The Country of Bunyan and Cowper
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Some of the most characteristic excursions through the gently undulating rural scenery which distinguishes so large a portion of the south midland district of England may be made along the towing-paths of the canals. The notion may appear unromantic; the pathway is artificial, yet it has now become rusticated and fringed with various verdure; some of the associations of the canal are anything but attractive—but upon the whole the charm is great. A wide, level path, driven straight across smiling valleys and by the side of hills, here and there skirting a fair park, and occasionally bringing some broad open landscape into sudden view, with the gleam and coolness of still waters ever at the traveller’s side, affords him a succession of pictures which perhaps the “strong climber of the mountain’s side” may disdain, but which to many will be all the more delightful, because they can be enjoyed with no more fatigue than that of a leisurely, health-giving stroll.
It was by such a walk as this through some of the pleasantest parts of Hertfordshire that we first made our way to Berkhampstead—the birthplace of William Cowper, turning from the canal bank to the embowered fragments of the castle, and through the quiet little town to the “public way,”—the pretty rural bye-road where the “gardener Robin” drew his little master to school:
“Delighted with the bauble coach, and wrapped
In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet capped,”
while the fond mother watched her darling from the “nursery window,” the memory of which one pathetic poem has made immortal.
In a well-known sentence, Lord Macaulay affirms in reference to the seventeenth century, “We are not afraid to say, that though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of that century, there were only two minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of these minds produced the Paradise Lost; the other, the Pilgrim’s Progress.” Similarly, with regard to the brilliant literary period which began towards the close of the eighteenth century, “we are not afraid to say,” that although there were many poets in England of no mean order, there were but two to whom it was given to view nature simply and sincerely, so as adequately to express “the delight of man in the works of God.” One of these poets produced the Task, the other the Exclusion.