Page images
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

John Brown, D.D. of Cambridge, born in Northumberland 1715, committed suicide 1766, was a writer of multifarious talents, whose numerous productions, both in prose and verse, once enjoyed great popularity. The work referred to in the text, "An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times," published in 1757, passed through seven editions in the same year. It represents Britain as then sunk in utter degeneracy, and predicts her speedy ruin as a nation.

But victory refuted all he said;

namely, Wolfe's, Boscawen's, Hawke's, Clive's, the battle of Minden, &c. and the general prosperity which, in 1760, ushered in the accession of George III.

[blocks in formation]

"The poet, by an easy pedestrian pace, has got midway through his theme before he kindles into any thing like fury, or betrays any strong symptom of the diviner mood. Then, indeed, comes a glorious burst, in which the patriot, the Christian, and the bard, all unite in a warning sufficient to alarm the most supine statesman, touching the real perils and false security of a nation hastening unconsciously to ruin, through the undermining vices of luxury and licentiousness."- MONTGOMERY.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

-

Churchill; himself unconscious of his powers.

It has been justly remarked, that this spirited passage is an excellent imitation of the style of the bold satirist whose character it portrays. Nothing, however, save the blind partiality with which even the best of men are apt to regard early friendships, could have induced the virtuous Cowper to speak so leniently of the vices of Churchill,-one who not only disgraced the sacred function, but who, by the vulgarity of his profligacy, would have brought contempt upon the veriest man of the world. He was the schoolfellow of Cowper, and about the same age. He died in France, 1764, at the age of thirty-three, leaving his career recorded in an epitaph composed by himself:

Life to the last enjoy'd, here Churchill lies.

NOTES TO THE PROGRESS OF ERROR.

NOTE 1.- Page 23, line 7.

The poisonous, black, insinuating worm.

The expression, "worm," in this and other passages, which has incurred the disapprobation of some living critics, appears to have also been objected to by Cowper's friends, to whom the manuscript was submitted. He defended its application, and retained the word, on the authority of Milton, as in the passage,

The chains of darkness, and the undying worm.

He might have added Shakespeare :

-The mortal worm,

The worm of conscience, still begnaw thy soul !

And the stern sublimity of Scripture," where the worm dieth not."

NOTE 2. Page 25, line 25.

Unmiss'd but by his dogs, and by his groom.

Cowper, in several passages, displays not only a contempt, but a detestation of field sports. In his youth, however, he appears to have viewed such amusements with more leniency, though it is evident that his practice then, as a sportsman, could hardly be turned against his theory in after life as a poet. In some verses written in his twentysecond year, we find the following among other "Symptoms of Love," for such is the title of the piece.

Would my Delia know if I love, let her take

My last thought at night, and the first when I wake;
With my prayers and best wishes preferr'd for her sake:
Let her guess what I muse on, when, rambling alone,

I stride o'er the stubble each day with my gun,
Never ready to shoot till the covey is flown.

NOTE 3.- Page 26, line 15.

Occiduus is a pastor of renown.

"The character of Occiduus," observes Mr Campbell, in his Selections from the British Poets, "is almost the sole exception to the general freedom from personality, which honourably distinguishes Cowper's satire." The remark is just; but it is worth inquiring into the cause of this exception, were it only to shew that Cowper was not personal, except when he considered reprehension to be individually merited. Occiduus is a kind of Latin anagram upon the name Wesley, in whose house, and under whose sanction, and even direction, these Sunday evening musical parties were held. While the present poem was passing through the press, Cowper, in reference to this passage, writes thus to Newton : "I am sorry to find that the censure I have passed upon Occiduus is even better founded than I supposed.

Lady

Austen has been at his Sabbatical concerts, which, it seems, are composed of song tunes and psalm tunes indiscriminately; music without words, and, I suppose one may say, consequently without devotion. On a certain occasion, when her niece was sitting at her side, she asked his opinion concerning the lawfulness of such amusements as are to be found at Vauxhall or Ranelagh; meaning only to draw from him a sentence of disapprobation, that Miss Green (the daughter, by a first marriage, of Mrs Jones, Lady Austen's sister) might be the better reconciled to the restraint under which she was held, when she found it warranted by the judgment of so sound a divine. But she was disappointed; he accounted them innocent, and recommended them as useful. Curiosity,' he said, was natural to young persons; and it was wrong to deny them a gratification which they might be indulged in with the greatest safety; because the denial being unreasonable, the desire of it would still subsist. It was but a walk, and a walk was as harmless in one place as in another!'- with other arguments of a similar import, which might have proceeded with more grace, at least with less offence, from the lips of a sensual layman. He seems, together with others of our acquaintance, to have suffered considerably in his spiritual character by his attachment to music.”—September 8, 1781. From the remaining part of the letter, Cowper shews that he means attachment to music carried to an excess; and we do hope that, generally at least, it is thought that concerts on a Sunday evening are a most reprehensible

excess.

Wesley was born at Epworth in 1703, studied at Christ Church College, Oxford. While here a few of his fellow students of like serious habits joined with him in forming a society for religious conversation, to which the term Methodists was applied by their gayer companions. Hence the origin of the sect which now constitutes so important a division of the Christian church. Wesley died 1791, having, according to some computations, preached 40,000 sermons, and travelled a space equal to fifteen times the circumference of the globe!

[blocks in formation]

Petronius! all the Muses weep for thee.

Under this name, that of a Roman poet who prostituted an elegant fancy to the service of licentiousness, Cowper lanches a severe but just reproof against Lord Chesterfield. That noblemen had been dead about eight years at the time these lines were written; then his political reputation and literary fame ranked higher than they do now, consequently the contagion of his letters was the more dreaded by those who regarded with Christian solicitude their probable effect upon the future generations of British youth.

NOTE 5. Page 32, line 12.

And without discipline the favourite child,
Like a neglected forester, runs wild.

The editor must object to his author's doctrine here. It is not the child that requires the rod; if properly trained, he will neither stand in need, nor even understand the necessity of punishment: because the rod is used or threatened improperly to the child, it is that the boy

becomes unmanageable without it; but to begin education rightly, and from the beginning, appears unfortunately to be a task to the delicate observation and ceaseless duty of which few parents are inclined to submit.

NOTE 6.- Page 32, line 23.

With memorandum-book for every town,

And every post, and where the chaise broke down.

We are informed, in one of Cowper's private letters, of a rather curious emendation, which was requisite in this passage as originally written. "In the Progress of Error, a part of the young squire's apparatus, before he yet enters upon his travels, is said to be

Memorandum-book, to minute down

The several posts, and where the chaise broke down.

Here, the reviewers would say, is not only down,' but down, derry down,' into the bargain, the word being made to rhyme to itself. This never occurred to me till last night, just as I was stepping into bed. I should be glad, however, to alter it thus." Then follow the lines as now printed.Cowper to Newton, July 7, 1781.

NOTE 7.- Page 35, line 16.

Even Lewenhoeck himself would stand aghast.

A self-taught philosopher, born at Delft 1632, where he died after a life of ninety years, devoted chiefly to observations with the microscope; of which instrument he may almost be termed the inventor. His works are published in four quarto volumes, consisting of exceedingly curious experiments and descriptions of his discoveries.

NOTE 8.- Page 36, line 18.

Woo'd an unfeeling statue for his wife,
Nor rested till the gods had given it life.

Pygmalion, whose age forms an important era in the history of ancient art, though more lightly applied in the text. See Ovid for the fable, and Arnobius, lib. vi. for the history; but both have omitted the pleasing connection which by such traditions the Greeks endeavoured to establish between the origin of the arts and the human affections.

NOTE 9.- Page 36, line 27.

Such was Sir Isaac, and such Boyle and Locke.

Newton, the great master of experimental philosophy, was born in 1642, and died, aged eighty-five, in 1727, exactly a century after the decease of Bacon, its founder. Of the truth, however, of the poet's previous remark,

Our most important are our earliest years,

Newton furnishes a striking proof, since his three immortal discoveries Fluxions, the Theory of Light, and the System of Gravitation

were made before he was thirty.
was not completed till its author had reached his sixty-first year.

But again, Bacon's Novum Organon

For fame that's true, life is a light exchange.

Boyle was born 1626, three months after Lord Bacon's death, thus filling up, by a most useful and early devotion of his life to study, the gap between the latter and Newton. Locke, born 1632, and dying 1704, directed into another channel the stream of knowledge, doing for the world of mind what these illustrious contemporaries were effecting for that of matter. In remarking upon a poet whose every aim points to religion, it is delightful thus to contemplate, in the very instances which he brings from the history of human knowledge, the care of God, who no sooner called away one servant, than he seemed to place that torch of true wisdom which a dying hand had relinquished in a young and vigorous grasp created for its reception.

NOTES TO TRUTH.

NOTE 1.- Page 41, line 10.

He reads his sentence at the flames of hell.

"I am no friend," writes the author in his Private Correspondence, "to the use of words taken from what an uncle of mine called the Diabolical Dictionary, but it happens sometimes that a strong expression is almost necessary to do justice to the indignation excited by an abominable subject." Cowper could not but deem sin a subject of this nature, and he has marked his own detestation, and its dangers, by the most fearful line in the whole compass of English poetry.

NOTE 2.- Page 41, line 20.

Your wilful suicide on God's decree.

Milton's view of this doctrine is similar:

So without least impulse or shadow of fate,
Or ought by me immutably foreseen,
They trespass; authors to themselves in all,
Both what they judge and what they choose.

Paradise Lost, Book III.

The admirers of both poets will find it an occupation barren neither of Christian edification, nor literary improvement, to compare frequently the religious views of Milton and Cowper. It would, however, be unpardonable intrusion in these notes, to quote even a portion of the numerous passages in which the latter resembles the former so closely, as almost to approach imitation. Upon the same principle, all references to other poets are omitted. We are persuaded also, with Cowper himself, that the majority of instances which have been adduced, of intentional borrowing, are merely the effects of accidental coincidence. Besides, we have his solemn assurance, and the fact is a very singular one, that he had read the works of but one poet, for twenty years previously. "I reckon it" (says he in a letter dated November, 1781,)" among my principal

« PreviousContinue »