exactly omnipresent common-sense; excellent
manners; an almost total absence in that part of the letters which we
are now considering of selfishness, and a total absence of
ill-nature.[23] It is no business of ours here to embark on the problem,
"What was the dram of eale" that ruined all this and more "noble
substance" in Cowper? though there is not much doubt about the agency
and little about the principal agents that effected the mischief. But it
is quite relevant to point out that all the good things noticed are
things distinctly and definitely good for letter-writing. And sometimes
one cannot help regretfully wondering whether, if he--who dealt so
admirably with such interests as were open to him--had had more and
wider ones to deal with, _we_ should not have had still more varied and
still more delightful letters, and _he_ would have escaped the terrible
fate that fell on him. For although Cowper was the reverse of selfish
in the ordinary sense, he was intensely self-centred, and his life gave
too much opportunity for that excessive self-concentration which is the
very hotbed of mental disease.

It is not a little surprising from this point of view, and it perhaps
shows how imperative the letter-writing faculty is when it is
possessed--that Cowper's letters are as good as they are: while that
point of view also helps us to understand why they are sometimes not so
good.

Of all the floating thoughts we find
Upon the surface of the mind,

as he himself very happily sums up the subjects of letter-writing, there
are few in his case which are of more unequal value than his criticisms.
Cowper had more than one of the makings of a critic, and a very
important critic. He was, or at any rate had been once, something of a
scholar; he helped to effect and (which is not always or perhaps even
often the case) helped _knowingly_ to effect, one of the most
epoch-making changes in English literature. But for the greater part of
his life he read very little; he had little chance of anything like
literary discussion with his peers; and accordingly his critical remarks
are random, uncoordinated, and mostly a record of what struck him at the
moment in the way of like and dislike, agreement or disagreement.

But then there is nothing that we go for to Cowper as a letter-writer so
little as for things of this kind: and even things of this kind take the
benefit of what Coleridge happily called--and what everybody has since