To form anything like a fair estimate of Cowper, it is wise to ignore as much as possible his mental disease, and always to bear in mind the manner of man he naturally was. He belonged essentially to the order of wags. He was, it is easy to see, a lover of trifling things, elegantly finished. He hated noise, contention, and the public gaze, but society he ever insisted upon.
'I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd, How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! But grant me still a friend in my retreat, Whom I may whisper--"solitude is sweet."'
He loved a jest, a barrel of oysters, and a bottle of wine. His well-known riddle on a kiss is Cowper from top to toe:
'I am just two and two; I am warm, I am cold, And the parent of numbers that cannot be told. I am lawful, unlawful, a duty, a fault, I am often sold dear, good for nothing when bought, An extraordinary boon, and a matter of course, And yielded with pleasure when taken by force.'
Why, it is a perfect dictionary of kisses in six lines!
Had Cowper not gone mad in his thirty-second year, and been frightened out of the world of trifles, we should have had another Prior, a wittier Gay, an earlier Praed, an English La Fontaine. We do better with _The Task_ and the _Lines to Mary_, but he had a light touch.
''Tis not that I design to rob Thee of thy birthright, gentle Bob, For thou art born sole heir and single Of dear Mat Prior's easy jingle. Not that I mean while thus I knit My threadbare sentiments together, To show my genius or my wit, When God and you know I have neither, Or such as might be better shown By letting poetry alone.'
This lightness of touch, this love of trifling, never deserted Cowper, not even when the pains of hell got hold of him, and he believed himself the especially accursed of God. In 1791, when things were very black, we find him writing to his good Dissenting friend, the Rev. William Bull ('Charissime Taurorum'), as follows:
'Homer, I say, has all my time, except a little that I give every day to no very cheering prospects of futurity. I would I were a Hottentot, or even a Dissenter, so that my views of an hereafter were more comfortable. But such as I am, Hope, if it please God, may visit even me. Should we ever meet again, possibly we may part no more. Then, if Presbyterians ever find their way to heaven, you and I may know each other in that better world, and rejoice in the recital of the terrible things that we endured in this. I will wager sixpence with you now, that when that day comes you shall acknowledge my story a more wonderful one than yours; only order your executors to put sixpence in your mouth when they bury you, that you may have wherewithal to pay me.'