The Works of William Cowper. William Cowper

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       Anni temperie fœcundo è cespite surgunt.

      My reason is, that the word cum is repeated too soon. At least my ear does not like it, and, when it can be done without injury to the sense, there seems to be an elegance in diversifying the expression, as much as possible, upon similar occasions. It discovers a command of phrase, and gives a more masterly air to the piece. If extincta stood unconnected with telis, I should prefer your word micant, to the doctor's vigent. But the latter seems to stand more in direct opposition to that sort of extinction which is effected by a shaft or arrow. In the daytime the stars may be said to die, and in the night to recover their strength. Perhaps the doctor had in his eye that noble line of Gray's,

      Hyperion's march they spy, and glitt'ring shafts of war!

      But it is a beautiful composition. It is tender, touching, and elegant. It is not easy to do it justice in English, as for example.[223]

      Many thanks for the books, which being most admirably packed came safe. They will furnish us with many a winter evening's amusement. We are glad that you intend to be the carrier back.

      We rejoice too that your cousin has remembered you in her will. The money she left to those who attended her hearse, would have been better bestowed upon you: and by this time perhaps she thinks so. Alas! what an inquiry does that thought suggest, and how impossible to make it to any purpose! What are the employments of the departed spirit? and where does it subsist? Has it any cognizance of earthly things? Is it transported to an immeasurable distance; or is it still, though imperceptible to us, conversant with the same scene, and interested in what passes here? How little we know of a state to which we are all destined; and how does the obscurity that hangs over that undiscovered country increase the anxiety we sometimes feel as we are journeying towards it! It is sufficient however for such as you and a few more of my acquaintance to know that in your separate state you will be happy. Provision is made for your reception; and you will have no cause to regret aught that you have left behind.

      I have written to Mr. ——. My letter went this morning. How I love and honour that man! For many reasons I dare not tell him how much. But I hate the frigidity of the style in which I am forced to address him. That line of Horace,

      Dii tibi divitias dederunt artemque fruendi,

      was never so applicable to the poet's friend, as to Mr. ——. My bosom burns to immortalize him. But prudence says "Forbear!" and, though a poet, I pay respect to her injunctions.[224]

      I sincerely give you joy of the good you have unconsciously done by your example and conversation. That you seem to yourself not to deserve the acknowledgment your friend makes of it, is a proof that you do. Grace is blind to its own beauty, whereas such virtues as men may reach without it are remarkable self-admirers. May you make such impressions upon many of your order! I know none that need them more.

      You do not want my praises of your conduct towards Mr. ——. It is well for him however, and still better for yourself, that you are capable of such a part. It was said of some good man (my memory does not serve me with his name) "do him an ill turn, and you make him your friend for ever." But it is Christianity only that forms such friends. I wish his father may be duly affected by this instance and proof of your superiority to those ideas of you which he has so unreasonably harboured. He is not in my favour now, nor will be upon any other terms.

      I laughed at the comments you make on your own feelings, when the subject of them was a newspaper eulogium. But it was a laugh of pleasure, and approbation: such indeed is the heart, and so is it made up. There are few that can do good, and keep their own secret, none perhaps without a struggle. Yourself and your friend—— are no very common instances of the fortitude that is necessary in such a conflict. In former days I have felt my heart beat, and every vein throb upon such an occasion. To publish my own deed was wrong. I knew it to be so. But to conceal it seemed like a voluntary injury to myself. Sometimes I could, and sometimes I could not succeed. My occasions for such conflicts indeed were not very numerous.

      Yours,

       W. C.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

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      Olney, Jan. 25, 1784.

      My dear Friend—This contention about East Indian patronage seems not unlikely to avenge upon us by its consequences the mischiefs we have done there. The matter in dispute is too precious to be relinquished by either party; and each is jealous of the influence the other would derive from the possession of it. In a country whose politics have so long rolled upon the wheels of corruption, an affair of such value must prove a weight in either scale, absolutely destructive of the very idea of a balance. Every man has his sentiments upon this subject, and I have mine. Were I constituted umpire of this strife, with full powers to decide it, I would tie a talent of lead about the neck of this patronage, and plunge it into the depths of the sea. To speak less figuratively, I would abandon all territorial interest in a country, to which we can have no right, and which we cannot govern with any security to the happiness of the inhabitants, or without the danger of incurring either perpetual broils, or the most insupportable tyranny at home. That sort of tyranny I mean, which flatters and tantalizes the subject with a show of freedom, and in reality allows him nothing more, bribing to the right and left, rich enough to afford the purchase of a thousand consciences, and consequently strong enough, if it happen to meet with an incorruptible one, to render all the efforts of that man, or of twenty such men, if they could be found, romantic and of no effect. I am the king's most loyal subject, and most obedient humble servant. But, by his majesty's leave, I must acknowledge I am not altogether convinced of the rectitude even of his own measures, or of the simplicity of his views; and, if I were satisfied that he himself is to be trusted, it is nevertheless palpable that he cannot answer for his successors. At the same time he is my king, and I reverence him as such. I account his prerogative sacred, and shall never wish prosperity to a party that invades it, and, under that pretence of patriotism, would annihilate all the consequence of a character essential to the very being of the constitution. For these reasons I am sorry that we have any dominion in the East; that we have any such emoluments to contend about. Their immense value will probably prolong the dispute, and such struggles having been already made in the conduct of it as have shaken our very foundations, it seems not unreasonable to suppose that still greater efforts and more fatal are behind; and, after all, the decision in favour of either side may be ruinous to the whole. In the meantime, that the Company themselves are but indifferently qualified for the kingship is most deplorably evident. What shall I say therefore? I distrust the court, I suspect the patriots; I put the Company entirely aside, as having forfeited all claim to confidence in such a business, and see no remedy of course, but in the annihilation, if that could be accomplished, of the very existence of our authority in the East Indies.

      Yours, my dear friend,

       W. C.

      It was natural for Cowper to indulge in such a reflection, if we consider, that in his time India presented a melancholy scene of rapine and corruption. It used to be said by Mr. Burke, that every man became unbaptized in going to India, and that, should it please Providence, by some unforeseen dispensation, to deprive Great Britain of her Indian empire, she would leave behind no memorial but the evidences of her ambition, and the traces of her desolating wars.

      Happily we have lived to see a great moral revolution, and England has at length redeemed her character. She has ennobled the triumphs of her arms, by making them subservient to the introduction СКАЧАТЬ