preciate writers of the most opposite character. Here and there it is probable that the editors hip of some one particular poet might more advantageously be entrusted to some particular living writer whom we might name; but we know no one among our contemporaries more likely to do justice to an edition of English Poets as a whole. The edition before us is emphatically an "annotated" edition of the English Poets. It in no small measure founds its claims to popular support upon the accuracy and copiousness of the annotations it contains. The illustrative matter is indeed ample. It is of two kinds, introductory and marginal. Judging by the volumes now before us, we have little hesitation in pronouncing an opinion favorable to the manner in which this important part of the editor's duty has been performed. The notes are numerous, but not too numerous. They discharge their proper functions; for they explain, they do not encumber the text. That here and there a wrong word may have crept in, or a stop may have been misplaced, or a note omitted where one is to be desired, is something more than a probability—it appears indeed to us to be a necessity in such a work. It would require, indeed, superhuman intelligence, and superhuman labor, wholly to prevent the occurrence of such mischances as these. That they seldom occur in a work of such extent, demanding so rare a combination of many qualities in the individual workman, is honorable to the ability, the care, and the conscientiousness of the editor. The "annotated" edition of the English Poets would be the greatest literary wonder of the age if no errors were discernible in it. To the assaults of that lowest order of criticism-the word-catching, which lives on syllables-a work of this kind is sure to be exposed. Every critic knows something, or thinks that he knows something, about Dryden and Pope, Goldsmith and Cowper. Many hold opinions of their own, perhaps have some peculiar critical tenets, any variance from which they regard as an unpardonable heresy. Mere difference of opinion constitutes, in their eyes, an offence. They treat as settled points what are often open questions; and whilst dogmatically commenting upon another's errors, not seldom illustrate their own. Doubtless they have a right to their opinions, and they have a right freely to express them. But a large portion of the censure which is passed by periodical critics upon such works as this, is, in reality a mere expression of a difference of opinion, and ought rather to be delivered in a suggestive than a dogmatic tone. The acrimony of rival commentators is, however, proverbial. The ineptissime dixit is still the favorite critical formula which expresses the offence of an editor who interprets an obscure passage after a fashion differing from that which finds favor in the eyes of his critic. But these Brunckian amenities are not creditable to our periodical literature. With the editor of such a work as this every literary man should make common cause; all who have our national literature at heart should endeavor to assist his labors, and to contribute something towards the completeness of his work. The edition of Cowper now before us, included in three of Mr. Bell's annotated volumes, may be taken as a fair specimen of the manner in which he is discharging his important duties. We do not conceive that the "bard of Olney" is one to the consideration of whose writings, and the illustration of whose career, a mind so constituted as is the editor's, is likely to bring so large an amount of enthusiasm and sympathy as to other poets whom we could name. But on that very account, we believe that in selecting the annotated Cowper for the text of the present paper, we are dealing fairly with the work as a whole. We have no doubt that better specimens of genial and careful editing will appear in the series. Indeed, we regard the annotated Dryden, with which the series was commenced, as, on the whole, a better specimen of editorial skill. But we cannot hesitate to declare that there is no existing edition of Cowper's Poems which we so much care to possess, as that which is now before us. It has one great advantage over all others, - that the poems are arranged according to the date of their composition, so that we have a complete picture of the development of the poetical faculty in William Cowper, and a history of the intellectual activity of the bard, at different periods of his life, at once in the most authentic and the most interesting shape. The introductory notes explanatory of the circumstances under which the different poems were written, and the influences to which the poet was exposed at the time of their composition, impart a vitality to the collection, which, taking all the pieces together, carries the reader on from one to another, and raises within him, as he advances, those emotions of sympathy which are inspired by the perusal of a vivid autobiography. It is a common remark, that the history of a poet's life is to be ", found in his works. But his poems, when collected, are often arranged in so clumsy a manner, or on so false a system, that they throw no light at all upon the progress of his inner life, or the development of his genius. Mindful of this, Mr. Bell has, for the first time, printed Cowper's Poems in chronological order; and it is difficult to say how much their interest is enhanced by such an arrangement.* In making frequent use of Cowper's unrivalled correspondence, the annotator has done wisely. But not less wisely in resisting the temptation to a more liberal use of these materials for commentary. It would have been easy, with a collection of Cowper's letters before him, for the editor to have multiplied note upon note. But such multiplication would have encumbered the text, and expanded the bulk of the work beyond convenient limits. It appears to us that we have just sufficient annotation, and no more, for a work that forms only a small component part of an extensive series. The life of William Cowper has been written so often and so amply, that it was hardly to be expected that Mr. Bell should have much novel matter to introduce into the Memoir which he has prefixed to the poems. It is a pleasant, a conscientious, and a reliable piece of writing; and, with the introductory notes, affords a very complete picture of the life, the habits, and the character of the poet. There is a well-known peculiarity in the life of Cowper which distinguishes it from almost every other subject of biography. People are prone to ask, when a new biographer or new essayist enters upon it, "which side does he take?" The subject, indeed, has become a sort of literary battle-fieldone, too, in which even larger interests than those of literature are concerned. The life of William Cowper has been written f.om very different points of view-one biographer regarding the views of another, to say the least of them, as dangerous heresies, and "The Poems," says Mr. Bell, "are here printed, for the first time, in chronological order. It is be lieved that independently of other considerations, the interest connected with these pieces is much enhanced by this arrangement; especially in reference to the minor poems, which, being chiefly occasional, are to a great extent autobiographical. They enter into the history of Cowper's life; and a new light is thrown upon them, by exhibiting them in the order of the incidents to which they refer. The particular circumstances connected with their origin are explained in the introductions, and, wherever it is possible, in Cowper's own words, derived from his correspondence." each having a large phalanx of supporter eager to condemn the work of his riva Grimshawe wrote because he was not satis fied with Hayley; and Southey wrote be cause he was not satisfied with Grimshaw Mr. Bell avoids both extremes. He is mor moderate and candid than his predecessors His sympathies are, perhaps, rather wit Southey than with Grimshawe. But he ha no theory to maintain. He treats of the re sults more than of the causes of Cowper' fearful maladies; and there is very little in his Memoir or his Notes to offend the preju dices of the most sensitive adherents of eithe party. If there be any thing, it is rather i some casual expression than in any studie assertion of opinion. In truth, it is a melancholy subject; but after all, not so melancholy as some, it seems would wish to make it. It would be the saddest thing of all to believe that so noble a mind was wrecked by that which is the very crown and perfection of human reason and without which the intelligence of man, in its sublimest utterance, is but as a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. That William Cowper was, at certain periods of his life, the victim of some miserable spiritual delu sions, is a painful and undeniable fact. Bu these delusions were not the cause, but the effect of the derangement under which he suffered. It has often been said that "reli gion drove him mad." But religion neve yet drove any man mad. Even Mr. Bell, o whose candor we have spoken approvingly seems to have fallen into this old error Speaking of the composition of the Olney Hymns, he says, "A devotional labor of thi peculiar description, calling him back int the solitude of study and composition, t those spiritual meditations which had former ly unsettled his reason, was full of danger to Cowper." But spiritual meditations did no unsettle Cowper's mind. His mind woul have been unsettled had he been an atheis and a blasphemer, The only difference woul have been in the manifestations of his dis ease. Had Cowper lived and suffered half a cen tury later, the terrible malady which, durin so many years of his life, overshadowed hi reason, would, in all probability, never hav been a mystery, never a subject of contentio between rival biographers and controversia essayists. The seat of the disease, whethe in the brain or the viscera, would hav been discovered: and we should have hear nothing of spiritual meditations unsettling the reason of the unfortunate poet. A it is, we can only grope about in dim twilight. The solution, it is true, is very easy-reason and analogy favor it; but at the best, it is only conjecture. More or less of doubt and obscurity must always envelop a subject upon which, in these days, modern science would in all probability have thrown a flood of light. The extent to which the diseases of the body, both organic and functional, affect the mind, is every year becoming better and better understood. Men are often victims of the most horrible delusions under the influence of a mere temporary derangement of the organs of digestion. We have no doubt that medical experience could cite scores of cases of mental aberration, analogous with that of Cowper, attended with corresponding symptoms of physical disease. In general terms it is said, and said truthfully, of the poet, that from his childhood upwards, he was constitutionally of a morbid temperament. It does not appear that there was any hereditary tendency to which the origin of his malady can be assigned, but that it was constitutional is not to be doubted. "I have all my life," he frequently said in his letters, "been subject to a disorder of my spirits." This commenced at a very early period. We cannot quite follow Mr. Grimshawe in the inference which he draws from some of the well-known lines "On the receipt of my mother's picture out of Norfolk," to the effect that even before his mother's death Cowper was subject to depression of spirits. "That a morbid temperament," says the biographer, "was the originating cause of his disposition, is confirmed by an affecting passage in one of his poems : “My mother! when I learnt that thou wast dead, Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed? Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, Wretch even then, life's journey just begun." But the meaning of this passage is not that Cowper was a "wretch" antecedently to the death of his mother, but that that event made him a wretch even at the beginning of "life's journey." His sorrows seem then to have commenced. There is nothing in the passage to lead us to the conclusion that they had commenced before. He might truly date his sorrows from that melancholy epoch. It is not improbable, indeed, that he owed them all to his untimely bereavement. He was a child of a delicate organization, and he required, therefore, the gentlest treatment and the most watchful care, subjected, in early childhood, to discipline of a very opposite nature. His father, the rector of Berkhampstead, on the death of Mrs. Cowper, sent William to school. The delicate, sensitive boy was "taken," as he said, "from the nursery, and from the immediate care of a most indulgent mother," and sent to "rough it," as best he might, among strangers. Where Bedfordshire abuts into Hertfordshire, at a point of the great highroad, between St. Albans and Dunstable, is a long straggling village or townlet, known by the name of Market-street.* Now that the North-Western Railway runs at no great distance, almost parallel with this road, the place has a wan, deserted, melancholy appearance. But once the now silent "street' continually resounded with the smackings of the post-boy's whip, and the notes of the coachman's horn, and there was something of bustle and excitement, as there was at that time in many places, once the great arteries of our traffic, but now almost without a pulse of life. In this pulseless Marketstreet, there was a school kept by one Dr. Pitman; and thither, at the age of six, William Cowper, motherless and forlorn, was sent to "make his way," as it is called, against the "rolling sea" of birch and bullies. And many a boy would have made his way against both. But poor little Cowper could not make his way at all. All the little nerve which he carried with him to Marketstreet was battered out of him by a big boy, who seems to have made it his especial business to cow one who needed but little discipline of any kind to bring him to a fitting state of subjection. "I had hardships of different kinds to conflict with," he wrote in after life in reference to his early training, "which I felt more sensibly in proportion to the tenderness with which I had been treated at home. But my chief affliction consisted in my being singled out from all the other boys by a lad about fifteen years of age, as a proper object on whom he might let loose the cruelty of his temper. I choose to forbear a particular recital of the many acts of barbarity with which he made it his business continually to persecute me; it will be suffi pains to show the conflicting testimonies of different Southey, in his life of Cowper, has been at some writers regarding the geographical position of Dr. Pitman's school-some having placed it in Bedfordshire, and some in Hertfordshire; and says truly enough, that the poet was only at one private school, A glance at the maps of the two counties might have assured him of the cause of the seeming die cient to say, that he had, by his savage | influence over this branch of internal disc treatment of me, impressed such a dread of pline; but in such establishments as D his figure on my mind, that I well remember Pitman's nothing can be easier. The maste being afraid to lift up my eyes upon him, has nothing more to do, when a young an higher than his knees, and that I knew him tender child is entrusted to his care, than t by his shoe-buckles better than any other place him immediately under the protectio part of his dress." Commenting upon this of one of the elder boys. The more openly passage, a portion of which Mr. Bell quotes coram populo, it is done, the better. Such in his introductory memoir, he observes, that trust is sure not to be betrayed. We hav to the brutality of this boy's character, and known the happiest results to attend such i the general impression left upon Cowper's practice as this. The chivalrous feelings o mind by the tyranny he had undergone at the elder boy are stimulated by such a Dr. Pitman's, may be referred "the unfavor- appeal to his manliness. He is proud of the able opinion he entertained respecting schools, charge. He rejoices in the confidence re so forcibly expressed in the poem entitled posed in him by his master; and he studies to 'Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools."" prove himself worthy of it. He soon learns how much pleasanter it is to protect and to cherish than to domineer and to oppress and he has his reward in the almost filial reverence and affection with which he is looked up to and leaned upon by his youthful Of this there is no doubt: but might not something more have been added-might not something more have been referred to the tyranny of the big bully at Dr. Pitman's? It would be hardly possible for a child of delicate organization to undergo such treat-client. ment as little William Cowper was subjected to at the bad school in Market-street, without some abiding consequences affecting his physical or moral health-or both. What the precise nature of this treatment was does not appear. But no one knowing the many forms which school-boy cruelty assumes can doubt for a moment that it is quite sufficient to sow broadcast, in such a constitution as little Cowper's, the seeds of that melancholy disease which overshadowed so many of the best years of his life. We are sorry to say, that there are many cases on record of similar evil treatment, attended with effects of the same melancholy nature. Not, however, that we regard such an instance of tyranny on the one side, and suffering on the other, as any thing more than an exceptional case. There has been more than a common outcry of late against "fagging systems," "monitorial systems," and other kinds of schoolboy domination. But we have no disposition to swell the chorus. We suspect that there are not many men, whether educated at public or private schools, who are not willing to speak feelingly, affectionately, gratefully, of the kindness shown. towards them by older boys. There is something almost parental in the tender care and chivalrous protection which we have seen extended to the young and helpless at the scholastic institutions which Cowper conceived to be nurseries of vice and hot-beds of oppression. When the result is different, it is for the most part to be attributed to the unfitness of the preceptor. In large public schools it may be difficult to exercise a direct Such kindly, judicious management as this might have saved poor Cowper. As it was, we can hardly doubt that during his residence at Dr. Pitman's the seeds of his terrible malady were sown. From the school in Market-street he was removed to the house of an oculist, where he remained for some time, under treatment for a disease of the eyes. A dreary time, in all probability, it was-with nothing strengthening or refreshing in the environments of his position, but much to enervate and depress. From this isolation he was thrown at once into the tumult of a public school. At the age of nine he went to Westminster. "At twelve or thirteen" he was seized with the smallpox," "severely handled by the disease, and in imminent danger." The virulence of the disorder cured the complaint in his eyes, but left behind what Cowper believed to be symptoms of consumption.* That it very much increased the irritability under which he suffered, and still further weakened an already weakly constitution, is not to be questioned. At this time, he says, he was struck with a lowness of spirits very un In the Memoir of Cowper's early life, written by himself, these apprehensions of a consumptive habit are mentioned before the appearance of the small-pox. But the narrative of his school-days is written in very general language, and the allusion to the consumptive symptoms may belong to any period of his Westminster career. As the attack of small-pox occurred at the age of twelve or thirteen, and he says, with reference to the "intimaenough to understand their meaning, they are more tions of a consumptive habit," that he had skill likely to have occurred after than before that age. common at his age." As time advanced, however, his position at Westminster necessarily improved. The most reserved and retiring boy cannot spend nine years at a public school without acquiring some confidence in himself. As he grew older, and necessarily more respected by reason of his seniority, he became more self-possessed. He formed many friendships. He took part in the active recreations of the school. These social enjoyments exercised a salutary influence upon both his body and his mind. It does not appear that during the latter years of his residence at Westminster he was otherwise than healthy and happy. At the age of eighteen he was "taken from Westminster, and, having spent about nine months at home, was sent to acquire the practice of the law with an attorney." On attaining his majority, he took a set of chambers in the Temple, and was "complete master of himself." Here, according to his own statement, he commenced "a rash and ruinous career of wickedness." Who could doubt the effect of dissipation upon his irritable constitution? Not long after his settlement in the Temple he was "struck with such a dejection of spirits as none but they who have felt the same can have the least conception of." "Day and night," he said, "I was upon the rack, lying down in horror and rising up in despair." In this state he "continued near a twelvemonth, when, having experienced the inefficacy of all human means, he at length betook himself to God in prayer." He had not, however, tried the effect of "all human means." Change of air and scene was subsequently recommended him, and he went to Southampton with a party of friends, and spent several months at that pleasant watering-place. It need not be said that the change had a prodigious effect upon his health and his spirits. One clear, calm, sun-shiny morning, as he sat on a hill-side, and looked down upon the beautiful expanse of sea and land beneath him, the burden which had so long oppressed him was suddenly removed, and he felt an elation of spirit so delicious that he could have wept for joy. This is no unwonted phenomenon. Nor is it a bit more strange that, finding himself so much better in health and lighter in mood, he should have ceased from those spiritual exercises to which he had betaken himself in a season of sickness and despondency. These mutations are SO common that they have passed into a proverb, contained in a somewhat irreverent distich, to He went back to town, gave himself up to society, and what he afterwards, perhaps in somewhat overstrained language of self-reproach, described as "an uninterrupted course of sinful indulgence." This kind of life, however, could not have had a verv beneficial effect upon his nerves. He was disappointed, too, in his affections. He was tenderly attached to his cousin, Theodora Cowper; and the passion was reciprocated. But the prudent parents, With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart, forbade the union; and the cousins remained single until death. Whether this "disappointment," which he made the subject of a poem, had any abiding effect upon his spirits, does not very clearly appear. Mr. Southey and Mr. Bell both think that it did not quoting in confirmation of this opinion a Latin letter written subsequently to the failure of his suit, in which he speaks of " lovely and beloved little girl" of sixteen, who had bewitched him at Greenwich. In our estimation, however, the argument based upon this passage is of no weight. The Latin letter appears to us to be nothing more than a bit of amusing badinage. Surely his account of the "amabilis et amata puellula," whose departure left behind so many "lachrymas et suspiria," was never meant to be received as the expression of a serious passion. Considering that he addressed his correspondent, a brother Templar, as "Delicia et lepores mei!" it is not very difficult to make allowance for the classical bombast wherein he speaks of his female friend. The Latin letter is curious and amusing, but it throws no light upon the real character of Cowper's love. His disappointment was, probably, one of many aggravating causes, which tended to increase his nervous irritability at this time; and we have little doubt, that if the issue had been different-if he had been united to a sensible, an amiable, and a sprightly woman, the clouds would not have gathered over him in such appalling density. A crisis was now, indeed, rapidly approaching. Cowper's little patrimony was fast melting away under the influence of a life of continued idleness. In this emergency he remembered that he had some influential friends; and he bethought himself of the possibility of obtaining a situation under Government. The office of clerk of the journals of the House of Lords was in the |
