66 POETICAL POPULARITY. COWPER'S HABITS OF COMPOSITION. 143 peer, and who saw through vulgar!" How often," said he once, "I have externals and humble occupations been in the heart of Paris, Berlin, to the inmost soul of the man, had and London, or some other city, sufficient provocations to be the and heard persons singing, or the satirist of those he idealized. hand-organ playing, Sweet Home, without a shilling to buy the next meal or a place to lay my head. The world has literally sung my song until every heart is familiar with its melody. Yet I have been a wanderer from my boyhood. My country has turned me ruthlessly from my office; and in my old age I have to submit to humiliation for bread." Thus he would complain of his hapless lot. His only wish was to die in a foreign land, to be buried by strangers, and sleep in obscurity. Imet him one day looking unusually sad, "Have you got your consulate?" said I. Yes, and leave in a week for Tunis; I shall never return." Poor Payne! his wish was realized he died at Tunis. We learn from Southey, who had seen his MS. letters, that they were written as easily as they appear to have been; they would not otherwise (he observes) have been inimitable; they are written in a clear, beautiful, running hand, and it is rarely that an erasure occurs in them, or the slightest alteration of a phrase." Cowper himself describes the painstaking attention he bestowed upon his poetical composition:-"Whatever faults I may be chargeable with as a poet, I cannot accuse myself of negligence. I never suffer a line to pass till I have made it as good as I can." FATE OF A LYRICAL WRITER. 66 POETICAL POPULARITY. As I sit in my garret here (in One of Campbell's most popular Washington) watching the course lyrics was the Wounded Hussar. of great men, and the destiny of In 1802 it was a street ballad, a party, I meet often with strange fact which was very annoying to contradictions in this eventful life. the sensitive poet, who was quizzed The most remarkable was that of on this proof of his success by his J. Howard Payne, author of Sweet waggish companions. In after Home. I knew him personally. years Campbell regarded his street He occupied the rooms under me for popularity in a different light. some time, and his conversation "Coming home one evening to my was so captivating that I often house in Park Square (narrates spent whole days in his apartment. Dr. Beattie), where as usual he had He was an applicant for office at dropped in to spend a quiet hour, I the time-consul at Tunis-from told him that I had been agreeably which he had been removed. What detained listening to some street a sad thing it was to see the poet music near Portman Square." subjected to all the humiliation of "Vocal or instrumental?" he inoffice-seeking. Of an evening we quired. "Vocal; the song was an would walk along the streets. Once old favourite, remarkably good, and in a while we would see some fa- of at least forty years' standing." mily circle so happy, and forming "Ha!" said he, "I congratulate so beautiful a group, that we would the author, whoever he is." "And both stop, and then pass silently so do I-it was your own song, the on. On such occasions he would Soldier's Dream; and when I came give me a history of his wanderings, away the crowd was still increashis trials, and all the cares incident ing." "Well," he added, musing, to his sensitive nature and poverty. I "this is something like popularity!" He then, as an instance of real po- | friend to try his powers in that pularity, mentioned that, happening species of composition. At length to enter a blacksmith's forge on he promised to do so if she would some trifling errand many years furnish him with a subject. She ago, he saw a small volume lying replied, "O you can never be in on the bench, but so begrimmed and want of a subject: you can write tattered, that its title-page was upon any write upon this sofa." almost illegible. It was Goldsmith's The poet obeyed her command, and Deserted Village and other Poems; produced the Task. every page of which bore testimony to the rough hands-guided by feeling hearts-that had so often turned over its leaves. "This," he added, was one of the most convincing instances of an author's popularity I ever met with." 66 BOWLES. This poem, which thus arose from the lively repartee of familiar conversation, presents a variety including almost every subject and every style, without the violation of order and harmony, while it breathes a spirit of the purest and most exalted morality. Thomas Campbell finely remarks, that "his whimsical outset in a work, where he promises so little and performs so much, may be advantageously contrasted with those magnificent commencements of poems which pledge both the reader and the writer, in good earnest, to a task. Cowper's poem, The canon's absence of mind was very great, and when his coachman drove him into Bath, he had to practise all kinds of cautions to keep him to time and place. The act of composition was a slow and laborious operation with Mr.Bowles. He altered and re-wrote his MS., until, sometimes, hardly anything on the contrary, is like a river, remained of the original, excepting which rises from a playful little the general conception. When we fountain, and which gathers beauty add that his handwriting was one and magnitude as it proceeds." "PARADISE LOST." of the worst that ever man wrote -insomuch that frequently he could not read that which he had When this great production apwritten the day before-we need peared, in 1667, the celebrated not say that his printers had very Waller wrote of it-"The old, tough work in getting his works blind schoolmaster, John Milton, into type. At the time when we hath published a tedious poem on printed for Mr. Bowles, we had one the fall of man; if its length be compositor who had a sort of knack not considered a merit, it has no in making out the poet's hierogly-other." phics, and he was once actually sent for by Mr. Bowles into Wiltshire to copy some MS. written a year or two before, which the poet had himself vainly endeavoured to decipher. (Newspaper.) COWPER'S "TASK." Cowper, like many other men of eminence, was often indebted to others for the subjects on which he wrote. Lady Austen was very fond of blank verse, and urged her Thomas Ellwood, an intelligent and learned Quaker, who was honoured by the intimate friendship of Milton, used to read to him various authors in the learned languages, and thus contributed as well to his own improvement as to solace the dark hours of the poet when he had lost his sight. "The curious ear of John Milton," said Ellwood, in his own Life," could discover, by the tone of my voice, when I did not clearly understand what I read, and open the difficult A couple of lobsters? Ay that passages." would have done very well-two shillings; tarts, a shilling.' Milton lent Ellwood the manuscript of Paradise Lost to read. When he returned it, Milton asked him how he liked it. "I like it much," said the judicious Quaker: "thou hast written well, and said much of Paradise Lost; but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?" Milton made no answer, but sat musing for some time. When business afterwards drew Ellwood to London, he called on Milton, who showed him the poem of Paradise Regained; and in a pleasant tone said to his friend, "This is owing to you; for you put it into my head by the question you asked me at Charlfont, which before I had not thought of." JONATHAN SWIFT. In one of his letters, Pope gives the following illustration of Dean Swift's eccentricity: "Dean Swift has an odd, blunt way, that is mistaken by strangers for ill nature: it is so odd that there is no describing it but by facts. I'll tell you one that first comes into my head. "One evening, Gay and I went to see him: you know how intimately we were all acquainted. On our coming in, 'Heyday, gentlemen,' says the doctor, 'what's the meaning of this visit? How came you to leave all the great lords that you are so fond of, to come hither to see a poor dean? Because we would rather see you than any of them.' 'Ay, anyone that did not know you so well as I do might believe you. But since you have come I must get some supper for you I suppose.' No, doctor, we have supped already.' 'Supped already? That's impossible: why, it is not eight o'clock yet. That's very strange but if you had not supped, I must have got something for you. Let me see; what should I have had ? "But you will drink a glass of wine with me, though you supped so much before your usual time only to spare my pocket.' 'No, we had rather talk with you than drink with you.' 'But if you had supped with me, as in all reason you ought to have done, you must then have drank with me. A bottle of wine, two shillings. Two and two are four, and one is five; just two and sixpence a piece. There, Pope, there's half a crown for you; and there's another for you, sir; for I won't save anything by you, I am determined.' "This was all said and done with his usual seriousness on such occasions; and in spite of everything we could say to the contrary, he actually obliged us to take the money." DRYDEN. This poet, when a boy at Westminster school, was put with others to write a copy of verses on the miracle of the conversion of water into wine. Being a great truant, he had not time to compose his verses; and, when brought up, he had only made one line of Latin, and two of English :— "Videt et erubit lympha pudica Deum!" "The modest water, awed by power divine, Beheld its God, and blushed itself to wine;" which so pleased the master, that, instead of being angry, he said it was a presage of future greatness, and gave the youth a crown on this occasion. SIR WALTER SCOTT. When Sir Walter Scott was a schoolboy, between ten and eleven years of age, his mother one morning saw him standing still in the street, and looking at the sky, in the midst of a tremendous thunder K storm. She called to him repeatedly, but he did not seem to hear: at length he returned into the house, and told his mother that if she would give him a pencil, he would tell her why he looked at the sky. She acceded to his request, and in a few minutes he laid on her lap the following lines: "Loud o'er my head what awful thunders roll! What vivid lightnings flash from pole to pole! It is thy voice, O God, that bids them fly; Thy voice directs them through the vaulted sky; Then let the good thy mighty power revere; Let hardened sinners thy just judg ments fear." BURNS. Burns, in his autobiography, informs us that a life of Hannibal, which he read when a boy, raised the first stirrings of his enthusiasm; and he adds, with his own fervid expression, that "the Life of Sir William Wallace poured a tide of Scottish prejudices into his veins, which would boil along them till the floodgates of life were shut in eternal rest." He adds, speaking of his retired life in early youth, "This kind of life, the cheerless gloom of a hermit, and the toil of a galley slave, brought me to my sixteenth year, when love made me a poet." BYRON. Moore relates, in his Life of Lord Byron, that on a certain occasion, he found him occupied with the History of Agathon, a romance, by Wieland; and, from some remarks made at the time, he seemed to be of opinion that Byron was reading the work in question as a means of furnishing suggestions to, and of quickening, his own imaginative powers. He then adds, "I am inclined to think it was his practice, when engaged in the composition of any work, to excite his vein by the perusal of others on the same subject or plan, from which the slightest hint caught by imagination, as he read, was sufficient to kindle there such a train of thought as but for that spark had never been awakened." GOETHE. The singular facility with which Goethe's poems were produced, resembling improvisation or inspiration rather than composition, has contributed in some cases, no doubt, to enhance their peculiar charm. "I had come," says he, "to regard entirely as nature; the rather that the poetic talent dwelling in me I was directed to look upon external nature as its proper subject. The exercise of this poetic gift might be stimulated and determined by occasion, but it flowed forth most joyfully, most richly, when it came involuntarily, or even against my will. "I was so accustomed to say over a song to myself without being able to collect it again, that I sometimes rushed to the desk, and, without taking time to adjust a sheet that was lying crosswise, wrote the poem diagonally from beginning to end, without stirring from the spot. For the same reason I preferred to use a pencil, which gives the characters more willingly; for it had sometimes happened that the scratching and spattering of the pen would wake me from my somnambulistic poetizing, distract my attention, and stifle some small product in the birth. For such poetry I had a special reverence. My relation to it was something like a hen to the chickens, which, being fully hatched, she sees chirping about her. My former desire to communicate these things only by reading them aloud renewed itself again. To barter them for money seemed to me de'testable." QUEEN VICTORIA AND THOMAS CAMPBELL. CRABBE. When the poet Crabbe once presented one of his poems to the late Lord-Chancellor Thurlow, his lordship said, “I have no time to read verses; my avocations do not permit it." Crabbe instantly retorted, "There was a time when the encouragement of literature was considered to be a duty appertaining to the illustrious situation which your lordship holds." Thurlow frankly acknowledged his error, and nobly returned it. He observed, "I ought to have noticed your poem, and I heartily forgive your rebuke." In proof of his sincerity he presented him with one hundred pounds, and subsequently gave him preferment in the church. COWPER'S AMUSEMENTS. "Amusements (he writes to Wm. Unwin) are necessary in a retirement like mine, especially in such a sable state of mind as I labour under. The necessity of amusement makes me a carpenter, a bird-cage maker, a gardener, and has lately taught me to draw, and to draw too with such surprising proficiency in the art, considering my total ignorance of it two months ago, that, when I show your mother my productions, she is all admiration and applause.' To Mr. Newton he writes:- "I draw mountains, valleys, woods, and streams, and ducks, and dab-chicks. I admire them myself, and Mrs. Unwin admires them, and her praise and my praise put together are fame enough for me." The pleasure he derives from his pursuits he thus describes: :- -“I never received a little pleasure from anything in my life; if I am delighted, it is in the extreme. The unhappy consequence of this temperament is, that my attachment to any occupation seldom outlives the novelty of it. That nerve of my imagination, that feels the touch of any particular 147 amusement, twangs under the energy of the pressure with so much vehemence, that it soon becomes sensible of weariness and fatigue." Adverting in another letter to his amusements, he says: "Poetry above all things is useful to me in this respect. While I am held in pursuit of pretty images, or a pretty way of expressing them, I forget everything that is irksome." The remark may remind us of one of his verses : "There is a pleasure in poetic pains, Which only poets know." QUEEN VICTORIA AND THOMAS CAMPBELL. The following story narrates the most graceful compliment and delicate return ever made by royalty: "I was at her Majesty's coronation, in Westminster Abbey," said Campbell, "and she conducted herself so well, during the long and fatiguing ceremony, that I shed tears many times. On returning home, I resolved, out of pure esteem and veneration, to send her a copy of all my works. "Accordingly, I had them bound up, and went personally with them to Sir Henry Wheatly, who, when he understood my errand, told me "that her Majesty made it a rule to decline presents of this kind, as it placed her under obligations which were unpleasant to her. 'Say to her Majesty, Sir Henry,' I replied, that there is not a single thing the Queen can touch with her sceptre in any of her dominions which I covet; and I therefore entreat you, in your office, to present them with my devotion as a subject.' But the next day they were returned. "I hesitated," continued Campbell, "to open the parcel; but, on doing so, I found, to my inexpressible joy, a note inclosed, desiring my autograph on them. Having complied with the wish, I again |