"Then willingly want her awhile,
And, sweeping the cords of your lyre,
The gloom of her absence beguile,
As now, with poetical fire.
'Tis yours, for true glory athirst,
In high-flying ditty to rise
On feathers renown'd from the first
For bearing a goose to the skies."
The old man died in the following June. The letters of consolation which Cowper wrote to Lady Hesketh are very beautiful. He says in one: "I often think what a joyful interview there has been between him and some of his contemporaries who went before him. The truth of the matter is, my dear, that they are the happy ones, and that we shall never be such ourselves until we have joined the party." It is sad after reading this to come upon a letter to Mr. Newton, written after a visit from him in the following August, marked by the old despair.
The beginning of 1 790 found him still renewing old acquaintances and making fresh ones. This time it was his mother's relatives, of whom he had heard nothing since his childhood. John Johnson was the grandson of his mother's brother, Roger Donne, rector of Catfield, in Norfolk. He was a Cambridge undergraduate, who had written a poem, and brought it to his relative for his opinion. It was not very favourable,[1] but the youth still rejoiced in his visit, for Cowper's heart yearned towards him. He went back quite delighted, with an introduction to Lady Hesketh, and much Homer to transcribe. On telling his aunt, Mrs. Bodham, how Cowper had received him, and how warmly he had expressed his affection for her (for they had been playfellows as children), she sent him an affectionate letter, and with it a portrait of his mother. He acknowledged the gift in one of the most charming of his letters, and wrote upon it the beautiful elegy of which we have already spoken. We see in it how the memory of the touch of her vanished hand, of the sound of her stilled voice, almost gave him peace of mind. Had anything earthly been able to do so, it would have been the memory of his mother's love. But his desire was unto that which is eternal and immortal, and until this desire was fulfilled, even until mortality was swallowed up of life, darkness rested upon his soul. This poem will always testify, not only the earnestness of his love and the strength of his faith in God, but also the truth that—
"Nor man, nor nature, satisfy whom only God created."
Another correspondent was Clotworthy Rowley, of Stoke-by-Nayland, with whom he had been intimate in the Temple, but whom he had not seen since. Rowley opened correspondence on the occasion of returning half a dozen books, which
- ↑ Cowper's advice to him is worth repeating, whether sound or not: "Remember that in writing, perspicuity is always more than half the battle. The want of it is the ruin of more than half the poetry that is published. A meaning that does not stare you in the face is as bad as no meaning, because nobody will take the pains to poke for it."
