English Lands Letters and Kings

of that cheery, sunny-faced, eloquent, ill-balanced man, Charles James Fox, whom we ought to remember as a true friend to America, in those critical days when taxation was swelling into tyra

is forces in great paroxysms of effort; one while the greatest comedist, and again the greatest orat

he story of the poor ill lieutenant of the inn, whom Corporal Trim (at Uncle Toby's instance) had gone to se

ys Trim, "c

l march," sa

in his tracks

s it was uttered. The Rev. Laurence Sterne, it is to be feared, counted too largely upon the swash of such tend

glow within him which gave new brightness to old Romanticism, and which kindled in after days many a fancy into flame

n and oth

Macp

upon the shoulder of a flax-haired maiden; with a little strain from Ossian's Fingal, in the placard below, to tell the story. The mighty Lamderg (who is the warrior) died: and Gelchossa (the flax-haired young woman) "mourned three days beside her love. The hunters found her dead." The picture is, I suspect, almost the only permanent mark in America of the

thou art forever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempests,

o the place where my love rests from the chase alone-his bow near him unstrung; his dogs

of O

entury all over Europe. Professors of Literature (such as Dr. Hugh Blair) wrote treatises upon their fire and grace; such men as Goethe and Schiller were fast admirers; Napoleon was said to be bewildered by their beauty. Of course they had French translation; and there were versions in German, Greek

, when dark winds pour it on rocky Cuthon--" it is roun

candido come la spu

venti lo spingono

di Cuto

bard; and this made him famous. The measure and range were new, and there was a torrent of flame and thunder and love and fury running through it which captivated: he went up to London-was appointed to go with Governor Johnston to Florida,[3] in America; remained there at Pensacola, a year or more; but quarrelled with his chief (he had rare aptitude for quarrelling) and came back in 1766. Some English historical work followed; but with little success or profit. Yet he was a canny Scotchman, and so laid his plans that he bec

the Gaelic;-Dr. Johnson among them, whose contemptuous doubts infuriated the Macpherson to such a d

ian. What would you have me retract? I thought your book an imposture; I think it an imposture still. Your rage I defy. Your abilities, since your Homer,[4] are n

and song and ballads which supported his allegations. The question is not even yet fully settled, and is hardly worth the settlement. Macpherson's own obstinacies and petulancies put unnumbered difficulties in the way; he resented any denial of Gaelic origin for his verse; he resented any denial of his capacity to sing better than the Gael; he promised to show Highland originals, and always made occasions for delay; withal he was as touchy as a bad child, and as virulent as a fish-woman. Nothing satisfied him;

he eminent scientist. He was buried "by special request" in Westminster Abbey; he had been always covetous of such public testimonials to his consequence.

irst quarter of the century (1725), when Allan Ramsay had sent out from his book shop in Edinboro', his rustic eclogue of the Gentle Shepherd, a love had b

rom a bookseller, now from a schoolmaster, now from a Jacobite, and now from a "stickit" minister.[6] I will give you one taste of this Scotticism of the borders, were it

O'Bu

Buchan, O Lo

wa' Jamie, that d

he pipe, and th

awa' Jamie, the

s ousen, has g

hadden, and

in lad, wi' his s

him, wi' the h

s sulky, my Min

on Jamie beca

as weel as a da

f sa dear to me

creepie, I sp

e laddie that l

saxpence, he

hauf o't, when

he graces of this modest schoolmaster singer, that taste and accomplishment were both ripening in those nort

the amiable Dean of the Edinboro' literati, was writing his Man of Feeling and his Julia de Roubigné,-books of great reputation in the early part of this century, but with graces in them that were only imitative, and sentiment that was dismally affected and over-wrought; and there was Lord Kames, the Gentleman Farmer, with a fine great house in the Canongate, who wrot

ge C

ab

London. City sounds do not press into their verse; but instead are the sounds of sea-waves or of winds on woods, or of church bells, or of the clink and murmur of the lives of cottagers. The first I name to you of these two is George Crabbe[7]-a name that may sound strangely, b

those white loc

polish of tha

wful glance on

nee and trembl

ngers all in d

shford soften

Pope, but it is Pope muddied and rusticated; Pop

mped itself on his boyish brain, that it came out afterward-when he could manage language, in which he had great gift-very clear and very r

llows rising

e: the waves so s

inking, and th

oment, in its

*

me, they strike w

ing, take their

nded flints, w

rage, and shal

*

passage tribes o

rey within the

ugh opposing

turn and all th

they give their w

ek white pinion

stless ocean

was just dead; but who should care for this stout young fellow from the shore? One man-one only, does care; it is the warm Irish-hearted Edmund Burke, who being appealed to and having read the verses which the adventurer brought to his notice, befriends him, takes him to his house, makes him know old Dr. Johnson; and his first book is launched and talked of under their patronage. Then this great friend Burke conspires religiously with the Bishop of Norwich to plant the poet in the Church. Why not? He has some Latin; he means well, and can write a sermon. So we find him returned to that wild North Sea shore with a littl

ershire join: the towers of Lincoln Cathedral are in sight at the north, and Nottingham Castle in the west: and there is a glitter in some near valley of an affluent of the Trent, sh

f putting him at ease among his titled visitors; perhaps enjoying from his high poise, the disturbing embarrassments with which the good-natured poet was beset un

nds he secures livings,-first in Dorset, and afterward in Leicestershire (1789), almost within sight of Belvoir towers. Hereabout, or in near counties, where he has parochial duties, he vegetates slumberously, for twenty years or more. He preaches, practises his old apothecary craft, drives (his wife holding the reins), idles, writes b

the South of England (Wiltshire), where the incense of London praises can reach him more directly. One day in 1819 he goes away from his publishers with bills for ￡3,000[10] in his pocket; must take them home to show them to his boy, John; he loves that boy and other children over much-more, it is to be feared, than he had ever done that mother, the

ly and lumbering as a poet; yet touching with raw and lively colors the griefs of England's country-poor; and with a realism that is h

am Co

wp

Cowper. You know him better: you ought to know him better. Yet he would have managed a church-if a parish had been his-worse than Crabbe did

own of Great-Berkhamsted, on the line of the London and Birmingham Railway. He studied at Westminster-being school-fellow with Churchill, the poet, and with Warren Hastings-of whose Trial we have had somewhat to say: afterward he entered a sol

great flame. There is reason, however, to believe that the smouldering of it had its influences upon Miss Theodora all through her life; and who shall say that it did not touch the great melancholy of the future poet with a sting of tenderness? Ther

re of average common sense, and unhampered by the trappings of genius that belonged to him, would have "gone on" for this place; secured it; made his easy fortune; lived a good humdrum life; died lamented, and never heard of. The poet's fine brain, however-which had been exercised already in musical verse-built up mountains of difficulty; he told in after years, with a curious sincerity, all the details of his struggle-how he held the phial of laudanum to his lips and how he flung it away; how he held a knife at his heart; and finally, how he threw his garter, which served for a gallows-rope, over the chamber door, and hung "till the bitterness of temporal death was past." Righteously enough, after all these weakly resolves, which a man of energy would have made strong, he falls into utter distraction; religious doubts and fears racking him, and

they relish his religious exuberance; they pity his frailties; and then and there begins an intimate friendship between Mrs. Unwin and our poet, which for its purity, its strength, its constancy, is without a parallel, I th

re were few neighbors of culture; no village growth or stir; lands all tamely level; streams all sluggish; industries of the smallest; no shooting-no fishing-no cards-no visitors-no driving; sermon reading in the morning; sermon reading in the evening; walks in the garden; digging in the garden (m

aces and naturalness provoked inquiry in London, and amongst cultured readers everywhere-as to who this "William Cowper of the Inner Temple" might possibly be? The Rev. John Newton of Olney knew, for the poet had assisted him in the preparation of a certain Olney Hymn Book

introduction (1781)-between the Unwin and the Cowper for three years, giving a new stir to the poet's brain. Out of that quickening came, after a night of travail, that ever-fresh ballad of John Gilpin's Ride; it was popular from the first; and some two years later-it was p

nd with a witchery to which he was unused and which tempted him to his best powers of song. He was proud of his fresh successes, and grateful to that new and fascinating member of their little household who had provoked and prompted them. What should disturb this cheery party of three-save the ever-lasting unfitness of the odd number? Perhaps the thought of this came first through some tender reproac

nted by it; "such an original and philosophic thinker," she says; "such genuine Christianity, and such a divine simplicity!" Even Corsica Boswell calls him

ery; and he consoles himself with the poor satisfaction of not being a mocker. He discusses village and public affairs with his barber, Wilson (who had conscientiously refused to dress Lady Austen's hair upon a Sunday). Alluding to American affairs, in that crisi

se me a politician; but, in truth, I am nothing less. These are the thoughts that occur to me while I read the newspaper; and when I h

ater

le of Olney and cheer him with their praises-all which praises fell like hail upon Cowper's window pane. And there had been a little trip devised, to divert that weakened and fatigued mind, down to Eartham in Sussex, where his friend Hayley has a beautiful place, and where he brings the artist Romney, to paint the well-known portrait; but there is no lon

rolled down from Newport Pagnell-to which place I had taken coach from Northampton-following all the windings of the sluggish Ouse, to Weston; stopping at the "Cowper's Oak" inn, I found next door his old home-its front overgrown with roses-and strolled into his old ga

mists that were gathering round him. He brought scholarly tastes and a quick conscience to the work; a boy would be helped more to the thieving of the proper English by Cowper's Homer, than by

at a later day-only chance things were written. But some of these chances were brimful of suggestion and of most beautiful issues. That relating to h

ips had language

ughly since I

thine-thy own s

oft in childho

s, else how dis

hild, chase all

Lady Hesketh, and other friends were anxious that the Olney poet should succeed to that honor; Southey s

ed perhaps by those later Homeric labors, but more likely by the grievous religious doubts which overhang him, loses fro

of C

herself be served; the poor poet bringing to that service all the instincts of affection, and the wavering purpose of a sha

locks, once

ore lovely

beams of O

M

I view-nor

orth seeing

ld rise in

M

s of thy

eir little f

rest, press

Mar

nderness which lurk in so many of the lines and in all the flowing measure of the little poem. Mrs.

d there three years later and was buried beside her. They were three dreary years-which followed upon her death-for him and for tho

r's p

frankness of utterance and a billowy undulation of movement that have compensating charms. He loves Nature as a boy loves his play; his humanities are wakened by all her voices. He not only seizes upon exterior effects with a painter's eye and hand, but he has a touch which steals deeper meanings an

h snows, or throwing shadows by morning, and counter-shadows at evening, over the flanks of low hills on which they stand in leafy platoons. And for sounds-far off church-bells waking solitudes with their tremulous beat and jangle;

ests are always golden. Prone to idleness he is perhaps-mental and physical; much femininity in him; his thought wavering and riding on his

er. In our next chapter we shall listen to the music of a different

be the corresponding Gaelic in a couplet of lines,

'n cobhar,'

ghaillinn

uan 1, F

pherson: b. 1

London, 1807) says that he (Macpherson) took some of his

my readers to know that a copy of this letter in Johnson's hand-writing, was sol

especting Ossianic origin, etc. The best exhibit, however, of the Gaelic side of the question may be found in the pre

56; Alexander Ross, minister, b. 1699; d. 1784; J

Tales of the Hall, are his best-known works. Life, by his son (18

eaking of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, etc., con

g dazzled and made giddy with the elaborate raptures and obscure originalities of these new artists, it is refreshing to meet again with

in 1816, but has been rebuilt

ever, that the sum was far too large, and Murray a loser by the bargain. Chap. xxii

outhey (regarded as standard), published with edition of his works in 1833

eman, M. de Tardif, and died in Paris in 1802. She may b

etc., by Thomas W

b. 1745; d. 1820. L