WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800)

The son of a chaplain of George II, Cowper was derived on both sides from illustrious families and it is not unnatural to ascribe to race a certain touch of gentility in all he did or wrote. After seven years at Westminster School he was 'articled,' at eighteen, to a London attorney, with whom he spent three years, afterward going into residence in the Temple, and in 1754, he was called to the bar. His experiments in versification at this time, some of them addressed to his cousin Theodora, with whom he was in love, show few symptoms of the poetic originality which he long afterward evinced. Some of his early associates, too, Warren Hastings at Westminster, Thurlow, the fellow-clerk of his apprentice days, and the raucous and none too moral wits of the Nonsense Club, seem in their several ways incongruous associates for the shrinking and self-searching pietist whom we know in his later years. Cowper was too timid for the business of a lawyer and, in 1763, when he was thirty-two years of age, the dread of qualifying for a clerkship so preyed upon his mind that he became violently insane and attempted suicide. When he recovered, he determined to retire from the excitements of the world and found a retreat at Huntington, near Cambridge, where he entered the home of the Reverend Unwin and his wife and was converted to Methodism. On the death of Unwin, in 1767, Cowper removed with Mrs. Unwin to Olney, and here came under the influence of John Newton, with whom he joined in the writing of the Olney Hymns. Newton's strenuous fanaticism aggravated his religious mania and, in 1773, he again became mad and so remained for two years. On his recovery, along with other worldly diversions, such as gardening, cheerful conversation and the keeping of pet hares, which were discountenanced by his spiritual comforter, Cowper began to amuse himself by writing verses and found increasing satisfaction in the exercise. His first volume, containing Table Talk and other poems, was published in 1782. The liveliness of this period was increased by his acquaintance with Lady Austen, a bright young widow, who suggested the subjects of The Task and The Diverting Ride of John Gilpin. These poems, published in 1785, made his reputation national. The most exacting of his tasks, the translation of Homer, was brought to completion in 1791. He now began to sink, for the last time, under the cloud of despondency, suffering almost constantly from the conviction that he was a lost soul. Some of the darker and more intense of his short poems, such as The Castaway, belong to these unhappy years and were printed after his death. Cowper had a rare and intense, though not a rich nature. His gift of humor appears most conspicuously in his Letters, which some critics have not hesitated to pronounce the best in the language. Fidelity to nature and religious earnestness are the prevailing characteristics of his poetry. Byron's phrase, the quiet of a loving eye,' precisely fits Cowper's manner of looking about him, except in his most heightened moments.