before "The Task" appeared; and had not the plaudits of the public roused the unhappy Poet, and charmed him too, with the voice of praise, to which none can be entirely deaf, in whom "the last infirmity of noble minds" is not extinct-it is difficult to suppose, that his faculties would have survived the shock of a bereavement, by which all that was most generous and tender in his nature, was wrought to the last agony of suffering, By the success of "The Task," and the excitement of the new world in which he began to live and breathe-though it was but the old world, in the concerns of which he now took an interest, unfelt before, since he resolutely left it,—Cowper was emboldened to undertake an incomparably greater achievementthe translation of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer into blank verse. This was completed, in its first form, in the course of six years, and published in two volumes, quarto; but to the end of his life, and even under the last long and impenetrable gloom that enwrapt his spirit, till it escaped into the brightness of the invisible world, his principal occupation was upon the works of the Grecian bard, which he revised, renewed, touched, and re-touched, in his endlessly elaborated version, even when he could attach himself to no other employment, and had lost the sense of every joy on earth, or hope in heaven. It has often been regretted, that, instead of this labour in vain, as it seems to many, he had not spent an equal portion of time and talent on original composition. The regret is at least as much bestowed in vain as was that labour; for there is no well-founded reason to suppose, from the momentary jeopardy in which he lived, of being plunged into sudden, irretrievable despondence, that, if he had been otherwise occupied, he could have maintained a comparable measure of health and cheerfulness; or that he would have produced any work of equally captivating character with that which had been wrought out of his heart and fancy, in the golden days of Lady Austen's influence. A second Task, under whatever title, like all second parts, would have been deemed a falling off from the first; and it is surely better to feel that this consummate piece is too short, than even that it is long enough. Yet, long enough it is, from the very cause why any work of real genius must be so, which fills, engages, and transports the readers to the end, leaving behind no sense of defect in itself, but only an eager desire for more of the same kind-a desire which, if met, instead of being satisfied, would be satiated. To Cowper's translation of Homer, we are beholden not only for the pleasure which a perusal will afford to reasonable and patient readers,—such, indeed, it will abundantly gratify,-but we may attribute to its happy possession of his mind, all the beautiful and inimitable letters which appear in his correspondence, during the progress of that work. The toil of daily turning over the thoughts of the greatest of poets, in every form of English that his ingenuity could devise, occupied, for many years, that very portion of his time which, with a person of no profession, and having no stated duties to perform, lies heaviest upon the spirit. The salutary exercise of his morning studies, made him relish with keener zest the relaxation of his social hours, or those welcome opportunities of epistolary converse with the absent, in which it is evident that much of the little happiness allowed to him lay: he is never more at home, consequently never more amiable, sprightly, entertaining, and even poetical, than in his correspondence, when he pours out all the treasures of his mind, and the affections of his heart, upon the paper which is to be the speaking representative of himself, to those whom he loves. It is no part of this essay to criticise Cowper's Homer, or to bring it into competition either with the original, or the antecedent versions of Chapman, Ogilvie, Hobbes, or Pope. Whatever may be the comparative defects of Cowper's translation, the work itself is one which no ordinary poetical power could have accomplished. There are many passages in it, which leave Pope's brilliant paraphrases of the corresponding lines as far behind them, as our Author's may be deemed below the original. But the general comparison between the two English Homers of the last century, is always made exceedingly to the disadvantage of the latter; not altogether, nor even in any considerable degree, from its positive inferiority, but from early prepossession in favour of the former. The fact is, that translations of classic authors, except on their first appearance, are very little read, except by youth, and by these, often before they are sufficiently familiar with the originals to enjoy their surpassing excellence. With such readers, the first version of a favourite poet, if it have high merit, so fills the imagination, unoccupied before, with the story, characters, and embellishments, all identified with its peculiar phraseology, that even a superior work afterwards, embracing the same subjects, cannot rival it. If, in two of our great seminaries, Cowper's Homer were the reading book of the scholars at the one, and Pope's of those at the other, it is most probable that the cleverest lads,-those who really enjoyed the poetry of the translation, would, to their lives' end, prefer that which had made the first indelible impression upon their minds; and, in such a case, it would be as difficult to supersede Cowper by Pope, as it is generally to supersede Pope by Cowper. Celebrated as Pope's translation is, it may be questioned whether there are a thousand persons living, who have read it through since they were thirty years of age. As for Cowper's, it is scarcely known now, except as an unsaleable book in the trade-catalogues. Between the school of Dryden and Pope, with their few remembered successors, not one of whom ranks now above a fourth-rate poet,-for Young, Thomson, Goldsmith, Gray, and Collins, though flourishing in the interval, were not of their school, but all, in their respective ways, originals;-between the school of Dryden and Pope, and our undisciplined, independent contemporaries, Cowper stands, as having closed the age of the former illustrious masters, and commenced that of the eccentric leaders of the modern fashions in song. We cannot stop to trace the affinity which he bears to either of these generations, so dissimilar from each other; but it would be easy to show how little he owed to his immediate forerunners, and how much his immediate followers have been indebted to him. All the cant phrases, all the technicalities of the former school, he utterly threw away; and, by his rejection of them, they became obsolete. He boldly adopted cadences of verse unattempted before, which, though frequently uncouth, and sometimes scarcely reducible to rhythm, were not seldom ingeniously significant, and signally energetic. He feared not to employ colloquial, philosophical, judicial idioms, and forms of argument, and illustrations, which enlarged the vocabulary of poetical terms, less by recurring to obsolete ones, (which has been too prodigally done since,) but by hazardous, and generally happy innovations of more recent origin, which have become graceful and dignified by usage, though Pope and his imitators durst not have touched them. The eminent adventurous revivers of English poetry about thirty years ago, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, in their blank verse, trode directly in the steps of Cowper, and, in their early productions at least, were each, in a measure, what he had made them. Our Author may be legitimately styled the father of this triumvirate, who are, in truth, the living fathers of the innumerable race of moderns, whom no human ingenuity could well classify into their respective schools. The death of Cowper occurred in the year 1800, but nothing of a character to influence public taste had proceeded from his pen since 1785, his Homer having been too little noticed to add either to his fame or his authority as a poet. A few brief strictures on his principal works, will best illustrate his peculiar claims to rank among the greatest benefac tors of his country, in the peaceful walks of elegant literature. The larger portion of his first volume* consists of rhyming pieces in ten-syllable measure. The first of these, entitled TABLE TALK, is a dialogue in verse, of which the subjects are chiefly the commonplace politics of the day; and the Author, 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, suthcient 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. "They trust to navies, and their navies fail,- Tyranny sends the chains that must abridge Slips the slave's collar on, and snaps the lock." Cowper's versification in these ten-syllable rhymes is very irregular, frequently harsh, sometimes heavy, and only occasionally harmonious or fluent. The whole strain of his argumentation is rather rhetorical than poetic; the illustrations, however, are often exceedingly ingenious and sparkling: sentiments with the force of proverbs; couplets with the point of epigrams; similes, which are sometimes allegories, some The words first and second volume, in the following pages, refer to the original edition, thus divided, but here collected into one. |