After reading "The Lives of the Poets," he writes as follows to the Rev. William Unwin: I am very much Johnson's humble servant. His uncommon share of good sense, and his forcible expression, secure to him that tribute from all his readers. He has a penetrating insight into character, and a happy talent of correcting the popular opinion, upon all occasions where it is erroneous; and this he does with the boldness of a man who will think for himself; but, at the same time, with a justness of sentiment that convinces us he does not differ from others through affectation, but because he has a sounder judgment. This remark, however, has his narrative for its object, rather than his critical perform ances. If Cowper had written a series of critical essays upon English poets they would have been as well worth reading as anything from Johnson's pen or Cowper's own. The following remarks are not only acute, but they also exhibit Cowper's ability to do what I have suggested: Every man conversant with verse-writing knows, and knows by painful experience, that the familiar style is of all styles the most difficult to succeed in. To make verse speak the language of prose without being prosaic, to marshal the words of it in such an order as they might naturally take in falling from the lips of an extemporary speaker, yet without meanness, harmoniously, elegantly, and without seeming to displace a syllable for the sake of the rhyme, is one of the most arduous tasks a poet can undertake. He that could accomplish this task was Prior; many have imitated his excellence in this particular, but the best copies have fallen far short of the original. It was to be expected that Goldsmith would find favor in Cowper's eyes; hence it is not surprising to find him writing: I have read Goldsmith's "Traveller" and "Deserted Village," and am highly pleased with them both, as well for the manner in which they are executed as for their tendency, and the lessons they inculcate. It is more remarkable, however, that he should have appreciated Burns, and have written as follows about him: I have read Burns's poems twice; and though they be written in a language that is new to me, and many of them on subjects much inferior to the author's ability, I think them on the whole a very extraordinary production. He was fitted to give advice to poets, and his practice was in keeping with the following sensible remarks: Whatever is short should be nervous, masculine, and compact. Little men are so; and little poems should be so; because, where the work is short, the author has no right to the plea of weariness; and laziness is never admitted as an available excuse in anything. Cowper's references to prose writers display the same acumen as those to poets. For example: — Robertson is an author that I admire much, with one exception, that I think his style too labored; Homer, as an historian, pleases me more. A vein of pleasantry runs through Cowper's correspondence, and those who read it, without knowing his personal history, would suppose that he was a light-hearted man. Yet his case was that of many who amuse others while being melancholy at heart; of Grimaldi, the clown, who made children and their parents laugh; of Liston, whose impersonations were the perfection of humor. Cowper's correspondent could scarcely believe that his spirits were not as light as his pen. He wrote that "Joy of heart, from whatever occasion it may arise, is the best of all nervous medicines." He had made thousands laugh over the adventures of "John Gilpin," while they rendered him sadder on a retrospect. He informed Lady Hesketh on the 11th of December, 1786, that The grinners at "John Gilpin " little dream what the author sometimes suffers. How I hated myself yesterday for ever having wrote it! Before then he had written the following words, which are as pathetic as they are true: markably sad when I seem remarkably merry. In general you may suppose that I am reThe effort we make to get rid of a load is usually violent in proportion to the weight of it. While Cowper was liable to attacks of for a time as helpless as an infant, and mental derangement which rendered him during which his desire to end his life with his own hand returned, and had to be restrained, he was subject at all times, after his first serious attack, to nervous fevers, for which he had not the good ad vice which he might have received had he lived at a later day, when the physician displays greater science in mental maladies. The remedies which Cowper took may have increased his disease. What they were can be gathered from the following passages in letters written to Mr. Johnson in 1792: I am a little better; the powders and the laudanum together have, for the present at least, abated the fever that consumes me; and in measure as the fever abates, I acquire a less discouraging view of things, and with it a little power to exert myself. I was obliged to prepare myself for Rose's coming by a nightly dose of laudanum-twelve drops suffice; but without them I am devoured by melancholy. Cowper's biographers have omitted to inquire as to the degree in which his malady was effected by the medicine which he took. The subject would repay investigation. He suffered much and often, yet his days in the land were far longer than those of his brother, who was supposed to be a stronger man. Born in 1731, he lived till the 25th of April, 1800, having outlived Mrs. Unwin. He changed his place of abode more than once, and in his later and infirm years he had more kind friends to soothe his life than in his earlier and livelier days. In short, his existence had many compensations, and, despite his mental twist, he lived as happily as many who seldom have had a day's illness. Cowper knew little of the world, and he became its censor because he was so igno rant. He prided himself upon being of it, but not in it, and looking upon it "through the loopholes of retreat." It is not strange, then, that much of his satire lacks point. No satirist can approach Juvenal without having had Juvenal's experience. If Cowper had lived more in the world he might have been happier. Excitement and variety would have hindered him from brooding over his feelings, and suffering torments which were the offspring of a morbid and super-sensitive imagination. Though he was a commonplace moralist, he was a pointed writer, and whatever he wrote had a grace and finish which cannot be matched by passages from the pages of any contemporary, save those of Goldsmith and Horace Walpole. Nothing lighter and more graceful than the follow ing is to be found in any writings but theirs; the thought is not novel, yet is so well expressed as to seem perfectly fresh. It occurs in a letter to the Rev. William Unwin: When we look back upon our forefathers, we seem to look back upon the people of another nation, almost upon people of another species. Their vast, rambling mansions, spacious halls, and painted casements, the Gothic little gardens and high walls, their box-edg porch smothered with honeysuckles, their ings, balls of holly, and yew-tree statues, are become so entirely unfashionable now that we can hardly believe it possible that a people who so little resembled us in their taste should resemble us in anything else. But in everything else, I suppose, they were our counterparts exactly; and time, that has sewed up the slashed sleeve, and reduced the trunk hose to a neat pair of silk stockings, has left human nature just where it found it. The inside of the man at least has undergone no change. His passions, appetites, and aims are just what they were. They wear perhaps a handsomer disguise than they did in days of yore; for philosophy and literature will have their effect upon the exterior, but in other respects a modern is an ancient in a different dress. I shall conclude by giving two more extracts from his letters, which will serve in addition to those already quoted, to show his character and skill as a letterwriter, and which also show a great contrast between Cowper writing about himself and indulging his imagination, and writing somewhat as Charles Lamb might have done on the same theme. Both occur in letters to the Rev. John Newton, the first letter being written in April, and the second in November, 1783: — My days are spent in vanity, and it is impossible to spend them otherwise. No man bleness of a life like mine than I am, or groans upon earth is more sensible of the unprofitamore heavily under the burden; but this too is vanity, because it is in vain; my groans will not bring the remedy, because there is no remedy for me. The time when I seem to be most rationally employed is when I am reading. My studies, however, are much confined, and of little use because I have no books but what I borrow, and nobody will lend me a memory. My own is almost worn out. I often wondered in former days at the patience of the antediluvian world: "I will suppose myself born a thousand years before Noah was born or thought of. I rise with the sun; I worship, I prepare my breakfast, I swallow a bucket of goat's milk and a dozen good sizable cakes. I fashion a string to my bow, and my youngest boy, a lad of about thirty years of age, having played with my arrows till he has stripped off all the feathers, morning is thus spent in preparing for the I find myself obliged to repair them. The chase, and it is become necessary that I should dine. I dig up my roots; I wash them, I boil them, I find them not done enough. I boil them again, my wife is angry, we dispute, we settle the point, but in the mean time the fire goes out, and must be kindled again. All this is very amusing. I hunt, I bring home the prey; with the skin of it I mend an old coat or I make a new one. By this time the day is far spent; I feel myself fatigued, and retire to rest. Thus, what with tilling the ground, and eating the fruit of it, hunting and walking and running, and mending old clothes, and sleeping and rising again, I can suppose an inhabitant of the primeval world so much occupied, as to sigh over the shortness of life, and to find at the end of many centuries that they had all slipt through his fingers, and were passed away like a shadow." W. FRASER RAE. From Macmillan's Magazine. which have been wrought in naval affairs shallow people may imagine that nothing is to be learned from a review of our triumphs at sea in the past. As soldiers are to be found who deny that useful lessons can be obtained from studying the campaigns of Napoleon, and who say that military history begins with Moltke, so sailors exist who assert that our naval annals before the era of steam are an old almanack, an unprofitable, nay, a pernicious dead letter. Yet in the art of war, as in other arts, mind controls, shapes, and informs matter. In the conflict of armed masses, whether at sea or on land, me. chanical appliances being nearly equal, superior energy and discipline always prevail; and it would be strange indeed if under the new conditions a Celtic or a Slavonic race should conquer the Teuton in his own element. These truths have not been lost on thinking men. The naval A VARIETY of causes has lately drawn manoeuvres of the last few years have the attention of Englishmen to the career given the whole subject an ever-growing of Nelson. We inherit the traditions of interest; and though the public mind has the Nile and Trafalgar ; but thinking peo- not nearly realized many problems of modple have been long convinced that these ern war at sea, it has instinctively turned to memories of glory, though a noble pos- the career of Nelson, the most illustrious session, may become worse than useless if of our great admirals, as exhibiting in the our naval strength is not kept up to the highest perfection what has been achieved requirements of the age, and if the lead-in the past by our fleets, and indicating ers of our fleets have not thoroughly grasped the problems of naval tactics and strategy which have come into being since the Great War. The conditions of warfare at sea have been immensely changed. England remains the first of maritime powers; but her world wide commerce has been quadrupled, and it is more exposed than it has ever been. She is fed from abroad like Imperial Rome. France would be a very different naval foe from what she was in Nelson's day. If the fleet of Spain is of little account, that of Russia has very largely increased, and Germany and Italy have now real navies. It is at least questionable if we could confront a coalition of maritime states as we did in 1780 and 1801. Meanwhile material inventions have wholly transformed the character and qualities of modern navies. Steam, electricity, huge rifled ordnance, and armor plating have made the ship of war of 1890 as completely different from the ship of war of 1790, as that was from a Roman trireme ; and this wonderful revolution has made the subject of the defence of our shores and the protection of our trade, of blockades, of single actions, and of battles at sea, and generally of naval tactics and strategy, of peculiar interest to reflecting Englishmen. In the changes perhaps what is at present possible. The fact is proved by the many biographies of the mighty seaman which have appeared of late, and perhaps most clearly by the very able criticisms made recently on bis heroic exploits. We shall add our mite to these contributions, premising merely that the real character of Nelson and his true place in history are not to be found in books of our tongue; they must be collected from his despatches; and indeed the only good estimate of what he was is from the pen of an accomplished Frenchman, the veteran and well-informed De La Gravière. We think, too, that if the ca reer of Nelson throws real light on important problems connected with modern naval warfare, it illustrates some less strikingly than those of other commanders of less renown, Collingwood, for example, Howe, and St. Vincent. In a sketch of this kind we must pass over the incidents of the life of Nelson and consider him only as a great commander. The most distinctive, perhaps, of his mental gifts, was that he understood infinitely better than any of our chiefs the existing conditions of naval warfare in the long contest waged between England and France, with the occasional aid of Spain, from the first of June to Trafalgar. One of the secrets, at least, of Napoleon's tri- | derful triumphs. Howe edges up towards umphs, in the first stages of his marvel- Villaret on the first of June, because he lous career, was that he had the insight to has still respect for a French fleet. Calder see that the progress of husbandry and the fights a poor and indecisive action, bemultiplication of roads enabled an army to cause he doubts that fifteen British ships live on resources found on the spot, and can cope with a French and Spanish to move with a quickness before unknown; squadron of twenty. But Nelson knows his grasp of these facts was a main cause that a British naval force is incomparably of his extraordinary success in the cam- superior to any of its foes. After a chase paign of Italy. The perception of Nelson from the Straits across the Atlantic, he was of a different kind, but it was attended literally hunts Villeneuve out of the West with like results, and it contributed largely Indies with eleven ships of the line against to his most splendid exploits. Though on twenty. On the day of Trafalgar he bears the whole inferior to that of England in directly down in double column and a the war which created the United States, light breeze on a much more numerous the navy of France, and even that of Spain, fleet in line, - tactics not to be justified in was not an infinitely weaker force. The mere theory, but, as affairs stood, a real belligerent powers were not ill-matched; inspiration of genius, because owing to D'Estaing contended on equal terms with their proved ascendency they practically Byron; and if Rodney overcame De ensured the success of our arms. Grasse, Suffrein certainly far surpassed Independently of the master faculty of Hughes, and was indeed the foremost understanding the conditions of the war, seaman of his time. But the Revolution Nelson possessed the quality of supreme immensely diminished the naval strength seamanship. His professional skill has and resources of France; it deprived her never been surpassed; it may be doubted of all her best admirals and of half prob- if it has been equalled; and this was due ably of her trained sea officers; it intro- not only to inborn genius, but also in a duced dilapidation and waste into her great degree to experience. It has not dockyards, arsenals, and chief ports; been sufficiently noticed that before he above all, it infected her whole naval ser- commanded a ship of war he had passed vice with the indiscipline and lawlessness through a most severe apprenticeship. of Jacobin teaching. On the other hand He had been in the Polar seas and in the the corrupt despotism of Spain had fatally Indian Ocean, and he had stood before impaired her fleets; the imbecile succes- the mast in the Merchant Service. He sor of Charles III. completely neglected informs us that he spent months in making a once fine navy; Spanish admirals and himself an accomplished pilot; and the captains owed advancement to favoritism, knowledge stood him in stead on two great intrigue, and not to merit; and Spanish occasions. No admiral certainly of his ships were manned by a set of sailors, day would have ventured to steer the described by the unfortunate Villeneuve British fleet in shore of the French at the as "a miserable assemblage of landsmen battle of the Nile, and so to place it beand conscripts, unfit for anything." It tween two fires. It has been said that was a characteristic peculiar to Nelson Foley devised the movement, but the celthat almost alone of English chiefs, and ebrated expression that a British ship in a much higher degree than any, he per- could anchor in the space where a French fectly appreciated the enormous difference ship could swim, seems to prove that Nelbetween a French and Spanish fleet in son was the real author. No less admira1780, and a French and Spanish fleet ble was his skill as a pilot in the famous twenty years later. And though our own attack on Copenhagen; but for his comnavy had faults of its own the mutiny prehension of the nature of the shoals, half of the Nore is sufficient proof- he thor- of his fleet probably would have been oughly understood that it had acquired an stranded and overwhelmed by the Danish incalculable superiority in officers and batteries. In almost every phase of his men, and in all that constitutes power at splendid career Nelson gave proof of the sea, over navies commanded by third-rate same powers as a seaman. Curiously chiefs, over ships worked by unskilled enough he commanded a brig while still captains and filled with crews "of lawless in his teens; and he completely justified and riotous Frenchmen," and of "Span- his superior's remark, that he trusted "the iards who could not climb up the rigging." youngster as though he was an old cap. This insight was an inspiration with him; and his complete mastery of the conditions of the war was a chief cause of his won tain." The action of the Agamemnon with the Ca Ira is another striking instance of this gift. The unfortunate Frenchman never had a chance, and was utterly crip- so decisive in his day, that he could venpled by his nimble foe, as Drake crippled ture on efforts which would now be reckthe "huge castles" of Spain. It is less; and he proved this in a number of scarcely necessary to dwell on the won- instances. He moves out of the line at derful chase of Brueys, and of the ill-fated St. Vincent, in order to detain the Spanish Villeneuve, still less to notice the aston- fleet and to enable the British delayed by ishing fact, that Nelson maintained the Jervis, through mere adherence to the blockade of Toulon for a period never routine of the past, to come up and attack before known, and that he gained days on the enemy; he is engaged for an hour with Villeneuve in his Atlantic flight; this was three first-rates, and yet, to use his own seamanship in the extreme of perfection. words "this was apparently and not in It should be observed, too, that although reality an unequal contest." It was the Nelson was the most daring and brilliant same at the Nile and the same at Trafal of chiefs, he showed an attention to minute gar, the same in the ocean chase of Villedetails, and to everything that made his neuve. Nelson's conduct is open to squadrons safe, that was in the highest theoretic criticism; in the state of the degree admirable. He could drive his belligerent navies it was practically right, ships through a narrow passage never and the results were decisive. The daring since traversed by men of war, but he was of Nelson was also combined with one of specially jealous of his masts and yards. the most precious of naval qualities, He took care to anchor by the stern at the quick readiness to seize the occasion at Nile a precaution that saved many Brit-hand and resolution to turn it to account. ish lives. He bore down on Brueys and again on Villeneuve having first made it certain that every British ship would be able to distinguish friend from foe. His vessels never blew up like the Achille and the Orient, still less attacked each other like the Spanish first-rates which perished in the Bay of Algesiras. The most conspicuous illustration of this gift, perhaps, is to be found in his attitude at Copenhagen, a battle little studied by the general reader, but a magnificent specimen of this great excellence. The British fleet was certainly in great peril. It had partly overcome the armed Danish hulks; but it was anchored in a narrow channel along a treacherous shoal; and the only avenue of retreat it possessed was commanded by a powerful land battery, the guns of which had by no means been silenced. Had Nelson obeyed the signal of Parker and drawn out of the fire - or tried to do so of his foes, it is not impossible that the British fleet would have been involved in a real disaster. But Nelson took care to make the Danes feel the tremendous effect of the British ordnance; and when this was done he sent off a flag of truce, in order really to enable his ships to make their way out of the close passage in which they had been, so to speak, imprisoned. In the eyes of seamen this was one of the most brilliant of his feats. Gifts however in a chief which depend on intellect are less valuable than moral qualities; "talent" said Napoleon, "is not a match for real strength of character." The excellence of Nelson is not less conspicuous if we consider him on this side of his nature. He was the most daring before he had at least gained the better perhaps of commanders, "the Suvorof," as he has been called, "of the deep, who destroyed fleets at the bayonet's point." His "savage audacity," Décres exclaimed, astonished admirals who had been brought up in the experiences of the American War. This impetuous boldness, no doubt, was not always followed by success. Nelson was beaten off in the descent on Teneriffe, and the final attack cannot be justified. He failed to cut out the flotilla of Boulogne, and seems to have underrated its strength. And as De La Gravière has remarked, had the dying breeze sunk to a calm on the day of Trafalgar, when a few only of the British ships were engaged with the whole combined fleet, the issue of the battle would have been different. But the daring of Nelson was seldom rashness; genius is not omniscient and must leave a chance to fortune; and as a rule, in his most striking exploits, we see means thoroughly adapted to ends and calculation controlling temerity. The superiority in fact of the British fleets was But the chief gift of Nelson lay in his genius for command, in his faculty for directing his officers and men to the accomplishment of his great achievements. He was the master-spirit of the ship or the fleet directed by him; he made all his officers his docile instruments, and animated them with the "sacred fire;" and he breathed into his crews a heroic ardor strengthened by extraordinary devotion to himself. He was not a martinet like the stern-hearted Jervis; not a mere kindly chief like the feeble Hotham; not only a "sailor's friend," like the veteran Howe; |