'All Sorts of Characters in the World'

“His poems are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of course, much of poetry is no longer read, not even by those who consider themselves poets. Who besides eccentrics and cranks reads Pope, Tennyson and Longfellow? The opening question is posed by Lord David Cecil in his first book, The Stricken Deer, or The Life of Cowper (1929). He continues: 

“Bound in solid leather and adorned with the sober magnificence of gilt lettering, they rest upon the upper shelves of old-fashioned libraries, unread from year’s end to year’s end, their backs growing drab, drained of hue and lustre by the strong, destroying sunlight. They are become merely furniture, less valued because less noticeable than the globes and grandfather clocks and graying mezzotints that crowd the room around them.”

 

This recalls Dr. Johnson's satisfyingly tart observation in The Rambler on March 23, 1751: “No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library; for who can see the wall crowded on every side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditations and accurate inquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue.”

 

By the time William Cowper published his masterwork, The Task (1785), he had already attempted suicide several times and been committed to an insane asylum. When in his right mind, Cowper was the sweetest of souls, a profoundly reverent man, literally God-fearing. He doted on his friends, wrote some of the finest letters in the language, composed hymns and adopted any animal seeking shelter. In prose, he had a gift for pithy portraiture. This is from the letter Cowper wrote on his fiftieth birthday – November 26, 1781 -- to his friend the Rev. William Unwin:

 

“There are indeed all sorts of characters in the world, there are some whose understandings are so sluggish, and whose hearts are such mere clods, that they live in society without either contributing to the sweets of it, or having any relish for them.”

 

That’s the set-up. Now he delivers this hapless character:

 

“A man of this stamp passes by our window continually. He draws patterns for the lace-makers. I never saw him conversing with a neighbour but once in my life, though I have known him by sight these 12 years. He is of a very sturdy make, has a round belly extremely protuberant, which he evidently considers as his best friend because it is his only companion, and it is the labour of his life to fill it. I can easily conceive that it is merely the love of good eating and drinking, and now and then the want of a new pair of shoes, that attaches this man so much to the neighbourhood of his fellow mortals.”

 

Condemning? Yes, but gently so. Cowper by nature was a forgiving soul. He continues:

 

“For suppose these exigencies and others of a like kind to subsist no longer, and what is there that could possibly give Society the preference in his esteem? He might strut about with his two thumbs upon his hips in a wilderness, he could hardly be more silent than he is at Olney, and for any advantage or comfort or friendship or brotherly affection, he could not be more destitute of such blessings there than in his present situation.”

 

One might almost hope to earn Cowper’s disapproval. Cecil goes on to quote two stanzas from Cowper’s “To the Rev. Mr. Newton (On His Return from Ramsgate”:

 

“To me the waves that ceaseless broke

Upon the dangerous coast,

Hoarsely and ominously spoke

Of all my treasure lost.

 

“Your sea of troubles you have past,

And found the peaceful shore;

I, tempest-tossed, and wrecked at last,

Come home to port no more.”

 

Cowper was born on November 25, 17311 and died in 1800 at age sixty-eight.