E-text prepared by Al Haines
London, 1880
Cowper is the most important English poet of the period between Popeand the illustrious group headed by Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley,which arose out of the intellectual ferment of the European Revolution.As a reformer of poetry, who called it back from conventionality tonature, and at the same time as the teacher of a new school ofsentiment which acted as a solvent upon the existing moral and socialsystem, he may perhaps himself be numbered among the precursors of therevolution, though he was certainly the mildest of them all. As asentimentalist he presents a faint analogy to Rousseau, whom in naturaltemperament he somewhat resembled. He was also the great poet of thereligious revival which marked the latter part of the eighteenthcentury in England, and which was called Evangelicism within theestablishment and Methodism without. In this way he is associated withWesley and Whitefield, as well as with the philanthropists of themovement, such as Wilberforce, Thornton, and Clarkson. As a poet hetouches, on different sides of his character, Goldsmith, Crabbe, andBurns. With Goldsmith and Crabbe he shares the honour of improvingEnglish taste in the sense of truthfulness and simplicity. To Burns hefelt his affinity, across a gulf of social circumstance, and in spiteof a dialect not yet made fashionable by Scott. Besides his poetry, heholds a high, perhaps the highest place, among English letter writers:and the collection of his letters appended to Southey's biographyforms, with the biographical portions of his poetry, the materials fora sketch of his life. Southey's biography itself is very helpful,though too prolix and too much filled out with dissertations for commonreaders. Had its author only done for Cowper what he did for Nelson![Our acknowledgments are also due to Mr. Benham, the writer of theMemoir prefixed to the Globe Edition of Cowper.]
William Cowper came of the Whig nobility of the robe. His great-uncle,after whom he was named, was the Whig Lord Chancellor of Anne andGeorge I. His grandfather was that Spencer Cowper, judge of the CommonPleas, for love of whom the pretty Quakeress drowned herself, and who,by the rancour of party, was indicted for her murder. His father, theRev. John Cowper, D.D., was chaplain to George II. His mother was aDonne, of the race of the poet, and descended by several lines fromHenry III. A Whig and a gentleman he was by birth, a Whig and agentleman he remained to the end. He was born on the 15th November(old style), 1731, in his father's rectory of Berkhampstead. Fromnature he received, with a large measure of the gifts of genius, astill larger measure of its painful sensibilities. In his portrait; byRomney the brow bespeaks intellect, the features feeling andrefinement, the eye madness. The stronger parts of character, thecombative and propelling forces he evidently lacked from the beginning.For the battle of life he was totally unfit. His judgment in its