Page:The poetical works of William Cowper (IA poeticalworksof00cowp).pdf/52

xliv (pp. 17, 18), there can be no question that a system which could have produced such a book must long have raised an antagonism in his mind.

Cowper and Newton would of course have no such thought as this. Instead of generalizing upon it, they came to the conclusion- that it was simply the work of a vicious and immorally-minded man. To one who knows so little of Madan as I have been able to discover, it is impossible to give any judgment on this point. But internal evidence does not support such a view. If Madan ever looked sorrowfully upon his charge at the Lock, and thought how each fallen woman had been once an innocent child, and might have been a happy wife with children round her knees, is it to be wondered at that he pondered on the question "On what theory might these have been wives?" Dwelling upon this,—being (let it be remembered) a Puritan in theology, and Judaizing in his view of the Scriptures,—one is not surprised that he rushed into the notion that the polygamy of the Mosaic days is not contrary to the will of God, and that by the restoration of it harlotry might be put an end to. If we start with the assumption that the law of the Pentateuch is the basis and limit of all moral legislation whatsoever,—and such an assumption should scarcely appear startling to many Protestants,:—then the whole of Madan's doctrine follows as a matter of course, for no one disputes the minor premiss, that Polygamy was allowed and practised. But those who hold that the world has been under a Divine Education, that the Christian Church has mounted on the stepping-stones of Judaism to higher things, will hold the theory to be an outrage on religion,—on the whole Bible. The consensus of Christian nations, of all nations indeed which have emerged out of barbarism, has a far higher authority in this matter than texts out of Leviticus. It is not wonderful that the righteous instincts of Cowper revolted at the theory. But considering his kinship with Madan, and their former intercourse, his course is certainly much to be regretted. His epigrams upon the book, poor enough, were only written for Newton's eye; but he wrote, and printed anonymously (1781), a long Poem entitled "Antithelyphthora," and a wretched production it is. It seems almost incredible that such a foolish straining after the comic, such a coarse and vulgar effusion, could have proceeded from so delightful a humorist and such a thorough gentleman. It may be said in excuse that he was now only a novice in the art of Poetry, and that as most of the poets that he had read were coarse, he may have thought it a necessity to be the same, just as Waller could not get on without an imaginary Saccharissa.

Cowper appears to have been somewhat ashamed of the production himself, for neither he nor his executors ever included it in his works. It was only by a curious accident that its authorship was discovered. Southey found, in a book which he had borrowed, a note from Samuel Rose—a friend of Cowper's of whom mention