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JAN 16:884

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Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh.

PREFACE.

THE fame of Cowper, like that of every other poet worthy to be reckoned among the foremost names of literature, has gone through various vicissitudes. The ups and downs of changing taste are indeed the tests of real reputation; and it is only the names that re-emerge, with lustre changed, perhaps, but scarcely dimmed, from the cold shades of neglect and forgetfulness, that are worthy to be inscribed on the national roll as a lasting glory and honour to the language. There are many who enjoy a very agreeable reputation in their own day to whom this ordeal is fatal, and there are few things at once more humbling and more comical than the juxtaposition of names which now and then a critical generation will make, to its own confusion. Thus Shenstone and even Rowe have been in their day coupled with Shakespeare; and Dante was once considered a rude and barbarous rhymster in the sublime presence of Lorenzo dei Medici. Cowper, who has no such rank, has, however, suffered like his greater brethren by the changes of popular feeling, and has gone out of fashion all the more completely for the temporary causes which at his outset added to his fame. There are almost always some adventitious circumstances to increase the due weight of poetic merit with the poet's contemporaries. The mere fact that they are contemporaries gives his generation an interest in him, besides the more true effect of a mind fashioned by the same influences, and probably moving in a line of thought harmonious with

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their own. In this there is nothing that detracts from the common interest of mankind, but rather a charm and attraction additional, an individuality which gives character to the general. Shakespeare is true Elizabethan but he is still truer man; and the large and noble atmosphere of a magnificent age adds something to, but never impairs, the humanity which we all share. Even Pope, the exponent of so much less heroic a period, loses but little from the fact that his ways of thinking and the very air he breathes are different from ours. And when the adventitious circumstances which enhance the poetry at its first bursting forth are personal, as in such a case as Byron's, the passing away of their temporary influence takes nothing from the true merit upon which every final verdict has to be founded. If we are not carried away by enthusiasm for the beautiful young peer and hero, we can still understand the state of mind of those who were so, and, though unimpressed ourselves, can comprehend sympathetically how his first readers were impressed. But Cowper is under the action of a different class of influences. The temporary advantage which enhanced his work to his generation was neither that of personal attractiveness nor of general harmony with his age. He represented, indeed, and afforded utterance to a large party in his age, binding willing fetters upon his gentle genius to make himself more and more its spokesman and exponent. His hope and ambition was to be the poet of religion—and that not of religion in the broadest sense, not of divine Christianity in its largeness and fulness, but of the special form of religion which a special revival of interest in sacred subjects at a moment of much profanity and vice had called forth. The faith, not even of Calvin, but of John Newton, represented Christianity to Cowper's eyes. He knew no kind of piety but that which was dictated by this form of doctrine, and he tutored himself to be its interpreter to the world which loved verse better than sermons. Immediately he had his reward; he was admitted not only by the lovers of poetry into the sacred

circle of the poets; but he was warmly hailed and adopted by the myriads who know nothing about literature, yet love above all things to have their own sentiments uttered for them in the language of verse. When it occurs to poetry

to be placed beside his Bible by the devout reader's bedside, it has reached a height at which no critical standards have any sway. The writers who attain this eminence are seldom great; they are usually devout hymnsters, authors of verses real enough to strike a responsive note in pious hearts, though without any value in art. But when by chance a true poet reaches this position, his fame, for the moment at least, is beyond measure. Keble, in our own generation, has reached it by the strength of an inspiration which is the same in its source but entirely different in its manifestation from that of Cowper; and what poet has reached so suddenly and easily anything like the universal popularity of the Christian Year?

This, however, which adds so immensely to immediate appreciation, is bad for the future. Keble may not suffer; he is so much less than Cowper in intrinsic merit, that if he loses this standing ground, no other will be left of appreciable magnitude, and he must go altogether if he fails at all; but at the same time he is far safer than Cowper, insomuch as his is the romance of religion, with many picturesque elements in it, of Gothic architecture, and fine music, and beautiful ritual, besides its all-pervading devotion. Even were the faith of the Evangelical party to return again, as perhaps, after the long reign of free-thinking and over-liberality, it may do, the pious sentiment of Keble would still keep him afloat. But Cowper has little chance of gaining toleration either from the High Church or the indifferent world. For his religiousness is of a far more rigid kind. Though he can see, none better, the love of God in the smile of nature, and point out the innocent homage of creation to its Maker, yet he cannot permit us to join in that homage without a distinct profession of faith. He will allow no general statements, no vague

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