William Cowper

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William Cowper
East Dereham, Norfolk, England
EducationWestminster School
OccupationPoet

William Cowper (

Anglican hymnwriter
.

One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th-century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him "the best modern poet", whilst William Wordsworth particularly admired his poem "Yardley-Oak".[2]

After being institutionalised for insanity, Cowper found refuge in a fervent evangelical Christianity. He continued to suffer doubt about his salvation and, after a dream in 1773, believed that he was doomed to eternal damnation. He recovered, and went on to write more religious hymns.

His religious sentiment and association with

Light Shining out of Darkness
" gave English the phrase: "God moves in a mysterious way/ His wonders to perform."

He also wrote a number of anti-slavery poems, and his friendship with Newton, who was an avid anti-slavery campaigner, resulted in Cowper's being asked to write in support of the Abolitionist campaign.[3] Cowper wrote a poem called "The Negro's Complaint" (1788) which rapidly became very famous, and was often quoted by Martin Luther King Jr. during the 20th-century civil rights movement.[4] He also wrote several other less well-known poems on slavery in the 1780s, many of which attacked the idea that slavery was economically viable.[5]

Early life

William Cowper

Cowper was born in

Pilgrim's Progress and John Gay
's Fables.

Cowper was first enrolled in Westminster School in April 1742 after moving from school to school for a number of years. He had begun to study Latin at a young age, and was an eager scholar of Latin for the rest of his life. Older children bullied Cowper through many of his younger years. At Westminster School he studied under the headmaster John Nicoll. At the time, Westminster School was popular amongst families belonging to England's Whig political party. Many intelligent boys from families of a lower social status also attended, however. Cowper made lifelong friends from Westminster. He read through the Iliad and the Odyssey, which ignited his lifelong scholarship and love for Homer's epics. He grew skilled at the interpretation and translation of Latin, an ability he put to use for the rest of his life. He was skilled in the composition of Latin as well and wrote many verses of his own.[8]

Career

After education at Westminster School, Cowper was articled to Mr Chapman, solicitor, of Ely Place, Holborn, to be trained for a career in law. During this time, he spent his leisure at the home of his uncle Bob Cowper, where he fell in love with his cousin Theodora, whom he wished to marry. But as James Croft, who in 1825 first published the poems Cowper addressed to Theodora, wrote, "her father, from an idea that the union of persons so nearly related was improper, refused to accede to the wishes of his daughter and nephew." This refusal left Cowper distraught. He had his first severe attack of depression/mental illness, referred to at the time as melancholy.[9]

In 1763 he was offered a Clerkship of Journals in the

St Albans
for recovery. His poem beginning "Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portions" (sometimes referred to as "Sapphics") was written in the aftermath of his suicide attempt.

After recovering, he settled at Huntingdon with a retired clergyman named Morley Unwin and his wife Mary. Cowper grew to be on such good terms with the Unwin family that he went to live in their house, and moved with them to Olney. There he met curate John Newton, a former captain of slave ships who had devoted his life to the Christian gospel. Not long afterwards, Morley Unwin was killed in a fall from his horse; Cowper continued to live in the Unwin home and became greatly attached to the widow Mary Unwin.

At Olney, Newton invited Cowper to contribute to a

hymnbook that he was compiling. The resulting volume, known as Olney Hymns, was not published until 1779 but includes hymns such as "Praise for the Fountain Opened" (beginning "There is a fountain fill'd with blood")[10] and "Light Shining out of Darkness" (beginning "God Moves in a Mysterious Way"), which remain some of Cowper's most familiar verses. Several of Cowper's hymns, as well as others originally published in the Olney Hymns, are today preserved in the Sacred Harp, which also collects shape note
songs.

In 1773, Cowper experienced an attack of insanity, imagining not only that he was eternally condemned to hell, but that God was commanding him to make a sacrifice of his own life. Mary Unwin took care of him with great devotion, and after a year he began to recover. In 1779, after Newton had moved from Olney to London, Cowper started to write poetry again. Mary Unwin, wanting to keep Cowper's mind occupied, suggested that he write on the subject of The Progress of Error. After writing a satire of this name, he wrote seven others. These poems were collected and published in 1782 under the title Poems by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq.

Crazy Kate, illustration for Cowper's The Task by Henry Fuseli (1806–1807).

In 1781 Cowper met a sophisticated and charming widow named Lady Austen who inspired new poetry. Cowper himself tells of the genesis of what some have considered his most substantial work, The Task, in his "Advertisement" to the original edition of 1785:

...a lady, fond of blank verse, demanded a poem of that kind from the author, and gave him the SOFA for a subject. He obeyed; and, having much leisure, connected another subject with it; and, pursuing the train of thought to which his situation and turn of mind led him, brought forth at length, instead of the trifle which he at first intended, a serious affair – a Volume!

In the same volume Cowper also printed "The Diverting History of John Gilpin", a notable piece of comic verse. G. K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy, later credited the writing of "John Gilpin" with saving Cowper from becoming completely insane.[11]

Harriett Hesketh by Francis Coates

Cowper and Mary Unwin moved to Weston Underwood, Buckinghamshire, in 1786, having become close with his cousin Lady Harriett Hesketh (Theodora's sister).[12] During this period he started his translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into blank verse. His versions (published in 1791) were the most significant English renderings of these epic poems since those of Alexander Pope earlier in the century. Later critics have faulted Cowper's Homer for being too much in the mould of John Milton.[13]

In 1789 Cowper befriended a cousin,

East Dereham (all places in Norfolk) with the Johnsons, after Mary Unwin became paralysed.[14]

Mary Unwin died in 1796, plunging Cowper into a gloom from which he never fully recovered. He did continue to revise his Homer for a second edition of his translation. Aside from writing the powerful and bleak poem "The Castaway", he penned some English translations of Greek verse and translated some of the Fables of John Gay into Latin.

Death and memorials

Stained-glass window depicting Cowper in St Nicholas's Church, East Dereham, Norfolk

Cowper was seized with

stained-glass window there commemorates his life.[2]

In St Peter's Church in

Clayton & Bell (1872) depicts Cowper at his writing desk accompanied by his pet hares, and bears the inscription "Salvation to the dying man, And to the rising God" (a line from Cowper's poem "The Saviour, what a noble flame"); and in the north aisle, an etched glass window is inscribed with lines from "Oh! for a closer walk with God" and "The Task". In the same church there is also a memorial tablet to the poet's mother, Ann Cowper.[15][16] Cowper is also commemorated (along with George Herbert) by another Clayton & Bell stained-glass window in St George's Chapel, Westminster Abbey.[17][18]

In 1823, Cowper's correspondence was published posthumously from the original letters in the possession of his kinsman John Johnson.[19][20]

Near the village of Weston Underwood, Buckinghamshire, where Cowper once resided, is a folly named Cowper's Alcove. The folly was built by the Lord of the Manor of Weston House, a member of the Throckmorton family in 1753.[21] Cowper was known to visit there frequently for inspiration for his poetry. The alcove is mentioned in Cowper's "The Task".[22] The folly was dedicated to Cowper by the Buckinghamshire county council green belt estate, and a plaque with the verse from "The Task" referencing the alcove was installed.

Queerness

Modern literary scholar Conrad Brunstrom described Cowper's relationships with women and men at this time as

homonormative
at one and the same time."[23]

Works

Poems

Hymns

Cowper is represented with fifteen hymns in American

.

  • 127 Jesus! where'er thy people meet
  • 357 The Spirit breathes upon the word
  • 450 There is a fountain, filled with blood
  • 790 Hark! my soul! it is the Lord
  • 856 To Jesus, the Crown of my hope
  • 871 Far from the world, O Lord! I flee
  • 885 My Lord! how full of sweet content (1782 translation)
  • 932 What various hindrances we meet
  • 945 Oh! for a closer walk with God
  • 965 When darkness long has veiled my mind
  • 1002 'Tis my happiness below
  • 1009 O Lord! in sorrow I resign (1782 translation)
  • 1029 O Lord! my best desire fulfill
  • 1043 There is a safe and secret place
  • 1060 God of my life! to thee I call

Familiar quotations

See also

Notes

  1. New Style (Gregorian calendar). Old Style date is 15 November 1731. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Calendar" . Encyclopædia Britannica
    . Vol. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

References

  1. ^ Abbott, Lemuel Francis (1792), Cowper (portrait)
  2. ^ a b Cameron. "William CowperDereham Norfolk". poetsgraves.co.uk.
  3. ^ "Abolitionist campaigners". bl.uk. Archived from the original on 26 June 2020. Retrieved 28 April 2015.
  4. ^ King, Martin Luther Jr., Carson, Clayborne; Holloran, Peter; Luker, Ralph; et al. (eds.), The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr: Threshold of a new decade
  5. ^ "Great campaigners", Abolition background, UK: BL, archived from the original on 26 June 2020, retrieved 28 April 2015
  6. ^ Alumni Oxonienses 1500–1714. Vol. Abannan–Kyte. 1891. pp. 338–365. Retrieved 16 December 2010.
  7. ^ Taylor, Thomas (1835). The Life of William Cowper, Esq. Seeley.
  8. ^ Rhodes, N., (ed.), William Cowper: Selected Poems, Psychology Press, 2003, p. 8.[ISBN missing]
  9. OCLC 2341106
    .
  10. ^ Cowper, William (1772). "There Is a Fountain". Hymnary.org (hymn). Retrieved 1 February 2018.
  11. ^ To be precise, Chesterton was making, in Chapter 2 of Orthodoxy [1], the point that contrary to some assumptions poetry does not make men mad, but if anything logic does. He then takes the example of Cowper: "only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the [...] logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. [...] He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin."
  12. required.)
  13. , [...] we have had great poets, like Cowper, who do not seem to have been able to distinguish between the tone of Milton and the tone of Homer.
  14. ^ Catharine Bodham Johnson, Introduction to Letters of Lady Hesketh to the Rev. John Johnson LL.D. (1901), pp. 5–8
  15. ^ "Interactive Guide". stpetersberkhamsted.org.uk. St Peter's Great Berkhamsted. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  16. .
  17. ^ Dunton, Larkin (1896). The World and Its People. Silver, Burdett. p. 35.
  18. ^ "Commemorations: William Cowper". westminster-abbey.org. Westminster Abbey. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  19. ^ Private correspondence of William Cowper, Esq., with several of his most intimate friends, now first published from the originals in the possession of his kinsman, John Johnson (2nd ed.). London: H. Colburn. 1824.
  20. ^ "Review of Private Correspondence of William Cowper". The Quarterly Review. 30: 185–199. October 1823.
  21. ^ "Cowper's Alcove – Wood Lane, Weston Underwood, Buckinghamshire, UK – Best Kept Secrets on". Waymarking.com. 25 October 2008. Retrieved 3 May 2022.
  22. ^ "The Task, by William Cowper".
  23. .

Bibliography

  • The Church Hymn Book for the Worship of God, 1872, edited by Edwin F. Hatfield. New York and Chicago.

Sources

Further reading

External links