The Collected Works. William Cowper
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than me; not that I am insensible of the value of a good name, either as a man or an author. Without an ambition to attain it, it is absolutely unattainable under either of those descriptions. But my life having been in many respects a series of mortifications and disappointments, I am become less apprehensive and impressible, perhaps, in some points, than I should otherwise have been; and, though I should be exquisitely sorry to disgrace my friends, could endure my own share of the affliction with a reasonable measure of tranquillity.
These seasonable showers have poured floods upon all the neighbouring parishes, but have passed us by. My garden languishes, and, what is worse, the fields too languish, and the upland-grass is burnt. These discriminations are not fortuitous. But if they are providential, what do they import? I can only answer, as a friend of mine once answered a mathematical question in the schools—"Prorsus nescio." Perhaps it is that men who will not believe what they cannot understand may learn the folly of their conduct, while their very senses are made to witness against them; and themselves, in the course of Providence, become the subjects of a thousand dispensations they cannot explain. But the end is never answered. The lesson is inculcated indeed frequently enough, but nobody learns it. Well. Instruction, vouchsafed in vain, is (I suppose) a debt to be accounted for hereafter. You must understand this to be a soliloquy. I wrote my thoughts without recollecting that I was writing a letter, and to you.
W. C.
TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.
Olney, June 24, 1781.
My dear Friend—The letter you withheld so long, lest it should give me pain, gave me pleasure. Horace says, the poets are a waspish race; and, from my own experience of the temper of two or three with whom I was formerly connected, I can readily subscribe to the character he gives them. But, for my own part, I have never yet felt that excessive irritability, which some writers discover, when a friend, in the words of Pope,
"Just hints a fault, or hesitates dislike."
Least of all would I give way to such an unseasonable ebullition, merely because a civil question is proposed to me, with such gentleness, and by a man whose concern for my credit and character I verily believe to be sincere. I reply therefore, not peevishly, but with a sense of the kindness of your intentions, that I hope you may make yourself very easy on a subject, that I can perceive has occasioned you some solicitude. When I wrote the poem called "Truth," it was indispensably necessary that I should set forth that doctrine which I know to be true, and that I should pass what I understood to be a just censure upon opinions and persuasions that differ from or stand in direct opposition to it; because, though some errors may be innocent, and even religious errors are not always pernicious, yet, in a case where the faith and hope of a Christian are concerned, they must necessarily be destructive; and because, neglecting this, I should have betrayed my subject; either suppressing what in my judgment is of the last importance, or giving countenance by a timid silence to the very evils it was my design to combat. That you may understand me better, I will subjoin—that I wrote that poem on purpose to inculcate the eleemosynary character of the Gospel, as a dispensation of mercy in the most absolute sense of the word, to the exclusion of all claims of merit on the part of the receiver; consequently to set the brand of invalidity upon the plea of works, and to discover, upon scriptural ground, the absurdity of that notion, which includes a solecism in the very terms of it, that man by repentance and good works may deserve the mercy of his Maker: I call it a solecism, because mercy deserved ceases to be mercy, and must take the name of justice. This is the opinion which I said in my last the world would not acquiesce in, but except this I do not recollect that I have introduced a syllable into any of my pieces that they can possibly object to; and even this I have endeavoured to deliver from doctrinal dryness, by as many pretty things in the way of trinket and plaything as I could muster upon the subject. So that, if I have rubbed their gums, I have taken care to do it with a coral, and even that coral embellished by the ribbon to which it is tied, and recommended by the tinkling of all the bells I could contrive to annex to it.
You need not trouble yourself to call on Johnson; being perfectly acquainted with the progress of the business, I am able to satisfy your curiosity myself—the post before the last, I returned to him the second sheet of "Table Talk," which he had sent me for correction, and which stands foremost in the volume. The delay has enabled me to add a piece of considerable length, which, but for the delay, would not have made its appearance upon this occasion: it answers to the name of Hope.
I remember a line in the Odyssey, which, literally translated, imports that there is nothing in the world more impudent than the belly. But, had Homer met with an instance of modesty like yours, he would either have suppressed that observation, or at least have qualified it with an exception. I hope that, for the future, Mrs. Unwin will never suffer you to go to London without putting some victuals in your pocket; for what a strange article would it make in a newspaper, that a tall, well-dressed gentleman, by his appearance a clergyman, and with a purse of gold in his pocket, was found starved to death in the street. How would it puzzle conjecture to account for such a phenomenon! some would suppose that you had been kidnapped, like Betty Canning, of hungry memory; others would say the gentleman was a Methodist, and had practised a rigorous self-denial, which had unhappily proved too hard for his constitution; but I will venture to say that nobody would divine the real cause, or suspect for a moment that your modesty had occasioned the tragedy in question. By the way, is it not possible that the spareness and slenderness of your person may be owing to the same cause? for surely it is reasonable to suspect that the bashfulness which could prevail against you on so trying an occasion may be equally prevalent on others. I remember having been told by Colman, that, when he once dined with Garrick, he repeatedly pressed him to eat more of a certain dish that he was known to be particularly fond of; Colman as often refused, and at last declared he could not. "But could not you," says Garrick, "if you was in a dark closet by yourself?" The same question might perhaps be put to you, with as much or more propriety, and therefore I recommend it to you, either to furnish yourself with a little more assurance or always to eat in the dark.
We sympathize with Mrs. Unwin, and, if it will be any comfort to her to know it, can assure her, that a lady in our neighbourhood is always, on such occasions, the most miserable of all things, and yet escapes with great facility through all the dangers of her state.
Yours, ut semper, W. C.
Among the occurrences that deserve to be recorded in the life of Cowper, the commencement of his acquaintance with Lady Austen, from its connexion with his literary history, is entitled to distinct notice. This lady possessed a highly cultivated mind, and the power, in no ordinary degree, to engage and interest the attention. This acquaintance soon ripened into friendship, and it is to her that we are primarily indebted for the poem of "The Task," for the ballad of "John Gilpin," and for the translation of Homer. The occasion of this acquaintance was as follows.
A lady, whose name was Jones, was one of the few neighbours admitted in the residence of the retired poet. She was the wife of a clergyman, who resided at the village of Clifton, within a mile of Olney. Her sister, the widow of Sir Robert Austen, Baronet, came to pass some time with her in the summer of 1781; and, as the two ladies entered a shop in Olney, opposite to the house of Mrs. Unwin, Cowper observed them from his window. Although naturally shy, and now rendered more so by his very long illness, he was so struck with the appearance of the stranger, that, on hearing she was sister to Mrs. Jones, he requested Mrs. Unwin to invite them to tea. So strong was his reluctance to admit the company of strangers, that, after he had occasioned this invitation, he was for a long time unwilling to join the little party; but, having forced himself at last to engage in conversation with Lady Austen, he was so delighted with her colloquial talents, that he attended the ladies on their return to Clifton; and from that time continued to cultivate the regard of his new acquaintance with such assiduous attention, that she soon received from him the familiar and endearing title of Sister Ann.
The great and happy influence which an incident that seems at first sight so trivial produced on the imagination of Cowper, will best appear from the following epistle, which, soon after Lady