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Manipulative Fallacies
in Early America
Studies on Selected
Congressional Debates
1789 to 1799

Juhani Rudanko
Paul Rickman
Manipulative Fallacies in Early America
 Juhani Rudanko • Paul Rickman

Manipulative Fallacies
in Early America
Studies on Selected Congressional Debates
1789 to 1799
Juhani Rudanko Paul Rickman
English Department English Department
Tampere University Tampere University
Tampere, Finland Tampere, Finland

ISBN 978-3-030-99932-2    ISBN 978-3-030-99933-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99933-9

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgments

We take pleasure in thanking Palgrave Macmillan for including this vol-

ume in their Palgrave Pivot series. We are also grateful to the anonymous
referees chosen by the publisher for their comments, which led to some
improvements in the book. Naturally, we are solely responsible for any
shortcomings that remain in the book.

v
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
References 11

2 Opposition to Amending the Constitution in a

Congressional Debate in 1789 13
2.1 Introduction and Background 13
2.2 Opposition to Madison’s Motion on June 8, 1789  18
2.3 Comparing the Argumentation of Madison’s Opponents 41
2.4 Defining the Fallacy of ad socordiam 43
2.5 Concluding Observations 45
References 47

3 Edward Livingston’s Resolution for Negotiating with

France in July 1798 51
3.1 Background 51
3.2 Edward Livingston’s Resolution and Kittera’s Amendment 53
3.3 Concluding Observations 60
References 62

4 Arguing for the Sedition Act in the Debate of July 5, 1798 65

4.1 Background 65
4.2 The Debate of July 5, 1798: Allen and Harper on the
Offensive 68

vii
viii Contents

4.3 Conclusion 90
References 91

5 Debating the Expulsion of Matthew Lyon in February 1799 95

5.1 Introduction 95
5.2 The Debates of February 20 and February 22, 1799 to Expel
Matthew Lyon 98
5.3 Concluding Observations111
References113

6 Conclusion115
References123

Index125
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The present book has the general objective to contribute to the under-
standing of the language of politics and of the means—especially such
means as involve manipulation—that politicians use in their attempt to
prevail over their opponents in political debates and controversies. Four
concrete controversies are drawn on for data and they are all from the early
period of the American Republic, from the period from 1789 to 1799.
Achieving an understanding of manipulative tactics used by politicians
during this decade is valuable because the tactics in question shed light on
the nature and practice of political argumentation during a formative
period of American political culture. Further, it is reasonable to assume
that an understanding of manipulative tactics during a formative period of
American political culture can help us identify tactics of manipulation in
other periods of history.
From a more general perspective, the study of the language of politics
is important in those countries where the laws and accepted legal practices
make it possible for speakers to debate issues publicly and express dissent
from current orthodoxies without fear of criminal prosecution. It is also
important to study the language of politics in countries where dissenters
are threatened or suppressed with criminal prosecution.
In more specific terms, the present book investigates three debates in
the United States House of Representatives relating to freedom of speech,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
J. Rudanko, P. Rickman, Manipulative Fallacies in Early America,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99933-9_1
2 J. RUDANKO AND P. RICKMAN

the first in 1789, the second in 1798, and the third in 1799. Sandwiched
between these three is a chapter relating to the foreign policy of the United
States in 1798. In each case the focus is on fallacious arguments. A falla-
cious argument, as the term is used here, is an argument involving an
informal fallacy. A textbook definition of an informal fallacy is given in (1).

(1) It is customary in the study of logic to reserve the term “fallacy”

for arguments that are psychologically persuasive but logically incor-
rect, that do as a matter of fact persuade but, given certain argu-
mentative standards, shouldn’t. We therefore define “fallacy” as a
type of argument that seems to be correct, but proves, on examina-
tion, not to be so. (Copi and Burgess-Jackson 1996: 97; origi-
nal emphasis)

In other words, the point of departure for the study of fallacies here is
a normative notion of the concept, explicit in the use of the modal shouldn’t
in the definition. The important question is then to inquire into the ways
in which a particular argument may fall short of a standard of adequacy. As
a preliminary step to answering the question from the perspective adopted
in this book, we begin by introducing some basic notions from Grice’s
(1975) framework of analysis. The first of these is Grice’s Cooperative
Principle, given in (2).

(2) Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the

stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the
talk exchange in which you are engaged. (Grice 1975: 45)

Grice then distinguishes several maxims and submaxims, the “following

of which will, in general, yield results in accordance with the Cooperative
Principle” (Grice 1975: 45). One of these maxims is Quantity, which has
two submaxims, given in (3).

(3) 1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the

current purposes of the exchange).
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is
required. (Grice 1975: 45)
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

Another maxim is that of Quality, “Try to make your contribution one

that is true” (Grice 1975: 46), which has the two submaxims given
in (4a-b).

(4) a. Do not say what you believe to be false.

b. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
(Grice 1975: 46)

Grice goes on to note that a speaker “may fail to fulfill a maxim in vari-
ous ways” (Grice 1975: 49). He or she may “flout a maxim,” that is, he
or she “may blatantly fail to fulfill it” (Grice 1975: 49). By this means, a
speaker may generate a conversational implicature. A conversational impli-
cature may also be generated by a speaker observing the Cooperative
Principle and the maxims, as in the well-known “out of petrol” example,
where the first speaker says “I am out of petrol”, and a hearer replies
“There is a garage round the corner,” implicating “that the garage is, or at
least may be open” and has, or may have, petrol to sell, among other
implicatures (Grice 1975: 51).
A further way in which a speaker may fail to fulfill a maxim is that the
speaker “may quietly and unostentatiously violate a maxim.” The speaker
will then “in some cases … be liable to mislead” (Grice 1975: 49). This
remark by Grice on how a speaker may mislead a hearer is highly pertinent
to the concern with fallacies involving deceptiveness in the case studies in
this book. Regarding deceptiveness, it has been pointed out that it needs
“only be viewed from the point of view of the intent to deceive” (Vincent
and Castelfranchi 1981: 750). That is, if a person makes a deceptive state-
ment, the statement is still deceptive even if the addressee does not believe
it and is not deceived (cf. Vincent and Castelfranchi 1981: 750).
To prepare the ground for the examination of the arguments to be
presented, it is also appropriate here to quote McCornack’s comment on
deceptive messages, developed as part of what has been called information
manipulation theory. The comment is given in (5).

(5) The production and presentation of messages that are deceptive

can be considered a phenomenon in which speakers exploit the
belief on the part of listeners that they (i.e., speakers) are adhering
to the principles governing conversational exchanges. Deceptive
messages are “deceptive” in that, while they constitute deviations
from the principles underlying conversational understanding, they
4 J. RUDANKO AND P. RICKMAN

remain covert deviations. [Note omitted] Listeners are misled by

their belief that speakers are functioning in a cooperative fashion
(i.e., actually adhering to the maxims). (McCornack 1992: 6; origi-
nal emphasis)

McCornack’s (1992) contribution is valuable because he develops

Grice’s brief remark further that a speaker “may quietly and unostenta-
tiously violate a maxim” and may then “be liable to mislead” by drawing
attention to covert deviations from the maxims. In his article McCornack
also brings up the valuable idea that there are “messages that mislead …
through the generation of deceptive implicatures” (McCornack 1992:
14). Using the “out of petrol” example, referred to above, we may say that
if the hearer, replying that “there is a garage round the corner”, knows
that the garage in question does not sell petrol, he or she is, for whatever
reason, likely to be creating a deceptive implicature. The person is not
covertly (or overtly) violating the maxim of Quality, as spelled out in (4a-­
b), assuming that the speaker knows that it is true that there is a garage
round the corner, for there is no falsehood in what the speaker says.
Instead, the person is covertly violating the maxim of Quantity, part 1, by
creating a false implicature, with the interlocutor making, or being invited
to make, the false inference that the garage sells petrol.1 That is, the
speaker is covertly failing to be “as informative as is required (for the cur-
rent purposes of the exchange),” to quote Grice’s definition. It is also
possible to say that by creating a deceptive implicature, the person is being
manipulative.
In his comments on manipulation de Saussure (2005) also points to the
role of hidden strategies “which aim at misleading the hearer in one way
or another” (de Saussure 2005: 117). With respect to manipulative dis-
courses, de Saussure also makes the pertinent comment given in (6):

(6) Manipulative discourses exist not because of formal features; they

are produced in order for the speaker to achieve specific goals.
Although some formal features may be more present in manipula-
tive discourses than in non-manipulative discourses, none are
exclusive to manipulative discourses. The main criterion I will use
is the one of intention on the part of the speaker, an intention
which is not cooperative in the Gricean sense (in particular regard-
ing the respect of the maxim of quality). (de Saussure 2005: 118;
original emphasis)
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

As was noted, in the “out of petrol” example it is the maxim of Quantity,

part 1, that is covertly violated, but on other occasions it could be that of
Quality, and this difference does not affect the value of de Saussure’s
points in (6). The first of them is that manipulation cannot be identified
by the presence of any formal features. This conclusion is also reflected in
the observation by Chilton (2011), who observes that “linguistic struc-
tures are not …. inherently deceptive or manipulative” (Chilton 2011:
180, original emphasis). Equally pertinent are de Saussure’s two other
insights in (6), namely, that a speaker engaging in manipulation is seeking
to achieve a particular goal with the manipulation and that the speaker has
an “intention that is not cooperative in the Gricean sense.” Grice’s frame-
work is premised on what has been described as the assumption that
“human conversation is an exercise in pure cooperation, in which conver-
sational partners work together toward a common goal—the efficient
exchange of information” (Pinker et al. 2008: 833), but that assumption
has come under challenge, as in Pinker et al. (2008). In support of their
challenge these authors point out that “a fundamental insight from evolu-
tionary biology is that most social relationships involve combinations of
cooperation and conflict” (Pinker et al. 2008: 833, original emphasis).
Work on manipulation, at least in its deceptive aspect, can be akin in spirit
to such work challenging current orthodoxy privileging the role of coop-
eration. It is thus no coincidence that the four case studies investigated in
this book involve conflicts and deep disagreements among the
participants.
It is seen in the individual chapters that a recurring theme in the falla-
cious arguments examined in this book involves deceptiveness, with the
speaker seeking to mislead the hearer in some way to achieve a specific
goal. Often it is a case of the speaker concealing something that is relevant
to the issue at hand, thereby “constraining the addressee’s access to critical
information” (Oswald et al. 2016: 522; see also de Saussure 2005: 117
and Chilton 2011: 181). Informal fallacies involving such deceptiveness
are taken to be manipulative in this study.
The “out of petrol” example given with its reference to the maxim of
Quantity, part 1, also brings up an important distinction between two
types of reasoning underlying most of the discussion of fallacies in the
present volume. The two types are practical and discursive reasoning, and
Walton has described the difference between them succinctly, as in (7).
6 J. RUDANKO AND P. RICKMAN

(7) Practical reasoning … is a kind of goal-directed, knowledge-based

reasoning that is directed to choosing a prudent course of action
for an agent that is aware of its present circumstances. In a practical
inference, the conclusion is an imperative that directs the agent to
a prudent course of action. The premises describe the agent’s goals
and knowledge in a given situation, especially practical knowledge
of ways and means.
Discursive reasoning, by contrast, has a cognitive orientation,
weighing reasons for and against the truth or falsity of a proposi-
tion. Logic, in the past, has usually dealt with discursive reasoning
as the only i­mportant kind of reasoning to be evaluated, and
ignored practical reasoning. (Walton 1996: 11)

Reasoning in politics is often concerned with the question of what line

of future action to adopt, rather than with the truth or falsity of a proposi-
tion, and it is therefore covert violations of the maxim of Quantity, part 1,
rather than of the maxim of Quality, that are a recurring theme in this
study. These points are taken up and developed further in Chap. 2 and in
later chapters.
It may be hoped that the discussion of informal fallacies in authentic
political debates will shed further light on the nature and role of deceptive
and manipulative tactics used by certain speakers in Congressional debates
in the early American Republic.
It may also be hoped that the information gained about the arguments
used in the four debates will shed some fresh light on the debates as his-
torical events and on the nature of the contributions of the individual
speakers to the debates. Each of the four debates is of intrinsic interest in
the context of American political culture, at a time when that culture was
evolving in the early years of the American Republic. The remainder of
this introduction describes the general circumstances of each debate, and
offers comments on why each debate is worth investigating as a political
event or for reasons relating to pragmatic interpretation.
Chapter 2 considers aspects of the first full-scale debate on what was to
become the American Bill of Rights. It is hard to overestimate the impor-
tance of the American Bill of Rights as the foundation of civil liberties in
the United States following its ratification in 1791. In particular, that
document enshrines the principle of religious freedom in the United
States, and it serves to ensure freedom of speech in the United States. It
may even promote freedom of speech for citizens of other countries in
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

that their citizens, while facing criminal penalties in their home countries
for expressing dissident opinions, may be able to get their sentiments pub-
lished in the United States. It is also easy to overlook that the United
States Bill of Rights is unique in the world even today in limiting the
power of a legislature to enact laws.
It is probably true to say that today most Americans are supportive of,
and even proud of, the Bill of Rights as a Constitutional provision safe-
guarding their basic liberties, and it is sometimes not appreciated that the
Bill of Rights was not part of the original Constitution, which was approved
at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787.
During the ratification process, there were demands for a Bill of Rights to
be added to the Constitution and some States, including Massachusetts,
approved “recommendary amendments,” when ratifying the Constitution
(see Rutland 1983 [1955]: 148). However, most of the 11 States which
had ratified the Constitution by the spring of 1789, when the first Congress
began to meet, had done it without any demand for amendments.
There is also another consideration that should be borne in mind in
assessing the political situation in the United States in the spring of 1789.
At the time of the elections to the first Congress, the political divide was
between Federalists and Antifederalists. Federalists supported the new
Constitution and its provisions granting additional powers to the Federal
government, compared to the articles of Confederation, while
Antifederalists were doubtful about the more extensive powers given to
the Federal government. In the run-up to the first Congressional elections
Antifederalists tended to bring up the issue of amendments and of a Bill of
Rights as an issue that they knew many Federalists preferred to avoid (see
Bowling 1990: 128). There was a general disinclination among Federalists
to support a bill of rights, which was perfectly understandable, because
such a bill might have threatened the powers granted to the Federal gov-
ernment in the newly approved Constitution. It may also be speculated
that Federalist reluctance to support a bill of rights was strengthened when
they scored an overwhelming victory over Antifederalists in the elections
to the first Congress. In this situation it was extraordinarily fortunate from
the point of view of a bill of rights that James Madison, who was a leading
Federalist at that time as one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, came
down in favor of amendments when standing as a candidate for the first
House of Representatives (see Ketcham 1990 [1971]: 276). Madison was
duly elected on February 2, 1789, and when the first Congress began
meeting in the spring of 1789, Madison was also very close to the newly
8 J. RUDANKO AND P. RICKMAN

elected President George Washington, and he began actively to work for a

bill of rights. As it turned out, his role was crucial in the first House of
Representatives.
The debate of June 8, 1789, was a key debate, because in that debate
Madison made the motion that the House of Representatives should con-
sider amendments to the Constitution and he also presented his full set of
amendments. For their part, the opponents of the consideration of amend-
ments were also very vocal in the debate, and at one point in the debate,
Roger Sherman, Federalist of Connecticut, one of the opponents, went so
far as to say that he thought that the opponents had the upper hand, as is
clear from the quotation given in (8), which is from a speech he gave
towards the end of the debate. (Debates 1834 contains the collected pro-
ceedings from the earliest period of the Unites States Congress.)

(8) It seems to be the opinion of gentlemen generally that this is not

the time for entering upon the discussion of amendments: our only
question therefore is, how to get rid of the subject. (Debates
1834: 448)

That the subject was not got rid of then and there was something of a
miracle and a remarkable victory for Madison. Chapter 2 examines argu-
mentation in the debate in more detail. The debate is a vital link in the
progression towards a modern American democracy, and it has received
some scholarly attention recently (see Rudanko 2005, 2011, 2021). The
present study, however, concentrates on arguments carried out that day
that have not yet been analyzed in earlier studies, and can shed light on the
participants of the debate and their motives.
Chapter 3 turns to a debate in the House of Representatives on an issue
of foreign policy about nine years later, on July 2 and July 3, 1798.
Madison had left Congress, and in the summer of 1798 Federalists had a
working majority in Congress, including the House of Representatives. It
was a time of heightened tensions with France. There were naval incidents
and there was the threat of a war, but there was no full-scale war. The term
“Quasi-War” has been used to describe the period of heightened tensions.
To avoid war, President Adams, who was a Federalist, had sent a three-­
man delegation to France to negotiate with the French foreign minister.
However, the French demanded a bribe as a precondition for negotiation,
along with other preconditions. When this became known in the United
States in the spring of 1798, there was a surge of feeling against France.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

Meanwhile in Paris the French foreign minister indicated that the French
were prepared to negotiate with Elbridge Gerry, who was one of the three
members of the American delegation, but not with the other two mem-
bers. The other two members left Paris, rejecting the French demand, but
on July 2, 1798, Gerry was still in Paris, and he stayed till August 8, 1798
(Elkins and McKitrick 1993: 608–609).
In that situation, Edward Livingston, Republican of New York, made
the motion in the House of Representatives that the House should recom-
mend to President Adams that Gerry should be authorized to negotiate
with the French foreign minister, observing the instructions that had orig-
inally been given to the American delegation. He made the motion on
July 2, 1798, and it was debated more extensively on the following day.
The debate in the House of Representative on Livingston’s motion was
fairly short. Federalists were outraged at the motion and the House then
rejected it. However, documents have revealed later that France had not
intended to go to war with the United States (Elkins and McKitrick 1993:
563–565), which might have become clear to the American side at the
time if Gerry had been authorized to talk to the French, and that might
have facilitated a settlement. The debate is also worth examining because
it included a maneuver by one member of the Federalist majority that
deserves attention from the point of view of linguistic pragmatics. The
debate and the maneuver are examined in Chap. 3.
Chapter 4 turns to another debate involving freedom of speech, and it
took place on July 5, 1798, a very short time after the debate on
Livingston’s motion. During the time of the Quasi-War with France, the
Federalist majority in Congress decided to enact the Sedition Act of 1798.
Chapter 4 considers the first major debate on the proposed act in the
House of Representatives, which concerned its second reading. The pro-
posed act was not quite in its final form at that time, but the key proviso
that defaming the President or the Legislature of the United States would
render a person subject to criminal penalties was part of the proposed act
even at that time. The question of major interest in the chapter is simple:
how was it possible for Federalists to argue for the sedition act in the face
of the seemingly unambiguous language of the First Amendment, which
states in part that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom
of speech, or of the press” (Nowak and Rotunda 1995: 989). Naturally,
the Federalist sponsors of the act could not admit that the proposed law
violated the First Amendment and thereby the Constitution, and fallacy
theory again suggests itself as suitable framework for analyzing their
10 J. RUDANKO AND P. RICKMAN

argumentation. Among the fallacies featured is the argument from fear

used fallaciously, which has not figured in earlier studies of the debate. A
formulation of the fallacious use of the argument is offered in the chapter.
Chapter 5 also bears on freedom of speech, or, more precisely, on the
provisions restricting freedom of speech of the Federalist Sedition Act of
1798. It concerns a debate on whether to expel a member of the House of
Representatives who had been jailed during the operation of the Sedition
Act. The member in question was Matthew Lyon, Republican of Vermont.
Being an outspoken Republican from New England, he had long been a
thorn in the side of Federalists, many of whom were likewise from New
England. Lyon had been convicted by a jury in Vermont and sentenced to
a term of imprisonment for several months, which he served in poor con-
ditions in a jail in Vermont. He was re-elected to Congress when he was
still in jail, and the attempt to expel him occurred when he had returned
to the House of Representatives. The main sponsor of the resolution to
expel Congressman Lyon was James Bayard, Federalist of Delaware, and
his arguments are examined in Chap. 5. Attention is also paid to argumen-
tation by Republicans, who vigorously opposed the expulsion of their fel-
low member.
Overall, the chapters seek to enhance our understanding of selected
historical debates during the formative period of American political cul-
ture. Fallacy theory is the main analytic tool in each chapter, and the chap-
ters also seek to develop our understanding of informal fallacies found in
political discourses at a particular time in history and to show how they
can be applied to real-life Congressional debates. In disciplinary terms, the
book advocates the recognition of fallacy theory as an important subdivi-
sion of linguistic pragmatics and of discourse analysis. By their nature
deceptive fallacies are manipulative, and as a consequence the studies in
this book seek to shed light on types of manipulative communication in
early America.

Note
1. For some actual examples of Quantity implicatures and “inferences from
what wasn’t said,” see Horn (2017: 35–40). He notes that a speaker can use
a Quantity implicature “to convey a falsehood” that he or she does “not
utter” (Horn 2017: 37).
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

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Macmillan.
Rudanko, Juhani. 2021. Fallacies and Free Speech: Selected Discourses in Early
America. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rutland, Robert Allen. 1983 [1955]. The Birth of the Bill of Rights, 1776–1791.
Revised ed. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
12 J. RUDANKO AND P. RICKMAN

de Saussure, Louis. 2005. Manipulation and Cognitive Pragmatics: Preliminary

Hypotheses. In Manipulation and Ideologies in the Twentieth Century: Discourse,
Language, Mind, ed. Peter Schulz and Louis de Saussure, 113–145. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Vincent, Jocelyne and Cristiano Castelfranchi. 1981. On the Art of Deception:
How to Lie while Saying the Truth. In Possibilities and Limitations of
Pragmatics. Proceedings of the Conference on Pragmatics, Urbino, July 8–14,
1979, ed. Herman Parret, Marina Sbizà and Jef Verschueren, 749–777.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Walton, Douglas. 1996. Argumentation Schemes for Presumptive Reasoning.
Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates.
 CHAPTER 2

Opposition to Amending the Constitution

in a Congressional Debate in 1789

2.1   Introduction and Background

The American Bill of Rights is probably the most distinctive part of the
United States Constitution. The reason is simply that, as far as is known,
there is no other country in the world with a document that restricts the
power of government in the way that that document restricts it, both in
principle and in accepted practice. One example of how it restricts the
power of Congress, perhaps the most important example, is the First
Amendment. It is given in (1).

(1) Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of reli-

gion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the free-
dom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably
to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of
grievances.

The amendment clearly restricts the power of the Congress with the
unequivocal verb phrase “shall make no law.” It is generally accepted that
most Americans, in both the major parties, have for decades tended to be
supportive of, and even proud of, the Constitution of the United States,
including the First Amendment. The Bill of Rights became part of the
United States Constitution in 1791 and the debates on the Bill of Rights
in the United States Congress took place in the summer of 1789. Historians

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

Switzerland AG 2022
J. Rudanko, P. Rickman, Manipulative Fallacies in Early America,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99933-9_2
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 “Scarce
The bittern knows his time, with bill ingulfed
To shake the sounding marsh; or, from the shore,
The plovers when to scatter o’er the heath,
And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.”

How true to nature this picture! how happily rendered! Then you
have the plowman and his oxen beginning their work—

“Cheered by the simple song and soaring lark.”

Again,—

“From the moist meadow to the withered hill,

Led by the breeze, the vivid verdure runs.”

That “withered hill!” Who that has ever looked on the mountains in
March, just before the first finger of Spring has touched them, but will
recognize the appropriateness of that epithet for their wan, bleached,
decayed aspect!
Then you have the whole process of trout-fishing, in the “mossy-
tinctured stream,” where “the dark brown water aids the grilse,”
showing that, as Thomson wrote, his thoughts reverted from
Richmond to the streams of the Merse; you have also the song-birds
piping each from its proper haunt, the linnet from “the flowering
furze,”—the various places where each bird builds his nest, given
with an accuracy that every bird-nesting boy will recognize; and the
scent of the bean-fields, noticed for the first time, as far as I know, in
poetry.
As one longer example of Thomson’s close observation and
peculiar manner, take the description of a spring shower:—

“At last
The clouds consign their treasures to the fields,
And, softly shaking on the dimpled pool
Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow
In large effusion o’er the freshened world;
The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard
By such as wander through the forest walks,
Beneath the umbrageous multitude of leaves.

...

“Thus all day long the full-distended clouds

Indulge their genial stores, and well-showered earth
Is deep enriched with vegetable life;
Till in the western sky the downward sun
Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush
Of broken clouds, gay shifting to his beam,
The rapid radiance instantaneous strikes
The illumined mountain; through the forest streams;
Shakes on the floods, and in a yellow mist,
Far smoking o’er the interminable plain,
In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.
Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around.
Full swell the woods, their every music wakes,
Mixed in wild concert, with the warbling brooks
Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills,
And hollow lows responsive from the vales,
Whence, blending all, the sweetened zephyr springs.”

These are but a few samples from “Spring” showing the minute
faithfulness with which Thomson had observed

“The negligence of Nature, wide and wild.”

Here are appearances of Nature, each accurately observed, and

their succession truthfully rendered, but the whole is so overlaid with
tawdry diction that it is hard to pierce below the enamel and feel the
true pulse of Nature beating under it. And yet it does beat there, and
in many another description in the “Seasons” now little heeded,
because of their old-fashioned garb. And yet he who will read the
“Seasons” through will find many a phrase true to Nature, many a
felicitous expression cropping out from the even roll of his solemn
pompous monotone. Thomson has been called the Claude of poets.
And his way of handling Nature stands to that of Wordsworth or
Tennyson much as Claude’s landscapes do to those of Turner or
some of the other modern painters. It may be added that Thomson’s
somewhat vapid digressions about Amelia and Lavinia have not
more meaning than the conventional lay figures and the classic
temples which Claude introduces into the foreground of his
landscapes.
As to the sentiment which animates the “Seasons,” it is a revolt
from the life of town and court to the simplicity and truth of rural life
and feeling. It is almost the first time this revolt finds expression in
English poetry, if we except some of the sylvan scenes in
Shakespeare. As the French critic well says, “Thirty years before
Rousseau, Thomson had expressed all Rousseau’s sentiments,
almost in the same style. Like him, he painted the country with
sympathy and enthusiasm. Like him he contrasted the golden age of
primitive simplicity with modern miseries and corruption. Like him he
exalted deep love, conjugal tenderness, the union of souls, paternal
affection, and all domestic joys. Like him, he combated
contemporary frivolity and compared the ancient republics with
modern states. Like Rousseau, he praised gravity, patriotism, liberty,
virtue; rose from the spectacle of Nature to the contemplation of
God.... Like him, too, he marred the sincerity of his emotion and the
truth of his poetry by sentimental vapidities, by pastoral billing and
cooing, and by an abundance of epithets, personified abstractions,
pompous invocations, and oratorical tirades.” This passage gives
truly, if with some exaggeration, the spirit with which the “Seasons”
and all their outward imagery are informed. But while Thomson
watched the ever-changing appearances and recorded them, what, it
may be asked, was his thought about the Power which originates
and upholds them? what did he conceive to be the relation of the
things we see to the things we do not see? Everywhere his poem
breathes a spirit of naturalistic piety. But if there is nothing in the
“Seasons” inconsistent with Christian truth, there is little or nothing
that directly affirms it. In “Winter” he breathes this prayer—

“Father of light and life! thou Good Supreme!

Oh teach me what is good! teach me thyself!
Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,
From every low pursuit! and feed my soul
With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure,
Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!”

There is nothing in his amiable and placid life to throw doubt on the
sincerity of that prayer. And yet Thomson’s piety seems to us now of
that kind which is easily satisfied and thoughtlessly thankful!
There are many at the present day, and those the most thoughtful,
who “not only see through but (as has been said) feel a strong
revulsion against the well-meant but superficial attempt to describe
the world as happy, and to see in God, as the Governor of it, only a
sort of easy and shallow goodness.” They cannot be satisfied with
such a view. “They have a complaining within—a sense of
imperfection in and around them which rebels against so easy-going
a view and demands another solution. It is not merely a benevolent
God that they long for, but a God who sympathizes with man, and
who in some way, of which only revelation can fully inform us, makes
out of man’s misery and imperfection the way to something better for
him.”
Thomson’s religion, no doubt, could hardly have escaped the
infection of the Deism that was all around him in the literary and
philosophic atmosphere of his time. In his beautiful “Hymn,” which
may be regarded as the climax of the “Seasons,” and as summing
up the devoutest thoughts which these suggested to him, there is
nothing that goes beyond such a view:—

“These, as they change, Almighty Father, these

Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is full of thee”—

unless perhaps in that more Christian strain where, hearing the

bleating on the hills and the lowings in the vale, he breaks forth—

“For the Great Shepherd reigns,

And his unsuffering Kingdom yet will come.”
 The prevailing spirit of the Hymn, as of most of his other
addresses to the Deity, is that of optimism and the reign of universal
benevolence:—

“I cannot go
Where Universal Love smiles not around,
Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns,
From seeming evil still educing good.”

There is much benevolence in his poetry, much feeling for the

miseries and wrongs of mankind, but no perception of that deeper
mystery—that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain,
waiting for a deliverance. Neither is there any sense of the relation of
the creation to the Creator other than that which the somewhat
mechanical conception of a maker and a machine supply. Perhaps it
is not to be wondered at that Thomson does not seem to feel the
inadequacy of this conception, for we in our own day, who have got
to feel so profoundly its inadequacy, have not as yet gone far to
supply its place with a worthier. Yet whatever may be his
shortcomings, all honor to the poet of the “Seasons”! Genuine lover
of the country as he was, he was the first English poet who led
poetry back into the fields, and made her once more free of her own
native region.
 CHAPTER XIII.
NATURE IN COLLINS, GRAY, GOLDSMITH, AND
BURNS.

COLLINS.
When Thomson was laid in Richmond Church, another poet
chanted over him a dirge breathing the very pathos of Nature herself:
—

“In yonder grave a Druid lies,

Where slowly winds the stealing wave,
The year’s best sweets shall duteous rise
To deck its poet’s sylvan grave.

“Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore,

When Thames in summer wreaths is drest,
And oft suspend the dashing oar
To bid his gentle spirit rest.”

About that ode of the gentle and pensive Collins (born 1721, died
1759) there is a sweet pathetic tone which the grander strains of
later English poetry have never surpassed. In the “Dirge over Fidele”
the same strain of pensive beauty is renewed. Collins was the first
poet since Milton wrote his early lyrics who brought to the description
of rural things that perfection of style, that combined simplicity and
beauty, which Milton had learned from the classic poets There is
another poem of Collins’s which, if not so perfect in expression as
the two just named, is interesting as almost the earliest inroad by an
English poet into the wild and romantic world which the Highlands of
Scotland contain, unless we except Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.” This
is Collins’s ode on the “Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of
Scotland.” It seems that in the autumn of 1749, Home, the author of
the tragedy of “Douglas,” had, when on a visit to London, during his
brief stay made the acquaintance of Collins, and kindled his
imagination with tales of the Highlands and the Hebrides. Collins
seems to have deepened this interest by the perusal of Martin’s
curious book on the Western Isles, and on Home’s return to Scotland
Collins addressed to him the ode, in which the English poet entered
with a deeper, more imaginative insight into the weird and wild
superstitions of the Gael than any Scottish poet had as yet shown.
After describing with great force and truthfulness the second sight,
the wraith, the water-kelpie, and many such-like things, he closes
with this apostrophe:—

“All hail! ye scenes that o’er my soul prevail!

Ye splendid friths and lakes, which, far away,
Are by smooth Annan filled, or pastoral Tay,
Or Don’s romantic springs, at distance hail!
The time shall come, when I, perhaps, may tread
Your lowly glens, o’erhung with spreading broom;
Or, o’er your stretching heaths, by fancy led;
Or, o’er your mountains creep, in awful gloom.”

Poor Collins: this hope was never fulfilled. A deeper gloom than
any that rests on the Highland mountains too soon gathered over
him. The ode itself does not seem to have received the notice it
deserves, both for its own excellence and as the first symptom of a
new and enlarged feeling about Nature entering into English poetry.
In the above extract the word “glen” occurs. Is there any earlier
instance of its use in English poetry or prose? The Scottish poets,
except the ballad-writers, were afraid to use it till the time of Scott.
Macpherson in his translations of Ossian, twelve years later than this
ode, uniformly renders the Gaelic “gleann” by the insipid “vale.”
But the most perfect and original poem of Collins, as well as the
most finely appreciative of Nature, is his Ode to Evening. No doubt
evening is personified in his address as “maid composed,” and “calm
votaress,” but the personification is so delicately handled, and in so
subdued a tone, that it does not jar on the feelings, as such
personifications too often do:—

“If aught of oaten stop, or pastoral song,

May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear,
Like thy own solemn springs,
Thy springs and dying gales,

“O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun

Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts,
With brede ethereal wove,
O’erhang his wavy bed:

“Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat

With short, shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing;
Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn,

“As oft he rises ’midst the twilight path,

Against the pilgrim borne in needless hum
Now teach me, maid composed,
To breathe some softened strain.

...

“Then lead, calm votaress, where some sheety lake

Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallowed pile,
Or upland fallows gray
Reflect its last cool gleam.

“But when chill, blustering winds, or driving rain,

Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut,
That from the mountain’s side,
Views wilds, and swelling floods,

“And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires,

And hears the simple bell, and marks o’er all,
Thy dewy finger draw
 The gradual dusky veil.”

There is about the whole ode a subdued twilight tone, a

remoteness from men and human things, and a pensive evening
musing, all the more expressive, because it does not shape itself into
definite thoughts, but reposes in appropriate images. And, as the
Aldine biographer observes,—“The absence of rhyme leaves the
even flow of the verse unbroken, and the change at the end of each
stanza into shorter lines, as if the voice of the reader dropped into a
lower key, contributes to the effect.”
In Thomson there was probably an observation of the facts of
Nature wider and more varied, but in Collins there is an intermingling
of human feeling with Nature’s aspects which is at once more
delicate and deep.
The increased sensibility to Nature which in English poetry
appeared in Thomson, was carried on through the eighteenth
century to its close by Collins, Gray, Goldsmith, and Cowper, and
manifested itself in each of these poets in a way characteristic of
himself.

GRAY.
In Collins we have seen Nature described with a perfect grace of
language and a penetrating of the forms and colors of things with
human sentiment, that far outwent the minute and faithful
descriptions of Thomson. This same movement was maintained, I
cannot say advanced, by Gray. That he had a fine feeling for Nature
is apparent in his letters, which show more minute observation and
greater descriptive power than his poetry. In these the beautiful
scenery around the Westmoreland Lakes finds the earliest notice.
In dealing with scenery, as with other things, Nature without Art,
and Art without Nature, are alike inadequate. To hit the balance is no
easy task. To let in Nature fully upon the heart, by means of an art
which is colorless and unperceived—this English poetry was
struggling toward, and Gray helped it forward, though he himself only
attained partial success. Often the art is too apparent; a false
classicism is sometimes thrust in between the reader and the fresh
outer world. Wordsworth has laid hold of a sonnet of Gray’s as a text
to preach against false poetic diction. And yet Gray, notwithstanding
his often too elaborate diction, deserves better of lovers of English
poetry than to have his single sonnet thus gibbeted, merely because,
instead of saying the sun rises, it makes

“Reddening Phœbus lift his golden fire.”

In the ode on Spring, it is “the rosy-bosomed hours, fair Venus’

train,” which bring spring in. Venus is thrust between you and the
advent of spring, much as Adversity is made “the daughter of Jove.”
For the nightingale we have “the Attic warbler,” as in another ode, for
the yellow corn-fields we have “Ceres’ golden reign.” It is needless to
say how abhorrent this sort of stuff is to the modern feeling about
Nature. And yet, notwithstanding these blemishes, Gray did help
forward the movement to a more perfect and adequate style, in
which Nature should come direct to the heart, through a perfectly
transparent medium of art. When he is at his best, as in the Elegy,
Nature and human feeling so perfectly combine that the mind finds in
all the images satisfaction and relief. There is in the Elegy no image
from Greece or Rome, no intrusive heathen deity, to jar upon the
feeling. From the common English landscape alone is drawn all that
is needed to minister to the quiet but deep pathos of the whole.
The line of poets who carried on the description of Nature during
the last century, Collins, Gray, Goldsmith, and Cowper, much as they
differ, have this in common. Their style, though each had his own,
was in all formed by a more or less intimate study of the classic
poets. And they regarded Nature, all more or less, in a meditative
moralizing way. They were all thoughtful, cultivated men, with
convictions and sentiments of their own—sentiments mainly of a
grave cast,—they saw Nature through the light of these sentiments,
and sought out those scenes and images in Nature which suited
their habitual mood. None of them are born children of Nature,
knowing her face before they could read or write. They were lovers
of books before they became lovers of the country. Hence there is in
them no rapture in the presence of Nature. For that we shall have to
look elsewhere than to those scholarly gentlemen.

GOLDSMITH.
The amiable and versatile Goldsmith looks at Nature, as he
passes along, with a less moralizing eye than the sombre-minded
Gray. In his earliest long poem, “The Traveller,” published in 1765,
though he surveys many lands, his eye dwells on man and society
rather than on the outward world. In remarkable contrast to more
recent English poets, though he passes beneath the shadow of the
Alps, he looks up to them with shuddering horror rather than with any
kindling of soul. The mountain glory had not yet burst on the souls of
men. The one thought that strikes him is the hard lot of the
mountaineers. Such conventional lines as these are all that he has
for the mountains themselves:—

“No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,

But winter lingers in the lap of May;
No zephyr fondly sues the mountain’s breast,
But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.”

It is only when he thinks of the Switzer’s love for them that they
become interesting:—

“Dear is the shed to which his soul conforms,

And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms;
And as a child, when scaring sounds molest,
Clings close and closer to his mother’s breast,
So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind’s roar,
But bind him to his native mountains more.”

This poem, however, is remarkable as the first expression in

English verse of that personal interest in foreign scenes and people
which has kindled so many a splendid strain of our more recent
poetry. But it is in “The Deserted Village,” his best known poem, that
he has most fully shown the grace and truthfulness with which he
could touch natural scenes. Lissoy, an Irish village where the poet’s
brother had a living, is said to have been the original from which he
drew. In the poem, the church which crowns the neighboring hill, the
mill, the brook, the hawthorn-tree, are all taken straight from the
outer world. The features of Nature and the works of man, the
parsonage, the school-house, the ale-house, all harmonize in one
picture, and though the feeling of desolation must needs be a
melancholy one, yet it is wonderfully varied and relieved by the
uncolored faithfulness of the pictures from Nature and the kindly
humor of those of man. It is needless to quote from a poem which
every one knows so well. The verse of Pope is not the best vehicle
for rural description, but it never was employed with greater grace
and transparency than in “The Deserted Village.” In that poem there
is fine feeling for Nature, in her homely forms, and truthful
description of these, but beyond this Goldsmith does not venture.
The pathos of the outward world in its connection with man is there,
but no reference to the meaning of Nature in itself, much less any
question of its relation to the Divine Being and a supersensible
world.

COWPER.
Though Collins, Gray, and Goldsmith, each in his own way, turned
their eye on rural scenery, and took beautiful pictures and images
from it into their poetry, yet it was none of these, but a later poet,
Cowper, who, as the true successor of Thomson, carried on the
descriptive work which he began. It was in 1730 that the first
complete edition of the “Seasons” appeared. “The Task” was
published in 1785. This is the poem in which Cowper most fully put
forth his power as a rural poet. In the first book, “The Sofa,” he thus
quaintly makes the first plunge from indoor to outdoor life, to which
many a time ere the long poem is ended he returns:—

“The Sofa suits

The gouty limb, ’tis true; but gouty limb,
Though on a sofa, may I never feel:
For I have loved the rural walk through lanes
Of grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep,
And skirted thick with intertexture firm
Of thorny boughs; have loved the rural walk
O’er hills, through valleys, and by river’s brink,
E’er since, a truant boy, I passed my bounds,
To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames;
And still remember, nor without regret,
Of hours that sorrow since has much endeared,
How oft, my slice of pocket-store consumed,
Still hungering, penniless, and far from home,
I fed on scarlet hips and stony haws,
Or blushing crabs, and berries that emboss
The bramble, black as jet, or sloes austere.”

This, the first rural passage in the “Task,” strikes the note of
difference between Cowper’s way of describing Nature and
Thomson’s; Cowper unhesitatingly introduces the personal element,
describes actual and individual scenes as he himself saw them in his
morning or evening walk. Or when rural scenes are not thus
personally introduced, they everywhere come in as interludes in the
midst of the poet’s keen interest in human affairs, his quiet and
delicate humor, his tender sympathy with the poor and the suffering,
his indignation against human wrong, his earnest brooding over
human destiny, and his forward glances to a time when visible things
will give place to a higher and brighter order. Thomson, on the other
hand, describes Nature as seen by itself, separate and apart from
human passion, or relieved only by some vapid episodes of a false
Arcadianism. Hence, great as is Thomson’s merit for having, first of
his age, gone back to Nature, the interest he awakes in it is feeble,
because with him Nature is so divorced from individuality and from
man. It is Nature in the general rather than the individual scene
which he describes—Nature aloof from rather than combined with
man. But her full depth and tenderness she never reveals except to
the heart that throbs with human interest.
But though Cowper sees the outer world as set off against his own
personal moods and the interests of man, yet he does not allow
these to discolor his scenes or to blur the exactness of their outlines.
Fidelity, absolute veracity, characterize his descriptions. He himself
says that he took nothing at second-hand, and all his pictures bear
witness to this. Homely, of course, flat, tame, was the country he
dwelt in and described. But to this day that Huntingdonshire
landscape, and the flats by the sluggish Ouse, in themselves so
unbeautiful, acquire a charm to the eye of the traveler from the
remembered poetry of the “Task” and for the sake of him who wrote
it. By that poetry it may be said that he

“For scenes not beautiful did more

Than beauty for the fairest scenes can do.”

As one out of many landscapes described, take this:—

“How oft upon yon eminence our pace

Has slackened to a pause, and we have borne
The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,
While admiration, feeding at the eye,
And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.
Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned,
The distant plow slow-moving, and beside
His laboring team, that swerved not from the track,
The sturdy swain diminished to a boy!
Here Ouse, slow-winding through a level plain
Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o’er,
Conducts the eye along his sinuous course
Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank,
Stand, never overlooked, our favorite elms,
That screen the herdsman’s solitary hut;
While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,
That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,
The sloping land recedes into the clouds;
Displaying, on its varied side, the grace
Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,
Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells
Just undulates upon the listening ear,
Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote.
Scenes must be beautiful which, daily viewed,
Please daily, and whose novelty survives
Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years.
Praise justly due to those that I describe.”

An ordinary prospect, you say, described in very ordinary poetry.

Yes, but the scene is a real scene, one of England’s veritable
landscapes, and the lines which describe it are genuine poetry,—
exact, transparent, lingering lovingly over the scene which the eye
rests on. And for its being ordinary description, no doubt it flows
easily and naturally along, but let any one try to describe as common
a prospect in verse, and he will find that this is not ordinary verse,
but instinct with that unobtrusive grace which only true poets attain.
Then how frequently the commonest country sights awaken
Cowper’s touch of native humor. Here is what he says of the mole
and his work: we—

“Feel at every step

Our foot half sunk in hillocks green and soft,
Raised by the mole, the miner of the soil.
He, not unlike the great ones of mankind,
Disfigures earth, and, plotting in the dark,
Toils much to earn a monumental pile
That may record the mischiefs he has done.”

In Keble’s “Essay on Sacred Poetry” I lately read the following

comparison between Cowper and Burns as descriptive poets.
“Compare,” he says, “the landscapes of Cowper with those of Burns.
There is, if we mistake not, the same sort of difference between
them, as in the conversation of two persons on scenery, the one
originally an enthusiast in his love of the works of Nature, the other,
driven by disappointment or weariness to solace himself with them
as he might.... The one all-overflowing with the love of Nature, and
indicating at every turn, that whatever his lot in life, he could not
have been happy without her; the other visibly and wisely soothing
himself, but not without effort, by attending to rural objects in default
of some more congenial happiness, of which he had almost come to
despair. The latter, in consequence, laboriously sketching every
object that came in his way; the other, in one or two rapid lines which
operate, as it were, like a magician’s spell, presenting to the fancy
just that picture which was wanted to put the reader’s mind in unison
with the writer’s.” And then Keble quotes, in illustration of the
difference, the description of Evening in the fourth book of the “Task,”
set over against the truly pastoral chant of “Dainty Davie.” I cannot
regard this estimate of the two poets as altogether true. The passage
which Keble quotes from Cowper is not one of his happiest.
“Evening” is there personified in conventional fashion, as “with
matron-step slow moving,” with night treading “on her sweeping
train.” If the two poets are to be compared at all, let it be when both
are at their best. Again, is it quite fair to contrast poetry of description
with the poetry of lyric passion, and to reject the former because it
does not possess the vivid glow that belongs to the latter? Moreover,
the country which Cowper had before him suited better a sober and
meditative than an impassioned strain. There can be no doubt that
Cowper turned to Nature as a relief and solace from too sad
thoughts rather than with the rapture of a fresh heart and a youthful
love. But Keble surely would have been the last to deny that this is a
legitimate use to make of Nature. He, before most men, would have
felt that that is one of the finest ministries of Nature which Cowper
thus expresses:—

“Our groves were planted to console at noon

The pensive wanderer in their shades, at eve
The moonbeam, sliding softly in between
The sleeping leaves is all the light they wish,
Birds warbling all the music.”

If it be one of Nature’s offices to make the young and the happy

happier, it is her no less genuine and beneficent work to lighten, by
her glad or reposeful looks, aged hearts that may be world-weary or
desponding.
How exact, faithful, and literally true in his record of the
appearances of Nature Cowper is, we have seen. It remains to ask
whether he had any philosophy of Nature, and if so, what it was. It
could not be that one so devout could look habitually on the face of
Nature without asking himself how all this visible vastness stands
related to the Invisible One whom his heart held commune with. All
remember his well-known line,—

“God made the country, but man made the town,”

and this thought echoes through all his praises of the country, and
enhances his pleasure in it. But it is not only by incidental allusion
that Cowper lets us know his thoughts on these things. The “Task”
contains two long passages, one in the “Winter Morning Walk,” from
line 733 to 906, and another in “The Winter Walk at Noon,” from line
181 to 254, in which his feelings on this subject find full utterance,
opening with the noble words,—

“He is the freeman whom the Truth makes free,

And all are slaves beside.”

In the former passage, of the man whose heart is set free with this
heavenly freedom he says, in words well known,

“He looks abroad into the varied field

Of Nature, and ...
Calls the delightful scenery all his own.
His are the mountains, and the valleys his,
And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy
With a propriety that none can feel,
But who, with filial confidence inspired,
Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling say, ‘My Father made them all.’”

And so throughout this whole passage he continues in a strain akin

to that of Thomson’s Hymn, but more intimate and devout, his
acknowledgment of Him whom he calls “The only just Proprietor” of
Nature. It is He who alike

“Gives its lustre to an insect’s wing,

And wheels his throne upon the rolling worlds.”
When He has enlightened the eye and touched the mortal ear—

“In that blest moment, Nature throwing wide

Her veil opaque, discloses with a smile
The Author of her beauties, who, retired
Behind his own creation, works unseen
By the impure, and hears his word denied.

...

“But, O thou bounteous Giver of all good,

Thou art of all thy gifts thyself the crown!
Give what thou canst, without thee we are poor,
And with thee rich, take what thou wilt away.”

A finer strain of rapturous piety could not be, but yet in it all there is
no advance beyond the old conception of a dead mechanical world,
which God, himself removed aloof, moves entirely from without.
There is no hint that Nature is alive with a life received from God
himself, and mysteriously connected with Him.
But in the second passage alluded to his thought about Nature
takes a higher reach. Speaking of the revival of the earth under the
touch of spring, he teaches that

“There lives and moves

A soul in all things, and that soul is God.”

Then, alluding to the view, entertained by many, then as now, that

what we call Nature’s operations are upheld and carried forward by
fixed laws, which spare the Maker all further trouble, he asserts that
all things are impelled

“To ceaseless service by a ceaseless force,

And under pressure of some conscious cause.
The Lord of all, Himself through all diffused,
Sustains, and is the life of all that lives.
Nature is but a name for an effect
Whose cause is God.”
 Nor does he step at this merely theistic view. He goes on to the
distinctly Christian teaching of St. John and St. Paul, so easy to
assert, so hard to take home to the feelings and imagination, that it is
the Eternal and Incarnate Word who is the Creator and Sustainer of
this visible universe.

“All are under One. One Spirit—his

Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows—
Rules universal Nature. Not a flower
But shows some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain,
Of his unrivaled pencil.”

No doubt Cowper held and believed this firmly, and it may be at

times had keen intuition of its truth. But it cannot be said that he
attained to make it felt in his ordinary descriptions of the every-day
landscape. He does not describe Nature as if he habitually saw it as
a living being plastic to an overruling and informing spirit. Rather he
beheld her more as common eyes behold her, as a mechanism, with
fixed features and a definite outline, which do not spontaneously,
and without an exertion of thought, lend themselves as vehicles of
spiritual reality. If he had been more possessed with the mystical
vision he might have been a higher poet for the few. He would not
have been what he has been called, the best of our descriptive poets
for every-day wear, the familiar companion of every quiet English
household. But though Cowper’s “Task” is full of scenery, it is not
purely, or even mainly, descriptive poetry. More than its rural
character is its deep, tender, universal human-heartedness. Man and
his interests are paramount, as paramount as in Pope or any other
city poet. Only it is not the conventional, not the surface part of man,
but that which is permanent in him and universal. In his indignation
against injustice and oppression, his hatred of slavery, his large
sense of universal brotherhood, and his revolt against all that hinders
it, we already hear in his poetry the not far-off murmur of the
Revolution, and of the new era it was bringing in. His denunciation of
the Bastile but four years before it fell—

“Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts,

Ye dungeons, and ye cages of despair,
There’s not an English heart that would not leap
To hear that ye were fallen at last,”—

is a fitting prelude to that prayer of thanksgiving which Wordsworth

raised a few years afterward from Morecombe Sands when he first
heard of the fall of Robespierre. It is because Cowper’s poetry throbs
with this deep and universal human sympathy that its background of
landscape, plain as it is, and untransfigured by passion, comes in
with such graceful and refreshing relief. Of Cowper’s descriptions
may be said what Wordsworth says of his own, there is always

“Some happy tone

Of meditation slipping in between
The beauty coming and the beauty gone.”

And this it is that gives them their peculiar charm.

BURNS.
The rural descriptions and the reflections on the outer world
contained in the poetry of Cowper, mark the highest limit which the
feeling for Nature had reached in England at the close of last
century. But the stream of natural poetry in England, which up to that
time had been fed from purely native sources, and which had flowed
on through all last century with ever increasing volume, received
toward the close of the century affluents from other regions, which
tinged the color and modified the direction of its future current. Of
these affluents the first and most powerful was the poetry of Burns. It
is strange to think that Cowper and he were singing their songs at
the same time, each in his own way describing the scenery that
surrounded him, and yet that they hardly knew of each other’s
existence.
Burns not only lived in a world of nature, of society, and of feeling,
wholly alien to that of Cowper, but he took for his models far different
poets. These models were the Scottish rhymers, Allan Ramsay,