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��OUB HYMNS
��productions of the man Cowper. " He has invented," says Thomas Campbell, " no character in fable, nor in the drama ; but he has left a record of his own character, which forms not only an object of deep sympathy, but a subject for the study of human nature." And his works have long been recognized as the poems of the philanthropist, they are not only pure from evil, but powerful for good. His invectives against slavery and other lational wrongs, have left an indelible impression upon the public mind, the full results of which we are only now receiving.
And Cowper marks an era in the history of our poetry. Macaulay says : " The forerunner of the great restoration of our literature was Cowper." And a modern writer has well said of his poetry : "Its main charm, and that which is never wanting, is its earnestness. This is a quality which gives it a power over many minds not at all alive to the poetical ; but it is also the source of some of its strongest attractions for those that are. Hence, its truth both of landscape-painting, and of the de scription of character and states of mind ; hence its skilful ex pression of such emotions and passions as it allows itself to deal with ; hence the force and fervour of its denunciatory eloquence, giving to some passages as fine an inspiration of the moral sub lime as is perhaps anywhere to be found in didactic poetry. Hence, we may say, even the directness, "simplicity, and manli ness of Cowper s diction all that is best in the form, as well as in the spirit of his verse. It was this quality, or temper of mind, in short, that principally made him an original poet ; and if not the founder of a new school, the pioneer of a new era of English poetry. Instead of repeating the unmeaning conven tionalities and faded affectations of his predecessors, it led him to turn to the actual nature within him and around him, and there to learn both the truths he should utter and the words in which he should utter them."
As a prose writer, Cowper left no important work, but his letters have been collected and published ; and besides the value they possess because of the light they throw on his sad but
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