known as "England's Christian poet." Perhaps it was necessary, for the consecration of his genius to the highest themes, to mingle that gloom of depression in the habit of his heart; if so, then that exquisitely beautiful hymn, composed on the eve of his madness, had a meaning extended over his whole life, of which he little dreamed.

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A MERRY HEART.

CHAPTER XVII.

Cowper's passion for fun and humour-The discipline to balance itExquisite lessons and scenes of social joy in his poems-Mingled sportiveness and solemnity of his letters to Newton.

PERFORMANCE in this world is often prevented by theoretical perfection; and one evil has to be set to keep guard over another. The skilful workman has to prepare his finest gold for use and workmanship with a portion of alloy. A cold day in nature is sometimes necessary to set the vegetation; and storms are necessary to prevent even our finest weather from injuring us. Cowper's native tendency to social pleasantry and humour perhaps needed to be chastened, or at least balanced, for under all his gloom the drollest recollections were sometimes uppermost in his mind. The only thing he remembered of his friend Hill's poetry in the Nonsense Club, in their early days, was the Homeric line, "To whom replied the Devil, yard-long tailed." Such snatches of ridiculous recollections he is continually presenting in his letters; one of them to Newton he finishes with a reference to Dr Scott, at the close of whose sermon he gives Newton an account of a droll blunder made by the

preacher, who, quoting a passage of Scripture, said to his hearers, "Open your wide mouths, and I will fill them."

Now, nothing is more delightful, more genial and congenial than such a disposition. Deliver us from men who cannot relish pleasantry, and, if need be, even in the midst of misery; such men cannot have your entire confidence, but are to be held as Shakspeare or Luther would have regarded men who hated music. "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." But the ceaseless thirst and craving for amusement and merriment, as if it were the whole of life, is a fever that dries and consumes the soul more fatally. A creature constituted with a very keen relish for the pleasures of a merry circle, and habituated to rely upon them, is not fitted to encounter any change of weather, or to ride through rough seas. Such a person is like a vessel carelessly loaded with such materials, that there is danger of a sudden shifting of the cargo, and inevitable shipwreck in consequence.

"Luxury gives the mind a childish cast,
And while she polishes, perverts the taste.
Habits of close attention, thinking heads,
Become more rare as dissipation spreads,
Till authors hear at length one general cry,
Tickle and entertain us, or we die."

There is a higher quality. "Is any merry? Let him sing psalms;" that taste and faculty is the celestial balance in the soul. If any man has learned to do that with the heart, he has learned it on such grounds as have taught him most solemnly and profoundly the madness of the man of mere mirthfulness; but there is room for happiness and joy in his affections, his mind, his whole being, to the

L

utmost extent to which occasion may ever call for merriment. But until he has learned to do that, until he has gained that hope which is an anchor in eternity, the end of his mirth is heaviness; for, "Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry," is the rule, but the heart of fools is in the house where such mirth reigns, and folly is joy, and joy is folly, to him that is destitute of wisdom.

That proverb also is as full of truth as pithiness, that "the laughter of fools is like the crackling of thorns under a pot ;" and persons who live for nothing but to giggle and make giggle are the most unmirthful beings in the world. Cowper's early associates, when he knew nothing higher or better than worldly mirth, were sad illustrations. A creature suddenly paralysed and stiffened in the act and attitude of boisterous laughter would be a hideous sight; but an immortal being who knows nothing but giggling and merriment, and imagines that life has no other end than such uninterrupted enjoyment, would be, to spiritual spectators at least, a much more deplorable spectacle.

How beautiful, in this connexion, are Cowper's lines on social life and conversation, along with that exquisite picture of the walk to Emmaus! Well might Cowper ask,

"Is sparkling wit the world's exclusive right?
The fix'd fee-simple of the vain and light?"

Nay, does it not much rather belong to those who have received in fee-simple an eternal inheritance of love, joy, peace? Assuredly the hope of heaven cannot quench or obscure the play of a faculty whose happiest permanent abode is in that mind which is the most serene and thoughtful. Piety restrains and curbs its wantonness, and prevents it from

THE WALK TO EMMAUS.

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assuming the part of the mere trifler, and thus at the same time gives it a usefulness unknown before, and makes it shine the brighter for its purification. Such conclusions were the fruits of Cowper's own experience, having tried both the paths of this world's merriment and of religious peace and joy; and he has thrown the celestial knowledge he had gained into some of the most beautiful lessons and pictures of his poetry.

"The mind, dispatch'd upon her busy toil,

Should range where Providence has bless'd the soil;
Visiting every flower with labour meet,

And gathering all her treasures, sweet by sweet,
She should imbue the tongue with what she sips,
And shed the balmy blessing on the lips,
That good diffused may more abundant grow,
And speech may praise the power that bids it flow.
"Yet Fashion, leader of a chattering train,
Whom man for his own hurt permits to reign,
Who shifts and changes all things but his shape,
And would degrade her votary to an ape,
The fruitful parent of abuse and wrong,
Holds a usurp'd dominion o'er his tongue;

Here sits and prompts him with his own disgrace,
Prescribes the theme, the tone, and the grimace,
And, when accomplish'd in her wayward school,
Calls gentleman whom she has made a fool.

'Tis an unalterable, fix'd decree,

That none could frame or ratify but she,

That heaven and hell, and righteousness and sin,
Snares in his path, and foes that lurk within,

God and his attributes (a field of day

Where 'tis an angel's happiness to stray)
Fruits of his love and wonders of his might,

Be never named in ears esteem'd polite;

That he who dares, when she forbids, be grave,
Shall stand proscribed a madman or a knave,
A close designer, not to be believed,

Or, if excused that charge, at least deceived.