Page:The poetical works of William Cowper (IA poeticalworksof00cowp).pdf/54

xlvi out the sun, and carpeting the floor. Here now most of his time was spent, with, myrtles in the window, and birds and rustling foliage making melody all around, and the letter describing it is perhaps the most beautiful of all his beautiful letters. This summerhouse is now classic ground, and the care of each successive owner has preserved it to this day in its original state.

Cowper says, in one of his letters written at this period, that he has only read one English poet for the last twenty years ; a statement sufficient to justify me in. not comparing him with other writers of the time. He had nothing to do with them. He may have read Percy's Reliques (published the same year that he removed to Huntingdon), but it is not very likely. The author whose style he imitated most was Churchill. But his position was a new one in literature. His foremost idea when he began "The Progress of Error" was to be, not merely a Poet, but a teacher, — a Vates. The title which Hayley gives him, "The Bard of Christianity," expresses what he sought after for himself. "Table Talk" was not the first written of the long poems, but he placed it first, as explaining his aims. As its name implies, it is a somewhat desultory production. A. and B. begin to converse about true and false Glory, then pass on to the duties, difficulties, and shortcomings of kings. A. hints that B. might turn his verse to useful account by propounding therein some plan for paying the national debt, but is told that even the engineering skill of Brindley could not turn Helicon to such a purpose. "Let us, at all events," says A. "have something practical. Why does a Briton love liberty?" This leads to a discussion of the English character, and of the use and abuse of liberty. B. takes a gloomy view of the present position of England, but A. reminds him that a like view was widely prevalent just when Lord Chatham's wonderful successes began. "Yet that view was correct," replies B., "and if Sin get the mastery of the nation the gloomy prognostications will yet come true." The growing passion of the verses excites A.'s notice, and this leads to a descant upon the functions of the Poet, and this again to the present condition of English Poetry. The bard holds that there is one new field into which the Poet may enter, namely, Religion.

"All other themes are sped, Hackneyed and worn to the last flimsy thread."

It were indeed, he exclaims, a noble aim for one to entrance his hearers by singing the love of Christ. Better even doggrel verse on high topics than flowing numbers on base ones. This is the author's preface, in fact, to the rest. What was the character of the religion which he thus set himself to expound we need hardly say. It was "Evangelicalism," the form which all earnestness took at that period in the history of the Church of England, the reaction against the "Evidential" and "Moral" Theology of the years preceding. Its defects as well as