Читать книгу The Collected Works - William Cowper - Страница 5

Doom'd, as I am, in solitude to waste

The present moments, and regret the past;

Depriv'd of every joy I valued most,

My friend torn from me, and my mistress lost;

Call not this gloom I wear, this anxious mien,

The dull effect of humour or of spleen!

Still, still, I mourn, with each returning day,

Him[4] snatch'd by fate in early youth away; And her[5]—thro' tedious years of doubt and pain, Fix'd in her choice, and faithful—but in vain! O prone to pity, generous, and sincere, Whose eye ne'er yet refus'd the wretch a tear; Whose heart the real claim of friendship knows, Nor thinks a lover's are but fancied woes; See me—ere yet my destin'd course half done, Cast forth a wand'rer on a world unknown! See me neglected on the world's rude coast, Each dear companion of my voyage lost! Nor ask why clouds of sorrow shade my brow, And ready tears wait only leave to flow! Why all that soothes a heart from anguish free, All that delights the happy—palls with me!

Having concluded the term of his engagement with the solicitor, he settled himself in chambers in the Inner Temple, as a regular student of law; but, although he resided there till the age of thirty-three, he rambled (according to his own colloquial account of his early years) from the thorny road of his austere patroness, Jurisprudence, into the primrose paths of literature and poetry. During this period, he contributed two of the Satires in Duncombe's Horace, which are worthy of his pen, and indications of his rising genius. He also cultivated the friendship of some literary characters, who had been his schoolfellows at Westminster, particularly Colman, Bonnell Thornton, and Lloyd. Of these early associates of Cowper, it may be interesting to learn a brief history. Few men could have entered upon life with brighter prospects than Colman. His father was Envoy at the Court of Florence, and his mother was sister to the Countess of Bath. Possessed of talents that qualified him for exertion, with a classical taste perceptible in his translation of Horace's Art of Poetry, and of the works of Terence, he relinquished the bar, to which he had been called, and became principally known for his devotedness to theatrical pursuits. His private life was not consistent with the rules of morality; and he closed his days, after a protracted malady, by dying in a Lunatic Asylum in Paddington, in the year 1794.

To Bonnell Thornton, jointly with Colman, we owe the Connoisseur, to which Cowper contributed a few numbers. Thornton also united with Colman and Warner in a translation of Plautus. But his talents, instead of being profitably employed, were chiefly marked by a predilection for humour, in the exercise of which he was not very discreet; for the venerated muse of Gray did not escape his ridicule, and the celebrated Ode to St. Cecilia was made the occasion of a public burlesque performance, the relation of which would not accord with the design of this undertaking. He who aims at nothing better than to amuse and divert, and to excite a laugh at the expense of both taste and judgment, proposes to himself no very exalted object. Thornton died in the year 1770, aged forty-seven.

Lloyd was formerly usher at Westminster School, but feeling the irksomeness of the situation, resigned it, and commenced author. His Poems have been repeatedly re-published. His life presented a scene of thoughtless extravagance and dissipation. Overwhelmed with debt, and pursued by his creditors, he was at length confined in the Fleet Prison, where he expired, the victim of his excesses, at the early age of thirty-one years.

We record these facts—1st. That we may adore that mercy which, by a timely interposition, rescued the future author of the Task from such impending ruin:—2ndly, To show that scenes of gaiety and dissipation, however enlivened by flashes of wit, and distinguished by literary superiority, are perilous to character, health, and fortune; and that the talents, which, if beneficially employed, might have led to happiness and honour, when perverted to unworthy ends, often lead prematurely to the grave, or render the past painful in the retrospect, and the future the subject of fearful anticipation and alarm.

Happily, Cowper escaped from this vortex of misery and ruin. His juvenile poems discover a contemplative spirit, and a mind early impressed with sentiments of piety. In proof of this assertion, we select a few stanzas from an ode written, when he was very young, on reading Sir Charles Grandison.

To rescue from the tyrant's sword

The oppress'd;—unseen, and unimplor'd,

To cheer the face of woe;

From lawless insult to defend

An orphan's right—a fallen friend,

And a forgiven foe:

These, these, distinguish from the crowd,

And these alone, the great and good,

The guardians of mankind.

Whose bosoms with these virtues heave,

Oh! with what matchless speed, they leave

The multitude behind!

Then ask ye from what cause on earth

Virtues like these derive their birth?

Derived from Heaven alone,

Full on that favour'd breast they shine,

Where faith and resignation join

To call the blessing down.

Such is that heart:—but while the Muse

Thy theme, O Richardson, pursues,

Her feebler spirits faint:

She cannot reach, and would not wrong,

That subject for an angel's song,

The hero, and the saint.

His early turn to moralize on the slightest occasion will appear from the following verses, which he wrote at the age of eighteen; and in which those who love to trace the rise and progress of genius will, I think, be pleased to remark the very promising seeds of those peculiar powers, which unfolded themselves in the richest maturity at a remoter period, and rendered that beautiful and sublime poem, The Task, the most instructive and interesting of modern compositions. Young as the poet was when he produced the following lines, we may observe that he had probably been four years in the habit of writing English verse, as he has said in one of his letters, that he began his poetical career at the age of fourteen, by translating an elegy of Tibullus. I have reason to believe that he wrote many poems in his early life; and the singular merit of this juvenile composition is sufficient to make the friends of genius regret that an excess of diffidence prevented him from preserving the poetry of his youth.