EXTRACTS. LIGHT THE SHADOW OF GOD. LIGHT that makes things seen makes some things invisible. Were it not for darkness and the shadow of the earth, the noblest part of creation had remained unseen, and the stars in heaven [had been] as invisible as on the fourth day, when they were created above the horizon with the sun, and there was not an eye to behold them. The greatest mystery of religion is expressed by adumbration, and in the noblest part of Jewish types we find the cherubim shadowing the mercy-seat. Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed are but the shadows of the living. All things fall under this name. The sun itself is but the dark Simulacrum, and light but the shadow of God.-Sir Thomas Browne. THE MORAL SUBLIME. Look, then, abroad through nature, to the range When guilt brings down the thunder, called aloud સ CHAPTER XIII. COWPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. DURING the last fifteen years of the eighteenth century, there was no English writer equal in originality and power to the poet Cowper. He is taken, therefore, as the representative man of the period. The great political event of the time was the outbreak of the French Revolution. The writers of this period are divided into four sections: 1. The Poets, beginning with Cowper; 2. The Dramatists, beginning with Sheridan; 3. Miscellaneous Prose Writers, beginning with Hannah More; 4. Theological Writers, beginning with the Wesleys. NOTE.- At no point in the history of English literature is it so difficult to mark a well-defined period as here. Many writers, whom it is necessary to include in the present chapter, had intimate relations with the writers and the events of the previous period. Many of the writers, on the other hand, survived far into the present century, and had relations with Scott, Byron, Coleridge, and their associates. Yet a careful consideration of their several cases will, it is believed, show that the main connection of these writers, after all, was with the writers and events of the last fifteen years of the eighteenth century. It is still more evident that the popular literature of the period, particularly in its poetical and theological aspects, assumed new and marked features, after Cowper and the Wesleys and the religious movement which they represented had received full and distinct recognition. I. THE POETS. Cowper. William Cowper, 1731-1800, created a new era in English poetry-springing at a bound into a place in the popular heart far more firmly established, far more deeply set, than Pope had ever attained. Pope had been the poet of the wits; Cowper became the poet of the race. The poems of his which first touched the popular heart were The Task, and the ballad of John Gilpin. The impression thus produced was deepened by his Hymns, contributed to the Olney collection, and by his extended work, the Translation of Homer. Early Life. Cowper, though in moderate circumstances at the time of his birth, was connected, both on his father's and his mother's side, with some of the noblest families in England. He was of a gentle, sensitive nature, and through life he instinctively shrank from whatever required any sort of rude encounter with his fellows. At the age of six, his mother being dead, he was sent for two years to a boarding-school, where he suffered intolerable hardships from the tyranny of one of the older boys. He then went to Westminster School, where he served an apprenticeship of seven years to the classics. A Law Student. At the age of eighteen, he was articled as a clerk in a law office, his fellow-student being Thurlow, who afterwards became Lord Chancellor. It is easy to imagine what sort of a figure such a character as Cowper would make in a law office. "There was I and the future Lord Chancellor constantly employed from morning till night in giggling and making giggle." In due time, however, he was called to the bar, and he took chambers, but he gained no clients. Failure of his Plans. His father was now dead, he was in his thirty-second year, and his patrimony was nearly gone. At this crisis, one of his powerful kinsmen procured for him the lucrative appointment of Clerk of the Journals to the House of Lords. The dread of qualifying himself by going through the necessary formalities in presence of the Lords, plunged him into the deepest distress. The seeds of insanity were already in his frame, and after brooding a while over his condition, he became entirely insane, and attempted suicide. In the course of two years, under treatment at a private asylum, the clond passed away, and he retired to a small country town where his brother resided. Newton and the Unwins.- While living with his brother he formed an intimacy with the clergyman of the place, Rev. Mr. Unwin, and finally became an inmate of the family. After the death of Mr. Unwin, his widow, Mary Unwin, continued to watch over Cowper with a friendship that never faltered. The family removed, however, to Olney, the residence of the Rev. Mr. Newton; and from that time John Newton and Mary Unwin are the main figures in the canvas which contains the pictures of Cowper's life. Here he contributed some Hymns to the volume which Mr. Newton was preparing. His morbid melancholy again returned, and he became once more entirely insane. On recovering from this second attack, Cowper amused himself with gardening, drawing, rearing hares, and writing poetry. A volume of his poems was published in 1782, but it attracted little attention and had small sales. It brought him pleasant words, however, from his friends and competent critics, and he began to resume his wonted cheerfulness. Lady Austen — At this time, Lady Austen, a widow, became one of the frequent guests of the household, and it was at her suggestion that Cowper wrote the inimitable poem of John Gilpin, she having given him the outline of the story. The effect of this poem was electrical, not only upon the public, but upon the author. At Lady Austen's suggestion Cowper next tried his hand at blank verse, the result being The Task, the subject as before being assigned by this most wise and judicious adviser. The Task was immediately and universally popular. It opened an altogether new field in English letters. In another poem, Tirocinium, he gave utterance to his opinion of the scandalous practices in the public schools of England. This was followed by no less an undertaking than a new Translation of Homer, which he completed in 1791, after seven years of continued labor. The Closing Scene. After this a deepening gloom began to settle on his mind, with occasional bright intervals. His life-long friend, Mary Unwin, died in 1796. "The unhappy poet would not believe that she was actually dead; he went to see the body, and on witnessing the unaltered placidity of death, flung himself to the other side of the room with a passionate expression of feeling, and from that time he never mentioned her name, or spoke of her again." Cowper lingered on for three years or more, when death came at last to his release. "So sad and strange a destiny has never before or since been that of a man of genius. With wit and humor at will, he was nearly all his life plunged in the darkest melancholy. Innocent, pious, and confiding, he lived in perpetual dread of everlasting punishment: he could only see between him and heaven a high wall, which he despaired of ever being able to scale; yet his intellectual vigor was not subdued by affliction. What he wrote for amusement or relief, in the midst of 'supreme distress,' surpasses the elaborate efforts of others made under the most favorable circumstances; and in the very winter of his days, his fancy was as fresh and blooming as in the spring and morning of existence. That he was constitutionally prone to melancholy and insanity, seems undoubted; but as surely the predisposing causes were aggravated by his strict and secluded mle of life.”— Chambers. Newton. REV. JOHN NEWTON, 1725-1807, is indissolubly associated with the history and the writings of Cowper. Newton was a native of London. He went to sea at the age of eleven; was engaged for some years in the slave-trade, experienced a religious conversion of an extraordinary character, and became afterwards a very zealous preacher. He was for seventeen years curate of the church at Olney, and he is chiefly known by his connection with that church. The Olney Hymns, selected and partly composed by Newton and Cowper, are well known, and form a marked feature in the history of English hymnody. Newton's writings are of the extreme evangelical type, and are noted for the rich vein of experimental religion that runs through them. They have been printed in 6 vols., 8vo. The following are some of them: Cardiphonia; Letters to a Wife; Omicron Letters; Sermons, etc. Newton exercised a powerful influence on the mind of Cowper, who was for many years one of his parishioners. ERASMUS DARWIN, 1731-1802, attracted considerable attention both as a poet and a naturalist. Darwin was a physician by profession, and was educated at Cambridge. He wrote in a pleasing style, and the novelty and daring of some of his speculations caused his works to be a good deal read. The errors in his theories, however, were exposed by Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, and other metaphysicians, and his writings gradually subsided into comparative oblivion. Works: The Botanic Garden, a Poem, in two parts, Economy of Vegetation, and the Loves of Plants; The Temple of Nature, a Poem, with Philosophical Notes; Zoonomia, or The Laws of Organic Life; Phytologia, or The Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening, etc. Beattie. JAMES BEATTIE, D. C. L., 1735–1803, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic in Marischal College, Aberdeen, was a friend and contemporary of Johnson, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Garrick, and others of that class. He is well known as a poet and as a writer on moral and metaphysical subjects. Beattie's most popular work is The Minstrel, a poem in the Spenserian stanza. Of his prose works, the chief are: Essay on Truth, intended as a reply to Hume; Evidences of the Christian Religion; Elements of Moral Science. The Essay on Truth met with great and immediate favor. It brought him the offer of the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, which, however, he declined. It gained him also the acquaintance and intimacy of the most distinguished writers of the day, and a substantial token of royal favor in the shape of a pension of £200 per annum. Dr. Beattie gives the following account of his interview with King George III. and the Queen: "They both complimented me in the highest terms on my Essay, which they said was a book they always kept by them; and the King said he had one copy of it at Kew, and another in town, and he immediately went and took it down from the shelf. I never stole a book but once,' said his Majesty, and that was yours. I stole it from the Queen, to give it to Lord Hertford to read.' He had heard that the sale of Hume's Essays had failed since my book was published; and I told him what Mr. Strahan had told me in regard to that matter." Johnson was a great admirer of Beattie. Bishop Warburton pronounced him "superior to the whole crew of Scotch metaphysicians." Cowper praises him in unmeasured terms. The present current of opinion in regard to his merits is at a much lower |