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If in Thomson you are sometimes offended with the slovenliness of the author by profession, determined to get through his task at all events; in Cowper you are no less dissatisfied with the finicalness of the private gentleman, who does not care whether he completes his work or not; and in whatever he does, is evidently more solicitous to please himself than the public. He shakes hands with nature with a pair of fashionable gloves on. He had neither Thomson's love of the unadorned beauties of nature, nor Pope's exquisite sense of the elegances of art. Still he is a genuine poet, and deserves all his reputation. His worst faults are amiable weaknesses, elegant trifling. He has left a number of pictures of domestic comfort and social refinement, as well as of natural imagery and feeling, which can hardly be forgotten but with the language itself. His satire is also excellent. It is pointed and forcible, with the polished manners of the gentleman, and the honest indignation of the virtuous man. His religious poetry wants elevation and fire. His story of John Gilpin has, perhaps, given as much pleasure to as many people as any thing of the same length that ever was written."

SECTION X.
COWPER.
The Task.

He is one of the most instructive and pleasing of English poets, and is decidedly one of the best specimens of an easy and graceful epistolary style. His most admired poem is the Task, some parts of which are inimitably good, but there are others rather trifling. "His language," says Campbell, "has such a mascu line, idiomatic strength, and his manner, whether he rises into grace or falls into negligence, has so much plain and familiar freedom, that we read no poetry with a deeper conviction of its sentiments having come from the author's heart." He is distinguished for a rich and chastened humor in most of his writings, though at times he was the victim of most lamentable melancholy. In the description of the quiet pleasures of domestic life, he much excels, as may be seen in the fourth book of the Task. He is the author of many other poems, and of some admirable

hymns in constant use at the present day. specimen of his poetry, read the following:

THE INFIDEL AND THE CHRISTIAN.

"The path to bliss abounds with many a snare ;
Learning is one, and wit, however rare.
The Frenchman, first in literary fame

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(Mention him, if you please. Voltaire? The same),
With spirit, genius, eloquence supplied,

Lived long, wrote much, laugh'd heartily, and died.
The Scripture was his jest-book, whence he drew
Bon-mots to gall the Christian and the Jew;
An infidel in health, but what when sick?
Oh-then a text would touch him at the quick :
View him at Paris, in his last career,
Surrounding throngs the demi-god revere;
Exalted on his pedestal of pride,

And fumed with frankincense on every side,
He begs their flattery with his latest breath,
And smother'd in't at last, is praised to death.
Yon cottager, who weaves, at her own door,
Pillow and bobbins, all her little store;
Content, though mean, and cheerful, if not gay,
Shuffling her thread about the livelong day,
Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night
Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light:
She, for her humble sphere by nature fit,
Has little understanding, and no wit,
Receives no praise; but though her lot be such
(Toilsome and indigent), she renders much:
Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true,
A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew;
And in that charter reads with sparkling eyes
Her title to a treasure in the skies.

"O happy peasant! O unhappy bard!

His the mere tinsel, hers the rich reward;
He praised, perhaps, for ages yet to come,
She never heard of half a mile from home;
He lost in errors his vain heart prefers,
She safe in the simplicity of hers."

As a

The charm of Cowper's poetry is a pure, innocent, lovely mind, delighting itself in pure, innocent, and lovely nature the freshness of the fields, the fragrance of the flowers, breathes in his verse.

THOMSON AND COWPER COMPARED.

Thomson's genius, says Professor Wilson, does not

very, very often-though often-delight us by exquisite minute touches in the description of nature-like that of Cow. per. It loves to paint on a great scale, and to dash objects off sweepingly by bold strokes such, indeed, as have almost always marked the genius of the mighty masters of the lyre and the rainbow. Cowper sets nature before your eyes -Thomson before your imagination. Which do you prefer? Both. In one mood of mind, we love Cowper best; in another, Thomson. Sometimes the Seasons are almost a Task, and sometimes the Task is out of Season. There is a delightful distinctness in all the pictures of the Bard of Olney-glorious gloom or glimmer in most of those of the Bard of Ednam. Cowper paints trees-Thomson, woods. Thomson paints, in a few wondrous lines, rivers from source to sea, like the mighty Barampooter-Cowper, in many no very wondrous lines, brightens up one bend of a stream, or awakens our fancy to the murmur of some single waterfall. But a truce to antithesis- a deceptive style of criticism and see how Thomson sings of snow. Why, in the following lines, almost-though not quite as well as Christopher North (Professor Wilson), in his Winter Rhapsody

"The cherish'd fields

Put on their tender robe of purest white,

'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current."

Nothing can be more vivid.

There are passages, nowever,

in which Thomson, striving to be pathetic, has overshot the mark, and ceased to be natural. Thus :

"The bleating kine

Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glittering earth
With looks of dumb despair."

The second line is perfect, but the third is not quite right. Sheep do not deliver themselves up to despair under any circumstances; and here Thomson transferred what would have been his own feelings in a corresponding condition, to animals who dreadlessly follow their instincts. Thomson redeems himself in what succeeds:

"Then sad dispersed,

Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow." For, as they disperse, they do look very sad—and, no doubt, are so- —but had they been in despair, they would not so readily, and constantly, and uniformly, and successfully have taken to digging-but whole flocks had perished.

But here is a passage which will live forever in which not one word could be altered for the better-not one omitted but for the worse-not one added that would not be superfluous-a passage that proves that fiction is not the soul of poetry, but truth-but, then, such truth as was never spoken before on the same subject-such truth, as shows that, while Thomson was a person of the strictest veracity, yet was he very far indeed from being a matter-of-fact man: A MAN PERISHING IN THE SNOW.

"As thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce
All winter drives along the darken'd air,
In his own loose-revolving field the swain
Disaster'd stands; sees other hills ascend,
Of unknown, joyless brow; and other scenes,
Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain;
Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on,
From hill to dale, still more and more astray,
Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigor forth
In many a vain attempt.

How sinks his soul!

What black despair, what horror fills his heart!
When, for the dusky spot, which fancy feign'd
His tufted cottage rising through the snow,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track and bless'd abode of man;
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And ev'ry tempest howling o'er his head
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind
Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep,

A dire descent, beyond the pow'r of frost!
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,

Smooth'd up with snow; and what is land unknown,

What water, of the still unfrozen spring,

In the loose marsh or solitary lake,

Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.
These check his fearful steps, and down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mix'd with the tender anguish nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man,
His wife, his children, and his friends unseen.
In vain for him th' officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out

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Into the mingled storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly winter seizes, shuts up sense,
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows a stiffen'd corse."

SECTION XI.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774).

"The Traveler" and "The Deserted Village" are beautiful descriptive poems. The latter is said to contain some of the happiest pictures of rural life and character in the English language. His "Vicar of Wakefield," a prose tale, is also much admired.

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The following extracts are from the "Deserted Village :"

"Sweet was the sound, when oft, at evening's close,
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose;

There, as I pass'd with careless steps and slow,
The mingled notes came soften'd from below;
The swain responsive as the milk-maid sung;
The sober herd that low'd to meet their young;
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool;
The playful children just let loose from school;
The watch-dog's voice that bay'd the whispering wind.
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind:
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,
And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made."

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THE COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER.
"Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way,
With blossom'd furze unprofitably gay,
There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule,
The village master taught his little school;

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The village all declared how much he knew;
'Twas certain he could write and cipher too;
Lands he could measure, times and tides presage ;
And e'en the story ran that he could gauge:
In arguing, too, the parson own'd his skill,
For, e'en though vanquish'd, he could argue still;
While words of learned length, and thundering sound,
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew.
But pass'd is all his fame; the very spot
Where many a time he triumph'd, is forgot."

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