will best describe Cowper's feelings on this occa- | Animal spirits, however, have their value, and are sion:-"I shall now communicate news that will especially desirable to him who is condemned to give you pleasure. When you first contemplated carry a burden which at any rate will tire him, the front of our abode, you were shocked. In your but which without their aid, cannot fail to crush eyes it had the appearance of a prison, and you him." sighed at the thought that your mother lived in it. On the 15th November, 1786, Cowper entered Your view of it was not only just, but prophetic. It upon his new abode. The following extracts from had not only the aspect of a place built for the pur- his letters describe his sensations on the occasion: poses of incarceration, but has actually served that "There are some things that do not exactly shorpurpose, through a long, long period, that we have ten the life of man, yet seem to do so, and frequent been the prisoners; but a jail delivery is at hand. removals from place to place are of that number. The bolts and bars are to be loosed, and we shall For my own part, at least, I am apt to think, if I escape. A very different mansion, both in point of had been more stationary, I should seem to myself appearance and accommodation, expects us; and to have lived longer. My many changes of habitathe expense of living in it will not be much greater tion have divided my time into many short periods; than we are subjected to in this. It is situated at and when I look back upon them, they appear only Weston, one of the prettiest villages in England, as the stages of a day's journey, the first of which and belongs to Mr. Throckmorton, afterwards Sir is at no great distance from the last. I lived longer John Throckmorton. We all three dine with him at Olney than any where. There indeed I lived till to-day by invitation, and shall survey it in the after-mouldering walls and a tottering house warned me noon, point out the necessary repairs, and finally to depart. I have accordingly taken the hint, and adjust the treaty. I have my cousin's promise that two days since arrived, or rather took up my abode, she will never let another year pass without a visit at Weston. You perhaps have never made the exto us, and the house is large enough to take us, and periment, but I can assure you that the confusion our suite, and her also, with as many of her's as that attends a transmigration of this kind is infinite, she shall choose to bring. The change will, I hope, and has a terrible effect in deranging the intellect. prove advantageous, both to your mother and to me, When God speaks to a chaos, it becomes a scene of in all respects. Here we have no neighborhood; order and harmony in a moment; but when his there we shall have very agreeable neighbors in the creatures have thrown one house into confusion by, Throckmortons. Here we have a bad air in the leaving it, and another by tumbling themselves and winter, impregnated with the fishy-smelling fumes their goods into it, not less than many days' labor of the marsh miasma; there we shall breathe in an and contrivance are necessary to give them their atmosphere untainted. Here we are confined from proper places. And it belongs to furniture of all September to March, and sometimes longer; there kinds, however convenient it may be in its place, to' we shall be upon the very verge of pleasure grounds, be a nuisance out of it. We find ourselves here in upon which we can always ramble, and shall not a comfortable house. Such it is in itself; and my wade through almost impassable dirt to get at them. cousin, who has spared no expense in dressing it up Both your mother's constitution and mine have suf- for us, has made it a genteel one. Such, at least, it fered materially by such close and long confine- will be, when its contents are a little harmonized. ment; and it is high time, unless we intend to re- She left us on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, Mrs. treat into the grave, that we should seek out a more Unwin and I took possession of our new abode. I wholesome residence. So far is well; the rest is could not help giving a last look to my old prison, left to Heaven." and its precincts; and though I cannot easily account for it, having been miserable there so many years, felt something like a heart-ache, when I took my leave of a scene, that certainly in itself had nothing to engage affection. But I recollected that I had once been happy there, and could not, without tears in my eyes, bid adieu to a place in which God had so often found me. The human mind is a great mystery; mine, at least, appears to be such upon this occasion. I found that I not only had a tenderness for that ruinous abode, because it had once known me happy in the presence of God, but that even the distress I had there suffered, for so long a time, on account of his absence, had endeared it to me as much. I was weary of every object, had long wished for a change, yet could not take leave without a pang at parting. What consequences are to attend our removal, God only knows. I know well that it is not in the power of situation to effect a cure of melancholy like mine. The change, however, has been entirely a providential one; for much as I wished it, I never uttered that wish, except to Mrs. Unwin. When I learned that the house was to be let, and had seen it, I had a strong desire that Lady Hesketh should take it for herself, if she should happen to like the country. That desire, indeed, is not exactly fulfilled, and yet, upon the whole, is exceeded. We are the tenants; but she assures us that we shall often have her for a guest, and here is room enough for us all. You, I hope, my dear friend, and Mrs. Newton, will want no assurances to convince you that you will always be received here with the sincerest welcome; more welcome than you have been you cannot be, but better accommodated you may and will be." To his friend Mr. Newton, he thus writes:"You have heard of our intended removal. The house that is to receive us is in a state of preparation, and when finished, will be both smarter and more commodious than our present abode. But the circumstance that recommends it chiefly is its situation. Long confinement in the winter, and indeed, for the most part in autumn too, has hurt us both. A gravel-walk, thirty yards long, affords but indifferent scope to the locomotive faculty; yet it is all that we have had to move in for eight months in the year, during thirteen years that I have been a prisoner. Had I been confined in the Tower, the battlements of it would have furnished me with a larger space. You say well, that there was a time when I was happy at Olney; and I am now as happy at Olney, as I expect to be any where, without the presence of God. Change of situation is with me no otherwise an object, than as both Mrs. Unwin's health and my own happen to be concerned in it. We are both I believe partly indebted for our respective maladies, to an atmosphere encumbered with raw vapors, issuing from flooded meadows, and we have perhaps fared the worse for sitting so often, and sometimes for several successive months, over a cellar filled with water. These ills we shall escape in the uplands; and as we may reasonably hope, of course, their consequences. But as for happiness, he that once had communion with his Maker, must be more frantic than ever I was yet, if he can dream of finding it at a distance from him. I no more expect happiness at Weston than here, or than I should expect it in company with felons and outlaws in the hold of a ballast-lighter. despair, and a thousand times filled with unspeak- THE extracts we have already made from Cow- Some of his friends, and Mr. Newton among the rest, on being apprized of his intended removal from Olney, expressed apprehensions that it would introduce him to company, uncongenial to his taste, if not detrimental to his piety. Adverting to these objections, he thus writes to his esteemed correspondent: "If in the course of such an occupation as I have been driven to by despair, or by the inevitable consequence of it, either my former connec tions are revived, or new ones occur, these things are as much a part of the dispensation of Providence as the leading points themselves. If his purposes in thus directing me are gracious, he will take care to prove them such in the issue; and, in the mean time, will preserve me (for he is able to do that, in one condition of life as well as in another) from all mistakes that might prove pernicious to myself, or give reasonable offence to others. I can say it, as truly as it was ever spoken, Here I am; let him do with me as seemeth to him good. At present, however, I have no connections, at which either you, I trust, or any who love me, and wish me well, have occasion to conceive alarm. Much kindness indeed I have experienced at the hands of several, some of them near relations, others not related to me at all, but I do not know that there is among them a single person from whom I am likely to catch contamination. I can say of them all, with more truth than Jacob uttered, when he contrary, we are exactly what we were when you saw us last:-1, miserable on account of God's departure from me, which I believe to be final; and she seeking his return to me in the path of duty, and by continual prayer.” called kid venison, 'The Lord thy God brought | assured, that notwithstanding all the rumors to the them unto me.' I could show you among them two men, whose lives, though they have but little of what we call evangelical light, are ornaments to a Christian country, men who fear God more than some who profess to love him. But I will not particularize further on such a subject. Be they what they may, our situations are so distant, and we are likely to meet so seldom, that were they, as they are not, persons even of exceptionable manners, their manners would have little to do with me. We correspond, at present, only on the subject of what passed at Troy three thousand years ago; and they are matters that, if they can do no good, will at least hurt nobody." After the publication of Cowper's second volume of poems, and indeed, for some considerable time before its actual appearance, he was diligently engaged in producing a new translation of Homer's unrivalled poems. His reasons for undertaking a work of so great magnitude, and that required such immense labor; and the spirited manner with which he brought it to a close, shall be related as nearly as possible in his own words. Writing to "Your letter to Mrs. Unwin concerning our con- Mr. Newton, he thus describes the commencement duct, and the offence taken at it in our neighbor- of this great undertaking:-"I am employed in hood, gave us both a great deal of concern, and she writing a narrative, but not so useful as that you is still deeply affected by it. Of this you may as- have just published. Employment, however, with sure yourself, that if our friends in London have the pen, is through habit become essential to my been grieved, it is because they have been misin- well-being; and to produce always original poems, formed, which is the more probable, because the especially of considerable length, is not so easy. bearers of intelligence hence to London are not For some weeks after I had finished the Task, and always very scrupulous concerning the truth of sent away the last sheet corrected, I was through their reports; and that if any of our serious neigh-necessity idle, and suffered not a little in my spirits bors have been astonished, they have been so with- for being so. One day, being in such distress of out the slightest occasion. Poor people are never mind as was hardly supportable, I took up the Iliad; well employed even when they judge one another; and merely to direct attention, and with no more but when they undertake to scan the motives, and preconception of what I was then entering upon, estimate the behavior of those whom Providence than I have at this moment of what I shall be doing has raised a little above them, they are utterly out this day twenty years hence, translated the first of their province and their depth. They often see twelve lines of it. The same necessity pressed me us get into Lady Hesketh's carriage, and rather un-again, I had recourse to the same expedient, and charitably suppose that it always carries us into a scene of dissipation, which, in fact, it never does. We visit, indeed, at Mr. Throckmorton's, and at Gayhurst; rarely, however, at the latter, on account of the greater distance; frequently, though not very frequently, at Weston, both because it is nearer, and because our business in the house that is making ready for our reception, often calls us that way. What good we can get or can do in these visits, is another question, which they, I am sure, are not qualified to solve. Of this we are both sure, that under the guidance of Providence we have formed these connections; that we should have hurt the Christian cause rather than have served it, by a prudish abstinence from them; and that St. Paul himself, conducted to them as we have been, would have found it expedient to have done as we have done. It is always impossible to conjecture to much purpose, from the beginnings of a providential event, how it will terminate. If we have neither received nor communicated any spiritual good at present, while conversant with our new acquaintance, at least no harm has befallen on either side; and it were too hazardous an assertion, even for our censorious neighbors to make, that the cause of the gospel can never be served in any of our future interviews with them, because it does not appear to have been served at present. In the mean time, I speak a strict truth as in the sight of God, when I say that we are neither of us at all more addicted to gadding than heretofore. We both naturally love seclusion from company, and never go into it without putting a force upon our own dispositions; at the same time I will confess, and you will easily conceive, that the melancholy, incident to such close confinement as we have so long endured, finds itself a little relieved by such amusements as a society so innocent affords. You may look round the Christian world, and find few, I believe, of our station, who have so little intercourse as we with the world, that is not Christian. We place all the uneasiness that you have felt for us on the subject, to the account of that cordial friendship of which you have long given us a proof. But you may be translated more. Every day bringing its occasion for employment with it, every day consequently added something to the work; till at last I began to reflect thus:-The Iliad and the Odyssey together consist of about forty thousand verses. To translate these forty thousand verses will furnish me with occupation for a considerable time. I have already made some progress, and find it a most agreeable amusement. Homer, in point of purity, is a most blameless writer, and though he was not an enlightened man, has interspersed many great and valuable truths throughout both his poems. In short, he is in all respects a most venerable old gentleman, by an acquaintance with whom no man can disgrace himself; the literati are all agreed, to a man, that although Pope has given us two pretty poems, under Homer's title, there is not to be found in them the least portion of Homer's spirit, nor the least resemblance of his manner. I will try, therefore, whether I cannot copy him more happily myself. I have at least the advantage of Pope's faults and failings, which, like so many beacons upon a dangerous coast, will serve me to steer by, and will make my chance for success more probable. These, and many other considerations, but especially a mind that abhorred a vacuum as its chief bane, impelled me so effectually to the work, that ere long I mean to publish proposals for a subscription of it, having advanced so far as to be warranted in doing so." There In another letter to the same correspondent, the following just and critical remarks on Pope's translation occur:-"Your sentiments of Pope's Homer agree perfectly with those of every competent judge with whom I have at any time conversed about it. I never saw a copy so unlike the original. is not, I believe, in all the world, to be found an uninspired poem so simple as are both of those of Homer; nor in all the world a poem more bedizened with ornaments than Pope's translation of them. Accordingly, the sublime of Homer in the hands of Pope, becomes bloated and tumid, and his description tawdry. Neither had Pope the faintest conception of those exquisite discriminations of character for which Homer is so remarkable. All Π THE LIFE OF WILLIAM COWPER. his persons, and equally upon all occasions, speak | a task which I never excuse myself from, when it in an inflated and strutting phraseology, as Pope is possible to perform it. Equally sedulous I am in has managed them; although in the original, the the matter of transcribing, so that between both, my dignity of their utterance, even when they are most mornings and evenings are, for the most part, commajestic, consists principally in the simplicity of pletely engaged. Add to this, that though my spitheir sentiments and of their language. Another rits are seldom so bad but I can write verse, they censure I must pass upon our Anglo-Grecian, qut are often at so low an ebb as to make the production of many that obtrude themselves upon me, but for of a letter impossible. I am now in the twentieth which I have now neither time nor room to spare, book of Homer, and shall assuredly proceed, bewhich is, that with all his great abilities, he was cause the farther I go the more I find myself justidefective in his feelings, to a degree that some pas- fied in the undertaking; and in due time, if I live, sages in his own poems make it difficult to account shall assuredly publish. In the whole I shall have for. No writer is more pathetic than Homer, be- composed about forty thousand verses, about which cause none more natural; and because none less forty thousand verses, I shall have taken great pains, natural than Pope, in his version of Homer, there- on no occasion suffering a slovenly line to escape fore, than he, none less pathetic. One of the great me. I leave you to guess, therefore, whether, such faults of Pope's translation is, that it is licentious. a labor once achieved, I shall not determine to turn To publish, therefore, a translation that should be it to some account, and to gain myself profit by it at all chargeable with the same fault, would be use- if I can; if not, at least some credit, for my reward. less. Whatever will be said of mine, when it does Till I had made such a progress in my present unappear, it shall never be said that it is not faithful. dertaking as to put it out of all doubt, that, if I I thank you heartily both for your wishes and lived, I should proceed in, and finish it, I kept the prayers, that should a disappointment occur, I may matter to myself. It would have done me little not be too much hurt by it. Strange as it may seem honor to have told my friends, that I had an arduous to say it, and unwilling as I should be to say it to enterprise in hand, if afterwards I must have told any person less candid than yourself, I will never- them that I had dropped it. Knowing it to have theless say that I have not entered upon this work, been universally the opinion of the literati, ever unconnected as it must needs appear with the cause since they have allowed themselves to consider the of God, without the direction of his providence, nor matter coolly, that a translation, properly so called, have I been altogether unassisted by him in the of Homer, is, notwithstanding what Pope has done, performance of it. Time will show to what it ul- a desideratum in the English language; it struck timately tends. I am inclined to think that it has me that an attempt to supply the deficiency would be a tendency to which I myself am at present a per- an honorable one, and having made myself, in forfect stranger. Be that as it may, he knows my mer years, somewhat critically, master of the oriframe, and will consider that I am dust, and dust ginal, I was by this double consideration induced to too that has been so trampled under foot, and beaten, make the attempt myself. I am now translating that a storm less violent than an unsuccessful issue into blank verse the last book of the Iliad, and mean of such a business might occasion, would be suffi- to publish by subscription. I wish that all English cient to blow me quite away. As I know not to readers had an unsophisticated and unadulterated what end this my present occupation may finally taste, and could relish real simplicity. But I am lead, so neither did I know when I wrote it, or at well aware, that in this respect, I am under a disall suspect, one valuable end, at least, that was to advantage, and that many, especially many ladies, be answered by the Task. It has pleased God to missing many pretty terms of expression that they prosper it; and being composed in blank verse, it is have admired in Pope, will account my translation, likely to prove as seasonable an introduction to a in those particulars, defective. But, I comfort myblank verse Homer, by the same hand, as any that self with the thought that in reality it is no defect; could have been devised; yet when I wrote the last on the contrary, that the want of all such embellishline of the Task, I as little suspected that I should ments as do not belong to the original, will be one ever engage in a version of the old Asiatic tale, as of its principal merits, with persons really capable of relishing Homer. He is the best poet that ever you do now." lived, for many reasons, but for none more than that majestic plainness that distinguishes him from all others. As an accomplished person moves gracefully without thinking of it, in like manner, the dignity of Homer seems to have cost him no labor. It was natural to him to say great things, and to say them well, and little ornaments were beneath his notice." The following extract will show that no person ever appeared before the public in a work of any literary importance, and more correct views of its legitimate claims, under such circumstances:-"I thank you for your friendly hints and precautions, and shall not fail to give them the guidance of my pen. I respect the public, and I respect myself, and had rather want bread than expose myself wantonly to the condemnation of either. I hate the affectation so frequently found in authors, of negligence and slovenliness, and in the present case am sensible how necessary it is to shun them, when I undertake the vast and invidious labor of doing better than Pope has done before me. I thank you for all that you have said and done in my cause, and beforehand for all that you shall say and do hereafter. I am sure that there will be no deficiency on your part. On my own part I assure you that no pains shall be wanted to make the work as complete as possible. have had the good fortune to please him, his approbation gives security for that of all others qualified like himself. I speak thus, after having just escaped such a storm of trouble, occasioned by endless remarks, hints, suggestions, and objections, as drove me almost to despair, and to the very verge of a resolution to drop my undertaking for ever. With infinite difficulty, I at last sifted the chaff from the wheat, availed myself of what appeared to me just, and rejected the rest, but not till the labor and anxiety had nearly undone all that one judicious critic had been doing for me. I assure you I can safely say, that vanity and self-importance had nothing to the effect of an alarm that I could not help taking, when I compared the great trouble I had with a few lines only thus handled, with that which I foresaw such handling of the whole must necessarily give me. I felt beforehand that my constitution would not bear it. Though Johnson's friend has teased me sadly, I verily believe that I shall have no more such cause to complain of him. We now understand one another; and I firmly believe that I might have gone the world through before I had found his equal in an accurate and familiar acquaintance with the original. Though he is a foreigner, he has a perfect knowledge of the English language, and can consequently appreciate its beauties, as well as discover its defects. I am now in a scene of perfect tranquillity and the | to me self-evident, that if a work have passed under profoundest silence, kicking up the dust of heroic the review of one man of taste and learning, and narrative and besieging Troy again. I told you that I had almost finished the translation of the Iliad, and I verily thought so. But I was never more mistaken. By the time when I had reached the end of the poem, the first book of my version was a twelvemonth old. When I came to consider it, after having laid it by so long, it did not satisfy me: I set myself to mend it, and did so. But still it appeared to me improvable, and that nothing would so effectually secure that point as to give the whole book a new translation. With the exception of a very few lines, I have so done, and was never in my life so convinced of the soundness of Horace's advice to publish nothing in haste; so much advan-do in all this distress that I suffered. It was merely tage have I derived from doing that twice which I thought I had accomplished notably at once. He, indeed, recommends nine years' imprisonment of your verses before you send them abroad; but the ninth part of that time is, I believe, as much as there is need of to open a man's eyes upon his own defects, and to secure him from the danger of premature self-approbation. Neither ought it to be forgotten, that nine years make so wide an interval between the cup and the lip, that a thousand things may fall out between. New engagements may occur, which may make the finishing of that which a poet has begun impossible. In nine years he may rise into a situation, or he may sink into one, utterly incompatible with his purpose. His constitution may break in nine years, and sickness may disqua- "The animadversions of the critic you sent me, lify him for improving what he enterprised in the hurt me more than they would have done, had they days of his health. His inclination may change, come from a person from whom I might have exand he may find some other employment more pected such treatment. In part they appeared to agreeable; or another poet may enter upon the same me unjust, and in part ill-natured; and, the man work, and get the start of him. Therefore, my himself being an oracle in almost every body's acfriend Horace, though I acknowledge your princi- count, I apprehended that he had done me much ple to be good, I must confess the practice you would mischief. Why he says that the translation is far ground upon it is carried to an extreme. The rigor from exact is best known to himself. For I know that I exercised upon the first book, I intend to ex-it to be as exact as is compatible with poetry; and ercise upon all that follow, and have now actually advanced into the middle of the seventh, nowhere admitting more than one line in fifty of the first translation. You must not imagine that I had been careless and hasty in the first instance. In truth, I had not; but, in rendering so excellent a poet as Homer into our language, there are so many points to be attended to, both in respect of language and numbers, that a first attempt must be fortunate indeed if it does not call aloud for a second. You saw the specimen, and you saw (I am sure) one great fault in it; I mean the harshness of some of the elisions. I do not altogether take the blame of these to myself, for into some of them I have been absolutely driven and hunted by a series of reiterated objections, made by a critical friend, whose scruples and delicacies teazed me almost out of all patience." prose translations of Homer are not wanted. The world has one already. I am greatly pleased with the amendments of a friend, to whom I sent a specimen, which he has returned amended with so much taste and candor, and accompanied with so many expressions of kindness, that it quite charmed me. He has chiefly altered the lines encumbered with elisions; and I will just take this opportunity to tell you, because I know you to be as much interested in what I write as myself, that some of the most offensive of these elisions were occasioned by mere criticism. I was fairly hunted into them by vexatious objections, made without end by — and his friends, and altered, and altered, till at last I scarcely cared how I altered. I am not naturally insensible, and the sensibilities I had by nature have been wonderfully enhanced by a long series of shocks, given to a frame of nerves that was never very athletic. I feel accordingly, whether painful or pleasant, in the extreme; am easily elevated, and easily cast down. The power of a critic freezes my poetical powers, and discourages me to such a degree, that makes me ashamed of my own weakness. Yet I presently recover my confidence again, especially when I have every reason to believe, as in the case you refer to, that a critic's censures are harsh and unreasonable, and arise more from his own wounded and mortified feelings, than from any defect in the work itself." With a view to make his translation as perfect as possible, Cowper, before he committed it to the press, availed himself of the assistance of several eminent critics, from some of whom he derived considerable assistance, which, at every convenient opportunity, he very readily and gratefully acknowledged. The remarks of others, however, to whose notice he had been persuaded to submit parts of his manuscript, were so frivolous and perfectly hypercritical, as to occasion him considerable vexation. Of this, the closing remarks of the last, and the whole of the following extract will afford ample proof:-"The Notwithstanding the irritation produced in the vexation and perplexity that attend a multiplicity mind of the poet by the trifling amendments and of criticisms by various hands, many of which are vexatious criticisms of some whom he had been persure to be futile, many of them unfounded, and suaded to consult, he nevertheless persevered in the some of them contradictory to others, is inconceiv-translation, with undiminished activity, and gave able, except by the author, whose ill-fated work hap-abundant proof that he possessed that real greatness pens to be the subject of them. This also appears of mind which alone could enable him to undertake |