ay life are
unknown? Indeed, though Cowper, as an orthodox Protestant, held that
ascetic practices ministered simply to spiritual conceit, was he not
bound to a sufficiently galling form of asceticism? His friends
habitually looked askance upon all those pleasures of the intellect and
the imagination which are not directly subservient to the religious
emotions. They had grave doubts of the expediency of his studies of the
pagan Homer. They looked with suspicion upon the slightest indulgence in
social amusements. And Cowper fully shared their sentiments. A taste for
music, for example, generally suggests to him a parson fiddling when he
ought to be praying; and following once more the lead of Newton, he
remarks upon the Handel celebration as a piece of grotesque profanity.
The name of science calls up to him a pert geologist, declaring after an
examination of the earth

That He who made it, and revealed its date
To Moses, was mistaken in its age.

Not only is the great bulk of his poetry directly religious or
devotional, but on publishing the 'Task' he assures Newton that he has
admitted none but Scriptural images, and kept as closely as possible to
Scriptural language. Elsewhere he quotes Swift's motto, _Vive la
bagatelle!_ as a justification of 'John Gilpin.' Fox is recorded to have
said that Swift must have been fundamentally a good-natured man because
he wrote so much nonsense. To me the explanation seems to be very
different. Nothing is more melancholy than Swift's elaborate triflings,
because they represent the efforts of a powerful intellect passing into
madness under enforced inaction, to kill time by childish occupation.
And the diagnosis of Cowper's case is similar. He trifles, he says,
because he is reduced to it by necessity. His most ludicrous verses have
been written in his saddest mood. It would be, he adds, 'but a shocking
vagary' if the sailors on a ship in danger relieved themselves 'by
fiddling and dancing; yet sometimes much such a part act I.' His love of
country sights and pleasures is so intense because it is the most
effectual relief. 'Oh!' he exclaims, 'I could spend whole days and
nights in gazing upon a lovely prospect! My eyes drink the rivers as
they flow.' And he adds, in his characteristic vein of thought, 'if
every human being upon earth could feel as I have done for many years,
there might perhaps be many miserable men among them, but not an
unawakened one could be found from th