
and of salvation, his religious poetry is of the most cheerful and even
triumphantly glad kind;
"His soul exults, hope animates his lays,
The sense of mercy kindles into praise."
Filled with this joyous assurance, wherever he turns his eye on the
magnificent spectacle of creation, he finds themes of noblest
gratulation. He looks into the heavens, and exclaims:
"Tell me, ye shining host,
That navigate a sea that knows no storm,
Beneath a vault unsullied with a cloud,
If from your elevation, whence ye view
Distinctly scenes invisible to man,
And systems, of whose birth no tidings yet
Have reached this nether world, ye spy a race
Favored as ours, transgressors from the womb,
And hastening to a grave, yet doomed to rise,
And to possess a brighter heaven than yours?
As one who, long detained on foreign shores,
Pants to return, and when he sees afar
His country's weather-bleached and battered rocks
From the green wave emerging, darts an eye
Radiant with joy toward the happy land;
So I with animated hopes behold,
And many an aching wish, your beamy fires,
That show like beacons in the blue abyss,
Ordained to guide the embodied spirit home
From toilsome life to never-ending rest.
Love kindles as I gaze. I feel desires,
That give assurance of their own success,
And that, infused from heaven, must thither tend."
_The Task_, Book v.
Such is the buoyant and cordial tone of Cowper's poetry; how unlike that
iron deadness that dared not and could not soften into prayer, which so
often and so long oppressed him. Nay, it is not for himself that he
rejoices only, but he feels in his glowing heart the gladness and the
coming glory of the whole universe.
"All creatures worship man, and all mankind
One Lord, one Father. Error has no place;
That creeping pestilence is driven away;
The breath of Heaven has chased it. In the heart
No passion touches a discordant string,
But all is harmony and love. Disease
Is not, the pure and uncontaminate blood
Holds its due course, nor fears the frost of age.
One song employs all nations, and all cry,
'Worthy the Lamb, for he was slain for us!'
The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks
Shout to each other, and the mountain tops
From distant mountains catch the flying joy:
Till nation after nation taught the strain,
Earth rolls the rapturous hosanna round.
Behold the measure of the promise filled;
See Salem built, the labor of a God!
Bright as a sun the sacred city shines:
All kingdoms, and all princes of the earth
Flock to that light; the glory of all lands
Flows into her; unbounded is her joy,
And endless her increase. Thy rams are there,
Nebaioth, and the flocks of Kedar there;
Praise is in all her gates: upon her walls,
And in her streets, and in her spacious courts,
Is heard salvation. Eastern Java there
Kneels with the native of the farthest West;
And Ethiopia spreads abroad the hand,
And worships. Her report has traveled forth
Into all lands. From every clime they come
To see thy beauty, and to share thy joy,
O Sion! an assembly such as earth
Saw never, such as Heaven stoops down to see.
Thus heavenward all things tend. For all were once
Perfect, and all must be at length restored.
So God has greatly purposed."--_The Task_, Book vi.
Such was the lofty and all-embracing spirit of that man whom hard
dogmatists could yet terrify and chill into utterest woe. Shrinking from
the world, he yet dared to lash this world from which he shrunk, with
the force of a giant, and the justice of more than an Aristides. Of the
Church, he yet satirized severely its errors, and the follies of its
ministers; in political opinion he was free and indignant against
oppression. The negro warmed his blood into a sympathy that produced the
most effective strains on his behalf--the worm beneath his feet shared
in his tenderness. Thus he walked through life, shunning its tumults and
its highways, one of its mightiest laborers. In his poetry there was
found no fear, no complaining; often thoroughly insane, nothing can
surpass the sound mind of his compositions; haunted by delusions even to
the attempt at suicide, there is no delusion in his page. All there is
bright, clear, and consistent. Like his Divine Master, he may truly be
said to have been bruised for our sakes. As a man, nervous terrors could
vanquish him, and unfit him for active life; but as a poet, he rose
above all nerves, all terrors, into the noblest heroism, and fitted and
will continue to fit others for life, so long as just and vigorous
thought, the most beautiful piety, and the truest human sympathies
command the homage of mankind. There is no writer who surpasses Cowper
as a moral and religious poet. Full of power and feeling, he often
equals in solemn dignity Milton himself. He is as impressive as Young
without his epigrammatic smartness; he is as fervently Christian as
Montgomery, and in intense love of nature there is not one of our august
band of illustrious writers who surpasses him. He shows the secret of
his deep and untiring attachment to nature in the love of Him who made
it.
"He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,
And all are slaves beside. There's not a chain
That hellish foes, confederate for his harm,
Can wind around him, but he casts it off
With as much ease as Samson his green withes.
He looks abroad into the varied field
Of Nature, and though poor, perhaps, compared
With those whose mansions glitter in his sight,
Calls the delightful scenery all his own.
His are the mountains, and the valleys his,
And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy
With a propriety that none can feel,
But who with filial confidence inspired
Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling say, 'My Father made them all!'
Are they not his by a peculiar right,
And by an emphasis of interest his,
Whose eye they fill with tears of holy joy,
Whose heart with praise, and whose exalted mind
With worthy thoughts of that unwearied love
That planned, and built, and still upholds a world
So clothed with beauty, for rebellious man?
Yes, ye may fill your garners, ye that reap
The loaded soil, and ye may waste much good
In senseless riot; but ye will not find
In feast, or in the chase, in song or dance,
A liberty like his, who, unimpeached
Of usurpation, and to no man's wrong,
Appropriates nature as his Father's work,
And has a richer use of yours than ye.
He is indeed a freeman: free by birth
Of no mean city, planned or ere the hills
Were built, the fountains opened, or the sea
With all his roaring multitude of waves."
_The Task_, Book v.
The writings of Cowper testify every where to that grand sermon which is
eternally preached in the open air; to that Gospel of the field and the
forest, which, like the Gospel of Christ, is the voice of that love
which overflows the universe; which puts down all sectarian bitterness
in him who listens to it; which, being perfect, "casts out all fear,"
against which the gloom of bigots and the terrors of fanatics can not
stand. It was this which healed his wounded spirit beneath the boughs of
Yardley Chase, and came fanning his temples with a soothing freshness in
the dells of Weston. When we follow his footsteps there, we somewhat
wonder that scenes so unambitious could so enrapture him; but the glory
came from within, and out of the materials of an ordinary walk he could
raise a brilliant superstructure for eternity.
William Cowper was born in the parsonage of Great Berkhampstead. The
Birmingham railway whirls you now past the spot; or you may, if you
please, alight, and survey that house, hallowed by the love of a mother
such as he has described, and by the record of it in those inimitable
verses of the son on receiving her picture.
"Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more,
Children not thine have trod my nursery floor;
And where the gardener Robin, day by day,
Drew me to school along the public way,
Delighted with my bawble coach, and wrapped
In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet capped.
'Tis now become a history little known,
That once we called the pastoral house our own."
Cowper was at school at Market-street, Hertfordshire, then at
Westminster; after which he was articled for three years to Mr. Chapman,
a solicitor. After quitting Mr. Chapman, he entered the Inner Temple as
a regular law student, where his associates were Thurlow, afterward the
well-known lord-chancellor, Bonnel Thornton, and Colman. Cowper's family
was well connected, both on the father's and mother's side, and he had
every prospect of advancement; but this the sensitiveness of his nature
prevented. Being successively appointed to the offices of reading clerk,
clerk of the private committees in the House of Lords, and clerk of the
Journals, he was so overwhelmed by being unexpectedly called on to
discharge his duty publicly before the House, that it unsettled his
mind, his prospects of a wordly nature were forever over, and in a state
of the most settled melancholy he was committed to the care of Dr.
Cotton, of St. Alban's. In the summer of 1765 he quitted St. Alban's,
and retired to private lodgings in the town of Huntingdon. There he was,
as by a direct act of Providence, led to the acquaintance of the family
of the Rev. Mr. Unwin, one of the clergymen of the place. Cowper had
attended his church, and his interesting appearance having attracted the
attention of his son William Cawthorne Unwin, he followed him in his
solitary walk, and introduced himself to him. This simple fact decided,
as by the very finger of Heaven, the whole destiny of the poet, and
probably secured him as a poet to the world. With this family he entered
into the most affectionate intimacy. They were people after his own
heart, pious, intelligent, and most amiable. The father was, however,
soon after killed by a fall from his horse, the son was himself become a
minister, and the widow, the ever-to-be-loved Mary Unwin, retired with
the suffering poet to Olney, at the invitation of the Rev. John Newton,
the clergyman there, where she watched over him with the tender
solicitude of a mother. To her, in all probability, we owe all that we
possess in the poetry of Cowper.
With his life here we are made familiar by his poetry and letters, and
the biography of Hayley. His long returns of melancholy; the writing of
poetry, which Mrs. Unwin suggested to him to divert his thoughts; his
gardening, his walks, his tame hares, his successive acquaintances with
Lady Austen, Lady Hesketh, and the like all--this we know. What now
concerns us is the present state and appearances of his homes and haunts
here. To these the access is now easy. From the Wolverton station, on
the Northwestern railway, an omnibus sets you down, after a run of nine
miles, at the Bull Inn, in the spacious, still, and triangular
market-place of Olney. Here, again, prints have made us most accurately
acquainted with the place. The house occupied by Cowper stands near the
eastern corner, loftily overtopping all the rest. There are the other
quiet, cottage-like houses stretching away right and left, the tall
elm-tree, the pump, the old octagon stone lock-up house. The house which
was Cowper's makes an imposing appearance in a picture, and in reality
is a building of considerable size. But it must always have been
internally an ill-finished house. He himself, and his friends, compared
it to a prison. It had no charms whatever of location. Opposite to it
came crowding up some common dwellings; behind lay the garden, on a dead
flat, and therefore with no attractions but such as art and a poet's
imagination gave it. It was, for some years after he quitted it,
inhabited by a surgeon. He has, in his turn, long left it; and it now is
divided into three tenements. One is a little grocer's shop, the other
part in front is an infant school, and the back part is a work-shop of
some kind. The house is altogether dingy and desolate, and bears no
marks of having at any time been finished in any superior style. That
which was once the garden is now divided into a back yard and a small
garden surrounded by a high stone wall. They show an apple-tree in it
which they say Cowper planted. The other and main portion of the garden
is cut off by the stone wall, and the access to it is from a distant
part of the town. This garden is now in the possession of Mr. Morris, a
master bootmaker, who, with a genuine feeling of respect for the poet's
memory, not only retains it as much as possible in the state in which it
was in Cowper's time, but has the most good-natured pleasure in allowing
strangers to see it. The moment I presented myself at his door, he came
out, anticipating my object, with the key, and proffered his own
guidance. In the garden, about the center, still stands Cowper's
summer-house. It is a little square tenement, as Cowper describes it
himself in one of his letters, not much bigger than a sedan chair. It is
of timber, framed, and plastered, and the roof of old red tiles. It has
a wooden door on the side next to his own house, and a glass one,
serving as window, exactly opposite, and looking across the next orchard
to the parsonage. There is a bench on each side, and the ceiling is so
low that a man of moderate stature can not stand upright in it. Except
in hot weather, it must have been a regular wind-trap. It is all over,
of course, written with verses, and inscribed with names. Around it
stand evergreens, and in the garden remain various old fruit-trees,
which were there in Cowper's time, and some of them, no doubt, planted
by him. The back of some low cottages, with their windows level with the
very earth, forms part of the boundary wall, and the orchard in front of
the summer-house remains as in Cowper's time. It will be recollected
that, in order to save himself the trouble of going round through the
town, Cowper had a gate put out into this orchard, and another into the
orchard of the Rectory, in which lived his friend Mr. Newton. He paid a
pound a year for thus crossing his neighbor's orchard, but had, by this
means, not only a very near cut to the parsonage opened to him, but a
whole quiet territory of orchards. This still remains. A considerable
extent of orchards, bounded, for the most part, by the backs of the town
houses, presents a little quiet region in which the poet could ramble
and muse at his own pleasure. The parsonage, a plain, modern, and not
large building, is not very distant from the front of the summer-house,
and over it peeps the church spire. One can not help reflecting how
often the poet and his friends used to go to and fro there. Newton, with
his genuine friendship for Cowper, but with his severe and
predestinarian religion, which to Cowper's grieving spirit was
terrifying and prostrating; then, a happy change, the lively, and
affectionate, and witty Lady Austen, to whom we owe John Gilpin and the
Task. Too lively, indeed, was this lady, charming as she was, for the
nerves and the occupations of the poet. She went, and then came that
delightful and true-souled cousin, Lady Hesketh, a sister, as Mary Unwin
was a mother to the poet. She had lived much abroad, from the days in
which Cowper and herself, merry companions, had laughed and loved each
other dearly as cousins. The fame of him whom she had gone away
deploring as blighted and lost forever, met her on her return to her
native land, a widow; and with a heart and a purse equally open, she
hastened to renew the intercourse of her youth, and to make the poet's
life as happy as such hearts only could make him. There is nothing more
delightful than to see how the bursting-forth fame of Cowper brought
around him at once all his oldest and best friends--his kith and kin who
had deemed him a wreck, and found him a gallant bark, sailing on the
brightest sea of glory to a sacred immortality.
Lady Hesketh, active in her kindness as she was beautiful in person and
in spirit, a true sisterly soul, lost no time in removing Cowper to a
more suitable house and neighborhood. Of the house we have spoken. The
situation of Olney is on the flat, near the River Ouse, and subject to
its fogs. The town was dull. It is much now as it was then; one of those
places that are the links between towns and villages. Its present
population is only 2300. In such a place, therefore, every man knew all
his neighbors' concerns. It was too exposed a sort of place for a man of
Cowper's shy disposition, and yet had none of that bustle which gives a
stimulus to get out of it into the country. Removing from it to the
country was but passing from stillness to stillness. The country around
Olney, moreover, is by no means striking in its features. It is like a
thousand other parts of England, somewhat flat, yet somewhat undulating,
and rather naked of trees. Weston, to which he now removed, was about a
mile westward of Olney. It lies on higher ground, overlooking the valley
of the Ouse. It is a small village, consisting of a few detached houses
on each side of the road. The hall stood at this end, and the neat
little church at the other. Trees grew along the street, and Cowper
pronounced it one of the prettiest villages of England. Luckily, he had
neither seen all the villages of England, nor the finest scenery of this
or other countries. To him, therefore, the country was all that he
imagined of lovely, and all that he desired. It never tired, it never
lost its hold upon his fancy and his heart.
"Scenes must be beautiful, which, dayly viewed,
Please dayly, and where novelty survives
Long knowledge, and the scrutiny of years.
Praise justly due to those that I describe."
This he said of this scenery around Weston; and in setting out for that
village from Olney, we take the track which, even before he went to live
there, was his dayly and peculiarly favorite walk. Advancing out of
Olney-street, we are at once on an open ascent on the highway. At a
mile's distance before us lies Weston and its woods, its little church
tower overlooking the valley of the Ouse. Behind us lies Olney, its tall
church spire rising nobly into the sky; and close beneath it the Ouse
emerges into sight, sweeping round the water-mills which figure in the
poet's works, and then goes in several different streams, as he says,
lazily along a fine stretch of green meadows, in which the scenes of
"The Dog and Water-lily," and "The Poplar Field" occur. On this eminence
stood Cowper often, with Mary Unwin on his arm, and thus he addresses
her, as he describes most vividly the view:
"And witness, dear companion of my walks,
Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceive
Fast locked in mine, with pleasure such as love,
Confirmed by long experience of thy worth
And well-tried virtues could alone inspire--
Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long.
Thou knowest my praise of nature most sincere,
And that my raptures are not conjured up
To serve occasions of poetic pomp,
But genuine, and art partner of them all.
How oft upon yon eminence our pace
Has slackened to a pause, and we have borne
The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,
While admiration, feeding at the eye,
And still unsated dwelt upon the scene.
Thence with what pleasure we have just discerned
The distant plow slow moving, and beside
His laboring team, that swerved not from the track,
The sturdy swain diminished to a boy;
Here Ouse slow winding through a level plain
Of spacious mead, with cattle sprinkled o'er,
Conducts the eye along his sinuous course
Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank,
Stand, ne'er overlooked, our favorite elms,
That screen the herdsman's solitary hut;
While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,
That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,
The sloping land recedes into the clouds;
Displaying on its varied side the grace
Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,
Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells
Just undulates upon the listening ear,
Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote."
We should not omit to notice that behind us, over Olney, shows itself
the church tower and hall of Clifton, the attempt to walk to which forms
the subject of Cowper's very humorous poem, The Distressed Travelers.
Before us, as we advance--the Ouse meadows below on our left, and plain,
naked farm-lands on our right--the park of Weston displays its lawns,
and slopes, and fine masses of trees. It will be recollected by all
lovers of Cowper that here lived Sir John and Lady Throckmorton,
Cowper's kind and cordial friends, who, even before they knew him, threw
open their park and all their domains to him; and who, when they did
know him, did all that generous people of wealth and intelligence could
do to contribute to his happiness. The village and estate here wholly
belonged to them, and the hall was a second home to Cowper, always open
to him with a warm welcome, and an easy, unassuming spirit of genuine
friendship, Lady Throckmorton herself voluntarily becoming the
transcriber of his Homer when his young friend Rose left him. In the
whole of our literature there is no more beautiful instance of the
intercourse of the literary man and his wealthy neighbors than that of
Cowper and the Throckmortons. Their reward was the pleasure they
conferred; and still more, the fame they have thus won.
The Throckmortons having other and extensive estates, the successors of
Cowper's friends have deserted this. The house is pulled down, a wall is
built across the bottom of the court-yard, which cuts off from view what
was the garden. Grass grows thickly in the court, the entrance to which
is still marked by the pillars of a gateway bearing vases. Across the
court are erected a priest's house and Catholic chapel--the
Throckmortons were and are Catholic--and beyond these still stand the
stables, coach-house, &c., bearing a clock-tower, and showing that this
was once a gentleman's residence. At the end of the old thatched
out-building you see the word SCHOOL painted; it is the village school,
Catholic, of course, as are all, or nearly all, the inhabitants. A pair
of gateway pillars, like those which led to the house, mark the entrance
to the village a little beyond the house. On the opposite side of the
road to the house is the park, and directly opposite to the house, being
taken out of the park, is the woodland wilderness in which Cowper so
much delighted to ramble.
The village of Weston is a pretty village. The house of Cowper, Weston
Lodge, stands on the right hand, about the center of it, forming a
picturesque old orchard. The trees, which in his time stood in the
street opposite, however, have been felled. A few doors on this side of
the lodge is a public house, with the Yardley Oak upon its sign, and
bearing the name of Cowper's Oak. The lodge, now inhabited by Mr.
Swanwell, the steward, who very courteously allows the public to see it,
is a good and pleasant, but not large house. It is well known by
engravings. The vignette at the head of this article represents the tree
opposite as still standing, which is not the fact, and the house wants
shrubbery round it, by which its present aspect is much improved. The
room on the right hand was Cowper's study. In his bed-room, which is at
the back of the house overlooking the garden, there still remain two
lines which he wrote when about to leave Weston for Norfolk, where he
died. As his farewell to this place, the happiest of his life, when his
own health, and that of his dear and venerable friend, Mrs. Unwin, were
both failing, and gloomy feelings haunted him, these lines possess a
deep interest. They are written on the bevel of a panel of one of the
window-shutters, near the top right-hand corner, and when the shutter
has been repainted, this part has been carefully excepted.
"Farewell, dear scenes, forever closed to me!
Oh for what sorrow must I now exchange you?
July 22.
-- -- even here 28 } 1795
July 22 } 1795."
The words and dates stand just as here given, and mark his recurrence to
these lines, and his restless state of mind, repeating the date of both
month and year.
From this room Cowper used to have a view of his favorite shrubbery, and
beyond it, up the hill, pleasant crofts. The shrubbery was generally
admired, being a delightful little labyrinth, composed of flowering
shrubs, with gravel walks, and seats placed at appropriate distances. He
gave a humorous account to Hayley of the erection of one of these
arbors: "I said to Sam, 'Sam, build me a shed in the garden with any
thing you can find, and make it rude and rough, like one of those at
Eartham.' 'Yes, sir,' says Sam; and straightway laying his own noddle
and the carpenter's together, has built me a thing fit for Stowe
Gardens. Is not this vexatious? I threaten to inscribe it thus:
Beware of building! I intended
Rough logs and thatch, and thus it ended."
All this garden has now been altered. A yard has been made behind, with
outbuildings, and the garden cut off with a brick wall.
Not far from this house a narrow lane turns up, inclosed on one side by
the park wall. Through this old stone wall, now well crowned with masses
of ivy, there used to be a door, of which Cowper had a key, which let
him at once into the wilderness. In this wilderness, which is a wood
grown full of underwood, through which walks are cut winding in all
directions, you come upon what is called the Temple. This is an open
Gothic alcove, having in front an open space, scattered with some trees,
among them a fine old acacia, and closed in by the thick wood. Here
Cowper used to sit much, delighted with the perfect and deep seclusion.
The temple is now fast falling to decay. Through a short winding walk to
the left you come out to the park, which is separated from the
wilderness by a sunk fence. A broad grass walk runs along the head of
this fosse, between it and the wilderness, and here you find the two
urns under the trees, which mark the grave of two favorite dogs of the
Throckmortons', for which Cowper condescended to write epitaphs, which
still remain, and may be found in his poems. There is also a figure of a
lion, couchant, on a pedestal, bearing this inscription: "Mortuo Leone
etiam Lepores insultant, 1815."
From this point also runs out the fine lime avenue, of at least a
quarter of a mile long, terminated by the alcove. Every scene, and every
spot of ground which presents itself here, is to be found in Cowper's
poetry, particularly in the first book of his Task--The Sofa. The Sofa
was but a hook to hang his theme upon; his real theme is his walk all
through this park and its neighborhood, particularly this fine avenue,
closing its boughs above with all the solemn and inspiring grace of a
Gothic cathedral aisle. To the right the park descends in a verdant
slope, scattered with noble trees. There, in the valley, near the road
to Olney, is the Spinny, with its rustic moss-house, haunted by Cowper,
and where he wrote those verses, full of the deepest, saddest melancholy
which ever oppressed a guiltless heart, beginning,
"Oh, happy shades, to me unblest!
Friendly to peace, but not to me!
How ill the scene that offers rest,
And heart, that can not rest, agree."
There, too, in the valley, but where it has freed itself from the wood,
is the Rustic Bridge, equally celebrated by him; and beyond it, in the
fields, the Peasant's Nest, now grown from a laborer's cottage, shrouded
in trees, to a considerable farm-house, with its ricks and buildings,
conspicuous on an open eminence. Still beyond are the woods of Yardley
Chase, including those of Kilwick and Dinglebury, well known to the
readers of Cowper; and this old chase stretches away for four or five
miles toward Castle Ashby. In traversing the park to reach the woods and
Yardley Oak, we come into a genuinely agricultural region, where a sort
of peopled solitude is enjoyed. Swelling, rounded eminences, with little
valleys winding between them; here and there a farm-house of the most
rustic description; the plow and its whistling follower turning up the
ruddy soil; and the park, displaying from its hills and dells its
contrast of nobly umbrageous trees, showed where Cowper had often
delighted himself, and whence he had drawn much of his imagery:
"Now roves the eye:
And posted on this speculative height
Exults in its command. The sheepfold here
Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe.
At first, progressive as a stream, they seek
The middle field; but scattered by degrees,
Each to his choice, soon whitens all the land.
There from the sunburn'd hay-field homeward creeps
The loaded wain; while, lightened of its charge,
The wain that meets it passes swiftly by;
The boorish driver leaning o'er his team,
Vociferous, and impatient of delay.
Nor less attractive is the woodland scene,
Diversified with trees of every growth,
Alike, yet various. How the gray, smooth trunks
Of ash, or lime, or beech, distinctly shine
Within the twilight of their distant shades:
There, lost behind a rising ground, the wood
Seems sunk, and shortened to its topmost boughs."
_The Task_, Book i.
At this point of view you find the poet's praises of the scenery more
fully justified than any where else. The park here has a solemn,
solitary, splendidly wooded air, and spreads its green slopes, and gives
hints of its secluded dells, that are piquant to the imagination. And
still the walk, of a mile or more, to the ancient chase, is equally
impressive. The vast extent of the forest which stretches before you
gives a deep feeling of silence and ancient repose. You descend into a
valley, and Kilwick's echoing wood spreads itself before you on the
upland. You pass through it, and come out opposite to a lonely
farm-house, where, in the opening of the forest, you see the remains of
very ancient oaks standing here and there. You feel that you are on a
spot that has maintained its connection with the world of a thousand
years ago; and amid these venerable trees, you soon see the one which by
its bulk, its hollow trunk, and its lopped and dilapidated crown, needs
not to be pointed out as the YARDLEY OAK. Here Cowper was fond of
coming, and sitting within the hollow boll for hours; around him
stretching the old woods, with their solitude and the cries of woodland
birds. The fame which he has conferred on this tree has nearly proved
its destruction. Whole arms and great pieces of its trunk have been cut
away with knife, and ax, and saw, to prepare different articles from.
The Marquis of Northampton, to whom the chase belongs, has had
multitudes of nails driven in to stop the progress of this destruction,
but finding that not sufficient, has affixed a board bearing this
inscription: "Out of respect to the memory of the poet Cowper, the
Marquis of Northampton is particularly desirous of preserving this oak.
Notice is hereby given, that any person defacing, or otherwise injuring
it, will be prosecuted according to law." In stepping round the Yardley
Oak, it appeared to me to be, at the foot, about thirteen yards in
circumference.
Every step here shows you some picture sketched by Cowper:
"I see a column of slow rising smoke
O'ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild.
A vagabond and useless tribe there eat
Their miserable meal. A kettle slung
Between two poles upon a stick transverse,
Receives the morsel--flesh obscene of dog,
Or vermin, or at best of cock purloined
From his accustomed perch. Hard-faring race!
They pick their fuel out of every hedge,
Which kindled with dry leaves just saves unquenched
The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide
Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin,
The vellum of the pedigree they claim."