reducible to rhythm, were not seldom ingeniously significant, and signally energetic. He feared not to employ colloquial, philosophical, judicial idioms, and forms of argument, and illustrations, which enlarged the vocabulary of poetical terms, less by recurring to obsolete ones, (which has been too prodigally done since,) than by hazardous, and generally happy innovations of more recent origin, which have become graceful and dignified by usage, though Pope and his imitators durst not have touched them. The eminent adventurous revivers of English poetry about thirty years ago, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, in their blank verse, trod directly in the steps of Cowper, and, in their early productions at least, were each, in a measure, what he made them. Our author may be legitimately styled the father of this triumvirate, who are, in truth, the living fathers of the innumerable race of moderns, whom no human ingenuity could well classify into their respective schools."* The simplicity of Cowper as a thinker, examiner, and writer, is unquestionably one of his greatest charms. He constantly reminds us of a highly-gifted and intelligent child. In all that he says and does, there is a total absence of all plot and stratagem, of all pretensions to think profoundly, or write finely; though, without an effort, he does both. His manner is to invite you to walk abroad with him amidst the glories of nature; to fix at random on some point in the landscape; to display its beauties or its peculiarities-to touch on some feature which has, perhaps, altogether escaped your own eye-to pour out the simplest thoughts in the simplest language and to make you feel that never man before had so sweet, so moral, so devout, so affectionate, so gifted, so musical a companion. The simplicity of his style is, we believe, considering its strength, without a parallel. No author, perhaps, has done more to recover the language of our country from the grasp and tyranny of a foreign idiom, and to teach English people to speak in English accents. In some instances, it may be granted, that he is somewhat more colloquial and homely than the dignity of his subject warrants. But for offences of this kind he makes the amplest compensation, by leading us to those "wells of undefiled English," at which he had drunk so deeply, and whence alone the pure streams of our national composition are to be drawn. It is next to be noticed, as to the style of Cowper, that it is as nervous as it is clear and unpretending. It is impossible to compare the works of Addison, and others of the simple class of writers, with Johnson, and those of the opposite class, without feeling that what they gain in simplicity they often lose Montgomery's Essay on Cowper's Poems. in strength and power. But the language of Cowper is often to the full as vigorous and masculine as that of Shakspeare. Bring a tyrant or a slave-driver before him for judgment; and the axe of the one and the scourge of the other are not keener weapons than the words of the poet. tween It would be difficult to find in any writer a more striking example of nervous phraseology than we have in the well-known lines: "But hark-the doctor's voice!-fast wedged beTwo empirics he stands, and with swoll'n cheeks Inspires the news, his trumpet. Keener far Than all invective, is his bold harangue, While through that public organ of report He hails the clergy; and defying shame, Announces to the world his own and theirs! He teaches those to read, whom schools dismissed And emphasis in score, and gives to pray'r And colleges, untaught; sells accent, tone. Th' adagio and andante it demands. He grinds divinity of other days Down into modern use; transforms old print To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes Of gall'ry critics by a thousand arts. Are there who purchase of the doctor's ware? O name it not in Gath!--It cannot be, [aid. He doubtless is in sport and does but droll; That grave and learned clerks should need such Assuming thus a rank unknown beforeGrand caterer and dry-nurse of the church!" In the next place, it will not be questioned, we think, by any reader of the preceding letters, that Cowper was a wit of the very highest order-and this quality is by no means confined to his prose, but enters largely into everything that he writes. No author surprises us more frequently with rapid turns and unexpected coincidences. The mock sublime is one of his favorite implements; and he employs it with almost unrivalled success. There is also a delicacy of touch in his witticisms which is more easily felt than described. And his wit has this noble singularity, that it is never derived from wrong sources, or directed to wrong ends. It never wounds a feeling heart, or deepens the blush upon a modest cheek. Other wits are apt to dip their vessels in any stream which presents itself; Cowper draws only from the purest fountains. It has been said of Sterne, that he hides his pearls in a ditch, and forces his readers to dive for them; but the witticisms of Cowper are as well calculated to instruct as to delight. This last topic is intimately connected with another, which, in touching on the excellences of Cowper as a poet, cannot be passed over, we mean, the astonishing fertility of his imagination. It was observed to the writer of these pages by the late Sir James Mackintosh, of the friend and ornament of his species, William Wilberforce, that "he was perhaps the finest of all orators of his natural, and rational of all writers; and, own particular order-that the wealth of his however poetry may seem to appropriate to imagination was such, that no idea seemed to herself rather the remote and visionary re present itself to his mind without its accom-gions of fiction than that of dull reality, we panying image or ghost, which he could pro- are disposed to think, that, even in her wildduce at his pleasure, and which it was a mat-est wanderings, she will maintain no real and ter of self-denial if he did not produce." And permanent ascendency over the mind, if she the latter part of this criticism might seem to widely deviates from nature and good sense. be made for Cowper. His mind appears "Monstrous sights," says Beattie, and he never to wait for an image, but to be over- might have added, monstrous conceptions, run by them. In argument or description-"please but for a moment, if they please at in hurling the thunders of rebuke, or whispering the messages of mercy-he does but wave his wand, and a host of spiritual essences descend to darken or brighten the scenes at his bidding; to supply new weapons of rebuke, or new visions of love and joy. Some of his personifications are among the finest specimens in any language. What, for example, has more of the genuine spirit of poetry, than the personification of Famine, in the following lines?— "He calls for Famine and the meagre fiend Blows mildew from between his shrivell❜d lips And taints the golden ear.' all; for they derive their charm merely from What is more lively or forcible than his which there was no regard to colors, propor description of Time?— "Time, as he passes us, has a dove's wing, shows His azure eyes, is tinctured black and red What, again, is superior in this way to his address to Winter? snows "O Winter! ruler of the inverted year! But the examples of this species of personification are without number; and we are not afraid to bring many of them into comparison with the Discord of Homer, the Fame of Virgil, or the Famine of Ovid-passages of so powerful a cast as at once, and without any assistance, to establish the poetical authority of their inventors. It may seem strange to some, that we should assign a place, among the poetical claims of Cowper, to his strong sense. He appears to us to be one of the most just, tions, or any of the physical laws of nature; eyes and Stamp and clear impression of good sense." The very passage in the sixth book of The Task," from which this line is taken, and which furnishes perhaps the most perfect uninspired delineation of a true Christian, supplies, at the same time, an admirable example of the quality we mean; and shows, that even where his feelings were the most intensely interested, his passions were under the control of his reason; that, when he mounted the chariot of the sun, he took care not to approach too near the flaming lumi nary. It would be impossible, in a sketch such as this, not to advert to the powers of the author as a satirist. And here, we think the most partial critic will be scarcely disposed to deny, that he sometimes handles his knife a little at random and with too much severity. He had early in life been intimate with Churchill; and, with scarcely a touch of the temper of that right English poet, had plainly caught something of his manner. There is this wide distinction between him and his master-that his irony and rebuke are never the weapons of party, or personality, but of truth, honor, and the public good. The strong, though homely image, applied by Churchill to another critic, "Like a butcher, doom'd for life In his mouth to wear his knife,' self a strong exemplification of the truth of his own rule. Not merely his heroes and his heroines, but his rocks, mountains, and rivers, are a sort of fac simile of himself. The blue lake reposing among the mountains is the bard in a state of repose. The thunder leaping from rock to rock is the same mind under the strong excitement of passion. But perhaps of all writers Cowper is the most habitually what may be termed an experimentalist is too just a picture of its author, but is infi- in poetry. He sought in "the man within," nitely far from being that of Cowper. It was the secret machinery by which to touch and well said of his satire, that "it was the off-to control the world without. He felt deeply; spring of benevolence; and that, like the Pe- and caught the feeling as it arose, and translian spear, it furnishes the only cure for the ferred it, warm from the heart, to his own pawound it inflicts. When he is obliged to per. Hence one great attraction of his writblame, he pities; when he condemns, it is ings. "As face answereth to face in water, with regret. His censures display no triso the heart of man to man." The sensations umphant superiority; but rather express a of other men are to a great degree our own; turn of feeling such as we might suppose an- and the poetical exhibition of these sensations gels to indulge in at the prospect of human is the presenting to us a sort of illuminated frailty." mirror in which we see ourselves, and are, according to the view, moved to sorrow or to joy. Preachers as well as poets will do well to remember this law of our nature, and will endeavor to analyze and to delineate their own feelings, if they mean to reach those of others. Unhappily, the noble author of this canon in philosophy and literature had no very profitable picture of this kind to display to his fellow men. He speaks, however, of unmasking the hell that dwelt within." And he has taught no unimportant lesson to his species, if he has instructed us in the utter wretchedness of those who, gifted with the noblest powers, refuse to consecrate them to the glorious Giver. But, however unprofitable his own application of the rule, the rule itself is valuable; and, in the case of Cowper, we have the application of it, both on the largest scale and to the best possible purpose. But, if his satirical powers were sometimes indulged to excess, it is impossible to deny that he was, generally and habitually, of all poets, the most sympathizing and tender. Nothing in human composition can surpass the tenderness of the poem on receiving his mother's picture, or of those exquisite lines addressed to a lady in France suffering under deep calamity, of which last we shall quote a few for the ornament of our page:— The path of sorrow, and that path alone, How slow to learn the dictates of his love, These flowing from the fount of grace above, The Hymns are almost uniformly of the same character. Drawn from the deep recesses of a broken heart, they find a short and certain way to the bosom of others. 66 There is one other feature in the mind of Cowper on which, before quitting the subject of this examination, we must be permitted to say a few words. It has been the habit with many, while freely conceding to our poet most of the humbler claims to reputation for which we have contended, to assign him only a second or third place in the scale of poets, on the ground that he is, according to their estimate, altogether "incapable of the true sublime." Now, it must be admitted that, if the only true sublimity in writing be to write like Milton, Cowper cannot be ranked in the same class as a poet. Of Milton it may be said, in the words of a poet as great as himself "He doth bestride the world Like a Colossus: and we petty men Walk under his huge legs.' And this leads to the notice of another peculiarity in his writings. It is said to have been a favorite maxim with Lord Byron, "that every writer is interesting to others in Nothing can be more astonishing than the proportion as he is able and willing to seize composure and dignity with which, like his and to display to them the hidden workings own Satan, he climbs the "empyreal height" of his own soul." The noble critic is him--sails between worlds and worlds-and moves among thrones and principalities, as if "Then liberty, like day, In like manner the Millennium of Cowper is at least not inferior to the Messiah of Pope. The corresponding passage in the latter writer is greatly inferior to that in which our poet says, Lurks in the serpent now-the mother sees, after the last extract: "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 Having offered these general observation: "on the Genius and Poetry" of Cowper, and having so largely drawn from his sweet and instructive pages, it is not thought necessary to supply any more specific notice of his sev eral poems. It is superfluous to enter upon a detailed proof that his poems in rhyme, though occasionally brightened by passages of extraordinary merit, are often prosaic in their character, and halting and feeble in the versification; that his shorter poems, whether of a gay or of a devotional cast, are, for pathos, wit, delicacy of conception, and felicity of expression, unequalled in our language; that his Homer is an evidence, not of his incapacity as a translator, but of the impossi bility of transmuting into stiff unyielding English monosyllables the rich compounds of the Greek, without a sacrifice both of sound and sense; that "The Task" outruns in power. variety, depth of thought, fertility of imagin ation, vigor of expression, in short, in all which constitutes a poet of the highest order, every hope which his earlier poems had allowed his readers to indulge. The dawn gave little or no promise of such a day. The porch was in no sense commensurate to the temple afterwards to be erected. On the whole, his "Poems" will always be considered as one of the richest legacies which genius and virtue have bequeathed to mankind; and will be welcomed wherever the English language is known, and English minds, tastes, and habits prevail; wherever the approbation of what is good and the abhorrence of what is evil are felt; wherever truth is honored, and God and his creatures are loved. With these observations we bring our imperfect criticisms on the Poems of Cowper to a conclusion. The writer of them does not hesitate to say that he has been amply rewarded for his own critical labors, by the privilege of often escaping from his own page to that of his author. And the reader of them will be still more largely compensated if, when weary of the critic, he will turn aside to breathe an ardent supplication to the Giver of all that was good and great in Cowper, that he himself may drink deeply of the spirit, without participating in the sorrows of this most holy, most distinguished, most suffering, but now most triumphant, servant of the God and Saviour to whom he so nobly and habitually dedicated all his powers. WHEN an author, by appearing in print, re- was not he wondered (as thousands in a quests an audience of the public, and is upon similar situation still do) that he should conthe point of speaking for himself, whoever tinue dissatisfied, with all the means appapresumes to step before him with a preface, rently conducive to satisfaction within his and to say, "Nay, but hear me first," should reach-But in due time the cause of his dishave something worthy of attention to offer, appointment was discovered to him-he had or he will be justly deemed officious and im- lived without God in the world. In a memopertinent. The judicious reader has proba-rable hour, the wisdom which is from above bly, upon other occasions, been beforehand visited his heart. Then he felt himself a with me in this reflection; and I am not very wanderer, and then he found a guide. Upon willing it should now be applied to me, how- this change of views, a change of plan and ever I may seem to expose myself to the dan- conduct followed of course. When he saw ger of it. But the thought of having my own the busy and the gay world in its true light, he name perpetuated in connection with the name left it with as little reluctance as a prisoner, in the title-page is so pleasing and flattering when called to liberty, leaves his dungeon. to the feelings of my heart, that I am content Not that he became a Cynic or an Asceticto risk something for the gratification. a heart filled with love to God will assuredly breathe benevolence to men. But the turn of his temper inclining him to rural life, he indulged it, and, the providence of God evidently preparing his way and marking out his retreat, he retired into the country. By these steps, the good hand of God, unknown to me, was providing for me one of the principal blessings of my life; a friend and a counsellor, in whose company for almost seven years, though we were seldom seven successive waking hours separated, I always found new pleasure-a friend who was not only a comfort to myself, but a blessing to the affectionate poor people among whom I then lived. This Preface is not designed to commend the Poems to which it is prefixed. My testimony would be insufficient for those who are not qualified to judge properly for themselves, and unnecessary to those who are. Besides, the reasons which render it improper and unseemly for a man to celebrate his own performances, or those of his nearest relatives, will have some influence in suppressing much of what he might otherwise wish to say in favor of a friend, when that friend is indeed an alter idem, and excites almost the same emotions of sensibility and affection as he feels for himself. It is very probable these Poems may come into the hands of some persons, in whom the sight of the author's name will awaken a recollection of incidents and scenes, which through length of time they had almost forgotten. They will be reminded of one who was once the companion of their chosen hours, and who set out with them in early life in the paths which lead to literary honors, to influence and affluence, with equal prospects of success. But he was suddenly and powerfully withdrawn from those pursuits, and he left them without regret; yet not till he had sufficient opportunity of counting the cost, and of knowing the value of what he gave up. If happiness could have been found in classical attainments, in an elegant taste, in the exertions of wit, fancy, and genius, and in the esteem and converse of such persons, as in these respects were most congenial with himself, he would have been happy. But he Some time after inclination had thus removed him from the hurry and bustle of life, he was still more secluded by a long indisposition, and my pleasure was succeeded by a proportionable degree of anxiety and concern. But a hope, that the God whom he served would support him under his affliction, and at length vouchsafe him a happy deliverance, never forsook me. The desirable crisis, I trust, is now nearly approaching. The dawn, the presage of returning day, is already arrived. He is again enabled to resume his pen, and some of the first fruits of his recovery are here presented to the public. In his principal subjects, the same acumen, which distinguished him in the early period of life, is happily employed in illustrating and enforc ing the truths of which he received such deep and unalterable impressions in his maturer years. His satire, if it may be called so, is benevolent, (like the operations of the skilful |