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are morality, and not poetry."* Without examining how far this principle applies exactly to the character of Pope, whom he himself owns not to have been without pathos and imagination, I think his proposition is so worded as to be liable to lead to a most unsound distinction between morality and poetry. If by "the most solid observations on life" are meant only those which relate to its prudential management and plain concerns, it is certainly true that these cannot be made poetical by the utmost brevity or elegance of expression. It is also true that even the nobler tenets of morality are comparatively less interesting in an insulated and, didactic shape than when they are blended with strong imitations of life, where passion, character, and situation bring them deeply home to our attention. Fiction is on this account so far the soul of poetry, that, without its aid as a vehicle, poetry can only give us morality in an abstract and (comparatively) uninteresting shape. But why does Fiction please us? surely not because it is false, but because it seems to be true; because it spreads a wider field and a more brilliant crowd of objects to our moral perceptions than Reality affords. Morality (in a high sense of the term, and not speaking of it as a dry science) is the essence of poetry. We fly from the injustice of this world to the poetical justice of Fiction, where our sense of right and wrong is either satisfied, or where our sympathy at least reposes with less disappointment and distraction,than on the characters of life itself. Fiction, we may indeed be told,

[Our English poets may, I think, be disposed in four different classes and degrees. In the first class I would place our only three sublime and pathetic poets, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton. In the second class should be ranked such as possessed the true poetical genius in a more moderate degree, but who had noble talents for moral, ethical, and panegyrical poesy. At the head of these are Dryden, Prior, Addison, Cowley, Waller, Garth, Fenton, Gay, Denham, Parnell. In the third class may be placed men of wit, of elegant taste, and lively fancy in describing familiar life, though not the higher scenes of poetry. Here may be numbered, Butler, Swift, Rochester, Donne, Dorset, Oldham. In the fourth class, the mere versifiers, however smooth and mellifluous some of them may be thought, should be disposed; such as Pitt, Sandys, Fairfax, Broome, Buckingham, Lansdowne. This enumeration is not intended as a complete catalogue of writers, but only to mark out briefly the different species of our celebrated authors. In which of these classes Pope deserves to be placed, the following work is intended to determine.-Joseph Warton, Dedication to Dr. Young.

The position of Pope among our poets, and the question generally of classification, Mr. Campbell has argued at some length in the Introductory Essay to this volume.]

carries us into "a world of gayer tinct and grace," the laws of which are not to be judged by solid observations on the real world.

But this is not the case, for moral truth is still the light of poetry, and fiction is only the refracting atmosphere which diffuses it; and the laws of moral truth are as essential to poetry as those of physical truth (Anatomy and Optics for instance) are to painting. Allegory, narration, and the drama, make their last appeal to the ethics of the human heart. It is therefore unsafe to draw a marked distinction between morality and poetry, or to speak of "solid observations on life" as of things in their nature unpoetical; for we do meet in poetry with observations on life which for the charm of their solid truth we should exchange with reluctance for the most ingenious touches of fancy.

The school of the Wartons, considering them as poets, was rather too studiously prone to description. The doctor, like his brother, certainly so far realised his own ideas of inspiration as to burthen his verse with few observations on life which oppress the mind by their solidity. To his brother he is obviously inferior in the graphic and romantic style of composition at which he aimed, but in which it must nevertheless be owned that in some parts of his Ode to Fancy' he has been pleasingly successful. Most of his poems are short and occasional, and (if I may venture to differ from the opinion of his amiable editor, Mr. Wooll) are by no means marked with originality. "The Enthusiast was written at too early a period of his life to be a fair object of criticism.

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WILLIAM COWPER.

[Born, 1731. Died, 1800.]

WILLIAM COWPER was born at Berkhamstead, in Hertfordshire. His grandfather was Spencer Cowper, a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and a younger brother of the Lord Chancellor Cowper. His father was the rector of Great Berkhamstead, and chaplain to George II. At six years of age he was taken from the care of an indulgent mother, and placed at a school in Bed

fordshire.* He there endured such hardships as embittered his opinion of public education for all his life. His chief affliction was, to be singled out, as a victim of secret cruelty, by a young monster, about fifteen years of age, whose barbarities were, however, at last detected, and punished by his expulsion. Cowper was also taken from the school. From the age of eight to nine he was boarded with a famous oculist,† on account of a complaint in his eyes, which, during his whole life, were subject to inflammation. He was sent from thence to Westminster, and continued there till the age of eighteen, when he went into the office of a London solicitor. His account of himself in this situation candidly acknowledges his extreme idleness. "I did actually live," he says, in a letter to Lady Hesketh, "three years with Mr. Chapman, a solicitor; that is to say, I slept three years in his house. I spent my days in Southampton-row, as you very well remember. There was I and the future Lord Chancellor Thurlow constantly employed from morning to night in giggling and making giggle." From the solicitor's house he went into chambers in the Temple; but seems to have made no application to the study of the law. "Here he rambled," says Mr. Hayley, "to use his own colloquial expression, from the thorny road of jurisprudence to the primrose paths of literature,"—a most uncolloquial expression indeed, and savouring much more of Mr. Hayley's genius than his own. At this period he wrote some verse translations from Horace, which he gave to the Duncombes, and assisted Lloyd and Colman with some prose papers for their periodical works. It was only at this time that Cowper could ever be said to have lived as a man of the world. Though shy

* In Hayley's 'Life' his first school is said to have been in Hertfordshire; the Memoir' of his early life, published in 1816, says in Bedfordshire. [In Cowper's account of his own early life, this school is said to have been in Bedfordshire; but Hayley says Hertfordshire, mentioning also the place and name of the master; and as Cowper was only at one private school, subsequent biographers have properly followed Hayley. The mistake probably originated in the press, Cowper's own Memoirs having apparently been printed from an ill-written manuscript. Of this there is a whimsical proof (p. 35), where the 'Persian Letters' of Montesquieu are spoken of, and the compositor, unable to decipher that Author's name, has converted it into Mules Quince.-Southey, Life of Cowper, vol. i. p. 7.]

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He does not inform us where, but calls the oculist Mr. D. Hayley, by mistake I suppose, says that he was boarded with a female oculist. [He was placed in the house of an eminent oculist, whose wife also had obtained great celebrity in the same branch of medical science.-Southey.]

[The Connoisseur,' and 'St. James's Chronicle.']

to strangers, he was highly valued, for his wit and pleasantry, amidst an intimate and gay circle of men of talents. But though he was then in the focus of convivial society, he never partook of its intemperance.

us.

His patrimony being well-nigh spent, a powerful friend and relation (Major Cowper) obtained for him the situation of Clerk to the Committees of the House of Lords; but, on account of his dislike to the publicity of the situation, the appointment was changed to that of Clerk of the Journals of the same House.* The path to an easy maintenance now seemed to lie open before him; but a calamitous disappointment was impending, the approaches of which are best explained in his own words. "In the beginning," he says, "a strong opposition to my friend's right of nomination began to show itself. A powerful party was formed among the Lords to thwart it. *** Every advantage, I was told, would be sought for, and eagerly seized, to disconcert I was bid to expect an examination at the bar of the House, touching my sufficiency for the post I had taken. Being necessarily ignorant of the nature of that business, it became expedient that I should visit the office daily, in order to qualify myself for the strictest scrutiny. All the horror of my fears and perplexities now returned. A thunderbolt would have been as welcome to me as this intelligence. I knew to demonstration that upon these terms the Clerkship of the Journals was no place for me. To require my attendance at the bar of the House, that I might there publicly entitle myself to the office, was, in effect, to exclude me from it. In the mean time, the interest of my friend, the honour of his choice, my own reputation and circumstances, all urged me forward, all pressed me to undertake that which I saw to be impracticable. They whose spirits are formed like mine, to whom a public exhibition of themselves, on any occasion, is mortal poison, may have some idea of the horrors of my situation-others can have none. My continual misery at length brought on a nervous fever; quiet forsook me by day, and peace by night; a finger raised against me was more than I could stand against. In this posture of mind I attended regularly at the office, where, instead of a soul upon the rack, the most active spirits were essentially necessary for my purpose. I expected no assistance from anybody there, all the inferior clerks being

* [His kinsman Major Cowper was the patentee of these appointments.]

none.

under the influence of my opponent, and accordingly I received The Journal books were indeed thrown open to me; a thing which could not be refused, and from which perhaps a man in health, and with a head turned to business, might have gained all the information he wanted; but it was not so with me. I read without perception, and was so distressed, that, had every clerk in the office been my friend, it could have availed me little ; for I was not in a condition to receive instruction, much less to elicit it out of MSS. without direction. Many months went over me thus employed; constant in the use of means, despairing as to the issue. The feelings of a man when he arrives at the place of execution are probably much like mine every time I set my foot in the office, which was every day for more than half a year together." These agonies at length unsettled his brain. When his benevolent friend came to him, on the day appointed for his examination at Westminster, he found him in a dreadful condition. He had, in fact, the same morning, made an attempt at self-destruction; and showed a garter which had been broken, and an iron rod across his bed which had been bent, in the effort to accomplish his purpose by strangulation. From the state of his mind, it became necessary to remove him to the house of Dr. Cotton, of St. Alban's,* with whom he continued for about nineteen months. Within less than the half of that time his faculties began to return; and the religious despair, which constituted the most tremendous circumstance of his malady, had given way to more consoling views of faith and piety. On his recovery he determined to renounce London for ever; and, that he might have no temptation to return thither, gave up the office of commissioner of bankrupts, worth about 607. a-year, which he had held for some years. He then, in June 1765, repaired to Huntingdon, where he settled in lodgings, attended by a man-servant, who followed him from Dr. Cotton's out of pure attachment. His brother, who had accompanied him thither, had no sooner left him, than, being alone among strangers, his spirits began again to sink; and he found himself, he says, "like a traveller in the midst of an inhospitable desert, without a friend to comfort or a guide to direct him." For four months he continued in his lodging. Some few neighbours came to see him; but their visits were not very frequent, and he rather declined than sought [Author of Visions in Verse,' 'The Fireside,' &c.]

*

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