SOURCE: “Walking into Public Notice” in William Cowper: Poet of Paradise, Evangelical Press, 1993, pp. 243-285.

[In the following excerpt, Ella describes Cowper's public life. He details correspondence both with friends, such as Unwin and Newton, and enemies, such as Martin Madan.]

After the publication of the Olney Hymns in 1779 Cowper's health improved greatly and the poet began to look around for new themes for his pen. Most of these he gathered from the news he obtained through his correspondence with friends such as William Unwin, Joseph Hill and John Newton and from the events recorded in the newspapers. Unwin, for instance, wrote complaining of those in politics who talk about virtue, but, because they do not know Christ, cannot implement it. This topic moved Cowper to write ‘Human Frailty’ which uses the seafaring imagery, so often used by him to portray the Christian life, as seen in the following excerpt:

Bound on a Voy’ge of awfull Length
And Dangers Little known,
A Stranger to Superior Strength
Man vainly trusts his own:
But Oars alas could ne’er prevail
To reach the distant Coast,
The Breath of Heav’n must Swell the Sail,
Or all the Toil is lost.

CONCERN FOR THE POOR

Cowper's illness and convalescence had not put a stop to his care for the poor in any way and he used what influence he could to raise funds for bedding, food and clothing for the destitute Olney lacemakers. Up to April 1780 the Olney lace trade had enjoyed a measure of protection from competition abroad and in Ireland by means of laws restricting cheap imports. There was much talk in Parliament, however, of lifting these restrictions, which would cause the price of lace in England to sink to such a low level that even the most industrious would not have been able to earn a living.

Cowper thought of his old friend Thurlow, now Chancellor, and decided to approach him through their joint friend Joseph Hill, who held an important office on Thurlow's staff, Cowper said to Hill,

If you ever take the Tip of the Chancellor's Ear between your Finger and Thumb, you can hardly improve the Opportunity to better Purpose, than if you should Whisper into it the Voice of Compassion & Lenity to the Lace Makers. I am an Eye Witness of their Poverty, and do know, that Hundreds in this little Town, are upon the Point of Starving, & that the most unremitting Industry is but barely sufficient to keep them from it. I know that the Bill by which they would have been so fatally affected is thrown out, but Lord Stormont threatens them with another, and if another like it should pass, they are undone. We lately sent a Petition from hence to Lord Dartmouth. I signed it, and am sure the Contents are true.—The Purport of it was to inform him that there are very near 1200 Lace Makers in this Beggarly Town, the most of whom had Reason enough while the Bill was in Agitation, to look upon every Loaf they bought as the last they should ever be able to Earn … The Measure is like a Scythe, and the poor Lacemakers are the Sickly Crop that trembles before the Edge of it. The Prospect of Peace with America is like the Streak of Dawn in their Horizon, but this Bill is like a Black Cloud behind it, that threatens their Hope of a comfortable Day with utter Extinction.

CORRESPONDENCE WITH UNWIN

Cowper always treated Unwin as a younger brother of whom he was very fond. He was always ready to impart something of life's wisdom to him and help him in the many theological and legal battles he had as a minister and as a man who was taking part more and more in public life. Unwin scarcely ever tackled a problem without first turning to his ‘elder brother’ for advice. Some of Cowper's answers are puzzling as he still writes from time to time as if he were utterly cut off from God. Nevertheless, his words show great spiritual insight and an understanding of human nature coupled with a real evangelical fervour.

Unwin, for instance, was troubled in 1780 about Sabbath-keeping and when a young convert approached him for advice, he turned at once to Cowper for a biblical point of view. Cowper answered:

With respect to the Advice you are required to give to a young Lady, that she may be properly instructed in the manner of keeping the Sabbath, you are so well qualified for the Task yourself that it is impossible you should need any Assistance, at least it is hardly possible that I should afford you any, who consider myself as no longer interested in the Question. As you desire it however, & I am not willing to refuse you the little that is in my Power, I just subjoin a few Hints that have occurred to me upon the Occasion, not because I think you want them, but because it would seem unkind to withold them. The Sabbath then I think may be consider’d.

1st. As a Commandment, no less binding upon modern Christians than upon ancient Jews. Because the spiritual People amongst them, did not think it enough to abstain from manual Occupations upon that Day, but entering more deeply into the meaning of the Precept, allotted those Hours they took from the World, to the Cultivation of Holiness in their own Souls. Which ever was & ever will be a Duty incumbent upon all who ever heard of a Sabbath, & is of perpetual Obligation, both upon Jews & Christians. The Commandment therefore injoins it, the Prophets have also inforced it, & in many Instances both Scriptural & modern, the Breach of it has been punish’d with a Providential & Judicial Severity that may make By standers tremble.

2. As a Privilege, which you will know how to dilate upon better than I can tell you.

3. As a Sign of that Covenant by which Believers are entitled to a Rest that yet remaineth.

4. As the Sine qua non of the Christian Character & upon this Head I should guard against being misunderstood to mean no more than two Attendances upon Public Worship, which is a Form complied with by Thousands, who never kept a Sabbath in their Lives. Consistency is necessary to give Substance & Solidity to the whole.

To Sanctify the Day at church, & to trifle it away out of church, is Profanation & vitiates all.

After all, I could ask my Catechumen one short Question, do you Love the Day, or do you not? If you Love it, you will never enquire how far you may safely deprive yourself of the Enjoyment of it. If you do not Love it, & you find yourself obliged in Conscience to acknowledge it, that is an alarming Symptom, & ought to make you tremble. If you do not Love it, then it is a Weariness to you & you wish it was over. The Ideas of Labor & Rest are not more opposite to each other, than the Idea of a Sabbath, & that Dislike and Disgust with which it fills the Soul of thousands to be obliged to keep it. It is worse than bodily Labor, more fatiguing than the Drudgery of an Ass.¹

Unwin knew a gardener who was an Independent but chose to work on Sundays giving very ‘pious’ reasons for doing so. Cowper called his arguments ‘paultry’ and referring to the practice of Wilson the barber (now turned Baptist) he wrote, ‘The Barber and Hairdresser who officiates me, would not wait upon the King himself on a Sunday, though he could easily make Apologies more plausible than any adduced by the old man you mention, were he disposed to tresspass against his duty and his Conscience.’² Cowper, though a keen gardener himself, did not work in the garden on Sundays and told his friends, who often ordered fowls from him, that they could not expect him to kill and prepare the birds on a Sunday.

One small incident at this time shows how keen Cowper still was to be used as a messenger of God, whatever his view of his own salvation. Unwin wrote, asking him to supply him with a few verses for a lady friend who was about to celebrate her birthday. Cowper responded with evangelical enthusiasm as he knew the person concerned and her need for the one thing that she lacked in her affluent life. Thus when the big day came, a certain Miss Stella Crewzé received the following lines:

To Miss Crewzé on her Birthday
How many between East and West,
Disgrace their Parent Earth,
Whose Deeds constrain us to detest
The Day that gave them Birth!
Not so, when Stella's natal Morn
Revolving Months restore,
We can rejoice that She was Born,
And wish her Born once more.

THE CALL TO BE A POET

Cowper was beginning to see that God was calling him to be a teacher and mentor. At first he took this to mean working as a private tutor, preparing boys for the university and making sure that they received a Christian education, which was not available to them in secular schools. He encouraged Unwin, for instance, to educate his children himself and equipped him with a series of letters proposing suitable literature and teaching methods. He went on to prepare courses for his own pupils and started work on a treatise on education. Over the next few years, however, Cowper gradually realized that his scope was to be far wider than preparing children for higher education. He was to put his classical and poetic skills to his Master's use as a mentor for the whole country, calling England back to God.

Before 1780, although Cowper had composed what he termed ‘a bookful’ of verse, he still had no intention of publishing, believing that he had as much claim to the title of ‘poet’ as a maker of mousetraps had to the title of engineer. He thus sent much verse of a more trivial and playful nature to Unwin and Hill as ‘thank yous’ for the parcels of fish or books which they often sent him. The poet was very fond of fish, calling himself ‘the most ichthyophagous of men’, so the small poems that went to Joseph Hill's address accompanied by fruit, vegetables and poultry, in lieu of payment for mackerel and oysters, became quite numerous.

One of the most delightful of these small poems is the fable of ‘The Pine Apple and the Bee’, which Cowper sent to Hill. The poet had imported pineapple plants from Jamaica and was growing them in cold frames which he had made himself. He noticed that instead of obtaining honey from the many flowers available, the bees would buzz around the cold frames trying in vain to get at the pineapple blooms. Cowper goes on to observe how the world wastes time in vainly wishing for what they cannot have and how:

Our dear Delights are often such,
Exposed to View but not to Touch,
The Sight our foolish Heart inflames,
We Long for Pine Apples in Frames,
With hopeless Wish One Looks & Lingers,
One breaks the Glass & Cuts his Fingers,
But they whom Truth & Wisdom lead,
Can gather Honey from a Weed.

Cowper playfully described this poetic moralizing as ‘fiddling for fish’ and he might have remained a poet at this level if it had not been for Newton's constant request that he should write poetry of a more serious and wide-reaching nature.

Although Newton now lived far away from Olney and had made new friends, he still regarded with mistrust any friendship shown by Cowper to others. He was particularly jealous of William Unwin, who had already gained a high reputation as a preacher, scholar and social benefactor.

Cowper had written to Unwin saying, ‘You are my Mahogany Box with a slit in the Lid of it, to which I Commit my Productions of the Lyrik kind, in perfect Confidence that they are safe, & will go no further.’³ But Cowper's letters, with their poetic contents, were not as safe as he thought. Newton somehow gained access to Cowper's letters to William Unwin at the latter's home at Stock. He read them and deduced that Cowper was being more friendly towards Unwin and enclosing more poetry in letters to him than to himself. This news shocked Newton so much that he wrote a complaining letter to Cowper.

At first Cowper was quite at a loss to understand why Newton should be so interested in his letters to Unwin and at an even greater loss to understand his jealousy. He sent Newton a letter in which he emphasized that there was sense in the practice of writing different letters to different people and not sending off copies of the same letter to everyone. The letter leaves very much for Newton to read between the lines and is as fine an example of diplomacy as Cowper was ever to write.

My dear Sir—

Though I should never think of sending the same Letter to two Correspondants, yet I confess I am not sorry that your communication with Stock is cut off, at least for the present. I have indeed sometimes wish’d that it had never been opened, & for a reason obvious enough. Though I never make one Letter a Copy of another, yet I have sometimes found myself rather at a plunge, & puzzled when I have attempted to find variety for two. I know you have a sight of those I write to Mr. Unwin, which would, if possible, be still less worth your seeing, if you had before read them addressed to yourself. You may think perhaps that I deal more liberally with Him in the way of poetical export than I do with You & I believe you have reason. The truth is This—If I walked the Streets with a Fiddle under my Arm, I should never think of performing before the Window of a Privy Counsellor or a chief Justice, but should rather make free with Ears more likely to be open to such amusement. The trifles I produce in this way are indeed such trifles that I cannot think them seasonable Presents for you. Mr. Unwin himself would not be affronted if I was to tell him that there is this difference between him & Mr. Newton: That the latter is already an Apostle while He himself is only undergoing the business of Incubation, with a hope that he may be hatched in time. When my Muse comes forth arrayed in sables, at least in a robe of graver cast, I make no scruple to direct her to my friend at Hoxton.⁴ This has been one reason why I have so long delayed the Riddle, but lest I should seem to set a value upon it that I do not by making it an Object of still further enquiry, here it comes.

I am just Two & Two, I am warm, I am cold
And the Parent of numbers that cannot be told
I am lawfull, unlawfull, a duty, a fault
I am often sold dear, good for nothing when bought.
An extraordinary boon, & a matter of course
And yielded with pleasure when taken by force
Alike the delight of the Poor & the Rich
Tho’ the vulgar is apt to present me his breech.(5)

The fact that Cowper sent Newton this rather vulgar riddle⁶ shows that he obviously wanted to make the point that Newton had not missed much by not receiving copies of the ditties Cowper had sent to other friends. When the Gentleman's Magazine published the riddle many years later, they censured the last two lines, thinking them too vulgar for gentlemen's eyes.

THE CONTROVERSY WITH MADAN

Another reason for Newton's lack of understanding regarding Cowper's attitude towards Unwin and petty verse was that he had been urging his friend for months to take up his pen to champion the Evangelical cause against Martin Madan, who was behaving in a most unseemly way. This matter should have first priority, Newton thought. Martin Madan was, however, the very person who had helped lead Cowper to Christ and he was Cowper's first cousin. Newton must have realized the difficulties of conscience Cowper would have in combatting in public a man who was his good friend, brother in Christ and also his own cousin.

Newton's stubbornness eventually won Cowper's co-operation and it was through his anti-Madan writings that Cowper was to start on the road to success as a poet. Before turning to this matter in detail, however, it will be fitting to look closely at the life and character of Martin Madan, friend of Whitefield, Wesley, Toplady and Newton, and one of the earliest supporters of Lady Huntingdon.

LIFE OF MADAN

Madan was six years older than Cowper but had perhaps shared at least one year at Westminster with his cousin. After Westminster Madan went on to Christ Church, Oxford, where he obtained a B.A. in 1746. After Oxford, Madan studied law at the Inner Temple and was called to the Bar in 1748. Madan was considered a brilliant scholar and successful lawyer and it was to a great extent due to his help and the loan of his notes that Cowper was able to complete his own studies. Madan's legal career was, however, to end abruptly in 1750.

The lawyer was sitting in a coffee-house joking with his colleagues about an event that was taking place in the neighbourhood. John Wesley was holding a meeting and the friends decided it would add to the evening's amusement if one of them should go and watch Wesley for a few minutes and then come back and take him off. Madan, who was a gifted speaker and mimic, was thought to be the best person to be given the task, so he was dispatched to go and hear Wesley preach. The evangelist was just giving out his text as Madan came in. It was Amos 4:12: ‘Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.’ At once Madan was convicted and convinced that he was not prepared to meet his God and, as he listened, he realized that, far from his being able to ‘take Wesley off’, Wesley could describe every detail of Madan's own sinful character. The lawyer left the meeting-house a changed man. When his friends greeted him on his return to the coffee-house with the words, ‘Can you take Wesley off?’ he could merely reply truthfully, ‘No, but he can take me off’, and left the place never to return.⁷

In the same year as his encounter with Wesley and with God, Madan became an itinerant preacher and seven years later was ordained in the Church of England. During this time he became closely acquainted with leading members of the Evangelical Revival and in 1762 was appointed by Lady Huntingdon as Chaplain of the Lock Hospital for vagrant women at Hyde Park Corner, London.

In 1765 Cowper wrote to Madan's sister expressing his great sense of the debt he owed to her brother for helping him on the way to Christ. ‘Your Brother Martin’, he told her, ‘has been kind to me, having wrote to me twice (since my Enlargement), in a stile which though it once was irksome to me to say the least, I now know how to value. I pray God to forgive me the many light things I have said and thought of Him and his labours. Hereafter I shall consider him as a burning and a shining Light, and as one of those who have turned many to Righteousness, shall shine hereafter as the Stars for ever and ever.’

MADAN'S USE OF MUSIC IN WORSHIP

Madan's light, however, was to wane considerably throughout the following years and to become, after 1780, a mere shadow of its former flame. Towards the beginning of his ministry Madan concentrated on the spoken word. He preached with power and could reach the hearts of the most hardened hearers. Madan also loved music and loved to sing. Indeed his love for music and singing gripped him more than his love for the spoken word. He wrote many hymns, edited the hymns of other Evangelicals, such as Charles Wesley, and composed music for them.

As current sacred singing did not tickle the ear enough for Madan, he put more rhythm and pep into it and encouraged his congregation to speed up their sung praise. He also introduced musical instruments into his services to ‘liven them up’ and added choirs for good measure to ‘lead’ and keep up the pace of the singing. His next experiment was to have the choir take part in sung worship without the participation of the congregation. Soon his services were offering mere ‘Christian entertainment’ whereby a passive congregation received their religious worship presented to them in a fully orchestrated way.

At first many Evangelicals were delighted with Madan's new way of getting street walkers ‘off the streets’. John Wesley, in particular, was keen on this new method of West End evangelism. Wesley approved of the fashionable custom of singing hymns in church meetings as long as it was ‘singing with the spirit and understanding also’.⁸ Methodist music, he argued, should be like the music of the ancients—pure melody, which he explained as an arrangement of single notes as opposed to singing in parts, which he called harmony.⁹

After a few visits to the Lock, however, the evangelist began to doubt the sense of Madan's musical activities. In February 1764, we find Wesley entering in his diary:

I heard ‘Judith,’ an Oratorio, performed at the Lock. Some parts of it were exceeding fine; but there are two things in all modern pieces of music, which I could never reconcile to common sense. One is, singing the same words ten times over; the other, singing different words by different persons, at one and the same time. And this, in the most solemn addresses to God, whether by way of prayer or of thanksgiving. This can never be defended by all the musicians in Europe, till reason is quite out of date.

Wesley also began to condemn the use of choirs hired to do the congregation's singing for them, thus shutting them out of the worship. Writing in 1768 after taking part in a sung service, Wesley says,

I began reading prayers at six, but was greatly disgusted at the manner of the singing. 1. Twelve or fourteen persons kept it to themselves, and quite shut out the congregation: 2. These repeated the same words, contrary to all sense and reason, six or eight times or ten times over: 3. According to the shocking custom of modern music, different persons sung different words at one and the same moment; an intolerable insult on common sense, and utterly incompatible with any devotion.¹⁰

Wesley quotes in support of his argument an author who writes, ‘The singing different words by different persons at the very same time necessarily prevents attention to the sense, so it frequently destroys melody for the sake of harmony; meantime it destroys the very end of music, which is to affect the passions.’¹¹

Cowper objected strongly to a minister taking part in such musical entertainment when there were so many churchgoers who were hungry for the Word of God. It was most likely Martin Madan and his brother Spencer that Cowper had in mind when he drew his scathing pen-portrait of the fiddling pastor who was too busy with his music to do real pastoral work:

Occiduus(12) is a pastor of renown,
When he has pray’d and preach’d the sabbath down,
With wire and catgut he concludes the day,
Quav’ring and semiquav’ring care away.
The full concerto swells upon your ear;
All elbows shake. Look in, and you would swear
The Babylonian tyrant with a nod
Had summon’d them to serve his golden god.
So well that thought th’ employment seems to suit,
Psalt’ry and sackbut, dulcimer, and flute.
Oh fie! ’tis evangelical and pure!
Observe each face, how sober and demure!
Ecstasy sets her stamp on ev’ry mien;
Chins fall’n, and not an eye-ball to be seen.
Still I insist, though music heretofore
Has charm’d me much, (not e’en Occiduus more)
Love, joy, and peace, make harmony more meet
For sabbath ev’nings, and perhaps as sweet.
Will not the sickliest sheep of every flock
Resort to this example as a rock;
There stand, and justify the foul abuse
Of sabbath hours with plausible excuse?
If apostolic gravity be free
To play the fool on Sundays, why not we?
If he the tinkling harpsichord regards
As inoffensive, what offence in cards?
Strike up the fiddles, let us all be gay!
Laymen have leave to dance, if parsons play.

Cowper was particularly critical of this kind of music-making as it occurred on Sundays when the parson ought to be looking after his flock. Indeed, he knew of ministers who were so taken up with their Sunday musical revelries that they had no time to deal with those who needed spiritual help and told their maids to tell Sunday callers that they were not at home. Thus the poet goes on to write,

Oh Italy!—thy sabbaths will be soon
Our sabbaths, clos’d with mumm’ry and buffoon.
Preaching and pranks will share the motley scene:
Our's parcell’d out, as thine have ever been
God's worship and the mountebank between.
What says the prophet? Let that day be blest
With holiness and consecrated rest.
Pastime and bus’ness both it should exclude
And bar the door the moment they intrude;
Nobly distinguish’d above all the six.
By deeds in which the world must never mix.
Hear him again. He calls it a delight,
A day of luxury, observ’d aright,
When the glad soul is made heav’n's welcome guest,
Sits banqueting, and God provides the feast.
But triflers are engag’d and cannot come;
Their answer to the call is—Not at home.(13)

Rather than learning from criticism Occiduus got worse and soon his Sunday services were mere musical presentations void of any trace of God's Word. Commenting on ‘Occiduus’ when writing to Newton in September 1781 Cowper sadly says, ‘I am sorry to find that the censure I have passed upon Occiduus is even better founded than I supposed. Lady Austen has been at his Sabbatical concerts, which it seems are composed of song tunes and psalm tunes indiscriminately, music without words, and I suppose one may say, consequently without devotion.’

Cowper was deeply concerned for the minister's welfare and goes on to discuss what the disadvantages and advantages of music are to one's spiritual life:

He seems, together with others of our aquaintance, to have suffered considerably in his spiritual character by his attachment to Music. The lawfullness of it, when used with moderation, and in its proper place, is unquestionable; but I believe Wine itself, though a man be guilty of habitual intoxication, does not more debauch and befool the natural understanding, than Music, always Music, Music in season and out of season, weakens and destroys the spiritual discernment. If it is not used with an unfeigned reference to the worship of God, and with a design to assist the Soul in the performance of it, which cannot be the case when it is the only Occupation, it degenerates into a sensual delight, and becomes a most powerfull advocate for the admission of other pleasures, grosser perhaps in degree, but in their kind the same.

Cowper and Newton were by no means alone in these seeming strictures. We read in the Memoirs of Hannah More, a most cultivated lady and member of the literati, the following interesting account: ‘I have just received a card invitation from a Countess, to a concert next Sunday, with a conditional postscript, “if I ever do such things on a Sunday;” and I have sent for answer, that I never do such a thing. After such a public testimony as I have given, one would have thought I should have escaped such an invitation.’¹⁴

Such words from the mouth of a leading Evangelical of more than two hundred years ago should give us food for thought today. We are living in times when the follies of the eighteenth century are returning and evangelical churches en masse seem to be jumping on the musical bandwagon and giving their church members tunes instead of sermons. Once a church departs from gospel-preaching, anything can happen in it, as the subsequent history of Martin Madan shows.

MADAN ADVOCATES POLYGAMY

Cowper's cousin was to discredit himself even further and thus separate himself from the Evangelical Movement as a whole. To be fair to Madan, it must be said that his health was very poor at this time and he had been given up for dead on at least one occasion in the seventies. His mind also seemed to have been affected by the family complaint and by an unhealthy reliance on astrology. He was not the same man mentally and physically in 1780 that he had been when he had helped lead Cowper to Christ. The events which led up to this lapse on Madan's part show how good-hearted and well-intentioned the man was but also how little respect he had for the high moral standards of a Christian.

Madan realized that many of the women who came under his care had been forced onto the streets by having affairs with men who had deceived them and then left them to their fate. He believed strongly that if a man were sexually intimate with a woman, he should be compelled to marry her and to support her. Madan soon found out, however, that a great number of the women under his care had lost their virginity through their dealings with married men. Thus Madan came up with the bizarre idea that these married men should be compelled to turn bigamists and marry the women they had wronged. He was naïve enough to think that all the prostitutes under his care were such wronged women who only needed a good home and financial support and they would mend their ways.

Both Cowper and Newton were closely attached to Madan and had followed the development of his ideas with astonishment and horror. Both saw that Madan, in his effort to better the lot of the prostitutes under his care, had failed to see how such a solution would wrong the malefactor's real, lawful wife. Cowper, always more able to express his views more spontaneously in verse than in prose, reacted to Madan's ‘brainwave’ with the words:

Oh rare Device! the Wife betray’d,
The Modest, chaste, Domestic Woman,
To Save a worthless, Wanton Jade,
From being, what she would be, Common.

Madan's great error was that he believed the Scriptures viewed bigamy as a Christian norm and that such a form of matrimony was part of the divine law. He thus started work on a multi-volumed book to prove his point. His sub-title summed up his position exactly: ‘Shewing by what means, and by what degrees, the laws of Jehovah concerning marriage, were opposed and abrogated, and a New System invented and established by Christian Churchmen.’¹⁵ On page 75 of the first volume he even argued that bigamy was ‘allowed, owned, and even blessed of God’ and ‘in no one instance, amongst the many recorded in Scripture, so much as disapproved’.

When Madan's circle heard that their friend was about to publish a three-volumed book to ‘prove’ from Scripture that bigamy was biblical, they bombarded him with letters of entreaty begging him not to disgrace the gospel in this way. They knew what a brilliant exegete Madan was and how earnestly and convincingly he was able to put over a case. Relying on his great learning in Hebrew and Greek, Madan proudly refused to listen to anyone who was not as versed in these languages as he was. Tempers were lost on both sides. The Rev. Thomas Haweis, once Madan's closest friend, started to prepare a slanderous attack on him, calling him ‘disordered’ in both head and heart. To make matters worse, Haweis threatened to make public certain confessions that Madan had made to Haweis in strict brotherly fellowship.

As Haweis owed his livelihood to Madan, Newton felt this was a great lack of taste and Christian responsibility and soon found his fellow Evangelicals looking to him to write to Haweis and stop his unwise publication. Newton wrote to Cowper asking his advice on how he should tackle the problem, stressing that the poet's thoughts would be invaluable to him. Cowper replied,

You do me an Honor I little deserve when you Ask my Opinion upon any Occasion, and Speak of being determined by it. Such as it is however it is always at your Service, and would be if it were better worth your having.—The Dictates of Compassion and Humanity Prompt you to Interpose your good Offices in order to prevent the Publication with which this unhappy Man is threat’ned by Mr. Haweis. They are Advisers you may safely Listen to, and deserve the more Attention on the present Occasion, as you are perhaps the only Man in the World to whom such a Design has been Suggested, and who would know how to manage the Execution of it with sufficient Delicacy & Discretion. The Book and the Author are distinct Subjects, and will be for ever accounted such by all reasonable Persons. The Author indeed may Suffer by the Follies of the Book, but the latter ought not to be Judged by the character of the Writer. If it were otherwise, yet in this Case there can be no Need of Mr. Haweis, the Point in Dispute being already tried, and Mr. Madan's Arguments condemn’d at the Bar of the Public. Mr. Haweis will hurt himself more by One such ungenerous Proceeding, than he can possibly Hurt Mr. Madan by divulging, if he can do it, a thousand Irregularities in his Conduct. Sensual & Lawless Gratifications are odious enough, especially in a Minister, but double Detestation attends the Man who to Gratify a present Enmity, avails himself of Secrets he could never have had Possession of, had he not once professed himself a Friend. If it should happen too that Mr. Madan's Intellects should be Swept away by such a Deluge of Obloquy & Detraction, following close upon his present Disappointment (an Event not at all improbable,) Mr. Haweis will have reason to wish that he had taken his Life rather than destroy’d his character. He thinks perhaps the Interest of the Cause demands it of him; but when was the Cause promoted by a Discovery of the Vices or Follies of its Advocates & Professors?—On the whole therefore if I must Advise, I would Advise to Write.¹⁶

John Newton accordingly wrote and soon found himself urging more than one fellow opponent not to go to equally dangerous extremes in presenting an opposite case. Instead of being thankful to Newton for appealing for fairness, Madan saw his old friend as his chief opponent, obviously thinking of the ‘mis reports’ concerning Newton's past referred to in chapter 6, and reproached him for not doing anything against prostitution and not setting an example by taking another wife alongside his beloved Mary. Newton had told Haweis, Madan's friend, of the false charges of immorality levelled against him and Haweis had obviously passed this information on to Madan, who was now misusing it. As John and Mary were well-known public figures by this time, and Madan spoke and wrote openly about his views, Cowper again responded in verse to protect his friend, publishing the following lines in the Gentleman's Magazine:

If John marries Mary, and Mary alone,
’Tis a very good match between Mary and John.
Should John wed a score, oh! the claws and the
          scratches!
It can’t be a match:—’tis a bundle of matches.

On reading the poem Newton wrote to Cowper saying:

Your epigram made us sharers in your laugh, but the occasion and subject summoned my muscles back to their pristine seriousness. I am afraid there will be many bundles of matches, and many families inflamed by them with the fire of contention. How can that be true in theory which if reduced to practice must be mischievous! Your dilemma (with three horns) will hold good. He that is happy with one wife will want no more, he that is not happy with one has one too many. Or, suppose we Sternholdize¹⁷ the thought—

What different senses of that word, A Wife!
It means the comfort or the bain of life.
The happiest state is to be pleased with one,
The next degree is found in having none.(18)

Newton saw that Cowper had a great skill in presenting a case without being bellicose and indeed slanderous. He also realized that Cowper was one of the few Evangelicals who had legal and linguistic abilities comparable to those of Madan and the literary skill to combat him. Thus Newton approached Cowper to lead Evangelicals against Madan in print.

Cowper felt he ought to decline for a number of reasons. For one thing, Cowper had already brought scorn on his family in particular, and the Whigs in general by his failing to appear before the House of Peers as the Whigs' candidate for a preferment which had led to his first major breakdown. Furthermore, Martin Madan was not the first of the Cowper clan to promote bigamy. Lord Chancellor Cowper, the brother of William's and Martin's grandfather, had written a treatise in defence of bigamy which had caused a national scandal and had done much to lessen the power of the Whigs in England. Cowper did not wish to bring more scorn on his family by highlighting the fact that its members still campaigned for bigamy.

Another good reason why Cowper felt that he could not combat Madan was his cousin's linguistic abilities. When Cowper started to read Madan's book, published under the pretentious name of Thelyphthora, he saw at once that whereas he could easily cope with Madan's arguments from the Greek, he had not the command of Hebrew to prove a worthy combatant. He realized also that Madan's point of view was so closely argued and so skillfully put that it would be extremely difficult to defeat him on his own ground.

Madan's notorious work was eventually published on 31 May 1780. Some thirty writers, mainly of an Evangelical bent, took up their pens in reply, but most of them were no match for the would-be bigamist. Although Cowper told Newton that Madan had exposed himself to the censure of those who think and the laughter of those who do not,¹⁹ the book sold well and Madan published a new edition, adding twenty-seven reasons from the pen of a Birmingham clergyman, why bigamy was acceptable to a Christian. The author, John Riland, challenged anyone to refute his reasoning. This moved Cowper, who found Riland's arguments unbiblical and illogical, to take up his pen and refute all twenty-seven of them in prose. His replies, however, are no longer extant but Cowper seems to have been successful as Riland recanted his views shortly afterwards.²⁰

COWPER TAKES UP THE CHALLENGE

Once Cowper had committed himself he was too much of a ‘Valiant for Truth’ to leave things at that and gradually became convinced before God that he must answer Madan at length in verse or he would disgrace himself by not taking up the challenge. Seeing that Mrs Newton was bearing the brunt of the burden of the controversy between Madan and Newton and knowing that her nerves were possibly even more tender than his own, he sent her a personal poem as a token that he was prepared to take up the gauntlet. Once again Cowper strove to solve human problems by taking an example from the animal world. The poem was originally called ‘Anti-thelyphthora’, like his later major poem on the topic, but when Cowper published the poem two years later, he removed all references to Madan's book and renamed the poem ‘The Doves’.

Muse, Mark the much lamented Day,
When like a Tempest fear’d
Forth issuing on the last of May,
Thelyphthora appear’d.
That fateful Eve I wander’d late,
And heard the Voice of Love;
The Turtle thus address’d her Mate,
And Sooth’d the list’ning Dove—
Our mutual Bond of Faith and Truth,
No Time shall disengage;
Those Blessings of our Early Youth
Shall cheer our latest Age:
While Innocence without Disguise,
And constancy Sincere,
Shall fill the Circles of those Eyes,
And Mine can Read them there;
Those Ills that wait on all Below
Shall ne’er be felt by Me,
Or gently felt, and Only so,
As being shar’d with Thee.
When Lightnings Flash among the Trees,
Or Kites are Hov’ring near,
I fear lest Thee alone they Seize,
And know no other Fear.
’Tis then I feel myself a Wife,
And Press thy Wedded Side,
Resolv’d an Union form’d for Life
Death never shall Divide.
But Oh! if, fickle and Unchaste
(Forgive a transient Thought)
Thou couldst become unkind at last,
And Scorn thy present Lot,
No need of Lightnings from on high,
Or Kites with cruel Beak;
Denied th’ Endearments of thine Eye,
This Widow’d Heart would Break.
Thus Sang the Sweet Sequester’d Bird
Soft as the passing Wind,
And I Recorded what I heard—
A Lesson for Mankind.(21)

This practice of teaching Christian and human conduct through pictures from nature was to become a major feature of Cowper's work and would link him closely with John Bunyan and the emblem poets. On many an occasion Cowper was to mourn that man had fallen lower than the beasts in moral duties and that whereas a pair of doves remained true to each other, it was often thought genteel by humans to live adulterously.

Cowper did not neglect his other friends during this time and in the summer of 1780 he sent William Unwin, among others, a poem entitled ‘Love Abused: The Thought Suggested by “Thelyphthora”’:

What is there in the Vale of Life
Half so delightfull as a Wife,
When Friendship, Love, and Peace combine
To Stamp the Marriage Bond Divine?
The Stream of pure and genuine Love
Derives its Current from Above,
And Earth a Second Eden Shows
Where’er the Healing Water flows.
But Ah! if from the Dykes and Drains
Of sensual Nature's fev’rish Veins,
Lust like a lawless headstrong Flood
Impregnated with Ooze and Mud,
Descending fast on ev’ry Side,
Once Mingles with the Sacred Tide,
Farewell the Soul enliv’ning Scene!
The Banks that wore a Smiling Green
With rank Defilement overspread,
Bewail their Flow’ry Beauties dead;
The Stream polluted, dark and dull,
Diffused into a Stygian Pool,
Thro’ Life's last melancholy Years
Is fed with everflowing Tears;
Complaints supply the Zephyr's Part,
And Sighs that Heave a Breaking Heart.

In this poem, too, there is a reference to a topic—the second Eden—which was to become prominent in the poet's later works.

Soon Cowper was to find a poetic theme which would enable him to strike out at Madan without being personal and without getting tied up in theological and linguistic knots. In October 1780 an article appeared in the Monthly Review dealing critically with Madan's book. The author, the Rev. Samuel Badcock, tackled his subject in a learned, biblical and humorous way. Cowper saw at once that he had found a prototype in Badcock for the hero of a dramatic poem in which he could put all his talents to the service of the Lord. Cowper thus determined to write an allegory in a mock-Spenserian manner in which Sir Marmadan, Knight of the Silver Moon (Badcock), fights against Sir Airy del Castro (Madan). Sir Airy is under the spell of an evil fairy named Hypothesis who has charmed him into believing:

That Wedlock is not rig’rous as suppos’d,
But Man within a wider Pale inclos’d
May Rove at Will, where Appetite shall lead,
Free as the Lordly Bull that ranges o’er the mead.
That Forms and Rites are Tricks of Human law,
As idle as the Chatt’ring of a Daw,
That lewd Incontinence and lawless Rape
Are Marriage in its true and proper shape,
That Man by Faith and Truth is made a Slave,
The Ring a Bauble, and the priest a Knave.(22)

Sir Marmadan is well protected with the Christian armour of Truth and Righteousness, but Sir Airy has a shield, inscribed with Hebrew words, (the Old Testament) which he believes will make him invincible. Cowper sums up the whole futile state of Madan's defence in two couplets:

His Shield with Hebrew lore was scribbled round,
But snatching it impatiently from the ground,
And slinging it revers’d upon his Arm,
He chang’d it to a Cabbalistic charm.

In other words, the Bible misused is truth abused and no shield at all. As Madan had called his treatise Thelyphthora, a word meaning ‘corruption of woman’, Cowper entitled his poem ‘Anti-Thelyphthora’. Such Greek-sounding names seem out of place in today's English but in Cowper's day it was fashionable to use them.

When Newton received the text from Cowper he was greatly surprised. It was quite different from what he had expected. Instead of a learned treatise, here was a swashbuckling adventure poem, similar in style to the Wakefield and York Morality Plays which the so-called common folk performed on the village green. It was as full of humour as it was of sense! Newton must have thought of his own lectures on Bunyan's works which he had delivered at Olney and which were attended by Cowper. He had expounded Bunyan's arguments for using literary devices and ‘types, shadows and metaphors’ to put the truth over and thus viewed Cowper's long poem with Bunyan's eyes when he wrote,

This book is writ in such dialect
As may the minds of listless men affect;
It seems a novelty, and yet contains
Nothing but sound and honest gospel strains.(23)

Newton, realizing that Cowper had taken up the cudgels for the truth in a way the average reader would understand and appreciate, approached his own publisher, Joseph Johnson of St Paul's Churchyard, with the poem. Johnson looked upon his business with far more vision than that of an ordinary businessman. He was very careful to choose works for publication that were sound and sensible yet daring and even radical in scope. He obviously believed Cowper's poem to be in this category and agreed to publish it as it was. Cowper stressed, however, that the poem was to appear anonymously, to which Newton agreed saying, ‘Your secret is locked up in a strong box of which only Mrs Newton, Mr Johnson and myself have the key.’ The poem was published as a twenty-paged quarto pamphlet in December 1780 and was Cowper's first independent production.

‘Anti-Thelyphthora’ was not, however, Cowper's last effort in this field and he wrote several shorter poems on the subject, chiefly in defence of Newton, who reviewed a later edition of Madan's book and incurred Madan's full wrath. Madan was once again critical of the Newtons' marriage and Cowper decided to write a poem void of allegory and symbolism, attacking Madan directly in person. The result was his ‘On Madan's Answer to Newton's Comments on Thelyphthora’:

M. quarrels with N.—for M. wrote a book,
And N. did not like it, which M. could not brook.
So he call’d him a Bigot, a wrangler, a Monk,
With as many hard names as would line a good trunk,
And set up his back, and claw’d like a Cat,
But N. lik’d it never the better for that.
Now N. had a Wife, and he wanted but One,
Which stuck in M's Stomach as cross as a bone.
It has always been reckon’d a just cause of Strife
For a Man to make free with another Man's Wife;
But the Strife is the strangest that ever was known,
If a man must be scolded for loving his own.

Peace only came to Newton when Madan swore never to have anything to do with him again. Madan had to leave the Lock, where he was eventually succeeded by Newton's friend Thomas Scott, and spent the rest of his life in academic studies and ill health.

After Cowper's death Lady Hesketh, Cowper's legatee, refused to allow biographers permission to publish ‘Anti-Thelyphthora’ for fear of hurting the feelings of the Madan family. It was thus not known for many years that Cowper's correspondence with John Newton had first led the poet to go into print as a Christian author. Instead of this the more ‘romantic’ theory developed that it was Mrs Unwin who encouraged Cowper to start publishing Christian verse—a theory which still holds sway even in more enlightened times.

LITERARY CO-OPERATION WITH NEWTON

Cowper was now beginning to see his way before him. He saw what an able weapon poetry was in the fight against evil and also that poetry reached people and homes where the gospel was otherwise never heard. Urged on by Newton, Cowper began his long evangelical poem ‘The Progress of Error’. Newton, encouraged by Cowper's success, asked Cowper for help in producing his own works. Thus the two friends started a mutual clearing-house in which they vetted each other's works before sending them off to their publisher.

One of the ways in which Cowper helped Newton was in suggesting titles and mottos for several of the latter's works. One day, for instance, in the summer of 1780, Cowper received the following lines from Newton concerning a new literary venture: ‘I shall be obliged to your ingenuity to hammer me out a title and a motto—my name is not to be prefixed. Can you compound me a nice Greek word as pretty in sound and as scholastically put together as Thelyphthora, and as much more favourable import as you please, to stand at the top of the title-page, and serve as a handle for an inquirer?’²⁴ Always willing to oblige his good friend, Cowper sent him a title page which Newton accepted gladly:

Cardiphonia
or the
Utterance of the Heart
In a Collection of Letters written in the Course
of a Real Correspondence
On a Variety of Religious Subjects
by Omicron
Haec Res et jungit, junctos et servat Amico.(25)

At the same time he wrote,

My dear Friend—

It is difficult to find a Motto for a Book containing almost as many Subjects as Pages, and those Subjects, of the Religious kind. Horace and my Memory are the only Motto-mongers I am possessed of. The former could furnish me with nothing suitable to the Occasion, but the latter after a deal of Persuasion & Enquiry, has at last supplied me with one that I hope will please you. I think my Greek Word as Characteristic of the Book as need be; I am sure it is a very legitimate Combination, and both my Ears inform me that it is more Musical than Thelyphthora. Thus having Puffed my Performance sufficiently, I leave it to your Admiration, and from yours, (if it so please you) recommend it to that of the Public.

Horace will furnish me with a Motto for the ensuing Paragraph as Pat as Heart can wish.

… nec meus audet
Rem tentare Pudor, quam Vires ferre recusent.(26)

Several examples of Newton's help to Cowper can be found in their correspondence concerning ‘The Progress of Error’, which Cowper had originally intended as a further criticism of Madan and a castigation of Lord Chesterfield for encouraging his own son to lead an immoral life. Cowper had referred to Thelyphthora as ‘curs’d’ and had used very strong language against Chesterfield. Newton asked Cowper to mellow his language as it ‘grated on the ear’ and complained especially about the use of the word ‘curs’d’. Cowper replied,

As to the word you mention, I a little suspected that you would object to it. Though I really thought that a Book which cannot be supposed to have been written under a Blessing, and that has certainly carried Mischief with it into many Families, deserved an Epithet as harsh as that which I had given it. It is a bargain however that I have made with my Lady Muse, never to defend or stickle for any thing that you object to. So the Line may stand if you please, thus.

Abhorr’d Thelyphthora, thy daring page—

Not tainted page for the reason I give in the Letter which contains the Epitaph on Lord Chesterfield.—You will meet with the obnoxious word again in the Copy I send you now, but coupled with a Substantive of so filthy a Character that I persuade myself you will have no Objection to the use of it in such a Connexion. I am no friend to the Use of words taken from what an Uncle of mine call’d the diabolical Dictionary, but it happens sometimes that a coarse Expression is almost necessary to do Justice to the Indignation excited by an abominable Subject. I am obliged to you however for your Opinion; and though Poetry is apt to betray one into a Warmth that one is not sensible of in writing Prose, shall always desire to be set down by it.

Cowper's decision ‘never to defend or stickle’ anything that Newton objected to eventually led him to drop all further attacks on Martin Madan and erase any direct references to Lord Chesterfield.

The ten years from 1770 to 1780 had witnessed writers such as John Wesley, Walter Sellon, Thomas Olivers and Augustus Toplady writing articles full of abusive language in their efforts to fight for Arminianism or Calvinism according to their various convictions. Newton, though looked upon as a leader by both parties, had steadfastly refused to join in these unholy slanging matches and was very anxious that Cowper, who loved a wrangle, should not spoil his message and his style by stooping to the level of his contemporary Christian writers. Thus, whenever Cowper inclined too much towards invective Newton was always there to calm him down.

A good example of this occurred when Cowper went on to write a poem which he called ‘Expostulation’, in which he denounced the Roman Catholic Church in no uncertain terms. Newton, who always campaigned for religious liberty, advised Cowper not to publish such offending lines. The following excerpt from one of Cowper's letters on the subject shows how intensely the two friends exchanged ideas about their works and how willing Cowper was to follow Newton's advice.

Though when I wrote the passage in question, I was not at all aware of any impropriety in it, and though I have frequently since that time both read and recollected it with the same approbation, I lately became uneasy upon the subject, and had no rest in my mind for three days ’till I resolved to submitt it to a trial at your tribunal, and to dispose of it ultimately according to your sentence. I am glad you have condemned it, and though I do not feel as if I could presently supply its place, shall be willing to attempt the task whatever labour it may cost me, and rejoice that it will not be in the power of the Critics whatever else they may charge me with, to accuse me of Bigotry, or a design to make a certain denomination of Christians odious, at the hazard of the public peace. I had rather my book were burnt than that a single line guilty of such a tendency, should escape me.

We thank you for two copies of your address to your parishioners; the first I lent to Mr. Scott, whom I have not seen since I put it into his hands. You have managed your Subject well, have applied yourself to Despisers and Absentees of every description, in terms so expressive of the interest you take in their welfare, that the most wrongheaded person cannot be offended. We both wish it may have the effect you intend, and that prejudices and groundless apprehensions being removed, the immediate objects of your ministry may make a more considerable part of your Congregation.²⁸

THE FIRST VOLUME OF POEMS PUBLISHED

After 1780 Cowper became convinced that he was to be a professional poet with the task of turning the minds of his pagan and backsliding contemporaries back to God and to his purpose and plan for the world and for mankind.

Shortly before Christmas 1780 Cowper wrote to Newton saying that he would soon be receiving an even longer poem than ‘Anti-Thelyphthora’ (i.e. the ‘Progress of Error’ already mentioned), and it would be quickly followed by another poem of still uncertain length entitled ‘The Truth’. It seems that hard work had been one of the causes of Cowper's last serious illness, so to put Newton's fears at bay he wrote, ‘Don’t be alarmed. I ride Pegasus in a curb. He will never run away with me again. I have convinced Mrs Unwin that I can manage him, & make him stop when I please.’

By the following January we find Cowper writing to Newton rejoicing that his friend had received the poem safely and was pleased with it. More mention is made of ‘The Truth’ and a few days later Cowper is writing to say that he had finished a long poem entitled ‘Table Talk’. In other words, Cowper had written three long poems of some 2,000 lines in all in a matter of a few weeks, not counting numerous pieces of verse of various lengths which he sent to other friends.

From now on Cowper's output was enormous by any standards. The fact was that he believed that God had a special ‘niche’ for every person and only those could serve a life useful to God who were given grace to recognize their ‘niche’ and live in it. Cowper had now found his place in God's purpose and though melancholy took over at times, whenever he was working for God as his poet he found true happiness.

Although Cowper promised Newton that he could stop when he pleased he kept on writing verse intensively well into February when he wrote to his friend,

Notwithstanding my purpose to shake hands with the Muse & take my leave of her for the present, we have already had a tete a tete since I sent you the last production. I am as much or rather more pleas’d with my new plan than with any of the foregoing. I mean to give a short Summary of the Jewish Story, the miraculous Interpositions in behalf of that people, their great privileges, their Abuse of them & their consequent destruction, and then by way of Comparison such another Display of the favors vouchsaf’d to this Country, the similar Ingratitude with which they have requited them, and the punishment they have therefore reason to expect, unless Reformation interpose to prevent it. Expostulation is its present title. But I have not yet found in the writing it that facility & readiness without which I shall despair to finish it well or indeed to finish it at all.²⁹

Although in this letter Cowper gives the impression of being at the end of his ideas, ‘Expostulation’ was in fact soon finished and in April the poet sent Newton a large parcel, wrapped up in brown paper, with the request that he should forward it to Johnson the publisher. Newton unpacked the completed manuscript of his long poems, ‘Table Talk’, ‘Truth’, ‘Expostulation’ and ‘The Progress of Error’, as well as several minor pieces, all neatly numbered so that Johnson would know just in what order they were to be printed. Newton wasted no time in contacting Johnson, who professed delight at the poems and promised they would be speedily printed.

In his covering letter sent with the parcel, Cowper mentions to Newton that he feels his poem ‘The Truth’ is so true and to the point that readers will be offended by its directness and goes on to say,

I think therefore that in Order to obviate in some measure those prejudices that will naturally erect their bristles against it, an explanatory preface, such as You, (and nobody so well as you) can furnish me with, will have ev’ry grace of propriety to recommend it. Or if you are not averse to the task, and your Avocations will allow you to undertake it, and if you think it would be still more proper, I should be glad to be indebted to you for a preface to the whole. I wish you however to consult your own Judgment upon the Occasion, and to engage in either of these works, or neither, just as your discretion guides you.

Newton was only too pleased to assist his friend and soon got down to the task.

WILLIAM UNWIN FEELS LEFT OUT

Meanwhile Cowper had a most difficult problem on his hands. As soon as Newton had protested that Cowper was showing more friendship to Unwin than himself, the poet had begun to supply Newton with the bulk of his work and ask his more experienced friend for help with his manuscripts. Not willing to cause strife, Cowper had not informed Unwin that he was now sending copy at a tremendous rate to Newton and that he was hoping to publish a whole volume of poems in the near future. Unwin was living under the apprehension that the small poems Cowper kept sending him were the whole of his verse. It seems that though Newton knew what was going on at the Unwins' home at Stock, Unwin had no idea of the extent of Cowper's correspondence with Newton.

The day came, however, when Cowper felt he must tell Unwin of his literary progress. Thus on 1 May 1781, after preparing the way by writing twenty-one lines of ‘small talk’, Cowper broke the news to Unwin saying,

In the Press and speedily will be published in one Volume Octavo, price three Shillings, Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple Esqr. You may Suppose by the Size of the publication that the greatest part of them have been long kept secret, because you yourself have never seen them. But the truth is that they are most of them except what you have in your possession, the produce of the last Winter. Two thirds of the Compilation will be occupied by 4 pieces, the first of which sprung up in the Month of December, and the last of them in the Month of March; they contain I suppose in all, about 2500 lines, are known, or are to be known in due time by the names of

Table Talk
Truth
The Progress of Error
Expostulation.

Mr. Newton writes a preface, and Johnson is the printer. The principal, I may say the only reason why I never mention’d to you till now, an Affair which I am just going to make known to all the World, if that Mr. All the World should think it worth his knowing, has been this; that ’till within these few days I had not the honor to know it myself. This may seem strange but it is true. For not knowing where to find underwriters who would chuse to insure them, and not finding it convenient to a purse like mine to run any hazard even upon the Credit of my own Ingenuity, I was very much in doubt for some Weeks whether any Bookseller would be willing to subject himself to an Ambiguity that might prove very expensive in case of a bad Market. But Johnson has heroically set all peradventures at defiance, and takes the whole charge upon himself—so Out I come.

Yours my dear friend with your Mother's Love—

Wm Cowper.

Cowper must have written these lines in great apprehension and with a very guilty conscience, yet evidently did not wish to give Unwin the full story about Newton's former protests. The poet had known, however, for several months that he might soon be able to go to print and the fact that he had not been absolutely sure until a short time before he wrote to Unwin was neither here nor there. Good friends usually inform one another about their work. Cowper, indeed, was always talking about friends sharing everything, but in order to keep the threefold peace between Newton, Unwin and himself, he had on this occasion been too reserved by far towards Unwin who, after all, was an even older Christian friend than Newton.

Unwin was, not surprisingly, deeply hurt and his reaction shows how deep was his friendship for Cowper and how suspicious he was of the poet's friendship with others. He lost no time in telling Cowper what he thought of his secrecy and the poet was made to regret what he had done. He was at first at a loss to find words to comfort Unwin but, not wishing to offend such a good friend further, he wrote,

My dear friend—

It is Friday; I have just drank tea, and just perused your Letter; and though this Answer to it cannot set off ’till Sunday, I obey the warm impulse I feel, which will not permitt me to postpone the business ’till the regular time of writing.

I expected you would be griev’d; if you had not been so, those Sensibilities which attend you upon every other Occasion, must have left you upon this. I am sorry that I have given you pain, but not sorry that you have felt it. A concern of that sort would be absurd, because it would be to regret your friendship for me, and to be dissatisfied with the Effects of it. Allow yourself however three Minutes only for Reflection, and your penetration must necessarily dive into the motives of my Conduct. In the first place, and by way of preface, remember that I do not, whatever your partiality may incline you to do, account it of much Consequence to any friend of mine, whether he is or is not employ’d by me upon such an Occasion. But all affected renunciations of poetical merit apart, and all unaffected Expressions of the Sense I have of my own Littleness in the poetical Character too, the obvious and only reason why I resorted to Mr. Newton and not to my friend Unwin was this—that the former lived in London, the latter at Stock; the former was upon the Spot, to correct that press, to give Instructions respecting any sudden Alterations, and to settle with the publisher every thing that might possibly occurr in the course of such a business. The latter could not be applied to for these purposes without what I thought would be a manifest Incroachment upon his kindness; because it might happen, that the troublesome Office might cost him now and then a Journey, which it was absolutely imposs-ible for me to endure the thought of.

When I wrote to you for the Copies you have sent me, I told you that I was making a Collection, but not with a design to publish. There is nothing truer than that at that time, I had not the smallest Expectation of sending a Volume of poems to the Press. I had several small pieces that might amuse, but I would not when I publish make the Amusement of the Reader my only Object. When the Winter depriv’d me of other Employments, I began to compose; and seeing 6 or 7 Months before me which would naturally afford me much leisure for such a purpose, I undertook a piece of some length; that finish’d; another; and so on, ’till I had amass’d the Number of lines I mentioned in my last … Believe of me what you please, but not that I am indifferent to you, or your friendship for me, on any Occasion.³⁰

As soon as Cowper had posted off this appeasing letter his conscience pricked him again and he decided to send another letter including a poem to pacify Unwin further. As the post had already gone, Cowper sent the letter by some other unofficial route.

Unknown to Unwin, Cowper had written a poem in his honour and had forwarded it to Newton in the brown paper parcel to be included in his volume. He had wanted it to be a surprise for Unwin when he eventually received Cowper's work. Now Cowper thought he had better send Unwin the poem so that he would see for himself that Cowper always thought well of him. The poem is as follows:

To the Revd. William Unwin
Unwin, I should but ill repay
The kindness of a friend,
Whose worth deserves as warm a lay
As ever Friendship penn’d,
Thy name omitted in a page
That would reclaim a vicious age.
An Union form’d as mine with thee,
Not rashly or in sport,
May be as fervent in degree,
And faithfull in its sort,
And may as rich in comfort prove,
As that of true fraternal Love.
The Bud inserted in the rind,
The Bud of Peach or Rose,
Adorns, though diff’ring in its kind,
The Stock whereon it grows
With flow’r as sweet or fruit as fair
As if produc’d by Nature there.
Not rich, I render what I may,
I seize thy Name in haste,(31)
And place it in this first Assay,
Lest this should prove the last—
’Tis where it should be, in a plan
That holds in view the good of Man.
The poet's Lyre, to fix his fame,
Should be the poet's heart;
Affection lights a brighter flame,
Than ever blaz’d by Art.
No Muses on these lines attend,
I sink the poet in the friend.

From this time on Cowper kept Unwin minutely informed of the progress of his book. Taking advantage of this latest change on Cowper's part, Unwin pressed the poet to allow him to be his contact-man at the publisher's instead of Newton. Cowper refused point-blank and, to be freed of strife, even went so far as to tell Newton that his services were no longer needed either. Cowper soon regretted this latter move and asked Newton to continue his work and read and check the proofs as soon as they came from the printer's. Johnson, however, intervened himself and took over much of the humdrum work of proof-checking.

The news that Newton had been privy to Cowper's confidence, whereas he himself had been left in the dark, could not have come at a worse time for Unwin. He had recently become governor of Christ's Hospital, a school with a very high academic reputation. Unwin was able to submit candidates for the school and obtain bursaries for them. Not wishing to be accused of misusing his privilege, however, he had refrained from making use of his right of nomination.

When Newton heard of Unwin's appointment, he at once begged Mrs Unwin to use all the influence she could on her son to get a nomination for his own nephew. For over a year he bombarded Mrs Unwin and Cowper with this request and even gave them a deadline when he expected them to come up with the nomination. Just before hearing Cowper's news about his literary co-operation with Newton, Unwin finally broke his practice and had Newton's nephew admitted to Christ's Hospital. He did this at great risk to his own reputation and expected Newton to show him real gratitude when he personally presented him with the nomination. To his surprise, Newton received the news without any great display of thanks and, indeed, dealt with Unwin rather brusquely.

This caused Unwin to write to his mother and Cowper complaining bitterly of Newton's unthankful conduct and at the same time expressing his shock at Cowper's news concerning his intended publication. Cowper thus wrote to soothe Unwin about not taking him into his confidence regarding Newton's editorship and, in the same letter, Mrs Unwin tried to calm her son down concerning his disappointment at Newton's hands. Mrs Unwin wrote,

My dear Billy,

accept my most sincere thanks for your favour done me, by that conferred on Mr. Newton's relation. I am sorry Mr. Newton's manner shocked you; but am rejoiced it had no other Effect. It was not for want of sensibility of the obligation I am certain; but I never in my life knew One that seemed so much at a loss as he is for expressing his feelings by word of mouth.—Last Sunday's post brought Mr. Cowper a letter from him with the following passage. ‘Yesterday Mr. Unwin came into the vestry & presented me with a Nomination to the Hospital. He did it very Cordially & handsomely, & I thanked him very heartily & honestly. For though I had no right to expect such a favour from him merely on my own account, I am very willing to consider myself personally obliged to him for it. I know Mrs. Unwin will believe I am duly sensible of her kindness, & I call my best thanks to her but a pepper Corn, because they fall short of what I mean:—I am no loser by this disbursement of thanks to him & to her, for Mr. & Mrs. Nind have paed me in kind’—

I am my dear Billy your obliged & affectionate Mother:

M. U.

When Unwin received Cowper's first four long poems, he wasted no time in giving his comments on them. He felt ‘Truth’ to be far too near the truth for unsaved people and suggested that Cowper should make it less obviously evangelical. Cowper looked upon ‘Truth’ as his own statement of faith and wanted to lead up to it with other lighter poems so that when readers had worked their way through more enticing fare they would suddenly find themselves confronted with the image of themselves in the eyes of God. This idea did not seem to appeal to Unwin but Cowper stood firm and wrote,

I reply therefore, not peevishly but with a Sense of the Kindness of your Intentions that I hope you may make yourself very easy on a Subject that I can perceive has occasion’d you some Sollicitude. When I wrote the Poem called Truth, by which is intended Religious Truth, it was indispensibly necessary that I should set forth that doctrine which I know to be true, and that I should pass what I understand to be a just Censure upon Opinions and persuasions that differ from, or stand in direct Opposition to it. Because though some Errors may be innocent, and even religious Errors are not always pernicious, yet in a case where the Faith and Hope of a Christian are concern’d, they must necessarily be destructive. And because neglecting This, I should have betray’d my Subject; either suppressing what in my Judgment is of the last importance, or giving Countenance by a timid Silence to the very Evils it was my design to combat. That you may understand me better, I will subjoin—that I wrote that Poem on purpose to inculcate the eleemosynary Character of the Gospel, as a dispensation of Mercy in the most absolute Sense of the word, to the Exclusion of all claims of Merit on the part of the Receiver. Consequently to set the brand of Invalidity upon the Plea of Works, and to discover upon Scriptural ground the absurdity of that Notion which includes a Solecism in the very terms of it, that Man by Repentance and good works may deserve the Mercy of his Maker. I call it a Solecism, because Mercy deserved, ceases to be Mercy, and must take the name of Justice. This is the Opinion which I said in my last the World would not acquiesce in, but except this I do not recollect that I have introduced a syllable into any of my pieces that they can possibly object to. And even this, I have endeavor’d to deliver from doctrinal dryness, by as many pretty things in the way of trinket and play thing, as I could muster upon the Subject. So that if I have rubb’d their Gums, I have taken care to do it with a Coral, and even that Coral embellish’d by the Ribbon to which it is tied, and recommended by the tinkling of all the bells I could contrive to annex to it.³²

MORE POETIC OUTPUT

When Cowper sent his parcel of poems off to Newton for publication in April, he told his friend that he had worked so hard that he was now going to give free range to his ‘Love of fine weather, Love of Indolence, and Love of gardening Employments’. This was the way he usually spoke to Newton in order to belittle his enormous appetite for work. Just two weeks later, however, he was already working on a further poem called ‘Hope’, which he believed would run into 1,000 lines.

Johnson, meanwhile, realizing that the gentry were leaving London for the season to enjoy their leisure at places such as Brighton, Southampton, Ramsgate and Bristol, decided not to publish until the winter and informed Cowper that he could make his book as thick as he liked. The poet thus continued to write ‘Hope’ with a view to adding it to the volume already at the publishers. Then, only days after writing that he would soon be in print and enjoying his garden, he found himself producing more poetry than ever.

Although he told Unwin that since he had begun to write long poems, he turned up his nose at short ones, he proceeded to translate and rewrite a number of Latin poems which his old teacher Bourne had written. These he gave a more Christian turn and made sure that they had a moral application. He then started to revise the poems he had already written, omitting those sections which were of mere topical interest and replacing them with other new compositions.

By July Cowper had not only composed several anti-Madan poems mentioned above but also a 635-lined work entitled ‘Charity’ and was halfway through a 900-lined poem called ‘Conversation’.

Cowper wrote a great many letters in verse, most of which have been lost. One rhyming letter, however, which he wrote to Newton telling him about ‘Charity’ has been preserved. Cowper tells Newton:

I have writ Charity, not for popularity, but as well as I could, in hopes to do good. And if the Review’r, should say to be sure, the Gentleman's Muse, wears Methodist shoes, you may know by her pace, and talk about grace, that she and her bard, have little regard, for the tastes and fashions, and ruling passions, and hoyd’ning play, of the modern day, and though She assume, a borrow’d plume, and now and then wear, a tittering air, ’tis only her plan, to catch if She can, the giddy and gay, as they go that way, by a production, on a new construction, and has baited her trap, in hopes to snap, all that may come, with a Sugar plumb, his Opinion in this, will not be amiss, ’tis what I intend, my principal End, and if it Succeed, and folks should read, ’till a few are brought, to a serious thought, I shall think I am paid, for all I have said, and all I have done, though I have run, many a time, after a rhime, as far as from hence, to the end of my Sense, and by hook or crook, write another book, if I live and am here, another year.³³

In August we find Cowper writing to Newton,

I have already begun and proceeded a little way in a poem call[ed] “Retirement.” My view in chusing that Subject is to direct to the proper use of the opportunities it affords for the cultivation of a Man's best Interests; to censure the Vices and the follies which people carry with them into their Retreats, where they make no other use of their leisure than to gratify themselves with the Indulgence of their favorite appetites, and to pay themselves by a life of pleasure for a life of Business. In conclusion I would enlarge upon the happiness of that State when discreetly enjoyed and religiously improved. But all this is at present in Embryo. I generally despair of my progress when I begin, but if like my travelling Squire, I should kindle as I go, this likewise may make a part of the Volume, for I have time enough before me.³⁴

Not forgetting his promise to send Newton samples of his trivial verse, too, Cowper enclosed the following lines concerning the high price of food as a result of the political situation, together with the promise of a brace of fowls and a duck sent on via a friend.

Cocoa nut naught,
Fish too dear,
None must be bought
For us that are here.
No Lobster on Earth,
That ever I saw,
To me would be worth
Sixpense a claw.
So dear Madam wait
Till fish can be got,
At a reas’nable rate,
Whether Lobster or not
Till the French and the Dutch
Have quitted the Seas,
And then send as much
And as oft’ as you please.

NEWTON'S PREFACE

By September 1781 Cowper had enough poems ready to fill 450 octavo pages and Johnson felt the time was coming to bring out the book. He therefore promised Cowper it would be out shortly after Christmas. Newton thus put the finishing touches to his preface and showed it to Eli Bates, a fellow Evangelical and founder member of the Eclectic Society, for approval. Bates found the preface too severe by far and warned Newton that he was supposed to motivate readers to read on rather than frighten them off. Nevertheless Newton forwarded the preface to Cowper without altering it, though he informed the poet of Bates' objections.

On reading the preface Cowper confessed that Newton had shown true friendship and only queried one sentence which he felt was not easily understandable. The rest, he believed, should remain exactly as it was. Of Bates' censures Cowper wrote,

Mr Bates, without intending it, has passed a severer censure upon the modern world of Readers, than any that can be found in my volume. If they are so merrily disposed in the midst of a thousand calamities, that they will not deign to read a preface of three or four pages, because the purport of it is serious, they are far gone indeed, and in the last stage of a frenzy such as I suppose has prevailed in all nations that have been exemplarily punished, just before the infliction of the Sentence. But though he lives in the world he has so ill an Opinion of, and ought therefore to know it better than I who have no intercourse with it at all, I am willing to hope that he may be mistaken.³⁵

The first part of Newton's preface is a very personal affirmation of his friendship for Cowper in which he says how pleasing and flattering it is for him to have his own name perpetuated on the title-page along with that of Cowper. He goes on to outline how he and the poor people of Olney have benefited from Cowper's friendship over many years.

After this, however, Newton becomes rather indiscreet and too personal. He had already referred in print to Cowper's illness in his preface to the Olney Hymns, though it was hardly a fitting place to mention it. Now Newton went even further in outlining Cowper's former indisposition, even suggesting that the poet was now past his spiritual best. Such information had nothing to do with the contents of the book and could hardly be considered as necessary background information for an appreciation of the poems. With hindsight it is easy to see that the remarks are in very bad taste.

The rest of the preface is a brilliant outline of the Christian gospel and would have served as a jewel in the crown of any book written by a man of God. In this section Newton says of Cowper:

He aims to communicate his own perceptions of the truth, beauty, and influence of the religion of the Bible,—a religion, which, however discredited by the misconduct of many, who have not renounced the Christian name, proves itself, when rightly understood, and cordially embraced, to be the grand desideratum which alone can relieve the mind of man from painful and unavoidable anxieties, inspire it with stable peace and solid hope, and furnish those motives and prospects, which in the present state of things, are absolutely necessary to produce a conduct worthy of a rational creature, distinguished by a vastness of capacity, which no assemblage of earthly good can satisfy, and by a principle and preintimation of immortality.

After explaining how Cowper's poems encourage experimental Christianity, as opposed to mere head-knowledge and lip-confession, Newton ends with the stirring words: ‘We are now certain, that the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. It has reconciled us to God, and to ourselves, to our duty, and our situation. It is the balm and cordial of the present life, and a sovereign antidote against the fear of death.’

Although several of Newton's friends strove to persuade him to cut out the parts least applicable to the contents of Cowper's poems and the gospel, Newton remained adamant that the preface was to remain unaltered. This dismayed Johnson, who thought that some of Newton's words were hardly a good introduction to a new author's work and the publisher, who counted Newton as one of his best friends, finally decided that he could not publish his words as they stood. Newton was very hurt but remained unbending and managed to arrange with Johnson for a few copies to be produced with his preface for private distribution.

He then turned again to Cowper asking him to have his name put on the title-page as editor in spite of Johnson's feelings regarding the preface. Cowper agreed to this, although at this time he had no intention of publishing under his own name. Johnson, however, would not hear of it and Newton's name was left out. This was very hard on Newton who had put in a great deal of work both on Cowper's and Johnson's behalf. He had read and transcribed hundreds of handwritten pages, edited them, pointed out passages which he felt should be omitted and made dozens of sensible suggestions as to how other passages could be bettered.

Eight years later when Cowper's poems were being proclaimed as the very best and there was no danger of their not selling well, Johnson relented and published Cowper's complete works up to that date with Newton's preface.

INTO PRINT AT LAST

Now that his poems were actually being printed, Cowper, though calm on the surface, was obviously worried about what the critics might say. He wrote to Unwin declaring his stand on the matter:

The Critics cannot deprive me of the pleasure I have in reflecting that so far as my leisure has been employed in writing for the public, it has been conscientiously employed, and with a view to their advantage. There is nothing agreeable to be sure in being chronicled for a dunce, but I believe there lives not a man upon earth who would be less affected by it than myself. With all this Indifference to Fame, which you know me too well to suppose me capable of affecting, I have taken the utmost pains to deserve it. This may appear a mystery or a paradox in practise, but it is true. I consider’d that the taste of the day is refined and delicate to excess, and that to disgust that delicacy of taste by a slovenly inattention to it, would be to forfeit at once all hope of being usefull; and for this reason, though I have written more verse this last year than perhaps any man in England, have finished and polished and touched and retouched with the utmost care. If after all I should be converted into waste paper, it may be my misfortune, but it will not be my fault, & I shall bear it with the most perfect Serenity.³⁶

Cowper, however, could not stop writing and soon he had composed a lengthy poem on the subject of friendship and one entitled ‘Ætna’ about what happens when a country turns its back on God. Oddly enough ‘Friendship’ was the first and one of the very few poems of Cowper's that Johnson refused to publish. It was also one of the poems that Cowper himself was most pleased with. However, he did not insist on its publication, believing that Johnson knew best what would be acceptable.

One of the last poems to be added to the volume was ‘The Love of the World Reproved; or, Hypocrisy Detected’ which Newton had already published in the Leeds Mercury and Gentleman's Magazine with six lines added of his own. This is the poem dealing with the various ideas of ‘sin’ amongst believers and is probably the source of the common expression ‘going the whole hog’.

By December Cowper had to stop sending in new poems as printing was in progress. Looking back at the way Johnson had accepted and praised his poetry Cowper told Newton that he had ‘reason to be very much satisfied’ with his publisher.

The first day of March 1782 saw the publication of the largest collection of Christian verse in one volume by one author to be issued since the days of John Bunyan. The volume carried the unpretentious title of Poems by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq.

As Cowper intended his work to be of use to the general reading public, he was particularly anxious that secular reviewers should also see the value of his work. He need not have worried. On the whole, though not jubilant in praise, the secular magazines and journals of the day gave Cowper a most positive write-up.

The reviewer in the Gentleman's Magazine stressed that he had known Cowper when he was ‘a keen sportsman in the classic fields of Westminster’ and had written essays for the Connoisseur. He wrote, ‘We have perused, with great pleasure, both the serious and humourous pieces, the Latin and English, of which this collection consists.’

The Monthly Review took some time to come out with their comments but when Cowper read them, he had every reason to be pleased. They proclaimed Cowper as a good poet, quite different to all others, writing,

Most poets have no character at all; being, for the chief part, only echoes of those who have sung before them. For while not only their sentiments and diction are borrowed, but their very modes of thinking, as well as versification, are copied from the said models, discrimination of character must of course be scarcely perceptible. Confining themselves, like pack-horses, to the same beaten track and uniformity of pace, and, like them too, having their bells from the same shop, they go jingling along in uninterrupted unison with each other. This, however, is not the case with Mr. Cowper; he is a poet sui generis, for as his notes are peculiar to himself, he classes not with any known species of bards that have preceded him: his style of composition, as well as his modes of thinking, are entirely his own. The ideas, with which his mind seems to have been either endowed by nature, or to have been enriched by learning and reflection, as they lie in no regular order, so are they promiscuously brought forth as they accidentally present themselves.

The London Magazine was high in praise of Cowper's verse, saying that it was ‘an entertaining collection upon a variety of subjects, temporary, moral, and satirical; composed with sound judgment, good taste, and no small share of wit and humour’.

The only criticism Cowper received in the press was from the staunchly conservative Critical Review, which was a vowed opponent of anything Whiggish and anything that was as critical as Cowper about the abuses of the Established Church. The reviewer liked Cowper's smaller, non-religious pieces but said he should keep his hand off religious topics as ‘his genius seems but ill adapted’ for such work. The magazine, so used to the pompous language of the neo-classical poets, found Cowper's simple language ‘coarse and vulgar’.

Cowper had foreseen such criticism when writing of weaknesses in the up-and-coming Higher Criticism of the Bible in ‘The Progress of Error’, where he says,

When some hypothesis absurd and vain
Has fill’d with all its fumes a critic's brain,
The text that sorts not with his darling whim,
Though plain to others, is obscure to him.(37)

Besides, Cowper had little time to worry about what the critics had to say. He was busy working on his second volume.

Notes

1. Letter to William Unwin, 28 March 1780.

2. Letter to William Unwin, 24 June 1781.

3. Letter to William Unwin, 1 May 1779.

4. Newton's address in London.

5. Letter to Newton, 31 July 1780.

6. When the riddle was published in the Gentleman's Magazine after Cowper's death, a reader solved it with the answer ‘a kiss’.

7. It might be thought exaggerated to refer to a ‘coffee-house’ in such a negative way but such houses were of very low repute in Cowper's day. Even in his most rakish period, Cowper confessed there was only one coffee-house in the whole of London that one could frequent without the risk of finding oneself in the most ribald and vulgar company.

8. Up to this time hymn-singing in Anglican church services was almost unknown and most churches were without organs and other musical instruments.

9. Wesley's Journal, 22 October 1768.

10. Ibid., 9 August 1778.

11. Ibid., 22 October 1768.

12. During the Calvinist-Arminian controversy at the end of the eighteenth century, many Calvinists argued that Occiduus, meaning ‘west’, was a reference to the Wesleys, (i.e. ‘West-leys’). Hayley thought that the reason why Cowper's first volume did not sell well for the first three years or so was that believers thought he was attacking Wesley. Internal evidence in Cowper's works points to either Martin Madan, the West End pastor, or his brother Spencer as the ‘culprit’. Occiduus also means ‘near death’ and ‘perishing’.

13. ‘The Progress of Error’, lines 124–68.

14. Roberts [Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More, New York, 1838], p. 170. (Miss More had just published Manners of the Great.)

15. Madan's emphasis.

16. Letter to John Newton, 19 November 1780.

17. Sternhold was one of the authors of the metric psalms sung in the Anglican service. Many later hymn-writers regarded his work as mere doggerel—Cowper disagreed with them.

18. Newton's Autobiography, [ed. by Josiah Bull], p. 250.

19. Letter to John Newton, 6 February 1780.

20. Mrs. Unwin's son-in-law, the Rev. Matthew Powley, was also very helpful in influencing Riland for the good.

21. Letter to Mary Newton, 5 June 1780. In his published version Cowper replaced the first verse with the lines:

    Reas'ning at every step he treads,
    Man yet mistakes his way,
    While meaner things, whom instinct leads,
    Are rarely known to stray,

    and made a few other minor alterations.

22. ‘Anti-Thelyphthora,’ lines 58–67.

23. George Offer, The Whole Works of John Bunyan, 1867, vol. III, p. 87.

24. Newton's Autobiography, p. 252.

25. Horace's Satires, I.ii.54, ‘This is how to make friends and keep them friends.’ Source given in King & Ryskamp, Letters and Prose Writings of Cowper, vol. i, p. 361. Letter to John Newton, 5 July 1780.

26. Horace, Epistles, II.i.258–9: ‘My modesty does not allow me to attempt a task which is beyond my strength to bear.’

27. Letter to John Newton, 18 February 1781.

28. Letter to John Newton, 27 November 1781.

29. Letter to John Newton, 25 February 1781.

30. Letter to William Unwin, 11 May 1781.

31. Cowper pronounced ‘haste’ with a short vowel to rhyme with ‘last’, also with a short vowel. Although Olney is now well within the area of Britain where vowels are pronounced long, older inhabitants of Olney still pronounce their vowels short, often reminding one of a Yorkshireman's speech. Cowper went to great pains to adopt the local pronunciation.

32. Letter to William Unwin, 24 June 1781. Cowper is referring in his final sentence to a baby's teething-ring.

33. Letter to John Newton, 12 July 1781.

34. Letter to John Newton, 25 August 1781.

35. Letter to John Newton, 22 October 1781.

36. Letter to William Unwin, 6 October 1781.

37. ‘The Progress of Error,’ lines 444–7.