good man from a charge of which he was quite guiltless. From whatever source Cowper may have derived his sad delusion, he certainly did not derive it, or receive any encouragement in it, from anything which Newton taught him, either from the pulpit or elsewhere. 2. But Newton was injudicious in his treatment of his gifted but afflicted friend. He persuaded him to write hymns and to visit the poor in his parish, when he should have encouraged him to undertake some more cheerful employment.' What evidence is there to show that either his hymn-writing or his parish work in any way tended to induce a return of Cowper's malady? Newton may well have thought that the consciousness of being usefully employed was the very best means of diverting Cowper's mind from the gloomy thoughts in which a want of occupation would have given him leisure to indulge. Nor should it be forgotten that the poet's last and worst attack took place long after he had given up such employments, and indeed long after he had ceased to be under Newton's influence at all. 3. Newton has been charged with narrow-mindedness on account of his disapproval of Cowper's translation of Homer, and of his proposed edition of Milton. But surely Newton's own account of the cause of his disapproval is a very reasonable one. He thought that one who, like Cowper, was gifted with an original genius was capable of better things than merely reproducing another man's thoughts. 4. Newton has been accused of 'unwarrantable interference,' of showing a spirit so intolerant and inquisitorial that it might have been considered harsh and unbecoming in a father confessor,' 'of acting while at Olney as the spiritual director of Cowper and Mrs. Unwin, and when he left considering it a trespass if they moved out of the narrow circle within which he circumscribed them." All this harsh language is used simply because Newton wrote to Cowper and Mrs. Unwin to inquire into the truth of a report which he had heard, of their entering into worldly society. Now considering the intimacy which had so long subsisted between Newton and Cowper, there is surely nothing very extraordinary in the conduct of the former, nothing at least deserving of the Southey's Life of Cowper, ii. 255. 1 severe strictures which have been applied to him. Cowper himself took the letters as they were meant. They did not in the least interfere with his respect and love for Newton. If there was fault anywhere, it lay with the meddlesome busybodies who were Newton's informants. The whole tenor of the good man's life contradicts the notion that he in any way desired to lord it over God's heritage in the houses at Olney and Weston Underwood. His character was as taking as it was striking; his life after his conversion was as pure and blameless as in earlier years it was the reverse. In the roll of worthies which the Evangelical revival produced in the last century, few are more interesting, few more worthy of our love and respect than John Newton. The part which William Cowper (1731-1800) took in the Evangelical movement is too important to pass unnoticed. The shy recluse of Olney and Weston Underwood contributed in his way more towards the spread of the Evangelical revival than even Whitefield did with all his burning eloquence, or Wesley with all his indomitable activity. For those who despised Whitefield and Wesley as mere vulgar fanatics, those who would never have read a word of what Newton or Romaine wrote, those who were too much prejudiced to be affected by the preaching of any of the Evangelical clergy, could not refrain from reading the works of one who was without question the first poet of his day. This is not the place to criticise Cowper's poetry; but it may be remarked that that poetry exercised an influence greater than that which its intrinsic merits-great though these were-could have commanded, owing to the fact that Cowper was the first who gave expression to the reaction which had set in against the artificial school of Pope. Men were becoming weary of the smooth rhymes, the brilliant antitheses, the flash and the glitter, the constant straining after effect, carrying with it a certain air of unreality, which had long been in vogue. They welcomed with delight a poet who wrote in a more easy and natural, if a rougher and less correct style. Cowper was, in fact, the father of a new school of poetry-a school of which Southey, and Coleridge, and Wordsworth were in the next generation distinguished representatives. But almost all that Cowper wrote (at least of original com position) was subservient to one great end. He was essentially a Christian poet, and in a different sense from that in which Milton, and George Herbert, and Young were Christian poets. As Socrates brought philosophy, so Cowper brought religious poetry down from the clouds to dwell among men. Not only does a vein of piety run through all his poetry, but the attentive reader cannot fail to perceive that his main object in writing was to recommend practical, experimental religion of the Evangelical type. He himself gives us the keynote to all his writings in a beautiful passage,1 in which he describes the want which he strove to supply. Pity, religion has so seldom found A skilful guide into poetic ground! The flowers would spring where'er she deigned to stray, Virtue, indeed, meets many a rhyming friend, Religion weaves for her, and half undressed, But while he never loses sight of his grand object, Cowper's poems are not mere sermons in verse. He not only passes without an effort from grave to gay, from lively to severe,' but he blends them together with most happy effect. Gifted with a rare sense of humour, with exquisite taste, and with a true appreciation of the beautiful both in nature and art, he enlists all these in the service of religion. While the reader is amused with his wit and charmed with his descriptions, he is instructed, proselytised-won over to Evangelicalism almost without knowing it. My sole drift,' wrote Cowper in 1781, a little before the publication of his first volume,2 is to be useful; a point at which, however, I know I should in vain aim, unless I could be likewise entertaining. I have, therefore, fixed these two strings to my bow; and by the help of both have done my best to send my arrow to the mark. My readers will hardly have begun to laugh before they will be called upon to correct that levity and peruse me with a more serious air. I cast a sidelong glance at the good-liking of 1 See Taylor's Life of Cowper, p. 426. 2 Id. p. 139. the world at large, more for the sake of their advantage and instruction than their praise. They are children; if we give them physic we must sweeten the rim of the cup with honey,' &c. To this principle he faithfully adhered in all his original poems. He felt the difficulty of the task which he had proposed to himself. He knew that he would have to break through a thick, hard crust of prejudice before he could reach his readers' hearts. He saw the necessity of peculiar delicacy of treatment, lest he should repel those whom he desired to attract. And nothing marks more strongly the high estimate which Cowper formed of Newton's tact and good judgment than the fact that the poet asked his friend to write the preface to his first volume. When he made this request he was fully aware that any injudiciousness, any want of tact, would be fatal to his object. But he applied to Newton expressly because he thought him the only friend who would not betray him by any such mistakes. His own words are worth quoting: '-'With respect to the poem called “Truth,” it is so true that it can hardly fail of giving offence to an unenlightened reader. I think, therefore, that in order to obviate in some measure those prejudices that will naturally erect their bristles against it, an explanatory preface, such as you (and nobody else so well as you) can furnish me with, will have every grace of propriety to recommend it; or if you are not averse to the task, and your avocations will allow you to undertake it, and if you think it will be still more proper, I should be glad to be indebted to you for a preface to the whole. I admit that it will require much delicacy, but am far from apprehending that you will find it difficult to succeed. You can draw a hair-stroke when another man would make a blot as broad as a sixpence.' It is from the nature of the case difficult to estimate the services which Cowper's poetry rendered to the cause which lay nearest to the poet's heart. Poems do not make converts in the sense that sermons do; nevertheless, it is doing no injustice to the preaching power of the Evangelical schoolstrong as it unquestionably was, far stronger than their writings to assert that Cowper's poetry left a deeper mark upon the Church than any sermons did. Through this 1 Taylor's Life, p. 146. means Evangelical theology in its most attractive form gained access into quarters into which no Evangelical preachers could ever have penetrated. The bitterest enemy of Evangelicalism who read Cowper's poems could not deny that here was at least one man, a scholar and a gentleman, with a refined and cultured mind and a brilliant wit, who was not only favourably disposed to the obnoxious doctrines, but held them to be the very life and soul of Christianity. Of course, to those who wished to find it, there was the ready answer that the man was a madman. But the mind which produced The Task' was certainly not unsound, at least at the time when it conceived and executed that fine poem. Every reader of discernment, though he might not agree with the religious views expressed in it, was obliged to confess that the author's powers were of the first order; and if William Cowper did no other service to the Evangelical cause, this alone was an inestimable one-that he convinced the world that the Evangelical system was not incompatible with true genius, ripe scholarship, sparkling wit, and a refined and cultivated taste. If pilgrimages formed part of the Evangelical course, the little town or large village of Olney should have attracted as many pilgrims as S. Thomas' shrine at Canterbury did five centuries before. For with this dull, uninteresting spot are connected the names not only of Newton, and Cowper, and Mrs. Unwin, but also those of two successive vicars, Mr. Moses Brown and Mr. Bean, both worthy specimens of Evangelicals, and last, but by no means least, the name of Scott, the commentator. Thomas Scott (1749-1821) was the spiritual son of Newton, and succeeded him in the curacy of Olney. There was a curious family likeness between the two men. Both were somewhat rough diamonds. The metal in both cases was thoroughly genuine; but perhaps Newton took polish a little more easily than Scott. Both were self-taught men, and compensated for the lack of early education by extraordinary application. Although Scott did not pass through so terrible an ordeal as Newton, still he had a sufficiently large experience, both of the moral evils and outward hard |