CHAPTER I THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH 1780-1815 THE period which immediately preceded and accompanied the French Revolution was one of violent and complete transition in English literature. The long frost of classicism broke up; the sealed fountains of romantic expression forced their way forth, and then travelled smoothly on upon their melodious courses. The act of release, then, is the predominant interest to us in a general survey, and the progress of liberated romance the main object of our study. Poetry once more becomes the centre of critical attention, and proves the most important branch of literature cultivated in England. The solitary figure of Burke attracts towards the condition of prose an observation otherwise riveted upon the singularly numerous and varied forms in which poetry is suddenly transforming itself. As had been the case two hundred years before, verse came abruptly to the front in England, and absorbed all public attention. George III. Among the factors which led to the enfranchisement of the imagination, several date from the third quarter of the eighteenth century. Johnson's famous and diverting Lives of the Poets was raised as a bulwark against forces which that sagacious critic had long felt to be advancing, and which he was determined to withstand. The Aristotelian rules, the monotony of versification, the insistence. abstract ideas and conventional verbiage-the whole panoply of classicism. under which poetry had gone forth to battle in serried ranks since 1660 was now beginning to be discredited. The Gallic code was found insufficient, for Gray had broken up the verse; Collins had introduced a plaintive, flute-like note; Thomson had looked straight at nature; then the VOL. IV. A on The Revival of Nature. timid protest had given scandal, while Churchill and Goldsmith had gone On the whole, this last, although now so tarnished and visibly so spurious, seems to have been at that time Cowper's Mother But in the meantime, four poets of widely various talent arrest our attention during the last years of the century. Of these, two, Cowper and Crabbe, endeavoured to support the old tradition; Burns and Blake were entirely indifferent to it-such, at least, is the impression which their work produces on us, whatever may have been their private wish or conviction. Certain dates are of value in emphasising the practically simultaneous appearance of these poets of the transition. Cowper's Table Talk was published in 1782, and the Task in 1785. Crabbe's clearly defined first period opens with the Candidate of 1780, and closes with the Newspaper of 1785. Blake's Poetical Sketches date from 1783, and the Songs of Innocence from 1787. If the world in general is acquainted with a single bibliographical fact, it is aware that the Kilmarnock Burns was issued in 1786. Here, then, is a solid body of poetry evidently marked out for the notice of the historian, a definite group of verse inviting his inspection and his classification. Unfortunately, attractive and interesting as each of these poets is, it is exceedingly difficult to persuade ourselves that they form anything like a school, or are proceeding in approximately the same direction. If a writer less like Crabbe than Burns is to be found in literature, it is surely Blake, and a parallel between Cowper and Burns would reduce a critic to despair. At first sight we simply see the following general phenomena. Here is WILLIAM COWPER, a writer of 'great elegance and amenity, the soul of gentle wit and urbane grace, engaged in continuing and extending the work of Thomson, advancing the exact observation of natural objects, without passion, without energy, without a trace of lyrical effusion, yet distinguished from his eighteenth century predecessors by a resistance to their affected, rhetorical diction; a very pure, limpid, tender talent, all light without fire or vapour. William Cowper William Cowper (17311800) was the son of the Rev. John Cowper and his wife Ann Donne, of good family on both sides. His father was chaplain to George II. and rector of Great Berkhampstead, where the poet was born on the 15th of November 1731. He was a very delicate child, much neglected at home after his mother's death in 1737, when he was sent for two years to a school in Market Street, Herts, where his nervous strength was permanently undermined by the bullying of one of his school-fellows. His eyes became painfully inflamed, and for two years (1739-41) he was under medical care in the house of an oculist. About the age of ten he grew stronger, and was able to be sent to Westminster School, where he played cricket and football, and, under the celebrated Latinist, Vincent Bourne, became a competent scholar. Among his friends and associates at school were Churchill, Colman, Cumberland, and Warren Hastings. Cowper remained at Westminster until 1749, when he was entered William of the Middle Temple, and articled for three years to a solicitor. During this time he was intimate with the family of his uncle, Ashley Cowper, with whose daughters, Harriet and Theodora, he was to be found" from morning to night, giggling and making. stages. At the death of his father, in 1756, Cowper bought chambers in the Middle Temple, and began to contribute to current literature. He says that he "produced several half-penny ballads, two or three of which had the honour to become popular," but these have never been identified. A variety of causes, however, of which the dread of poverty was one, exasperated his neurosis, and in October 1763, just after his appointment to be Clerk of the Journals of the House of Lords, he became suicidally insane; on the 7th of December he was placed in an asylum at St. Albans, kept by a minor poet of some grace and an excellent physician, Dr. Nathaniel Cotton. His terrible Sapphics were written during this confinement. In the summer of 1765 he was considered to be so far cured that he was removed to lodgings in Huntingdon. Here he renewed his correspondence with a charming cousin, Lady Hesketh, and made some pleasant acquaintances, in particular that of a cultivated family of Unwins, into whose house he was taken as a paying guest later in the same year. In 1767 the elder Mr. Unwin was thrown from his horse, the children were dispersed, and it became natural for Mrs. Unwin and Cowper to take house together. Accordingly in September they removed to Orchard Side in Olney in Bucks. Here Cowper was greatly impressed by the character and conversation of the curate, John Newton, who persuaded the poet to help him in his parochial duties: Olney was a poor parish, without gentry, "and the poor poet was the only squire." Newton, however, had no sense of moderation; a young man of fiery under the strain of violent religious excitement Cowper went mad again. I have taken довозом since you went, many of the walks occasion for it From a letter of Cowper's have no 4 with ardour, but the decline of Mrs. Unwin's faculties, ending in para! his intelligence again. He fought a losing battle against insanity, |