ding school, whose supposed hatred of Nature
meant simply that they were thoroughly immersed in the pleasures of a
society then first developed in its modern form, and not yet undermined
by the approach of a new revolution. The men of Pope and Addison's time
looked upon country squires as bores incapable of intellectual pleasure,
and, therefore, upon country life as a topic for gentle ridicule, or
more frequently as an unmitigated nuisance. Probably their estimate was
a very sound one. When a true poet like Thomson really enjoyed the fresh
air, his taste did not become a passion, and the scenery appeared to him
as a pleasant background to his Castle of Indolence. Cowper's peculiar
religious views prevented him again from anticipating the wider and more
philosophical sentiment of Wordsworth. Like Pope and Wordsworth, indeed,
he occasionally uses language which has a pantheistic sound. He
expresses his belief that

There lives and works
A soul in all things, and that soul is God.

But when Pope uses a similar phrase, it is the expression of a decaying
philosophy which never had much vitality, or passed from the sphere of
intellectual speculation to affect the imagination and the emotions. It
is a dogma which he holds sincerely, it may be, but not firmly enough to
colour his habitual sentiments. With Wordsworth, whatever its precise
meaning, it is an expression of an habitual and abiding sentiment, which
rises naturally to his lips whenever he abandons himself to his
spontaneous impulses. With Cowper, as is the case with all Cowper's
utterances, it is absolutely sincere for the time; but it is a doctrine
not very easily adapted to his habitual creed, and which drops out of
his mind whenever he passes from external nature to himself or his
fellows. The indwelling divinity whom he recognises in every 'freckle,
streak, or stain' on his favourite flowers, seems to be hopelessly
removed from his own personal interests. An awful and mysterious decree
has separated him for ever from the sole source of consolation.

This is not the place to hint at any judgment upon Cowper's theology, or
to inquire how far a love of nature, in his sense of the words, can be
logically combined with a system based upon the fundamental dogma of the
corruption of man. Certainly a similar anticipation of the poetical
pantheism of Wordsworth may be found in that most logical of Calvinists,
Jonathan Edwards. Cowper, too, could be at