194 PLAYFULNESS OF COWPER'S HUMOUR. wonder that a sportive thought should ever knock at the door of my intellect, and still more that it should gain admittance. It is as if a harlequin should intrude himself into the gloomy chamber where a corpse is deposited in state. His antic gesticulations would be unseasonable at any rate, but more especially so if they should distort the features of the mournful attendants into laughter. But the mind, long wearied with the sameness of a dull, dreary prospect, will gladly fix its eyes on anything that may make a little variety in its contemplations, though it were but a kitten playing with her tail." But here it is to be remarked that in fact what renders the humour of Cowper so delightful is, that it is neither forced nor boisterous, neither put on for effect nor resorted to for provoking laughter either in himself or others; but it is manifestly a native permeating element, from a deep living salient spring in his being; a vein running through the whole empire of his mind and heart, like a brook in green pastures. The sportive flashes of his wit are as native, genuine, and playful, as artless and unpremeditated, as the serenest expressions of his piety are sincere, profound, and thoughtful; and both are as spontaneous as the rich droppings of a full honey-comb. The playfulness of Cowper, not being assumed, but really omnipresent and irresistible, had a native sweetness and power that, except in the intervals of real, despotic, overwhelming insanity, gained the victory over his gloom; nor was he at any time so utterly miserable as he conceived himself to be. Meantime, the lessons of his affliction were never forgotten by him; he felt deeply his dependence upon God for every breath of his genius. There was this difference, COWPER'S ENJOYMENT OF COMPOSITION. 195 he said, between the generality of poets and himself— "they have been ignorant how much they stood indebted to an Almighty power for the exercise of those talents they have supposed their own; whereas I know, and know most perfectly, and am, perhaps, to be taught it to the last, that my power to think, whatever it be, and consequently my power to compose, is as much as my outward power afforded to me by the same hand that makes me in any respect to differ from a brute. This lesson, if not constantly inculcated, might, perhaps, be forgotten, or at least too slightly remembered." Thus it was that Cowper never wrote with weariness, never but with pleasure, never except spontaneously; and this was a great source and secret of his success. He said himself that there were times when he was no more of a poet than he was a mathematician, but at other times it seemed as easy for him to pour forth the sweetest thoughts' and feelings, in the sweetest, simplest style, as for a child to breathe. He once said to his friend Unwin, as also to Lady Hesketh, that he was so formed as to be, in regard to pleasure and pain, in extremes; whatever gave him any pleasure gave him much; and he enjoyed much in the work of composition. It was an amusement that carried him away from himself; or rather it transported him from his gloomy self to his radiant and hopeful self under the light of heaven; from the experience of an imagined despair to that region of heavenly experience taught of God, amid thoughts of the richest wisdom, and feelings kindling with the theme; emotions grateful, devout, affectionate, crowding forth from the opened doors of that life hid with Christ in God, before which, at other times, 196 COWPER'S ENJOYMENT OF COMPOSITION. despair kept such gloomy and forbidding watch, that there was no access to it, no communion with it. The labour of his authorship on heavenly themes was as the work of those who, passing through the Valley of Baca, make it a well; it was like Isaac's labour in digging the wells which the Philistines in their malignity had filled and sealed up with dirt and stones; and in its happy result to himself it was as a hand Divine reached down to draw him up from an abyss of wretchedness. "The quieting and composing effect of it," he told Newton, "was such, and so totally absorbed have I sometimes been in my rhyming occupation, that neither the past nor the future (those themes which to me are so fruitful in regret at other times) had any longer a share in my contemplation." This was just because, in meditating on these sweet celestial themes, he had retreated from the mob of accusing and despairing tumultuous thoughts into that holy of holies, where his life was in a double sense hid with Christ in God. He stole away gradually, by such delightful occupation, from his own despair, and the Enemy found there was one secret recess which he could not enter, one pavilion where God could hide the troubled wanderer from the strife of tongues. COWPER'S EMPLOYMENTS. 197 CHAPTER XX. Tenor of Cowper's life and employments-The idle and the busy manTranslation of Homer-His account of this work to Newton. In the year 1786, Cowper wrote to Lady Hesketh, in reference to his mental malady, a letter descriptive of the same, from which we have already quoted some passages. "It will be thirteen years in little more than a week,” said he, "since this malady seized me. Methinks I hear you ask-your affection for me will, I know, make you wish to do so-Is it removed?' I reply, In great measure, but not quite. Occasionally I am much distressed, but that distress becomes continually less frequent, and I think less violent." "In the year when I wrote "The Task'—for it occupied me about a year-I was very often most supremely unhappy; and am, under God, indebted in a good part to that work for not having been much worse." This was written in January, a month the recurrence of which Cowper always dreaded, for it was in that month that his tremendous malady had seized him, and he feared its periodical return. But the style of this letter shews how cheerfully he could speak of his malady when he exerted himself to view it and describe it from the bright side. Cowper here says that while writing "The Task" he 198 COWPER'S EMPLOYMENTS. was often supremely unhappy; it was a period in which he was threatened with a second recurrence of his malady in all its force, and he suffered indescribably from dejection of spirits. Yet let us look from another point of view, and that Cowper's own point, chosen by himself in his poem, upon the tenor of his life and employments, and we shall see the same supremely unhappy person happier than thousands whom the world call happy; and even in his own conscious estimation not unfavoured of his God, nor without deep and constant enjoyment. "How various his employments whom the world Calls idle; and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too! Friends, books, a garden, and perhaps his pen, Delightful industry enjoy'd at home, And Nature in her cultivated trim Dress'd to his taste, inviting him abroad Can he want occupation, who has these?" When He shall call His debtors to account, The mind He gave me; driving it, though slack, By causes not to be divulged in vain, To its just point, the service of mankind. He that attends to his interior self, That has a heart, and keeps it; has a mind Has business; feels himself engaged to achieve A life all turbulence and noise may seem To him that leads it, wise, and to be praised; |