The author of "The Task" has lain in his grave in St. Edmund's Chapel in Dereham Church one hundred years this very month, yet how fresh, how human, is his memory. A hundred years may be but a bubble on the surface of the river of Time, but an insignificant moment in the history of the evolution of man and his destiny, yet it is usually amply sufficient to confer oblivion upon the individual mortal. Of the thousands of Englishmen who were buried on St. Mark's Day 1800 what memory survives? Their children have followed them into the silent halls of death; there are none left to tell what manner of men they were, whether merry or grave, wise or foolish. Nor will biographies, even in two octavo volumes, suffice to keep alive the memory of a man for one hundred years. Nothing can do this but the being actively concerned in and inextricably associated with events or discoveries of vast importance either world-wide or national, or the being endowed with that strange inexplicable something we call Genius, which enables a man of letters to give expression to himself in a language which long outlasts the lips that uttered it. This latter is the reason why it has come about that Cowper's name is as well known as Marlborough's, and why Charles Lamb is as unforgettable as Arthur Duke of Wellington.

The literary history of Cowper's reputation is a strange one. Cowper was not only a pious poet; he was a Christian poet, and a Christian poet whose Christianity was no fanciful concoction, no dreamy aspiration, no pathetic stretching forth of blind hands into the void, no vague though passionate desire for Immortality, but a plain-spoken Bible religion. He believed in the Word of God as made known to man in the canonical Scriptures. The melancholy fact that a

constitutional madness (which in its first beginnings had no sort of connection with religion whatsoever) prevented him, save at too rare intervals, from enjoying the peace of God, in no way impaired the vitality of his faith. Dr. Newman was not quite sure whether Dr. Arnold was a Christian, but both Newman and Arnold agreed that Cowper was one.

This patent fact from the first secured Cowper a vogue. There are and always have been no inconsiderable number of quiet, God-fearing folk in the land who, when they take up a book, as they occasionally do, are not prepared to lay down their religion, and who cannot bring themselves, even when they are reading Shakespeare, altogether to forget that Sir John Falstaff and Sir Toby Belch had, or by a necessary presumption of literature must be taken to have had, immortal souls, and the thought saddens them. I am not defending these people, only asserting their existence. Even Milton (about whose Christianity Mr. Gladstone had grave doubts) was not, like Cowper, sans peur et sans reproche. In pious Church of England circles Milton's Republicanism stood in his way, whilst it can hardly be denied that the suspicion of Arianism clings about his epic poetry, or that a flavor of Paganism is to be found adhering to his lyrical verses. Besides which, plain people like a more familiar strain than John Milton's.

For some generations Cowper was the favorite poet of Protestant piety, not that there was anything in his vein of Quietism to repel the pious Roman Catholic, had such a one by any chance turned over his pages. Entirely free as Cowper is from affectation and pomposity (which so sadly mar the verse of Akenside, also a prime favorite in his day), beautifully sincere and nobly pathetic as

almost every line reveals him, we need not wonder that he should have stirred the hearts and kindled the enthusiasm of many piously-nurtured minds brought up in homes where books were not too abundant. They were not much to be pitied, the young people who had Cowper for their favorite poet.

But it is, no doubt, a risky thing to be the pet poet of a class-risky, I mean, for the reputation. If a poet's work contains something that you greatly value for its own sake, quite apart from the Muse's sake, you are apt to extol the poetry, not so much for its merit as for its message, and though, from a poetical point of view, the part you like the best may be the weakest of all the poet's work, you do not care. You scribble "How true" in the margin, and learn the bit off by heart. We see this process very

plainly in patriotic poetry. If lines of precisely equal literary merit with "The Absent-minded Beggar" had been composed in exaltation of the forces raised by the Boers, they would have been denounced in a patriotic press as poor stuff, unworthy even of the bad cause they espoused. There is nothing blameworthy in this. It is inevitable. And so it chanced with Cowper's poetry: the least poetical portions were praised the most, and its real merits were obscured. Time, which seldom permits stupidity to be permanent, has set this to rights. Cowper lost his vogue. Sir Walter and the Romantic School went trooping by to the sound of the fife and drum, Byron forced his forbidden way into the most sheltered homes. Then Wordsworth slowly made himself felt; and was there not the rapture of Shelley, the magic of Keats? Who can wonder that for a while Cowper was voted slow? The Ouse ill bears comparison with the Rhine. The Recluse of Olney and

Weston was doomed to hibernate for a few decades.

He could afford to wait better than most poets, for he had another string to his bow. In 1803 the ineffable Hayley, who, like many another shockingly bad poet, was a good friend, published a "Life and Letters of Cowper" in four cumbrous volumes, to which he prefixed some superfluous remarks of his own on "Epistolary Writers." Eleven years later the private correspondence of the poet was published in two volumes, by his kinsman Mr. Johnson. From these not largely-circulated books the judicious worldling had no difficulty in perceiving that the Cowper he had too lightly dismissed as a preaching poet was a prince of prose.

No complete edition of Cowper's letters appeared until 1836, but from that time forward his fame as a letter-writer, second to no one anywhere or at any time, has been firmly established.

It was impossible for anyone with a tincture of taste and a heart of flesh to read Cowper's letters without turning to his poems, and when once this was done in a pure literary spirit, such as that, for example, which always animated the great French critic Sainte Beuve, Cowper's reputation as a genuine, truthful and interesting poet was re-established on an unassailable basis.

Cowper's natural equipment for a poetical career consisted of a delicate and playful humor, a taste exquisitely refined and at the same time strangely shrewd, and a scholarly gift of versification. He was a shy gentleman with a pretty wit and a quick eye for the humors of society. He came of a strong Whiggish stock, and understood the British Constitution a great deal better than Lord Salisbury seems to do. In the works of no other of our poets are to be

found manlier opinions, and in none a loftier patriotism, combined though it was in his case with a passionate desire to see justice done to all mankind.

In

Unhappily, he inherited the seeds of insanity, which in early manhood took the form of a suicidal mania. 1763, whilst living in chambers in the Temple, he made a desperate attempt upon his own life, and was removed to an asylum, where he remained a year. Ten years later he made another equally determined attempt to destroy himself. The last years of his life were spent under the shadow of an impenetrable gloom. Men who hate dogmatic religion have tried to make us believe that Cowper's misery was due to his religion, but, so far from that being the case, to any impartial person who reads Cowper's letters it is plain that, though the poet's insanity colored his religion, and created the delusion that he individually was condemned to live outside the promises of God, it was just because he believed so firmly in the love of God for the rest of the world that he was able to preserve so long and so marvellously the delightful natural affectionateness of his disposition. Cowper's religion, shrouded and distorted as his madness made it, was his best friend, for it kept his humanity alive

He bore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted.

The Leisure Hour.

To give extracts from Cowper would indeed be superfluous, but if any reader is disposed to think lightly of Cowper's poetry let him refresh his memory of it by reading from "Hope" the eighty lines beginning at

"Adieu," Vinosa cries, and yet he sips The purple bumper trembling at his lips.

This done, let him read the first six hundred lines (they are but short ones) of "Conversation;" then lines 144 to 209 of "The Sofa;" afterwards the glorious lines from the "TimePiece," beginning

England, with all thy faults I love thee still,

and ending

Oh, rise some other such, Or all that we have left is empty talk Of old achievements, and despair of

new.

The whole of the famous "Winter Morning Walk" can be read with positive delight and exhilaration, but if shorter poems need citation, "Boadicea," "Toll for the Brave," and the "Lines to Mary," are among the masterpieces of British verse. "The Poplar Field" is not perhaps so well kuown. I need say no more.

Augustine Birrell.