structure, beyond masculine description, presumably in the style of the day; she has a little waist, cheeks with a high colour, and full and rather pouting lips. Wherever we meet her in the letters, she is a figure of gaiety and kindness. In 1773 Cowper had a long attack of madness which left him with a permanent delusion that God had required him to kill himself, and that his failure to obey had finally stamped him God's enemy. The seventy letters to Teedon, which Mr Thomas Wright has printed, and others to more reasonable friends, form a terrible record of insanity. With years the disease gained strength, and he sought refuge from himself in translating Homer. Homer is the easiest and the most difficult of Greek authors to render; and Cowper tripped, as Charles Lamb pointed out, over Homer's swiftness.1 He was too much under Milton's influence. His letters are full of references to Homer, and his criticisms and comments are fresh and interesting. Every kindness that Lady Hesketh, and Johnson, and Hayley could minister to a mind diseased, he had. Hayley's services were surely the most ingenious poet ever devised for poet, but they were in vain. Deeper and deeper in misery Cowper sank. Mrs Unwin's health gave way and she died, and her poet unhappily survived her for four years. Even now, in an interlude of his disease, he could write with the extraordinary power and pathos of the Castaway, and he did a good deal of miscellaneous translation, Milton's Latin poems and Virgil's Moretum. His last piece of original composition, a poem written in a lucid interval in March 1799, is the Castaway. It tells of a sailor of Anson's who fell overboard on a night of storm when rescue was impossible, and how he 1 Letter to Charles Lloyd, 31 July 1809. Thirteen years before he had praised Cowper's Odyssey as very Homeric"; letter to Coleridge, 14 June 1796. 2 See Atlantic Monthly, July 1907. Waged with death a lasting strife Supported by despair of life. Verse after verse gives the vivid sense of his long struggle, till By toil subdued he drank The stifling wave, and then he sank. No poet wept him; but the page That tells his name, his worth, his age, And tears by bards or heroes shed I therefore purpose not, or dream, To give the melancholy theme But misery still delights to trace No voice divine the storm allayed, When, snatched from all effectual aid, But I beneath a rougher sea And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he. On the 25 April 1800 he died, still feeling "unutterable despair." England had already living others of greater poetic power who were to eclipse him in poetry. But some three years after his death Hayley published a quarto Life of Cowper, the real feature of which was a number of the poet's letters-somewhat cut about, it is true, to please Lady Hesketh, who was charmed with the result. "Johnny" Johnson followed with his familiar correspondence, and Grimshaw and Southey in turn republished in rival editions all the letters they could get. Others have since been added. By now it is possible to maintain that it is rather as a letter-writer than as a poet that Cowper will live, or at least that the letters will be read more than the poems. Yet one writes it with reluctance. In any case, letters and poems together give us such a picture as we have nowhere in English, save in Boswell and Lockhart-and one which, it is possible to maintain, surpasses both in charm. BOSWELL HO is this Scotch cur at Johnson's heels?" some one asked Goldsmith in 1763. "W "He is not a cur," said Goldsmith; "he is only a bur. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking." 1 2 The bur was James Boswell, Esquire, eldest son of a Scottish Judge, Lord Auchinleck. He was twenty-two years old, and had already begun to pack his life with vivid interests. Johnson, he says, "used to tell with great humour, from my relation to him, the following little story of my early years, which was literally true: 'Boswell, in the year 1745, was a fine boy, wore a white cockade, and prayed for King James, till one of his uncles (General Cochran) gave him a shilling on condition that he should pray for King George, which he accordingly did. So you see (says Boswell) that Whigs of all ages are made the same way." The delicate way in which he transfers his autobiography to Johnson's lips is characteristic. When rather older, he went to Edinburgh University, and there made the friendship of W. J. Temple, who soon went on to Cambridge, and with whom he kept up a correspondence through life. In 1759 he went to Glasgow to attend Adam Smith's lectures. It is something to captivate one's professors, and Boswell did it; for Adam Smith gave him a testimonial to the effect that he was "happily possessed of a facility of manners." 3 "Some days ago," writes Boswell (29 July 1758), “I 1 Life, i. 417. Throughout references are made to Dr Birkbeck Hill's sixvolume edition. 2 Life, i. 431. Rae, Adam Smith, p. 58. was introduced to your friend Mr Hume; he is a most discreet, affable man, and has really a great deal of learning and a choice collection of books. He is indeed an extraordinary man,-few such people are to be met with nowadays. . . . Mr Hume, I think, is a very proper person for a young man to cultivate acquaintance with. Though he has not perhaps the most delicate taste, yet he has applied himself with great attention to the study of the ancients, and is likewise a great historian, so that you are not only entertained in his company, but may reap a great deal of useful instruction." David Hume was nearly thirty years older than his critic of eighteen, and had already published most of his more notable books. So early did Boswell consider with whom a young man might profitably cultivate acquaintance, and conclude to aim at the best. He goes on to tell Temple that "your grave, sedate, philosophic friend"-it is not Hume that is meant-has been "violently in love with " Miss W-t, but now "it is changed to a rational esteem of her good qualities, so that I should be extremely happy to pass my life with her; but if she does not incline to it, I can bear it æquo animo, and retire into the calm regions of philosophy. She is indeed extremely pretty . . . at the same time she has a just regard for true piety and religion, and behaves in the most easy, affable way. She is just such a young lady as I could wish for the partner of my soul; and you know that is not every one; for you and I have often talked how nice we would be in such a choice. I own I can have but little hopes, as she is a fortune of thirty thousand pounds." Temple was to receive such confidences for many years about many "charmers" and "princesses." In Glasgow Boswell fell in with Roman Catholics and decided to become one; but, according to the anecdote 1 Years later we find Hume still entertaining him-"an elegant supper, three sorts of ice-creams. What think you of the northern Epicurus style?" Letter to Temple, 19 June 1775 |