The Poetical Works of Anna Seward With Extracts from her Literary Correspondence. Edited by Walter Scott ... In Three Volumes |
 | I. |
| II. |
 | III. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 | The Poetical Works of Anna Seward |  |
REMONSTRANCE ADDRESSED TO WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ. IN 1788,
ON THE SARCASMS LEVELLED AT NATIONAL GRATITUDE IN THE TASK.
“Tho' grac'd with polish'd manners,” tho' endow'd
With talents destin'd to immortal fame,
But wanting generosity, the man
Who darts the blighting of satiric wit,
Lanc'd from a spleenful heart, or sullen weaves
The dark anathemas of Calvin's school
Against a nation's praise, its grateful praise,
Bestow'd by Heaven,—not on the general mind,
But on the chosen Few, ordain'd to prove
In what full portion to the human soul
God can impart intelligence; the rays
Destin'd to stream from their eternal source
Through future ages. O'er each feeling heart
Shed they not transport which allays each ill,
Sickness, and pain, and sorrow; lift the mind,
Seating its pleasures high, till waste expense
And frivolous pursuits, fatigue or pall,
While all the grosser train of sensual joys
Prove vapid as they are guilty?—Read we not
On Inspiration's page, “Who loves not man
Whom he hath seen, how should he love his God,
Yet unbeheld?” So he, who would repress
The fervent tribute of each thankful heart
For true delights and pure, receiv'd from Man,
May fear his Maker, but will never know
The nobler piety, that fits the soul
For happiness and Heaven. O! wintry Spirit,
Hurling thine icy bolt of sarcasm
Against the loveliest and most generous rites
That e'er an honest, grateful nation paid
With grudging eyes on those applausive hours
When Poesy and Music, with twin'd arms,
Attended jubilant?—to Avon's bank
From the remotest confines of our isle,
Her silver shores, and mast-aspiring towns,
Her tower'd cities and her villa'd hills,
Her lakes, her rivers, and her golden vales,
Exulting in their country's proudest boast,
And by the patriot passion taller grown,
Stood tiptoe on Avona's brink, and there
Strew'd all the rifled Summer's bloomy stores;
The incense of the warmer Orient toss'd;
Pour'd in loud paeans the triumphant song,
And from the cup, carv'd from the hallow'd tree,
Sprinkled the bright libation; tree, that fell
At the harsh dictate of a kindred mind,
Kindred in spleen, though much unlike in power,
To thine, Misanthropist! Nor singly rose
This murmur, cold and dreary as the rill
That ink-like huddles through the russet moor,
Powerless to fertilize. Lo! in a strain
Fanatic and illiberal as the lay
Maligning Avon's festival, thou scorn'st
Thy country, marshalling in holy shrines
The harmonic strength of Europe, to fulfil
The great designs Briarean Handel plann'd;
His lyre seraphic to thy native tongue!—
Thou heard'st with grudging and disgusted ear
Those great designs attain'd, when, thro' the aisles
Of the vast ancient fane, in torrents burst
Those floods of harmony, that lift the soul
Upon their swelling and tumultuous waves
Up to the Throne of God.—O! what is Virtue,
If praise of those, who thus their talents ten
Ardent improv'd, is folly, or is vice?
Fall the deep shadows of this Cynic spleen;
Mark how ungenerous the beauteous strain
Closes, that sings the desolate of heart,
Forlorn Omai, on his native hills
Wandering, with eyes that search the watry waste
Thy lovely requiem to his vanish'd joys
With heartless taunt on the illustrious band
That led him hither, and restor'd him back,
At his kind, natural wish, that nobly sprung
From patriot love, too probably, alas!
Requited ill, and pregnant with the pangs
Of fruitless, stung regret. Was it for gain
That those illustrious Chiefs, with daring hand,
Rais'd the pale curtains of the southern Pole?—
Loth as thou art to credit human worth,
O! Bard unjust! thou know'st that not for gold,
Gems, or false glory, they explor'd and brav'd
Climes dangerous and unknown; but to diffuse
The blessings mild of cultivated life
Amid the perilous and lonely haunts
Of the lugubrious savage, straying slow,
Silent and comfortless, o'er pathless wastes
Torrid, or frore. Thus on the worth, that rose
Its nation's honour, thy immortal muse,
Which should record it to succeeding times,
For the bright, fostering dews of just applause,
Sheds cankerous scorn. And was it not enough
To impute to every wild and idle weed
Of human frailty, such envenom'd juice
As slowly circles through thy latent veins,
Death-giving hemlock?—Was not that enough,
Without enlisting a much favour'd muse
And O! twice blest, like Mercy? Was thy lyre
Thus highly gifted for such warfare rude?
For notes, O! how unlike the strains that stole
From the sweet harp of Jesse's pitying son,
Before whose kind, assuasive, melting tones
Flew the despair which spread her raven-wing
O'er the sunk spirit of Saul!—Thee, Bard morose,
Churlish amid thy fancy's golden stores,
Thee will I teach, censorious as thou art,
What is not Virtue. Listen to my verse;
Confute it if thou canst;—if not, admit
The force of Truth, though rushing from a lyre
Less richly strung, less solemn than thine own!
Merely from terror to abstain from vice;
Merely to sigh for sufferings, which result
From proud unfeeling Man's abuse of power,
Careless, or rancorous;—nor yet to seize
The rod of indignation, to chastise
The vanities and follies of mankind
With that asperity, which ill becomes
A fellow-mortal frail.—'Tis not to check,
With cynic sneer, that fervour of the soul,
Which, grateful for the transport Genius gives,
Praises the unwearied culture of its powers,
These constitute thee not;—for O 'tis thine
With soft compassion's pleading eye to look,
And with benign allowance, on each fault
Not wearing crime's dark hue, though thee thyself
No such weak errors taint. It is to hope
Much from the mercy of a parent judge
On him he made so frail.—It is to know
That all thou see'st of selfish, light, and vain,
Far less of sin possesses, than the pride,
Rigid and drear, which shuts the censor's heart
Against construction charitable; against
Tender indulgence.—'Tis to love, applaud,
And emulate, whatever has its rise
In glad fraternal kindness, and the power
Of gratitude, dispersing by its glow
Envy, and Hate, and Fear, which darkling roam
That man's cold mind, who feels another's right
To Fame's bright wreath, yet brings no votive flower.
It soften not the Satirist's marble breast,
O! may he listen to an higher strain,
A strain of Inspiration, and it breathes
No precept hostile to my lays!—but list,
List, I adjure thee! since it much imports
Thy welfare temporal, and eternal!—try
The censures harsh of thy stern muse, who oft
Try them by test unerring, by the Voice
Which sounding brass and tinkling cimbal call'd
The human, and angelic strains combin'd,
If wanting Charity;—there should they fail,
Thy censures harsh to that pure ordeal brought,
Reform them, and grow social, just, and kind,
Reform them, and be happy!—With firm hand
Disroot thy bosom's hemlock!—there it grows,
Dark spots denote the weed, illiberal spleen,
Adverse to praise, however nobly earn'd,
Where latent hope of a reward on high
Prompts not its fervour; sullen, bigot-pride,
Hating for errors, less perhaps than thine.
Genius has long her amaranthine crown
Exulting placed, may they, who hold their torch
High o'er the paths of Peace, Daughters of Heaven,
Star-pointing Hope, and meek-voic'd Charity,
Clear that gloom'd brow, illume those eyes severe,
Solicitous, and sad!—O, clasp the veil
Mild Charity extends, of sky-wove grain,
Blessing the hand, which gently lets it fall
Upon a brother's frailty! From thy hand
When thus it may descend, immortal Hope
Shall, with her silver anchor, thy void grasp
Smiling supply, and, upward soaring, chase
Disclose the realms of Everlasting Light!
These verses were not sent to Mr Cowper, on account of the reported depression on his spirits, and were during his lifetime, for the same reason, with-held from the press.
The line and half, with which this poem opens, are taken from the Task. So says its author of those who feel no pang of conscience for having set their foot upon a noisome reptile.
See the invidious ridicule of the Stratford jubilee in the 6th Book of the Task, a poem whose descriptive powers are always admirable, and whose morality and piety are often sublime.
The use of that word here has been objected to, as too low an expression and unmusical; but surely it had been unwise to have expunged it, because it may be familiar in the dialect of our peasantry, since the English vocabulary has no word which would exactly give its meaning in the two passages where it occurs in the Remonstrance. Learned men have asserted, that grudge has no precise synonime in any language. Its harsh sound, where an harsh feeling is to be expressed, cannot be a just objection. Neither the words envious, or malignant, nor yet unwilling, or reluctant, convey its perfect meaning. The two first are too strong, the second not strong enough. Grudge is a word so peculiar in its signification, that it should not be banished from serious poetry. It stands between unwillingness that our neighbour should possess a certain good, and hating, or envying him its possession. Grudge denotes a feeling stronger than reluctance, yet less bitter than hatred, less vile than envy; and finally, it has been used by our best writers in their serious strains, as the authorities in Johnson's Dictionary prove. If false refinement has rejected any word, the loss of which cannot with precision be supplied, and which has no indecent meaning, those who wish rather to write nervously than nicely, should endeavour, by using it themselves, to recall the exile. Cowper, in the Task, has the word grudge twice, see book iii, page 119, first edition.
Gastril, who having bought the premises on which it stood, cut down Shakespear's mulberry tree, inhospitably to preclude the request of travellers to pay visits of poetic veneration to the tree planted by the great poet of England.
“Like bold Briareus with his hundred hands!”
He certainly composed his Oratorios for a band whose complete number the comparative fewness of musical performers rendered then unattainable.
The appropriation of those sums to charitable purposes which were collected at the Handelian commemorations, places the injustice of Cowper's sarcasm upon a level with its absurdity, accusing them, as it does, of a profane and idolatrous tendency.
See latter part of the first book of the Task. The episode begins,
I pity thee.—
When this Remonstrance to Cowper was written, its author only knew him in his publications. Mr Hayley's Biography of that unfortunate man softens, by excited pity, the indignation which had arisen from the ungenerous passages reprobated here;—but the delineation of Cowper's character, and the records of his life, compared with the illiberal censures which disgrace the interesting and beautiful pages of the Task, teach us, more than ever, to deplore the dire Calvinistic principles, which ruined his peace, and which could so freeze and narrow a heart, which Nature had made warm and expansive. They taught him to anathematize for departed genius, sublimer and more extensive than his own, Shakespear and Handel, that praise for the magnificent talents they had cultivated, which his published letters prove him to have been desirous to obtain for his own poetry. March 1806.
| The Poetical Works of Anna Seward | |