COWPER AND NEWTON

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21726, 7 March 1936, Page 19

COWPER AND NEWTON

. , , William Cowpep and th© 1 Century. By Gilbert Thomaa Ivor Nicholson and Watson. Ltd. 396 PP(ISs net) Through Whltcombe and Tombs Ltd; Though there i 3 in Mr Thomas’s study' no lack of sensitive and critical comment on Cowper’s various writings, the chief purpose of the book is to illuminate Cowper’s mind and temperament as they were and as they moved under the influence of “the spirit of the age.” Mr Thomas succeeds admirably; and readers to whom Cowper’s story is new will respond, as Mr Thomas teus it, to the charm and sadness of the poet’s character, his wit and fancifulness, his delicious sense of fun, his moral earnestness, deepening into gloom and despair, and the darkness of his end. They will discover, if yet unknown, the endless delight of Cowper’s letters, and—if they are not stubbornly averse to “old-fashioned poetry’’—may even be led venturesomely beyond John Gilpin” and “Mary” and Andrew Selkirk’s solitude and the lost avenue of poplars to the peculiar, delicious exactitudes and pretty sobrieties of “The Task.” But other readers, who know in what harsh lines and hateful hues Cowper’s friend John Newton has been depicted, and how. heavily he has been blamed for the poet’s lamentable fall to a sense of his spiritual doom, will particularly respect Mr Thomas’s achievement in correcting this false account of Newton and misleading explanation of Cowper’s tragedy. Sir James Frazer, for example, in, the brilliantly written memoir of Cowper which prefaces his selection of the letters, • interprets Newton and his Calvinistic beliefs and his influence in the most sinister fashion; and he has received abundant and carefully argued support for the view that Cowper was ‘edged towards madness and toppled oyer by the fatal urgency of this spiritual adviser. It is true that less sensational opinions have been advanced; for instance, by Birrell, whose robust common sense appeared in his remark that Cowper’s going mad had as much to do with Religion as with algebra. But the anti-Newton hypothesis holds the floor, as in such matters plausibly dramatic, simple ones always tend to do. Newton was, in fact, a man not always perceptive, wise, and tolerant; but Mr Thomas nevertheless fully justifies the epithets he applies to him—“sagacious, gentle, and lovable” —and his estimate of the “comparative mildness of his Calvinism, and- . . . the sincerity and charm of hisL character.” First among the witnesses, of course, is Cowper himself; and it is monstrous injustice to Newton and no true justice to Cowper to attribute the poet’s madness to his friend’s temper and doctrine. This is an excellent piece of work, to which the publishers have lent the aid of comely production.