WILLIAM COWPER (1731—­1800)

In Cowper we have another interesting poet, who, like Gray and Goldsmith, shows the struggle between romantic and classic ideals.  In his first volume of poems, Cowper is more hampered by literary fashions than was Goldsmith in his Traveller and his Deserted Village.  In his second period, however, Cowper uses blank verse freely; and his delight in nature and in homely characters, like the teamster and the mail carrier of The Task, shows that his classicism is being rapidly thawed out by romantic feeling.  In his later work, especially his immortal “John Gilpin,” Cowper flings fashions aside, gives Pegasus the reins, takes to the open road, and so proves himself a worthy predecessor of Burns, who is the most spontaneous and the most interesting of all the early romanticists.

LIFE.  Cowper’s life is a pathetic story of a shy and timid genius, who found the world of men too rough, and who withdrew to nature like a wounded animal.  He was born at Great Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, in 1731, the son of an English clergyman.  He was a delicate, sensitive child, whose early life was saddened by the death of his mother and by his neglect at home.  At six years he was sent away to a boys’ school, where he was terrified by young barbarians who made his life miserable.  There was one atrocious bully into whose face Cowper could never look; he recognized his enemy by his shoe buckles, and shivered at his approach.  The fierce invectives of his “Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools” (1784), shows how these school experiences had affected his mind and health.  For twelve years he studied law, but at the approach of a public examination for an office he was so terrified that he attempted suicide.  The experience unsettled his reason, and the next twelve months were spent in an asylum at St. Alban’s.  The death of his father, in 1756, had brought the poet a small patrimony, which placed him above the necessity of struggling, like Goldsmith, for his daily bread.  Upon his recovery he boarded for years at the house of the Unwins, cultured people who recognized the genius hidden in this shy and melancholy yet quaintly humorous man.  Mrs. Unwin, in particular, cared for him as a son; and whatever happiness he experienced in his poor life was the result of the devotion of this good woman, who is the “Mary” of all his poems.

A second attack of insanity was brought on by Cowper’s morbid interest in religion, influenced, perhaps, by the untempered zeal of one John Newton, a curate, with whom Cowper worked in the small parish of Olney, and with whom he compiled the famous Olney Hymns.  The rest of his life, between intervals of melancholia or insanity, was spent in gardening, in the care of his numerous pets, and in writing his poems, his translation of Homer, and his charming letters.  His two best known poems were suggested by a lively and cultivated