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WILLIAM COWPER.1

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

COWPER was twenty years old when Gray's Elegy was published, for he was born November 26, 1731. A few years after Gray's death, Cowper, then forty-six years old, wrote to a friend : "I have been reading Gray's works, and think him the only poet since Shakespeare entitled to the character of sublime." Probably he was thinking of Gray's odes when he wrote thus; he himself had a temperament and a poetic gift which might make him admire sublimity in others without a particle of regret for the lack of it in his own verse. Gray wrote his odes in the grand style; he was a scholar who kept up the traditions of great poetry. Cowper, with a similar early training in classical literature, lived away from universities and cities, in a flat pastoral country, and wrote his poems partly for diversion, partly because, in the leisure he had, this was an agreeable occupation to which his friends urged him, but most of all because his poetic nature gently stirred him. He wrote under the influence of a placid country life and a strong though not always tranquil religious feeling, and the simplicity of his themes found in his truthful, conscientious spirit a simple expression, so that he was a forerunner in some ways of Wordsworth. He was a contemporary of Goldsmith, and they had in common a directness and naturalness in poetry, but Goldsmith, even when writing of rural scenes, was a town 1 Pronounced Cooper, some members of the family so spelling the name.

poet. Cowper was a country poet, who looked from a dis tance and without much personal sympathy on town life.

He was born of a gentle family, with noble descent, though one is tempted to reckon more on his mother's inheritance of the poetic wealth of Donne than of the royalty of Henry III. He was six years old when his mother died, and though the poem which he wrote years after, on receiving her portrait, is an expansion by the imagination of the fact which memory brings to mind, there is no doubt that the child suffered keenly through the loss, for he was a timid, shrinking boy, and at this early age was sent to a large boarding-school, where he suffered untold misery. Some boys, thrown thus into a rough world, come out toughened by the experience; others are driven into solitary, secretive habits. Cowper, looking back on his boyish life, pleaded earnestly for the shelter of home when children were still young. He was sent to Westminster, one of the great public schools, and there finished his formal education. He could not have been wholly unhappy at school, for some of his longer poems have bright pictures of schoolboy life.

At eighteen he began the study of law, but he had little interest in the profession. He lived, however, after he was twenty-one and till he was thirty-two in the Temple, one of the great lawyers' houses in London, which in those days. were the resort of young unmarried men, of whom a few practised law diligently, but many lived socially with a slight show of work. Cowper was one of these latter. With a few others whose names are scarcely remembered he formed a literary club, and they all wrote nonsense verses and played with literature. It is quite possible that Cowper's name would have been as little known to-day as those of his companions, but for a sudden change in his life.

His father had died a few years after Cowper began the study of law, and the money which he left his son was nearly gone, when an occasion came to which the idle lawyer had looked forward. He had thought it not unlikely

he would secure one of the public offices in the gift of the government through family influence, and so it turned out. A vacancy occurred, that of clerk of the Journals of the House of Lords, and the place was to be disposed of by one Major Cowper, a kinsman, who offered it to the young lawyer. Possibly, if he had been spending the past ten years in hard work, he would have been quite ready to take the office; but his idleness was both the effect and cause of a general melancholy which had crept over him. He had led, we may say, a restless, unhealthy sort of life; a physical disorder underlay it, but also his training had not given him the will to resist. And so, when this opportunity came, he was seized with a kind of terror. All sorts of difficulties sprang up which he could not seem to meet. He read the Journals which he was to keep, and the task loomed up in frightful proportions. He became so deranged by all this that he tried in various ways to kill himself. He was defeated sometimes by circumstance, sometimes by his own irresolution at the last moment. At last in trying to hang himself he fell, a servant came in, and Cowper, sending for Major Cowper, broke down completely, surrendered his appointment, and went to a private asylum for the insane.

After eighteen months, Cowper was discharged, and his property being now nearly all gone, his relatives subscribed money enough to take care of him, supposing he would live out a life of uselessness. He went into the country, to Huntingdon near Cambridge, and there he fell in with a family named Unwin, who befriended him, and with whom he went to live. The Rev. William Unwin was a clergyman whose wife, much younger, was but seven years older than Cowper, and whose son was preparing for the ministry. Between Cowper and the Unwins there sprang up a most affectionate relation, and when, two years later, the old clergyman died, his widow went to live in the little village of Olney, and Cowper followed her there as one of her family. The principal reason for their going to Olney was the

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presence there of the Rev. John Newton, who was an im portant figure in the religious revival of the time, the re vival which was led by Wesley and Whitefield, admired both by Mrs. Unwin and Cowper. Newton had a strong influence over Cowper, and was largely the inspirer of the many hymns which Cowper wrote, some of which, like

and

"God moves in a mysterious way,"

"Oh, for a closer walk with God,"

are found in most hymn-books to-day.

It was not long after taking up his life in Olney that Cowper again fell into a period of insanity, and was long and faithfully attended by Mrs. Unwin. He recovered, and thenceforth led a quiet, retired life in the country, in the companionship chiefly of women, - Mrs. Unwin, his cousin Lady Hesketh, and a friend, Lady Austen. Mrs. Unwin, with a woman's bright instinct, suggested occupation for him in verse-making, and Cowper, now nearly fifty years old, took up the instrument he had played with, and since the old themes of his idle life in the Temple had no charms for him, he took his new, more serious thought, and turned it into verse, writing a number of satires, to which he gave the name of Truth, Table Talk, Expostulation, Hope, Conver sation, etc. These were more than mere exercises in verse, but they lacked spontaneity. This came later when, under the general head of The Task, he wrote a number of rambling, graceful, light though serious poems into which he poured his best thought. His poetry, it may be believed, cured him of much of his melancholy, and as he grew healthier, so he wrote wholesome, sweet verse, now and then, as in John Gilpin, breaking into laughter. He played with his pets, he worked in his garden, he translated Homer, and little by little his old friends in London found that the person whom they supposed had been thrown aside as good

for nothing was a famous man. He wrote from his seclusion most delightful letters, which have been published since his death. People now go back to Cowper as they like to go into the country and see clear streams, limpid lakes, and gentle rolling country. His poetry is full of rest and peace. He died April 25, 1800.

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