When playing with thy vesture's tissued flow-
The violet, the pink, and jessamine,

laughter over his friend's story, and rises know so intimately. The address to his next morning to pen the famous ballad of mother's picture is the memoir of his the ride to Ware. The well-known legend childhood: of the origin of the "Task" brings out the air of light, cheerful badinage which was natural to the man. Cowper asked Lady Austen for a subject. "You can write upon any subject," laughed his friend; "write upon this sofa." And Cowper at once begins, with a smile upon his lip,

I sing the Sofa, I who lately sang
Faith, Hope, and Charity!

and rambles on with a humourist's way-
wardness, the waywardness of Rabelais or
Tristram Shandy. His poetic tone is
heightened and set off in the verses that
follow, as in others it is cramped and con-
trolled, by the shrewd eye of a man of the
world. Whether he wanders, indeed, be-
neath "the cool colonnade" of poplars, or
drapes himself in the censor's mantle, one
discerns always beneath poet or pietist the
same keen, quiet observer of the fancies
and fashions of men. Cowper is the pre-
decessor of Crabbe as a painter of real
life, but his touch is finer, his humour and
sensibility truer and more delicate. Scat-
tered everywhere over his pages are vig-
nettes of men and women as perfect in
outline and tone as those of Addison.
When the wind blows open the gypsy's
rags and discloses "a tawny skin, the
vellum of the pedigree they claim," one
almost fancies Mr. Spectator is again chat-
ting with Sir Roger de Coverley and the
fortune-teller. It is especially in his social
figures that he recalls for us the neatness
and precision of the great essayist. The
group round the card-table, the chess-
player with his "eye as fixed as marble,"
the art-connoisseur at an auction, Sir
Smug at his patron's board, are all master-
pieces of good-natured humour. But his
range of observation is far deeper and
wider than Addison's. The coarse despair
of the farmer at Tithing day is as accu-
rately painted as the vulgarity of the
tradesman of Cheapside. The pathos of
his picture of the broken-hearted servant-
girl who haunts the common and "begs an
idle pin of all she meets" is as irresistible
as that of the story of Le Fevre. It is his
humour that breaks out in Cowper's
charming egotism. Half his attraction
lies in his autobiographic tone. He is a
Montaigne of a different stamp, chatting
to us of his hares and his garden, his
"fancies of strange images observed in
the red embers" as he stoops over the
fire, his friends and foes, his joys and
sorrows. There is no poet whom we

ers,

pricked them into paper with a pinAnd thou wast happier than myself the while, Would'st softly speak, and stroke my head, and

smile.

Each phrase of his life, each habit, each
liking is as liberally laid open as in the
self-revelations of the Gascon philosopher.
Every one knows his early love of fields
and flowers, his early study of Cowley, his
learning Milton by heart, his walks arm-
in-arm with Mrs. Unwin, his dislike of
tobacco, his love for "the cups that cheer
and not inebriate," his evenings with the
tame hares gambolling over the carpet.
His social taste is the taste of a genial
Thackeray, with just the same touch of
contempt for the rural snobbery around
him. He chose the Unwins for his friends
because he found them "the most agreea-
ble people imaginable, quite sociable, and
free from the ceremonious civility of coun-
try gentlefolks. The old gentleman," he
adds characteristically, "is a man of sense,
and as simple as Parson Adams." In kindly
company like this his life expanded freely.
The greater passions, struggles, interests
of the world, were strange to him. He
had his love-disappointment at the open-
ing of his life, and one of the most re-
markable of his early poems shows, as Mr.
Benham in his admirable biography has
pointed out, that the blow told more
heavily than most of his commentators
have been willing to allow :-

See me, ere yet my destined course half-run,
Cast forth a wanderer on a wild unknown!
See me neglected on the world's rough coast,
Each dear companion of my voyage lost!

A verse like this strikes, at the very
opening of his poetical career, the note
which closes it in the "Castaway." But
his temper subsided early and naturally
into the milder delights of Mary Unwin's
friendship or Lady Austen's society. He
shrank from ambition as from passion; the
rough energy of his age, its canal-digging,
and engine-building, its unsparing criti-
cism, its audacious science, all were
strange and distasteful to him. Some-
thing of the humourist's scepticism mingled
with the natural shyness and timidity
which secluded the poet from the world.
The Cowper of popular legend is for once
the Cowper of fact; it is only with his

hares, or in the cosy seat beside the teatable, or in the little arbour where he sang hidden like a bird in leaves and flowers, that he was really at home.

far beyond any who had preceded them. That it was the age of Evidences simply proves that, unlike later divines, scholars of the Paley stamp cheerfully accepted the No doubt there was another side to all test of free inquiry, the ultimate appeal to this. Cowper's despair, his religious mel- reason, and the task, possible or impossiancholy, his madness, invests him with a ble, of reconciling its conclusions with far more tragic interest than the sunnier faith. To the revived fanaticism of the aspect of his life. Mr. Benham's treat- Puritan school such a course seemed godment of this difficult subject is wiser and less enough, just as to Cowper or Newton more just than that of preceding biogra- science and criticism seemed audacious phers, but in his effort to be fair to the defiances of Divine wisdom. But it is as Calvinistic school among whom the poet difficult to accept the verdicts of Calvinism was unhappily thrown he has fallen into on these subjects as it is to accept the dicthe very common fault of unfairness tum of Mr. Pattison that the exhibition of towards the religion of his age. "All religious truth for practical purposes was writers," he tells us, "agree in holding confined in "the period of the Evidences" that it was an evil time both in faith and to a few obscure writers. The writers of the practice;" and he adopts Mr. Pattison's Sacra Privata, the Serious Call, and the verdict that it was "an age destitute of Saturday essays of the Spectator can depth and earnestness; an age whose scarcely be called obscure. That Cowper poetry was without romance, whose philos- isolated himself from all the healthy effort ophy was without insight, and whose and sober religion of his day, that his public men were without character; an whole life flung itself into the gloomy faage of light without love, whose very naticism of men like Newton, we are far merits were of the earth, earthy." Esti- from considering, with Mr. Benham, an mates of this kind always omit from the inevitable result of his religious earnestreligion of the eighteenth century the one ness. It might have been avoided, and essential factor of the problem, the reli- had it been avoided one element at least gious element itself. It is only by the ex- of his melancholy, the form which it eventclusion of Nelson and Newton, of Wesley ually assumed, would at any rate have and Romaine, from its religion that we can been removed. But Calvinism furnished pronounce it "an evil time in faith and only one element of it. Its main cause lay practice," as it is only by the exclusion in the man himself. It is difficult not to of Hume and Berkeley that we can pro- see how much of the religious excitement nounce its philosophy to be "without in- which ended in his terrible mania sprang sight." It is amusing that Bishop Wilson, from Cowper's craving for a sphere of feelthe divine in whom Mr. Arnold has lately ing and action wider and greater than was found "light" and "love" most eminently naturally his own. There was in him a combined, should be a divine of this very restlessness that beats its wings fiercely age of "light without love." The eight- against the bars of the cosy little cage in eenth century followed two centuries which he lived. For all that was really during which the world's mind had been powerful in himself and his work he cared wholly set on religious subjects and theo- least. He was an exquisite painter of logical strife. Against this entire absorp- character and landscape, but his aim was tion of human energy into a single to be a moralist and a didactic poet. He channel there was, no doubt, a strong and healthy reaction. Literature, science, mechanical enterprise, commercial activity all claimed their part in human effort. Within the religious pale itself there was, no doubt, a great change, and above all a But for a philosophical survey vigorous reaction against the narrowness of the world with which his censure preof theological systems. But it would be tended to deal he was thoroughly unqualhard to count this reaction irreligious, as ified. His politics were the mild Whigthe Jacobite parsons counted it from gery of a little country town. His claswhom our modern censures are mostly sical training had left him utterly igno taken, unless we count justice and mercy rant of history or science. "He foresees," The Latitudinarian school practically says Mr. Benham, "the end of the world gave the tone to English religion during the close at hand. He rails at the natural eighteenth century, and in truth and fair-philosopher who attempts to discover the ness of theology the Latitudinarians stood causes of physical calamities such as earth

80.

put down his graceful vignettes of gypsies and poplar shades to assume the airs of a Christian Juvenal. He pronounced other themes to be worn out, and religion to be a new and unworked theme of his own discovery.

Since then, with few associates, in remote
And silent woods I wander, far from those
My former partners of the peopled scene;
With few associates, and not wishing more.
Here much I ruminate, as much I may,
With other views of men and manners now
Than once, and others of a life to come.
I see that all are wanderers, gone astray
Each in his own delusions.

quakes or diseases, at the historian who deed in point of consciousness, at an isolatakes the trouble to investigate the mo- tion which gave them something of the tives of remarkable men, at the geologist grandeur of Satan. "Hell disavows and and astronomer." Nothing can be more Deity disowns me" might have fallen from wearisome than his condemnation of pleas- the lips of Lara. Even in the tenderer ures and a world of which he knew noth- mood of Cowper's religious melancholy ing. It is with the mere shibboleth of there are traces of the same longing for party that "he denounces oratorios, chess, isolation, isolation from men where not whist-playing, and smoking as severely as from heaven. In the touching verses in he does breaches of the moral law." And which he paints himself as a "stricken it is the more unreal that the moment we deer" it is easy to note the unconscious get beneath the surface we find ourselves pride with which he regards his own sevobliged to distinguish between Cowper erance from the mass of men :himself and this Cowper who is simply repeating the jargon of his friends. In himself he preserves throughout a perfect moderation and good sense. "When he met with a smoker in the person of his friend Bull, his anger and scorn were over and done with directly." He did not hesitate to express his honest admiration of such a rake as Churchill. If he wrote like a bigot against Papists, he cancelled the passage on making the acquaintance of one, like a man of sense. He even made friends with a Roman Catholic family whom his neighbours shunned. His reply to Newton, who had censured him for intercourse with "worldly persons, is a bold rebuke to his friend's fanaticism. "I could show you among them two men," he writes, "whose lives, though they have but little of what we call evangelical light, are ornaments to a Christian country,men who fear God more than some who profess to love him." The unreality became far more terrible in its results when it passed into the sphere of personal piety. Cowper was by nature a gay, cheerful humourist; what he aimed at was the position of a stern religious enthusiast, or the gloomy seclusion of a rebel against God. He had the longing of an unquiet spirit for the imaginative woe of griefs which were really strange to his nature. Much of his earlier feeling must have been purely imaginary; a simple comparison of dates shows him writing merry letters to one friend at the very moment when he is inditing the gloomiest expressions of spiritual despair to another. But the conception of a struggle with heaven, of his position as the “Castaway" of Divine wrath, gave a grandeur and intensity to Cowper's life which had its pleasure as well as its pain. Byron hurling defiance at a God he feared is a different picture from Cowper playing with his knife and fork while grace was said, lest bystanders should think he ventured to join in the prayer. But in both poets there is the same indication of a satisfaction, differing greatly in

We have left ourselves little space to speak of Cowper purely as a poet. He was far from being the first to introduce landscape into poetry; in his own day Thomson had done this on a far larger scale than he ever attempted. But he is perhaps the first English poet who ever painted the personal joy of country landscapes. The author of the Seasons unwinds a glorious roll of scenes, but he never touches them or is himself a part of them. Cowper walks with us through the country he paints, splashing up muddy lanes to the peasant's cottage on the little hill, or stumbling among the molehills into the meadow "ankle-deep in moss and flowery thyme." Only one English poet can be compared with him in the sense of actual familiarity with the scenes he describes, in that sense of open-airiness, if we may venture to coin the word, which pervades the delicious pictures of his "Task." But Wordsworth climbing Helvellyn, or skirting lake and mere, is another sight from Cowper wandering along the sedgy banks of Ouse. The poet of the Lakes deliberately chose his home among scenes of a special grandeur, apart from common English sights and sounds. Cowper took Huntingdon and Olney as he found them. It is his perception of the beauty in common sights and sounds, his general all-embracing pleasure in them, that is the note of his poetry. He may be said to have discovered the field so exquisitely worked out since by Tennyson, the landscape of the Eastern counties, with its slow rivers and spacious meadows, the tranquil landscape of half England. No

finer picture of such a scene has ever been painted than that which stands at the entrance of the "Task"; and still more exquisite, while more familiar, are the wellknown lines,

perk his ears and stamp and scold aloud with all the prettiness of feigned alarm and anger insignificantly fierce." The most famous of Cowper's lines is as characteristic as it is famous - -"God made the country, and man made the town." And yet his own pictures of rural life are the best refutation of his words. No poet is more sternly realistic in his treatment of country people. The very woodsman marches along with his pipe in his mouth,

The poplars are felled, farewell to the shade And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade. It is something of the tenderness of colour, the breadth and repose of these large landscapes, that makes such pictures as that of Evening and Night in the "Winter Even-"with pressure of his thumb to adjust the ing" so charming. Cowper finds another point of likeness with Wordsworth in the closeness and fineness of his observation. His delight in the varying shades of tinting among the nearer woods, his view of the sheep pouring from the sheep-folds

The very kine that gambol at high noon,
The total herd receiving first from one
That leads the dance a summons to be gay,
Though wild their strange vagaries, and uncouth
Their efforts, yet resolved with one consent
To give such act and utterance as they may
To ecstasy too big to be supprest.

But between the relation of the two poets
to the nature they describe there is a very
wide difference. In Wordsworth there is
little or no trace of any personal love or
familiarity with any living creature. The
linnet is little more than a bright creature
stirring among the leaves. The lark is a
symbol of domestic affection. The cuckoo
is no bird, but a wandering voice. Cow-
per, on the other hand, is like Burns in his
lovingness of temper and tone. His de-
scriptions are often like so many soft ca-
resses. He moves among the life of nature
with a sort of playfellow feeling; the hare,
to borrow his own words, scarce shuns him;
the stock-dove still cooes in the pine-tree,
nor suspends her long love-ditty at his
approach; the squirrel, "flippant, pert,
and full of play," springs up the neighbour-
ing beech only to "whisk his brush and

fragrant charge of a short tube that fumes beneath his nose." The riot, the dispute, the drunkenness of the village alehouse take a form singularly in contrast with the lyrical eulogies of Burns. We see the thief and the poacher prowling along the country lanes; the very milkmaid has flaunting ribbons on her head; if the village bells fall in melodious chime on his ear, the poet sketches with unsparing pen the drone of the village parson. Cowper is no writer of sham pastorals; his rustics are photographed as clearly and truthfully as the gentry of his social satire. It is in human portraiture with loving fidelity in his delineation of the natural life and scenery amongst which men live, that half Cowper's power consists. Of his use of humour we have spoken before, but it is especially noteworthy in its contrast with Pope's poetic use of wit.

this combination of hard truthfulness in

We cannot now dwell further on either poet or poetry; but we must not conclude without drawing attention to the series of books of which the present volume forms a part. So far as we have seen them, the "Globe" editions of our English poets are admirable for their scholarly editing, their typographical excellence, their compendious form, and their cheapness. Mr. Benham's edition of Cowper is one of permanent value. The biographical introduction is excellent, full of information, singularly neat and readable, and modest

-indeed too modest in its comments. The text is arranged in chronological order, which, amongst other advantages, puts the "Castaway" in its proper position as Cowper's last poem. The notes seem concise and accurate, and the editor has been able to discover and introduce some hitherto unprinted matter. Altogether the book is a very excellent one.

66

From Temple Bar. THE PRUSSIAN VICTORY AT LEUTHEN,

A.D. 1757.

BY SIR EDWARD CREASY.

santly harassed the Duke's dominions. The offer was accepted; and the Pope confirmed Duke Conrad's grant. The Knights, largely reinforced from all parts of Christendom, made themselves by degrees masters of Prussia, and many of the adjacent territories. Conversion to Christianity was enforced on the conquered natives at the sword's point. The immigration of German merchants, artizans and agriculturists was encouraged; and the cities of Elbing, Marienburg, Thorn, Dantzic, Konigsberg, and others were founded. They added to the armorial ensigns of their order the imperial eagle, by permission of the Emperor Frederick II.

CHAUCER, in the prologue to his "Canterbury Tales," written near the end of the fourteenth century, speaks of Prussia, or "Preusse," as one of the parts of Heatheness," in which his ideal knight had ridden, and had achieved honor for his "worthiness." We know also, from the historical chronicler Walsingham, that one of the merits of a real English knight (Henry of Bolingbroke, who became our king Henry IV.) was that about the same time when Chaucer was writing, in the year 1390, he had made a campaign, as a The order was for some time prosperous crusader, among the Teutonic Knights, and powerful; but gradually it was weakagainst the heathens of Prussia, and the ened by internal dissensions, and by unother barbarous countries in its vicinity. successful wars with the kings of Poland. Prussia's civilization is little more than King Casimir of Poland, in 1466, dismemfour centuries old. France, England, bered Prussia; as Frederick the Great of Spain, Germany, and Italy were, and long Prussia, four centuries afterwards, helped had been, Christian countries, flourishing to dismember Poland. Casimir took Upwith arts and literature, with commerce, per Prussia as part of his own dominions; with civic and other political organizations; and the Teutonic Knights were compelled while the greater part of Prussia continued to do homage to the King of Poland, and to be a wild waste land, where the Teu- to acknowledge him as their feudal lord, in tonic Knights carried on, what they return for being allowed to retain possessdeemed a holy war of conversion or exter-ion of the rest of their territories. mination, against the old pagan natives of the soil.

About sixty years afterwards, in Luther's time, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights was a nobleman of the ancient House of Hohenzollern. Hohenzollern, the original seat of this remarkable family, is in Suabia. One of its members, Conrad of Hohenzollern, had attached himself to the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and had been made by him, in 1170, Burgrave of Nurnberg. That dig

These Teutonic Knights were formed, originally, out of the remnants of the army of German crusaders, which the great Emperor Frederick Barbarossa led from Europe into Asia in 1189. Barbarossa was accidentally drowned in the river Cydnus; and part of his forces turned homeward without ever reaching Palestine. Others persevered, and took hon-nity became hereditary in his family. ourable part in the crusade against Saladin, of which our Richard Coeur de Lion and Philip Augustus, of France, became the most important leaders. Imitating the Templars and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, some of the German crusaders formed an order, or military priesthood, which took the name of "The order of Teutonic Knights of the House of St. Mary of Jerusalem."

When the Mahometans had reconquered nearly all the territories and strongholds of the Christians in Syria, the Teutonic Knights betook themselves to Venice. Their renown was high in Europe; and Conrad, Duke of Mazovia, about the year 1230, offered the Grand Master of the Knights, Herman de Salza, to cede to the order the provinces of Culm and Livonia, and all the lands that they could conquer from the idolatrous Prussians, who inces

The Hohenzollerns generally were high in favour with the Emperors; and, in 1417, Frederick of Hohenzollern, Burgrave of Nurnberg, received from the Emperor Sigismund the important dignity of Margrave of Brandenburg.

The province (the March) of Brandenburg lies close to the old Prussian territory of the Teutonic Knights. After several changes of rulers, Brandenburg had lapsed to the Empire. When the Emperor appointed Frederick of Hohenzollern to be its Graf (its Marquess), he at the same time conferred on him the rank of an Elector of the Empire; and the heads of the Hohenzollerns were styled Electors of Brandenburg, down to the time when they became kings of Prussia.

Early in the fifteenth century, when the doctrines of the Reformation were making rapid progress in Northern Germany,