BOOKS.

MR. GOLD WIN SMITH'S " COWPER."* IN his little book on Cowper, Mr. Goldwin Smith is both too brief and too apologetic. He does not say as much as might fairly have been said of Cowper's ease, grace, and simplicity. and the great impression made upon English literature by the naturalness of his manner, and the mingled playfulness aml melancholy of his life. And what he does say is too apologetic. In a passage of no little beauty, in which he closes this far too brief essay upon Cowper, Mr. Goldwin Smith strikes what he evidently regards as the key-note of his estimate of the poet :— " Any one whose lot it is to write upon the life and works of Cowper must feel that there is an immense difference between the interest which attaches to him, and that which attaches to any one among the far greater poets of the succeeding age. Still, there is something about him so attractive, his voice has such a silver tone, he retains, even in his ashes, such a faculty of winning friends, that his biographer and critic may be easily beguiled into giving him too high a place. He belongs to a particular religious movement, with the vitality of which the interest of a great part of his works has departed, or is departing. Still more emphatically and in a still more important sense does he belong to Christianity. In no natural struggle for existence would he have been the survivor, by no natural process of selection would he ever have been picked out as a vessel of honour. If the shield which for eighteen centuries Christ by his teaching and his death has spread over the weak things of this world should fail, and might should again become the title to existence and the measure of worth, Cowper will be cast aside as a specimen of despicable infirmity, and all who have said anything in his praise will be treated with the same scorn."

Now, of that estimate, we should say that it is at once too low in tone as regards Cowper's natural gifts, and too emphatic in its implied assertion that the genius of Cowper is one of "those weak things of the world "for which Christianity fosters a

special sympathy. Cowper's natural gifts were by no means

slender or unremarkable, even in a literature so rich as the English ; and so far as we can understand and enjoy Cowper's genius, it is much less his humility, much less the aptitude for

* English Men of Letters. Edited by John Morley. Colorer. By Goldwin Smith. London : Macmillan and Co,

doing God's will (to which St. Paul refers when he says that the weak things of the world are intended by the divine will to confound the mighty), than Cowper's quickness of eye, brightness of fancy, playfulness of feeling, and finish of thought, —qualities eminently calculated to please the world,—which have given) him the place he holds in English literature. Undoubtedly,. there are passages, and passages of uncommon beauty, in Cowper's poems, which he could not have written, if he had not been also a very religious-minded man. But even in these passages there would be little to attract, without literary gifts which are certainly not conferred upon a man by any religions. belief whatever.

We should have supposed that Cowper owes more to his malady, and the fascination which the melancholy seclusion of one so playful as well as graceful, has had for the minds of his readers, than either to his natural goodness or his religious. humility. His long retirement, his simple habits, his favourite. spaniel, his tame hares, his devotion to Mrs. Unwiu, and his intervals of melancholia, have no doubt done much to engrave his figure on the minds of Englishmen ; but even so, they would hardly have rated him as high as they have done,. were not there something very striking in the contrast betweea these simple and somewhat sad-coloured tastes, and the grace and playfulness of a style which—as it is illustrated at least in his correspondence—has never been surpassed in English litera- ture. Mr. Goldwin Smith seems to us to make much too little. of the beauty and vivacity of those exquisite letters. He praises them, of course, and selects some very good specimens for his readers. But he hardly seems to see that it was the classical. ease, purity, and humour, best of all exemplified in his letters, which made Cowper's poetry so charming, and his mind and character itself a gem unique in our history and literature. In some of his very earliest verse, Cowper declares to a friend of his (Robert Lloyd):—

" For thou art born sole heir and single

Of dear Mat Prior's easy jingle."

But that is hardly true. Cowper himself had in him a large share of the case and liveliness which he envied so much in Prior ; and he understood the peculiar mixture of bright nar- rative with genial sarcasm which goes to make what are now called "society verses," as well as any English poet who ever wrote. A great part of the world has forgotten to whom we owe the well-known lines, for instance, against too ranch familiarity in friendship :— "It is not timber, lead, and stone, An architect requires alone To finish a great building; The palace were but half complete, Could he by any chance forget The carving and the gilding.

The man who hails you Tom or 'Jack,' And proves by thumping on your back His sense of your great merit, Is such a friend that one bad need Be very much his friend, indeed, To pardon or to bear it."

It seems to us that Cowper's clear insight into the good and bad manners of the world, his lucid good-sense, and lively manner of expressing that good-sense, is far too much overlooked in Mr. Goldwin Smith's estimate of the shy religious poet. Thus,. the depreciation of Cowper as a social censor by Mr. Goldwin. Smith, only because he made exceptions in all his censures in favour of his friends, appears to us to go a great deal beyond the mark :—

"No man was ever less qualified for the office of a censor ; his judge ment is at once disarmed, and a breach in his principles is at once made, by the slightest personal influence. Bishops are bad ; they are. like the Cretans, evil beasts and slow-bellies ; but the bishop whose brother Cowper knows is a blessing to the Church. Deans and canons arc lazy sinecurists, hut there is a bright exception in the case of the Cowper who held a golden stall at Durham. Grinding India is criminal, but Warren Hastings is acquitted, because he was with Cowper at Westminster. Discipline was deplorably relaxed in all colleges, except that of which Cowper's brother a Fellow. Pluralities and resignation bonds, the grossest abuses of the Church, were per. fectly defensible in the case of any friend or acquaintance of this Church reformer. Bitter lines against Popery, inserted in The Task, were struck out, because the writer had made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Throckmorton, who were Roman Catholics. Smoking was detestable, except when practised by dear Mr. Bull. Even gam. bling, the blackest sin of fashionable society, is not to prevent Fox, the great Whig, from being a ruler in Israel."

Now that, of course, so far as the facts go, is true enough, but it does not in the least prove that Cowper was unfitted for the sort of lively censure which his verse so often embodies. That Cowper could not bear to blame in a friend what he blamed in any one who was not a friend, shows that he was not a very stern moralist ; but it does not at all show that his clear sense and

lively fancy did not fit him to see what it was that chiefly required assailing in society, and bow amendment might be brought about. Mr. Goldwin Smith passes a truer and wiser judgment on Cowper's real sagacity, when speaking, later on, of his remarkable political sanity :—

"Cowper, we have said, always remained in principle what he had been born, a Whig, an unrevolutionary Whig, an Old Whig' to adopt the phrase made canonical by Burke.

'Ti, liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume, And we are weeds without it. All constraint Except what wisdom lays on evil men Is evil.

The sentiment of these lines, which were familiar and dear to Cobden, is tempered by judicious professions of loyalty to a king who rules in accordance with the law. At onetime, Cowper was inclined to regard the Government of George III. as a repetition of that of Charles I., absolutist in the State and reactionary in the Church ; but the pro- gress of revolutionary opinions evidently increased his loyalty, as it did that of many other Whigs, to the good Tory King. We shall presently see, however, that the views of the French Revolution itself expressed in his letters are wonderfully rational, calm, and free from the political panic and the apocalyptic hallucination, both of which we should rather have expected to find in him. He describes himself to Newton as having been, since his second attack of madness, an extramundane character with reference to this globe, and though not a native of the moon, not made of the dust of this planet.' The Evangelical party has remained down to the present day non-political, and in its own estimation extramundane, faking part in the affairs of the nation only when some religious object was directly in view. In speaking of the family of nations, an Evangelical poet is of course a preacher of peace and human brotherhood. He has even in some lines of Charity, which also were dear to Cobden, remarkably antici- pated the sentiment of modern economists respecting the influence of Free-trade in making one nation of mankind."

Surely of a man who could be so described, even if you are obliged to qualify your praise of his sense by ascribing it in some degree to his " extramundane " character, it is a great blunder to speak as if some people at least might, without any very culpable error on their own part, mistake him for a fool. In one passage, for instance, Mr. Goldwin Smith says of a letter of Cowper's to John Newton, that he wrote "in a style which showed that though he was sometimes mad, he was not a fool." We should say that any one who could have mistaken Cowper for a fool, would have been so utterly destitute of insight as rather to deserve the epithet himself. His letters are full of shrewdness, as well as tenderness and vivacity. If any one who has read the letter given by Mr. Goldwin Smith on the morality or immorality of the use of rouge by women, could think of Cowper's judgment as anything but a very keen as well as sober judgment, we should esteem very little what he might think either of Cowper, or any one else.

And even as regards Cowper's pietism, Mr. Goldwin Smith is far too apologetic, and insists far too much on this as a unique and repelling element in his poetry. That Cowper was a very religious man, we all know. That he spent a good deal more of his time in formal reli- gious exercises than has been at all common with poets, not, like Keble, religious teachers themselves, is also true. But that there is anything sanctimonious or morbid about his religious belief, we entirely deny. One or two of the religious passages in "The Task" are amongst the finest of his produc- tions. One or two even of his hymns are fine poetry, as well as full of pure devotional feeling. There is always the ease and freedom of true culture in Cowper's modes of speech. Mr. Goldwin Smith himself absolves him completely from the charge of unctuousness. The directness and simplicity of a mind which goes straight to the point, and expresses the exact shade of feeling from which he writes, whether that be approved by conventional piety or not, make the great charm of his letters. And it is just the same even when he does touch religious subjects. He touches them as one who thinks and feels on such things for himself, and never disguises from himself what it is that he does think or feel. We do not see that there is anything to be excused in the matter. Cowper's religion was, after all, his own, and not John Newton's. And it made a very essential part in the fresh- ness and reality of his character. Of course, no one would think for a moment of comparing the poetry of Cowper, who as a poet must always take a comparatively modest position in our literature, with the poetry of Milton which is almost its greatest ornament. But this we will say, that Cowper's religious character is expressed in a very much fresher and less conventional fashion even in his verse, than Milton's religions

character ever is. Indeed, the charm of Cowper consists in just that ease, simplicity, and freedom of which Milton has not got a trace. But Cowper will not live chiefly in his verse. Were it not for his prose, and the inimitable picture it has en- graved on the imagination of England of the alternately dejected and lively spirit of the poet himself, his would never have been a great name in our literature, whereas Milton's prose, and the impression it has produced of the grandiosity and, arti- ficiality of the writer's mind, when not engaged in its highest task, are mere take-offs from the extraordinary grandeur of Mil- ton's verse. It seems to us that Mr. Goldwin Smith has treated Cowper too little as a character, too little as a letter- writer, too little as a man, and too much as a poet. Much of his poetry is very charming, but its charm is really greatest as illustrative of his letters and his life, while no judicious critic would say that the charm of his letters and his life consists chiefly in the illustration they supply of his poetry.

With these deductions, Mr. Goldwin Smith's little book is graceful and pleasant enough ; but there are a few curious blunders in the style. What, for instance, can he mean by say- ing (p. 5),—" As we see from one of Cowper's letters, it was a coarse scepticism which desired to be buried with its hounds F" What are the hounds of Scepticism ? And how can Scepti- cism desire to be buried with them