"The Cups that Cheer, But Not Inebriate."
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,
And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups,
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,
So let us welcome peaceful evening in."
The above quotation is taken from Cowper's masterpiece, "The Task." Had he written nothing else, his name would still have been immortal. All lovers of good literature are familiar with the sad yet beautiful life of the poet; and there is scarcely any region of England so well known in imagination as the haunts of Cowper at Olney and Weston. There he lived with his friends, the Unwins, Lady Austen, Lady Hesketh, and the Throckmortons; and in the whole range of literature no more beautiful instance can be found of mutual attachment between a literary man and his friends, than in the life of William Cowper. His life and his compositions present to us the most striking contrast; he was timid in disposition, yet bold in his writings; melancholy in mind, yet full of humor in his correspondence; unhappy to an extraordinary degree, yet he made the whole world merry with his "John Gilpin;" despairing of God's mercy and salvation, yet his religious poetry is of the most cheerful and triumphant character; often thoroughly insane, even to the degree of attempting suicide, yet nothing could surpass the sound nature of his compositions; all these are bright and clear. "No writer," says Howitt, "surpasses Cowper as a moral and religious poet." To Mrs. Austen the world is indebted for "John Gilpin," the Homer Translations, and above all, "The Task," written in 1785. During one of his fits of depression, Lady Austen, to divert him, proposed that he should write something in blank verse. "Set me a task, then," said he. "O, you can write on anything; take that sofa!" And so his masterpiece begins--
Truth, Hope, and Charity, and touch'd with awe
The solemn chords, and with a trembling hand,
Escap'd with pain from that advent'rous flight,
Now seek repose upon an humbler theme;
The theme though humble, yet august and proud
Th' occasion--for the fair commands the song."
It has been well said, "The Sofa was but a hook to hang his theme upon." "The Task" is a long poem, divided into six Books, with subjects as follows: Book I., The Sofa; Book II., The Time Piece; Book III., The Garden; Book IV., The Winter Evening; Book V., The Winter Morning Walk; Book VI., The Winter Walk at Noon. He begins Book I. with a history of seats in general, and having brought it down to the time of sofas, his mind reverts to the days of boyhood, when, after rambling along the banks of the Thames until tired, he needed no sofa on his return. The nature of his theme, the sofa, suggestive of home scenes and experiences, naturally led to a treatment of topics coming up in everyday life, without order or coherence. Hence, few poems contain so great a number of things attractive and interesting to the reader. The success of "The Task" was instant and decided. "The best didactic poems," says Southey, "when compared with 'The Task,' are like formal gardens in comparison with woodland scenery." The quotation which introduces this article is from Book IV., The Winter Evening. He first describes the coming in of the post:--
"Haok! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge;"
then his expectant hand opens the evening paper
"To learn the news from noisy London, and the universe."
To peep at such a world; to see the stir
Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd;"
and with perfect content he closes The Winter Evening:--
The virtue, temper, understanding, taste,
That lifts him into life, and lets him fall
Just in the niche he was ordained to fill.
To the deliverer of an injured land
He gives the tongue to enlarge upon, a heart
To feel, and courage to redress her wrongs;
To Monarchs, dignity; to Judges, sense;
To Artists, ingenuity and skill;
To me, an unambitious mind, content
In the low vale of life, that early felt
A wish for ease and leisure, and ere long
Found here that leisure and that ease I wish'd."
His Winter Walks, Books V. and VI., contain beautiful descriptions of nature and reveries upon various subjects. The country he describes is homely and flat, yet it becomes transfigured and ennobled as seen through the poet's description. The homes and haunts of Cowper are still accessible to tourists. The Yardley Oak, with its hollow trunk, and its lopped and dilapidated crown-
"Its high top bald with hoary antiquity,"
bears this inscription: "Out of respect to the memory of the poet Cowper, the Marquis of Northampton is particularly desirous of preserving this oak. Notice is hereby given, that any person defacing, or otherwise injuring it, will be prosecuted according to law."
In the hollow of this tree Cowper would sit for hours during the season of his melancholy. The fame he has conferred upon it by so doing has nearly proved its destruction. Whole branches, and great pieces of its trunk, have been cut away and manufactured into relics. Leaving the scenes where his life, saddened by morbid imagination, yet rich in its benefits to mankind, had been passed, he went with his venerable friend, Mrs. Mary Unwin, to Dereham, in Suffolk. There both of them died-she in 1796, and he in 1800.
"The Task" abounds in many beautiful maxims:--
"What none can prove a forgery may be true."
"He is the freeman whom the truth makes free."
It is related of Cowper that in 1799, during one of his fits of melancholy, he meditated suicide by drowning in the Thames. He ordered a cab and gave the driver directions to take him to a certain bridge. A heavy fog prevailed that night, and after driving for about an hour the cabman confessed that he was lost, and could not find the place. Cowper alighted to give the man fuller directions when he perceived that he was in front of his own door. He dismissed the cab, went to his room, and wrote that beautiful hymn,
His wonders to perform."