Poets and Poetry
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Poets and Poetry’
We turn to books seeking an author’s sympathy and fellowship, but William Cowper’s verse is unusual: he turns to us for ours.
In 1853, Frederick Maurice was deprived of the Chair of Theology at King’s College, London for his unorthodox opinions. Undeterred, he and fellow enthusiasts including Charles Kingsley applied themselves strenuously to the moral education of working men. Three years on Maurice was in Ellesmere, Shropshire, giving a lecture on ‘The Friendship of Books’ in which he drew attention to the life of poet William Cowper.
After the devastation of the Great War, calls rose for a new economic and social system, and to put the wisdom of our forebears behind us.
After the Great War of 1914-1918, a consensus grew that the world had changed and there must now be a new global economy, a new kind of society, even a new morality. Socio-economic experts — the gods of the market place — declared their laws, and the public worshipped at their shrines; but Rudyard Kipling believed that older gods, the wise maxims of our forebears, would have the last word.
Standing on the dockside with Laertes, who is eager to board ship for Paris, Polonius takes a moment to share some fatherly wisdom.
Early in William Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, probably written around 1599-1601, Laertes is due to leave Denmark for France; he had returned home only briefly for the coronation of King Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle and step-father. As Laertes goes aboard, his father Polonius gives him his affectionate blessing, and with it a generous helping of common sense.
In 1798, ‘Plays on the Passions’ appeared in London bookstores, but no one seemed to know who had written them.
In 1798, a volume of three dramas appeared in the English press, under the title of ‘Plays on the Passions.’ The passions were love and hatred, and the dramas were ‘Basil’, ‘The Trial’ and ‘De Monfort.’ They were warmly received but they were also anonymous, and the country’s literary men and women were beside themselves to know who had written them.
William Cowper’s peace was shattered by the arrival of a Parliamentary candidate doorstepping his Buckinghamshire constituents.
In December 1783, after losing the American colonies to independence, King George III sacked the Government and appointed 24-year-old William Pitt as Prime Minister; on March 25th, a Parliament in uproar was dissolved in readiness for a general election. Just days later, William Grenville MP came calling on William Cowper — somewhat uncomfortably, as Grenville supported Pitt and Cowper did not.
In ‘Familiarity Dangerous,’ poet William Cowper tells a little tale warning that if you join in the game you play by the rules.
William Cowper was very much a cat person, so naturally these lines from the Latin of Vincent Bourne (1695-1747), who had been on the staff at Westminster School when Cowper was a pupil there, appealed to him. A kitten reminds us that if you want to be one of the gang it has got to be on their terms.