“Thy lot thy
brethern of the slimy fin
Would envy,
could they know that thou wast doom’d
To feed a
bard, and to be prais’d in verse.”
Cowper
likewise addressed poems to hares (he kept three: Puss, Tiney and Bess), dogs
and grasshoppers. He was an egalitarian among his fellow creatures and found
human vanity a bottomless source of deflationary humor. The other side of
Cowper’s abhorrence of mankind’s sinfulness and depravity was his taste for
mocking it. In the following passage, from a letter he wrote to his friend the
Rev. William Unwin on this date, Oct. 31, in 1779, Cowper could be making fun
of social media and most digital communications:
“I wrote my
last letter merely to inform you that I had nothing to say; in answer to which
you have said nothing. I admire the propriety of your conduct though I am a
loser by it. I will endeavour to say something now, and shall hope for
something in return.”
Cowper is both
funny and gracious, and devotes the rest of his letter to outrage over Dr.
Johnson’s demolition of John Milton. Johnson published the fifty-two bio-critical
sketches that make up Lives of the Most
Eminent English Poets between 1779 and 1781. In his “Life of Milton” he
famously writes of “Lycidas”:
“In this
poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is
nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore
disgusting: whatever images it can supply are long ago exhausted; and its
inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction on the mind.”
Cowper, an
informal critic at best, fumes: “[Johnson’s] treatment of Milton is unmerciful
to the last degree. A pensioner is not likely to spare a republican; and the
Doctor, in order, I suppose, to convince his royal patron of the sincerity of
his monarchical principles, has belaboured that great poet's character with the
most industrious cruelty.”
Like most
great critics, Johnson has his weak spots, uttering outrageous judgments that
make little sense to us. Unlike lousy critics, though, Johnson gives us
something worth thinking about even when he’s patently wrong. Cowper will have
none of it. He takes Johnson's dismissals personally:
“He has passed
sentence of condemnation upon 'Lycidas,' and has taken occasion, from that
charming poem, to expose to ridicule, (what is indeed ridiculous enough,) the
childish prattlement of pastoral compositions, as if 'Lycidas' was the
prototype and pattern of them all. The liveliness of the description, the
sweetness of the numbers, the classical spirit of antiquity that prevails in
it, go for nothing. I am convinced by the way, that he has no ear for poetical
numbers, or that it was stopped by prejudice against the harmony of Milton’s.”
Even the
gentle Cowper turns ad hominem: “Oh!
I could thresh his old jacket, till I made his pension jingle in his pocket.”
Cowper’s “John Gilpin’s Ride” was one of the first poems I memorized, at about seven y.o., and I still spout lines from it with or without occasion, indeed whenever I have nothing better to say, which happens sometimes, not to say frequently.
ReplyDeleteWe had no Cowper in any school I ever went to. For years I knew him only for “John Gilpin.” When in my teens I found, left on a library table, “The Task,” I opened it and read curiously for what may have been a minute but seemed longer – and closed it with a sigh which has not yet fully expired.
Ah, the old charge that Johnson hated Milton...when he said that Paradise Lost isn't the greatest of epic poems only because it it isn't the first.
ReplyDeleteAs for Bill taking a swipe at Sam, I rather think that would go like Tyson- Spinks.