On May 28, 1781, William Cowper writes to his friend the Rev. John Newton, Anglican priest, “Amazing Grace” lyricist, former slaver, former slave, abolitionist and hymnist:
“You seldom
complain of too much sunshine, and if you are prepared for a heat somewhat like
that of Africa, the south walk in our long garden will exactly suit you.
Reflected from the gravel and from the walls, and beating upon your head at the
same time, it may possibly make you wish you could enjoy for an hour or two that
immensity of shade afforded by the gigantic trees still growing in the land of
your captivity.”
At age
eighteen, Newton had been seized by a press gang into service with the Royal
Navy. In 1745 he was left by his shipmates with a slave trader in West Africa,
whose African wife made Newton her slave. Thus, “the land of your captivity.”
Cowper continues:
“If you
could spend a day now and then in those forests, and return with a wish to
England, it would be no small addition to the number of your best pleasures. .
. . The time will come, perhaps, (but death will come first,) when you will be
able to visit them without either danger, trouble, or expense; and when the
contemplation of those well-remembered scenes will awaken in you emotions of
gratitude and praise, surpassing all you could possibly sustain at present.”
Cowper believed
the souls of the dead may revisit the Earth, perhaps even returning safely to locations
previously dangerous or with unhappy associations. The Irish writer Brian Lynch
in his great novel about Cowper, The
Winner of Sorrow (Dalkey Archive Press, 2009), touches on this theme. Lynch
begins a later poem, “L’imperfection,”
with two lines from the second passage quoted above:
“The time
will come, perhaps,
(But death
will come first)
When we may
be able to visit
The dead and
where they lived
When we first
knew them,
And then,
though they will not
Be able to
see us, we shall
Look at
those faces we
Loved once
with better thanks
And more
praise than we gave,
Or were able
to give . . .”
The seven of us in the world who still read Cowper’s poems would likely agree with George Saintsbury: “Cowper would have been a great poet of the second class at any time, and in some times might have attained the first.” Barton Swaim describes Cowper as a “placeholder” who fell between two epochs in literary history, being neither Augustan nor Romantic but sharing traits with both. He was one of the “mad poets,” having attempted suicide several times and been confined to asylums. His letters are among the best in the language and often enormously funny. He memorably wrote: “I, fed with judgment, in a fleshly tomb, am / Buried above ground.” I’m reminded of these lines from Book IV, “The Winter Evening,” of his masterpiece, The Task:
“In such a
world; so thorny, and where none
Finds
happiness unblighted; or, if found,
Without some
thistly sorrow at its side;
It seems the
part of wisdom, and no sin
Against the
law of love, to measure lots
With less
distinguish’d than ourselves; that thus
We may with
patience bear our mod’rate ills,
And
sympathies with others, suffering more.”
Cowper was
born on this date, November 26, in 1731, and died in 1800 at age sixty-eight.
2 comments:
For those interested, the complete works of John Newton are available as a well-done four-volume set from The Banner of Truth Trust. Among lots of other things, the set contains most, if not all, of his lyrics.
Newton's biggest hit, "Amazing Grace" lends itself to wide appreciation in the secular world. His next biggest hit, "There is a Fountain Filled with Blood" does not.
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