ceptance, I know not. I am unfortunately made neither of cedar nor mahogany, but truncus ficulnus, inutile lignum; consequently, though I should be planed till I am as thin as a wafer, it will be but rubbish to the last "." Easterly winds, which are proverbially neither good for man nor beast, he thought unfavourable to him in all his occupations, especially that of writing. Disturbed sleep had the same effect. "Such nights," said he, "as I frequently spend are but a miserable prelude to the succeeding day, and indispose me above all things to the business of writing; yet with a pen in my hand, if I am able to write at all, I find myself gradually relieved; and as I am glad of any employment that may serve to engage my attention, so especially I am pleased with an opportunity of conversing with you, though it be but upon paper. This occupation above all others assists me in that self-deception to which I am indebted for all the little comfort I enjoy; things seem to be as they were, and I almost forget that they never can be so again 9. 999 He believed that the moon affected him, and that there was no human being who did not more or less experience its effects. If she had any crabs among her acquaintance, he told one of his friends, she would if she attended to them find them always much more peevish and ill-tempered at the new and full moon than at any other time; for he was sure it influenced the temper as well as the brain, when either was at all disordered. Upon his own temper it had no effect, for that was equally sweet at all times, but it had a very perceptible one upon his spirits; during the full moon he was observed to be always low, and "quite different to what he was at any other season 10." It is possible that he may have been thus affected, because he expected to be so; but the fact is certain, whether it be considered as the effect of the imagination alone, or as a case in proof of the old opinion concerning the influence of the moon upon lunatics. The effect was upon his spirits, not upon his intellect, or temper; and the degree of apprehension with which he looked to the full of the moon, was not more than that wherewith he regarded an east wind. But he dreaded the return of that month in which his former seizures had occurred; and his friends 8 June 23, 1780. 9 To Mrs. Newton, June, 1780. 10 Lady Hesketh's Anecdotes, pp. 61, 62. knowing this, dreaded it for him. Writing to Mr. Newton, he says, "When January returns, you have your feelings concerning me, and such as prove the faithfulness of your friendship. I have mine also concerning myself, but they are of a cast different from yours. Yours have a mixture of a sympathy and tender solicitude, which makes them, perhaps, not altogether unpleasant. Mine, on the contrary, are of an unmixed nature, and consist simply, and merely, of the most alarming apprehensions. Twice has that month returned upon me, accompanied by such horrors as I have no reason to suppose ever made part of the experience of any other man. I accordingly look forward to it, and meet it, with a dread not to be imagined. I number the nights as they pass, and in the morning bless myself that another night is gone, and no harm has happened. This may argue, perhaps, some imbecility of mind, and no small degree of it; but it is natural, I believe, and so natural as to be necessary and unavoidable. I know that God is not governed by secondary causes, in any of his operations; and that, on the contrary, they are all so many agents, in his hand, which strike only when he bids them. I know consequently that one month is as dangerous to me as another; and that in the middle of summer, at noon-day, and in the clear sunshine, I am, in reality, unless guarded by him, as much exposed, as when fast asleep at midnight, and in mid-winter. But we are not always the wiser for our knowledge, and I can no more avail myself of mine, than if it were in the head of another man, and not in my own. I have heard of bodily aches and ails that have been particularly troublesome when the season returned in which the hurt that occasioned them was received. The mind, I believe, (with my own, however, I am sure it is so,) is liable to similar periodical reflection. But February is come; January, my terror, is passed; and some shades of the gloom that attended his presence have passed with him. I look forward with a little cheerfulness to the buds and the leaves that will soon appear, and say to myself, Till they turn yellow I will make myself easy. The year will go round, and January will approach. I shall tremble again, and I know it; but in the mean time I will be as comfortable as I can. Thus, in respect of peace of mind, such as it is that I enjoy, I subsist, as the poor are vulgarly said to do, from hand to mouth; and of a Christian, such as you once knew me, am, by a strange transformation, become S. C.-1.. ૨ an Epicurean philosopher, bearing this motto on my mind,Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quærere When Cowper commenced author he fancied that as spring came on, what with walking and out-of-door avocations, he should find little leisure for the pen; in winter, perhaps, he might assume it again, but his appetite for fame he thought was not keen enough to combat with his love of fine weather, his love of indolence, and his love of gardening employments 12. His inclination when he began to write verses after his recovery, and without any view to publication, had been to indulge in melancholy strains. At that time, speaking of the midsummer heat to Mr. Unwin, who had gone to the coast, he said to him, "We envy you your sea-breezes. In the garden we feel nothing but the reflection of the heat from the walls; and in the parlour, from the opposite houses. I fancy Virgil was so situated when he wrote those two beautiful lines, Oh quis me gelidis in vallibus Hami The worst of it is, that though the sunbeams strike as forcibly upon my harp-strings as they did upon his, they elicit no such sounds, but rather produce such groans as they are said to have drawn from those of the statue of Memnon 13" But Mrs. Unwin had, with excellent judgement, suggested to him a species of poetry, in which, of all others, at that time, he was likely to engage more willingly, and with most benefit to himself. For a young and presumptuous poet, (and presumptuousness is but too naturally connected with the consciousness of youthful power,) a disposition to write satires is one of the most dangerous he can encourage. It tempts him to personalities, which are not always forgiven after he has repented and become ashamed of them; it ministers to his self-conceit; if he takes the tone of invective, it leads him to be uncharitable; and if he takes that of ridicule, one of the most fatal habits which any one can contract, is that of looking at all things in a ludicrous point of view. Cowper was liable to none of these evil consequences. He had outlived the prejudices of the Westminster Club, and could see and acknowledge merit out of what had formerly been his own set. Whe 11 Feb. 5, 1790. 12 To Mr. Newton, April 8, 1781. 13 July 17, 1779. ther or not time had produced any change in his political prepossessions, it had removed from public life most of those persons who had been to him objects either of exaggerated admiration, or ill-founded dislike. If his dwelling had indeed been 66 a lodge in some vast wilderness, he could scarcely have been more removed from all influences that might warp his judgement; so little did he converse upon passing events and the actors who were then fretting their hour upon the stage, and so little were his thoughts directed towards them. He had the hope and the belief that he was usefully employed, and the consciousness that he was endeavouring to be so; and his friends, on their part, might reasonably entertain a persuasion that such an employment would gradually produce a healthy state of mind,.. that in proportion as he felt himself a humble, but willing and zealous instrument of good, he would cease to think it possible that, with such intentions and desires, he could be an object of particular reprobation. He had begun these moral satires with the ardour of one whose heart was in his work. That ardour abated somewhat 66 in his progress. Retirement," he says, grows, but more slowly than any of its predecessors. Time was when I could with ease produce fifty, sixty, or seventy lines in a morning; → now, I generally fall short of thirty, and am sometimes forced to be content with a dozen 15" At first, too, the prospect of publication gave him little pleasure, and excited no expectation. "No man," said he, ever wrote such a quantity of verse, as I have written this last year, with so much indifference about the event, or rather with so little ambition of public praise. My pieces are such as may possibly be made useful. The more they are approved, the more likely they are to spread, and consequently the more likely to attain the end of usefulness; which, as I said once before, except my present amusement, is the only end I propose. And even in the pursuit of this purpose, commendable as it is in itself, I have not the spur I should once have had. My labour must go unrewarded, and as Mr. R. once said, I am raising a scaffold before a house that others are to live in, and not I16" 14 Task. 15 To Mr. Newton, Sept. 18, 1781. 16 Aug. 16, 1781. When the volume was within a sheet or two of its conclusion, he expressed the same feeling to Mr. Newton. "I sometimes feel such a perfect indifference, with respect to the public opinion of my book, that I am ready to flatter myself no censure of reviewers, or other critical readers, would occasion me the smallest disturbance. But not feeling myself constantly possessed of this desirable apathy, I am sometimes apt to suspect that it is not altogether sincere, or at least that I may lose it just in the moment when I may happen most to want it. Be it, however, as it may, I am still persuaded that it is not in their power to mortify me much. I have intended well, and performed to the best of my ability;-so far was right, and this is a boast of which they cannot rob me. If they condemn my poetry, I must even say with Cervantes, 'Let them do better if they can !'-if my doctrine, they judge that which they do not understand; I shall except to the jurisdiction of the court and plead Coram non judice. Even Horace could say he should neither be the plumper for the praise, nor the leaner for the condemnation of his reader; and it will prove me wanting to myself indeed, if supported by so many sublimer considerations than he was master of, I cannot sit loose to popularity, which like the wind bloweth where it listeth, and is equally out of our command. If you, and two or three more such as you, say, well done; it ought to give me more contentment, than if I could earn Churchill's laurels, and by the same means' 17 99 But in composing these poems he had learnt his own power, and had strengthened it; and that consciousness made him look to future exertion. "A French author," he observes to Mr. Unwin, says, "There is something very bewitching in authorship, and he that has written, will write again. If the critics do not set their foot upon this first egg that I have laid, and crush it, I shall probably verify his observation; and when I feel my spirits rise, and that I am armed with industry sufficient for the purpose, undertake the production of another volume 18 Three months afterwards he repeated this saying to Mr. Newton, and commented upon it thus: "It may be so. I can subscribe to the former part of his assertion from my own experience, having never found an amusement, among the many I have been obliged to have recourse to, that so well 18 Nov. 24, 1781. 17 Feb. 2, 1781. |