COWPER'S CENTENARY
[To the Editor of the SeEcr4vron.] - -Will you allow me a moment to see if I can dry a few of the tears that flow from my friend Mr. Forster's cheeks over Cowper's grave ?
Cowper is not neglected. If there were few shouts over his centenary that is because of the laments over the gold standard. Few people can think of two things at once. Ile is read, both poetry and letters, more, I should imagine at the present than at any time in the last fifty years. Time exterminates neither England nor Genius. When someone has created a unique thing there will he always sonic to discover that uniqueness, cherish it and pass it on. Was not John Donne lost for two hundred years ? Indeed if the present tribe of investigators increase, the trouble in the future will be not that genius is forgotten but that too much of it is remembered. I can see Mr. Aldous Huxley's smooth- skulled town-clothed children of the future drinking in through a tube the whole of Cowper's Sofa as a morning hygienic digestive !
And as to England—are not these fears as to her future beauty a little exaggerated ? Let us do all we can to protect her but in the end she follows her own design. The arterial road that Mr. Forster condemns has left the remoter country- side peaceful and free as it has not been for twenty years. And even pylons ! The landscape is wiser in dealing with them than we are. And a flight of aeroplanes ! The sky suffers no loss from their symmetry and beauty.--I am, Sir, &c., Brackenburn, Manesty Park, Keswick. Itcuri WALrorai.
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