Deeper than the depths beneath, Lord, it is my chief complaint, O for grace to love Thee more! 1 Such, too, is the beautiful hymn beginning with the verse Sometimes a light surprises The Christian while he sings; It is the Lord who rises But the frequent tone of Cowper's hymns is that of one who feels himself 'tempest-tossed and half a wreck,' clinging with pathetic tenacity to a hope which often seems scarcely sufficient to save him from despair :The billows swell, the winds are high Clouds overcast my wintry sky; Out of the depths to Thee I call My fears are great, my strength is small.3 He feels desolate in spirit and God-forsaken, lost in the night, and beset by mysterious enemies : My soul is sad and much dismayed; Powers of darkness are around him, and his soul is dark within. And yet I see, or think I see, A glimm'ring from afar ; A beam of day that shines for me, To save me from despair." His best hymns are most of them in the minor key of prayerful submission to a sovereign Will, and of earnest 1 Olney Hymns, i. 118. 2 Id. iii. 48. 4 Id. iii. 20. 5 Id. iii. 8. longing for deliverance from an innate sinfulness which might yet be too strong for him. Among these may be mentioned those beginning 'Oh for a closer walk with God;'1 'God of my life, to Thee I call; '2 'What various hindrances we meet; '3 The billows swell;' 4 'God moves in a mysterious way.;'5 'There is a fountain;' 'O Lord, my best desire fulfil,' and that in which he declared his purpose of retiring from a world which seemed to him crowded with spiritual dangers : Far from the world, O Lord, I flee From scenes where Satan wages still Cowper's translations of the fervid but quietistic and somewhat unpracticable hymns of Madame Guyon arose out of a cause which forcibly exhibits the sad religious dejection which he could never for long together overcome. 'Ask no hymns,' he wrote, 'from a man suffering by despair as I do. I could not sing the Lord's song, banished as I am, not to a strange land, but to a remoteness from His presence, in comparison with which the distance from east to west is no distance, is vicinity and cohesion. I dare not, either in prose or verse, allow myself to express a frame of mind which I am conscious does not belong to me: least of all can I venture to use the language of absolute resignation, lest only counterfeiting, I should for that very reason be taken strictly at my word, and lose all my remaining comfort. Can there not be found among those translations of Madame Guyon somewhat that might serve the purpose? . . . I have no objection to giving the 1 Olney Hymns, i. 3. 3 Id. ii. 60. 2 Id. iii. 119. 4 Id. iii. 18. In an 5 Id. iii. 15. 'The history of this hymn is remarkable. interval of derangement Cowper thought it was the Divine will that he should go to a certain part of the river Ouse and drown himself; but the driver of the vehicle, missing his way, diverted him from his purpose, and thereupon were composed those memorable lines.'-Saunders, 346. 7 Id. iii. 19. 8 Id. iii. 45. 6 Id. i. 79 graces of the foreigner an English dress, but insuperable ones to all false pretences and affected exhibitions of what I do not feel.'1 Before passing from the hymnists of the latter part of the eighteenth century, a few others should yet be mentioned. Martin Madan and Mrs. Cowper were both cousins of William Cowper. To the former is owed the generally adopted variation from Charles Wesley and Cennick's, Lo! He comes with clouds descending.'2 Robert Hawker (1754-1830), vicar of a parish in Plymouth, was author of two hymns quoted in the Lyra Britannica—one upon the name 'Abba, Father,' the other upon the word Amen.' Joseph Carlyle (1759-1805) was professor of Arabic in Cambridge, and vicar of Newcastle. He was the writer of 'Lord, when we bend before Thy throne.' 4 Bishop Horne, best known by his Commentary, was the author of a few hymns; Bishop Lowth of some versions from the Psalms. The hymn, 'Jesus, and can it ever be,' was written in 1776 by Thomas Green of Ware, when he was only ten years old." ་ John Newton's vicar and predecessor at Olney was Moses Brown, who is spoken of as 'an evangelical minister and a good man.' The vicarage of Olney was only £50 a year; and Moses Brown had a family of thirteen children. His pecuniary difficuties being, therefore, very great, he was glad to accept the chaplaincy of Morden College, Blackheath, and Newton succeeded to the parochial cure. He was at one time much disappointed at not becoming Poet Laureate. Certainly the tenure of this office did not, in the eighteenth century, imply any considerable poetical gift. Brown. might have filled it quite as worthily as some who had 8 Book of Praise, xc. 7 Cecil's Memoirs of J. Newton, 41. 8 Id., and James Hervey's Works, vi. 270. 4 Id. 126. 6 Saunders, 349. 9 M. Brown's Sunday Thoughts, fourth ed. 1781, part iii. 984-6. held it before him. But he was only a very moderate poet. His poem on the Universe and his Sunday Thoughts received much praise, and the latter passed through at least four editions. But the circulation must have been almost entirely among a number of worthy people who cared little for the poetical in comparison with the religious merit of his poems. They were instructive and orthodox, mildly evangelistic, tolerant, except to Rome, suffused with a quiet appreciation of natural beauty, and appropriate, yet not too heavy, for Sunday reading. 'I hope,' wrote James Hervey, 'Divine Providence will give his Sunday Thoughts an extensive spread, and make them an instrument of diffusing the savour of true religion. Seldom, if ever, have I seen a treatise that presents the reader with so full yet concise a view, so agreeable yet striking a picture of true Christianity in its most important articles, and most distinguishing peculiarities. Though I am utterly unacquainted with the author' (they afterwards became intimate), 'I assure myself he is no novice in the sacred school.'1 The Sunday Thoughts were first published in 1750: a fourth part, including some hymns, or Night Songs, was added in 1781. Philip Skelton, an Irish clergyman who published his hymns in 1784. His Song of Creation, interesting in thought and finely expressed, may be found in Professor Palgrave's Treasury of Sacred Song. Cowper was for some time under the care of Dr. Nathaniel Cotton (1707-1788), who kept a private establishment of high repute for persons of deranged intellect. The poet used to speak of him with the utmost gratitude, as a physician whose humanity was equal to his skill, and who was as capable of administering to the spiritual as to the physical maladies of his patients.2 He was a man also of some literary note. His Visions in Verse, published about 1751, attained a good deal of 1 James Hervey's Works, vi. 47. 2 Cowper's poem on "Hope;' Cowper's Letters, July 4th, 1765; Cecil's Memoirs of Newton, 45; Chalmers's Life of Cotton, 5. popularity, and deserved it, not as having any great poetical merit, but as embodying in smooth, easy-flowing measure the ideas of a sensible, benevolent, and religious mind. Each vision is a kind of allegory, in which some personified quality such as Pleasure, Health, Friendship, etc., is the principal character. Among Cotton's other poetical productions are a few hymns, one of which, beginning 'If solid happiness,' ends with this bright verse For conscience like a faithful friend, And faith shall fix our thankful eye Hitherto, William Cowper (1731-1808) has only been spoken of here as one among the hymn-writers of the latter half of the eighteenth century. It would be beyond the limits of the subject to remark upon his general merits as a poet. But in all his principal writings the religious element is strongly marked. With two or three unimportant exceptions, all his poems date from a period when religious convictions had for a long time become altogether the controlling principle of his life. His genius was late in ripening. He was fifty years old before he was known as a poet. The best and most characteristic features of Cowper's poetry are very closely related to the strong Christian feeling which actuated him. Without it, his writings might not have been deficient in sweetness and pathos ; but they would have been deprived of that which conferred upon them those higher qualities which made his poems a turning-point in eighteenth century literature. His thorough earnestness, his transparent simplicity of moral aim, his devoted love of all goodness, his shrinking aversion from all forms of evil, his lively sense of a divine purpose and significance in all created worksthese principles, operating in a sensitive and poetical 1 This hymn is not in Chalmers's edition. It is from Patrick's Collection, 1786. |