A Letter Book / Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing

WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800)

It was necessary to say a good deal about Cowper's letters in the Introduction, but it would hardly do to stint him of some further comment. It will be a most unfortunate evidence of degradation in English literary taste if he ever loses the position there assigned to him, and practically acknowledged by all the best judges for the last century. For there is certainly no other epistoler who has displayed such consummate (if also such unconscious) art in making the most out of the least. Of course people who must have noise, and bustle, and "importance" of matter, and so forth, may be dissatisfied. But their dissatisfaction convicts not Cowper but themselves: and the conviction is not for want of Art, but for want of appreciation of Art. Now this last is one of the most terrible faults to be found in any human creature. Not everybody can be an artist: but everybody who is not deficient to this or that extent in sense—to use that word in its widest and best interpretation, for understanding and feeling both—can enjoy an artist's work. Nor is there any more important function of the often misused word "education" than "bringing out" this sense when it is dormant, and training and developing it when it is brought out. And few things are more useful for exercise in this way than the under-current of artistry in Cowper's "chit-chat." His letters are so familiar that it is vain to aim at any great originality in selecting them. The following strikes me as an excellent example. What more trite than references to increased expense of postage (rather notably topical just now though!) and remarks on a greenhouse? And what less trite—except to tritical tastes and intellects—than this letter?

25. To the Rev. John Newton

Sept. 18. 1784.

My dear Friend,

Following your good example, I lay before me a sheet of my largest paper. It was this moment fair and unblemished but I have begun to blot it, and having begun, am not likely to cease till I have spoiled it. I have sent you many a sheet that in my judgment of it has been very unworthy of your acceptance, but my conscience was in some measure satisfied by reflecting, that if it were good for nothing, at the same time it cost you nothing, except the trouble of reading it. But the case is altered now. You must pay a solid price for frothy matter, and though I do not absolutely pick your pocket, yet you lose your money, and, as the saying is, are never the wiser; a saying literally fulfilled to the reader of my epistles.

My greenhouse is never so pleasant as when we are just upon the point of being turned out of it. The gentleness of the autumnal suns, and the calmness of this latter season, make it a much more agreeable retreat than we ever find it in summer; when, the winds being generally brisk, we cannot cool it by admitting a sufficient quantity of air, without being at the same time incommoded by it. But now I sit with all the windows and the door wide open, and am regaled with the scent of every flower in a garden as full of flowers as I have known how to make it. We keep no bees, but if I lived in a hive I should hardly hear more of their music. All the bees in the neighbourhood resort to a bed of mignonette, opposite to the window, and pay me for the honey they get out of it by a hum, which, though rather monotonous, is as agreeable to my ear as the whistling of my linnets. All the sounds that nature utters are delightful,—at least in this country. I should not perhaps find the roaring of lions in Africa, or of bears in Russia, very pleasing; but I know no beast in England whose voice I do not account musical, save and except always the braying of an ass. The notes of all our birds and fowls please me, without one exception. I should not indeed think of keeping a goose in a cage, that I might hang him up in the parlour for the sake of his melody, but a goose upon a common, or in a farmyard, is no bad performer; and as to insects, if the black beetle, and beetles indeed of all hues, will keep out of my way, I have no objection to any of the rest; on the contrary, in whatever key they sing, from the gnat's fine treble to the bass of the humble bee, I admire them all. Seriously however it strikes me as a very observable instance of providential kindness to man, that such an exact accord has been contrived between his ear, and the sounds with which, at least in a rural situation, it is almost every moment visited. All the world is sensible of the uncomfortable effect that certain sounds have upon the nerves, and consequently upon the spirits:—and if a sinful world had been filled with such as would have curdled the blood, and have made the sense of hearing a perpetual inconvenience, I do not know that we should have had a right to complain. But now the fields, the woods, the gardens have each their concert, and the ear of man is for ever regaled by creatures who seem only to please themselves. Even the ears that are deaf to the Gospel, are continually entertained, though without knowing it, by sounds for which they are solely indebted to its author. There is somewhere in infinite space a world that does not roll within the precincts of mercy, and as it is reasonable, and even scriptural, to suppose that there is music in Heaven, in those dismal regions perhaps the reverse of it is found; tones so dismal, as to make woe itself more insupportable, and to acuminate[113] even despair. But my paper admonishes me in good time to draw the reins, and to check the descent of my fancy into deeps, with which she is but too familiar.

Our best love attends you both, with yours,

Sum ut semper, tui studiossimus,

W. C.

FOOTNOTES:

[113] "Acuminate" = "sharpen," is a perfectly good word in itself, but perhaps does not so perfectly suit "despair," which crushes rather than pierces.

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