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Cowper and the Evangelicals: Notes on Early Biographical Interpretations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Lodwick Hartley
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Extract

If Contemporary critics are inclined to see William Cowper as “first and foremost … an Evangelical preacher”,1 the tradition (though not in every respect the judgment) is well founded. Significantly enough, the first serious biographical interpretation of the poet was not a biography at all but an Evangelical sermon preached by the Reverend Samuel Greatheed at Olney on May 18, 1800, shortly after Cowper's death. Greatheed was one of the pupils of the Reverend William Bull— Cowper's beloved “smoke-inhaling Bull”—at his academy in Newport Pagnell for the training of members in the Independent Church; he was a friend and correspondent of Cowper in the last years of the poet's life; and he became one of the first editors of the Eclectic Review when it was founded in 1805.4 The sermon was preached while Greatheed was supply pastor for the Reverend Thomas Hillyard's Independent Congregation in Olney, and it was shortly afterward published at Newport Pagnell and in London.3 In the year of its publication, it appeared in digested form in the Evangelical Magazine4 and quotations from it formed the bulk of “An Account of the Life and Death of William Cowper” in the Gospel Magazine and Theological Review.6 For the next three years it became the basic source of Evangelical comment on Cowper in periodicals and in at least two “memoirs” in book form. However, in spite of its interest as an early biographical source, its importance is greater as an opening gun in the long (and even yet inconclusive) warfare engaged in by critics and biographers over the part that Evangelicalism or Methodism played in Cowper's madness.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 65 , Issue 5 , September 1950 , pp. 719 - 731
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1950

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References

1 H. J. C. Grierson and J. C. Smith, A Critical History of English Poetry (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1946), p. 259.

2 See W. P. Courtney, “Rev. Samuel Greatheed”, N. & Q., 11th Ser., v (Jan. 27,1912), 71-73.

3 A Practical Improvement of the Divine Counsel and Conduct, attempted in a Sermon, occasioned by the decease of William Cowper, Esq; preached at Olney, 18 May 1800; By Samuel Greatheed. Newport-Pagnel; Printed and Sold by J. Wakefield; also sold by T. Williams, No. 10 Stationer's Court. W. Button, Paternoster Row, London; and by Abel, Northampton. [1800] 47 pp. John Newton also preached a funeral sermon in May 1800. A MS account by Hannah Jowett is given in Mary Bradford Whiting, “‘A Burning Bush’: a New Light on Relations between William Cowper and John Newton”, Hibbert Journal, xxiv (1926), 303-313.

4 III (1800), 457.

5 v (1800), 428–137.

6 See my own “ ‘The Stricken Deer’ and His Contemporary Reputation”, SP, xxxvi (1939), 637–650.

7 See H. N. Fairchild, “Unpublished References to Blake by Hayley and Lady Hesketh”, SP, xxv (1928), 1–10.

8 XVIII (1801), 669-670.

9 LXXI (1801), 59.

10 IX (1800), 498.

11 Beauties of Cowper. To Which Are Prefixed, A Life of the Author and Observations on His Writings. Newark: For R. Dutton, Birchin Lane, Cornhill; and J. Booth, Duke Street, Portland Place (London, 1801), p. xvi.

12 William Cowper and the Eighteenth Century (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1948), passim. Newton's theological bias, it is true, was more Calvinistic than Arminian; but it is demonstrable that Cowper's Calvinism was considerably more pronounced than that of Newton. See Maurice J. Quinlan, “Cowper and the Unpardonable Sin”, Journal of Religion, xxiii (1943), 110-116.

13 Beauties of Cowper, p. xix. Italics mine.

14 Adelphi. A Sketch of the Character, and an Account of the last Illness, of the late Rev.

John Cowper. A. M. & c. who finished his Course with Joy, 20th March, 1770. Written by his Brother, the late William Cowper, Esq. of the Inner Temple. Faithfully transcribed from his original Manuscript by John Newton (London: T. Williams, 1802). 36 pp. Newton's prefatory advertisement is quoted from The Works of William Cowper, ed. by Robert Southey

(London, 1855), i, 151–152 ii.

15 LXXII (1802), 335.

16 “Lady Hesketh made the request in a letter of July 5, 1800. B.M. Add. MS 30,803. See Fairchild, op. cit., p. 2.

17 Cowper, Poems, Early Productions, ed. James Croft (London, 1825), p. 68.

18 See Louise Lanham, “The Poetry of William Cowper in Its Relation to the English Evangelical Movement” (Diss., Univ. of North Carolina, 1936), p. 249.

19 The Life and Letters of William Cowper, Esq. (London, 1812), i, 6, 58, 96.1 have used the “new” edition.

20 See Edinburgh Review, ii (1803), 64–86, and my “ ‘The Stricken Deer’ and His Contemporary Reputation”, pp. 647–648.

21 Gentleman's Magazine, l xxiii (1803), 433–441.

22 See Private Correspondence of William Cowper, Esq., ed. John Johnson (London, 1824), introd.

23 Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Cowper, Esqr. London: T. Williams Stationer's Court. This is, of course, not by John Corry (vide infra) as I mistakenly assumed in “Cowper and Mme. Guyon: Additional Notes”, PMLA, EVI (1941), 585–587.

24 Memoirs of the Life and Writings of William Cowper, Esq. A New Edition: Revised, Corrected, and Recommended, by the Rev. S. Grealheed, F.S.A. London: Printed for Whitting-ham and Arliss, Paternoster Row; and Williams and Son, Stationers' Court. 1814. Advertisement.

25 Incidentally, the Memoirs presents Lady Austen in her proper light as an Evangelical and not as a “lady of the world.”

26 With Critical Observations on his Poems. By John Corry, Author of “A Satirical View of London”, “The Detector of Quackery”, Etc. London: Printed for Vernor and Hood, Poultry, By James Swan, Angel Street, Newgate Street. 1803. For biographical material on Corry, see DNB. Besides the works listed in the title, Corry published in 1802 Memoirs of Alfred Berkley; or the Dangers of Dissipation, of which the British Critic for October of the same year, remarked with classic ambiguity: “Some novel manufacturers would have extended this narrative to three volumes. The author has our praise for confining it to one.”

27 Corry, pp. 13, 16. The treatment of Cowper's insanity in the anonymous “An Elegy on the Death of Wm. Cowper, Esq.”, in the Gospel Magazine and Theological Review, v (May, 1800), 200, is interestingly similar:

28 Op. cit., pp. 2,5.

29 …and never before published. With an Appendix, containing some of Cowper's Religious Letters and other Interesting Documents, illustrative of the Memoir. London: R. Edwards. 1816. Within the next two years there were at least four English and three American editions of this work. A competing edition in 1816 by another publisher is the Memoirs of the most remarkable and interesting Parts of the Life of William Cowper, Esq. Written by Himself, To which is added, an Original Poem and a Fragment, London: E. Cox and Son. 1816. The complex bibliographical problems involved here have never been clarified. For the purposes of this paper, I am confining myself to the Memoir of the Early Life, and I am citing from the so-called “Second American edition from the second London edition”, Newburgh: Philo B. Pratt, 1817.

30 xvi (1816), 117–129.

31 The staunchest Evangelicals admitted no doubt on this score. The American reviewer in The Panoplist, or Missionary Magazine, xiii (Boston, 1817), 65–77, spoke with disapproval of reviewers, like that of the Quarterly, who dared to question the propriety of the publication.

32 N. S. vi (1816), 313–343. The same article reviews the unsatisfactory biographical treatments in reference works. The Edinburgh Encyclopedia referred baldly to Cowper's “religious madness” and openly pointed to Newton as a contributing cause. The Encyclopaedia Britannica said that Cowper was fitted by natural disposition to receive all the horrors “without the consolation of his faith.” Only Rees's Cyclopaedia had an account acceptable to the reviewer. The difference in editorial bias between the Eclectic Review and the Christian Observer is interestingly discussed in M. J. Quinlan, Victorian Prelude (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1941), pp. 189–190.

381 have cited from the “first American edition” (Philadephia, 1824).

33 I have cited from the “first American edition” (Philadephia, 1824).