Читать книгу The Collected Works - William Cowper - Страница 43

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Olney, July 31, 1769.

Dear Joe—Sir Thomas crosses the Alps, and Sir Cowper, for that is his title at Olney, prefers his home to any other spot of earth in the world. Horace, observing this difference of temper in different persons, cried out a good many years ago, in the true spirit of poetry, "How much one man differs from another!" This does not seem a very sublime exclamation in English, but I remember we were taught to admire it in the original.

My dear friend, I am obliged to you for your invitation: but, being long accustomed to retirement, which I was always fond of, I am now more than ever unwilling to revisit those noisy and crowded scenes, which I never loved, and which I now abhor. I remember you with all the friendship I ever professed, which is as much as ever I entertained for any man. But the strange and uncommon incidents of my life have given an entire new turn to my whole character and conduct, and rendered me incapable of receiving pleasure from the same employments and amusements of which I could readily partake in former days.

I love you and yours, I thank you for your continued remembrance of me, and shall not cease to be their and your

Affectionate friend and servant,

W. C.

Cowper's present retirement was distinguished by many private acts of beneficence, and his exemplary virtue was such that the opulent sometimes delighted to make him their almoner. In his sequestered life at Olney, he ministered abundantly to the wants of the poor, from a fund with which he was supplied by that model of extensive and unostentatious philanthropy, the late John Thornton, Esq., whose name he has immortalized in his Poem on Charity, still honouring his memory by an additional tribute to his virtues in the following descriptive eulogy, written immediately on his decease, in the year 1790.

Poets attempt the noblest task they can,

Praising the Author of all good in man;

And next commemorating worthies lost,

The dead, in whom that good abounded most.

Thee therefore of commercial fame, but more

Fam'd for thy probity, from shore to shore—

Thee, Thornton, worthy in some page to shine

As honest, and more eloquent than mine,

I mourn; or, since thrice happy thou must be,

The world, no longer thy abode, not thee;

Thee to deplore were grief misspent indeed;

It were to weep that goodness has its meed,

That there is bliss prepared in yonder sky,

And glory, for the virtuous when they die.

What pleasure can the miser's fondled hoard

Or spendthrift's prodigal excess afford,

Sweet as the privilege of healing woe

Suffer'd by virtue combating below!

That privilege was thine; Heaven gave thee means

To illumine with delight the saddest scenes,

Till thy appearance chased the gloom, forlorn

As midnight, and despairing of a morn.

Thou hadst an industry in doing good,

Restless as his who toils and sweats for food.

Av'rice in thee was the desire of wealth

By rust unperishable, or by stealth.

And, if the genuine worth of gold depend

On application to its noblest end,

Thine had a value in the scales of heaven,

Surpassing all that mine or mint have given:

And though God made thee of a nature prone

To distribution, boundless, of thy own;

And still, by motives of religious force,

Impell'd thee more to that heroic course;

Yet was thy liberality discreet,

Nice in its choice, and of a temp'rate heat;

And, though in act unwearied, secret still,

As, in some solitude, the summer rill

Refreshes, where it winds, the faded green,

And cheers the drooping flowers, unheard, unseen.

Such was thy charity; no sudden start,

After long sleep of passion in the heart,

But stedfast principle, and in its kind

Of close alliance with th' eternal mind;

Traced easily to its true source above,

To Him, whose works bespeak his nature, love.

Thy bounties all were Christian, and I make

This record of thee for the Gospel's sake;

That the incredulous themselves may see

Its use and power exemplified in thee.

This simple and sublime eulogy was a just tribute of respect to the memory of this distinguished philanthropist; and, among the happiest actions of this truly liberal man, we may reckon his furnishing to a character so reserved and so retired as Cowper the means of enjoying the gratification of active and costly beneficence; a gratification in which the sequestered poet had delighted to indulge, before his acquaintance with Mr. Newton afforded him an opportunity of being concerned in distributing the private, yet extensive, bounty of an opulent and exemplary merchant.

Cowper, before he quitted St. Alban's, assumed the charge of a necessitous child, to extricate him from the perils of being educated by very profligate parents; he sent him to a school at Huntingdon, transferred him, on his removal, to Olney, and finally settled him as an apprentice at Oundle, in Northamptonshire.

The warm, benevolent, and cheerful piety of Mr. Newton, induced his friend Cowper to participate so abundantly in his parochial plans and engagements, that the poet's time and thoughts were more and more engrossed by devotional objects. He became a valuable auxiliary to a faithful parish priest, superintended the religious exercises of the poor, and engaged in an important undertaking, to which we shall shortly have occasion to advert.

But in the midst of these pious duties he forgot not his distant friends, and particularly his amiable relation and correspondent, of the Park-house, near Hertford. The following letter to that lady has no date, but it was probably written soon after his establishment at Olney. The remarkable memento in the postscript was undoubtedly introduced to counteract an idle rumour, arising from the circumstance of his having settled himself under the roof of a female friend, whose age and whose virtues he considered to be sufficient securities to ensure her reputation as well as his own.