ym wper

CHARACTERIZATION BY CAMPBELL.

1. The nature of Cowper's works makes us peculiarly identify the poet and the man in perusing them. As an individual, he was retired and weaned from the vanities of the world; and as an original writer, he left the ambitious and luxuriant subjects

of fiction and passion for those of real life and simple nature, and for the development of his own earnest feelings in behalf of moral and religious truth.

2. His language has such a masculine, 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; and of the enthusiasm, in whatever he describes, having been unfeigned and unexaggerated. He impresses us with the idea of a being whose fine spirit had been long enough in the mixed society of the world to be polished by its intercourse, and yet withdrawn so soon as to retain an unworldly degree of purity and simplicity.

3. He was advanced in years before he became an author; but his compositions display a tenderness of feeling so youthfully preserved, and even a vein of humor so far from being extinguished by his ascetic habits, that we can scarcely regret his not having written them at an earlier period of life. For he blends the determination of age with an exquisite and ingenuous sensibility; and, though he sports very much with his subjects, yet, when he is in earnest, there is a gravity of long-felt conviction in his sentiments which gives an uncommon ripeness of character to his poetry.

4. It is due to Cowper to fix our regard on this unaffectedness and authenticity of his works, considered as representations of himself, because he forms a striking instance of genius, writing the history of its own secluded feelings, reflections, and enjoyments, in a shape so interesting as to engage the imagination like a work of fiction. He has invented no character in fable, nor in the drama; but he has left a record of his own character, which forms not only an object of deep sympathy, but a subject for the study of human nature. His verse, it is true, considered as such a record, abounds with opposite traits of severity and gentleness, of playfulness and superstition, of solemnity and mirth, which appear almost anomalous; and there is, undoubtedly, sometimes an air of moody versatility in the extreme contrasts of his feelings.

5. But looking to his poetry as an entire structure, it has a massive air of sincerity. It is founded in steadfast principles of

belief; and if we may prolong the architectural metaphor, though its arches may be sometimes gloomy, its tracery sportive, and its lights and shadows grotesquely crossed, yet, altogether, it still forms a vast, various, and interesting monument of the builder's mind. Young's works are as devout, as satirical, sometimes as merry, as those of Cowper, and undoubtedly more witty. But the melancholy and wit of Young do not make up to us the idea of a conceivable or natural being. He has sketched in his pages the ingenious but incongruous form of a fictitious mind; Cowper's soul speaks from his volumes.

6. Considering the tenor and circumstances of his life, it is not much to be wondered at that some asperities and peculiarities should have adhered to the strong stem of his genius, like the moss and fungus that cling to some noble oak of the forest amidst the damps of its unsunned retirement.

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MRS. BROWNING'S STANZAS ON COWPER'S GRAVE.

1. It is a place where poets crowned

May feel the heart's decaying;
It is a place where happy saints
May weep amid their praying.
Yet let the grief and humbleness
As low as silence languish,
Earth surely now may give her calm
To whom she gave her anguish.

2. O poets! from a maniac's tongue1
Was poured the deathless singing!
O Christians! at your cross of hope
A hopeless hand was clinging!
O men! this man in brotherhood,
Your weary paths beguiling,

Groaned inly while he taught you peace,

And died while ye were smiling.

Cowper was of an extremely melancholy temperament (yet he wrote John Gilpin!). During his whole life he was subject to temporary fits of mental aberration, and before his death became wholly insane.

3.

And

now,

what time all

ye may read Through dimming tears his story

How discord on the music fell,

And darkness on the glory;

And how, when, one by one, sweet sounds

And wandering lights departed,

He wore no less a loving face

Because so broken-hearted.

4. He shall be strong to sanctify
The poet's high vocation,

And bow the meekest Christian down

In meeker adoration;

Nor ever shall he be in praise

By wise or good forsaken;

Named softly as the household name
Of one whom God hath taken !

ON THE RECEIPT OF MY MOTHER'S PICTURE OUT OF

NORFOLK.

[INTRODUCTION.-These touching lines were written by Cowper in 1790, ten years before his death. The occasion was the receipt of his mother's portrait from his cousin Ann Bodham, and in a letter to that lady he uses the following words: "The world could not have furnished you with a present so acceptable to me as the picture which you have so kindly sent me. I received it the night before last, and viewed it with a trepidation of nerves and spirits somewhat akin to what I should have felt had the dear original presented herself to my embraces. I kissed it and hung it where it is the last object that I see at night, and, of course, the first on which I open my eyes in the morning. She died when I completed my sixth year; yet I remember her well, and am an ocular witness of the great fidelity of the copy."]

Oh that those lips had language! Life has passed
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-I. Oh that, etc. What kind of sentence grammatically? Observe that "oh" here is the emotional interjection, not the mere sign of the vocative case, which should be written O. Translated from emotional into intellectual expression, "Oh" is equivalent to the sentence How I wish that!'

2. but roughly. What is the force of "but " here?

1 "Speech is the expression of thought, but an interjection is the expression

Those lips are thine-thy own sweet smile I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,
"Grieve not, my child; chase all thy fears away!"
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blest be the art that can immortalize—
The art that baffles Time's tyrannic claim
To quench it) here shines on me still the same.
Faithful remembrancer of one so dear,

O welcome guest, though unexpected here,
Who bidd'st me honor with an artless song,
Affectionate, a mother lost so long!
I will obey, not willingly alone,

But gladly, as the precept were her own:
And, while that face renews my filial grief,
Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief,
Shall steep me in Elysian revery,*
A momentary dream, that thou art she.

My mother! when I learned that thou wast dead,
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?

10

15

20

5

LITERARY ANALYSIS.-5. else how distinct.

What is the force of "else?"

-For what word is "distinct" here used by poetic license?

6. Grieve not... away. Analyze this sentence.

7. meek intelligence. Explain.

8-10. the art... it. To what art does the author refer?-Translate this periphrasis into plain language.

12. 0. Is this the emotional interjection, or the sign of the vocative case? 13, 14. artless song, Affectionate. Remark on the order of words. See Mil

ton's L'Allegro, page 51, note 32, of this book.

16. as the precept were her own. In this construction modern prose usage requires the conjunction if after as; but the old English idiom is "as" alone followed by a verb in the subjunctive.

19. Elysian revery. Explain. Discriminate between "revery" and dream. 21. My mother! etc. What is the figure of speech? (See Def. 23.)

of feeling; so that it is not, strictly speaking, a part of speech. Indeed, in place of being a part of a sentence, it is itself an entire though unanalyzed utterance of emotion, and expresses, in its own way, what it would require a whole sentence to state-provided this statement were possible."-SWINTON: New English Grammar, page 196.