The Henson Journals

[143]

Wednesday, August 28th, 1918.

1486th day

I continued my matutinal reading of Cowper's "Task". In "The winter evening" there is a hostile description of the clerical magistrate:

"The plump convivial parson often bears

The magisterial sword in vain, and lays

His reverence and his worship both to rest

On the same cushion of habitual sloth.

Perhaps timidity restrains his arm;

When he should strike he trembles, and sets free,

Himself enslaved by terror of the ban,

The audacious convict whom he dares not bind.

Perhaps, though by profession ghostly pure,

He too may have his vice, and sometimes prove

Less dainty than becomes his grave outside

In lucrative concerns. Examine well

His milk–white hand, the palm is hardly clean –

But here & there an ugly smutch appears.

Foh! 'twas a bribe that left it; he has touch'd

Corruption. Whoso seeks an audit here

Propitious pays his tribute, game or fish,

Wild–fowl or venison! and his errand speeds.

Who are the donors of such bribes? Are they poachers? Cowper would hardly desire a brisk enforcement of the Game Laws. Or, does he allude to the complimentary gifts of the local squires?

[144]

Then follows a vigorous indictment of "universal soldiership" as the spring of general social corruption.

'Tis universal soldiership has stab'd

The heart of merit in the meaner class.

Cowper describes the transformation under discipline of the rustic lout into a smart soldier, and the disgust of honest work which his military life breeds in him:

And, his three years of heroship expired,

Returns indignant to the slighted plough.

He hates the field, in which no fife and drum

Attends him; drives his cattle to a march;

And sighs for the smart comrades he has left.

His impatience of work goes along with an acquired disgust of morality:

'Twere well if his exterior charge were all –

But with his clumsy port the wretch has lost

His ignorance and harmless manners too ,

To swear, to game, to drink: to shew at home

By lewdness, idleness, and Sabbath–breach,

The great proficiency he made abroad;

To astonish & to grieve his gazing friends,

To break some maiden's and his mother's heart;

To be a pest where he was useful once,

Are his sole aim, and all his glory, now.

This is ominous reading just now.

[145]

Cowper's observation was keen and true. He describes the destructive effect of a hard winter on the birds:

How find the myriads, that in summer cheer

The hills and valleys with their ceaseless songs,

Due sustenance, or where subsist they now?

Earth yields them naught; the imprison'd worm is safe

Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs

Lie cover'd close; and berry–bearing thorns

That feed the thrush (whatever some suppose)

Afford the smaller minstrels no supply.

The long protracted rigour of the year

Thins all their numerous flocks. In chinks & holes

Ten thousand seek an unmolested end,

An instinct prompts, self–buried ere they die.

The very rooks and daws forsake the fields,

Where neither grub, nor root, nor earth–nut, now

Repays their labour more; and perch'd aloft

By the wayside, or stalking in the path,

Lean pensioners upon the traveller's track,

Pick up their nauseous dole, though sweet to them,

Of voided pulse or half–digested grain.

This description is life–like, and could only have been written by a lover and student of the country, who could draw on his own observations.

[148] [symbol]

I fear the amiable poet would not have been one of my supporters during the conflicts of the last few months. Yet, though he wouldn't have dreamed it possible, I should have more nearly agreed with him even religiously than those who would have claimed and used him.

Dr Forsyth sends me his article on "Evangelicals & Home Reunion", and accompanies it with a friendly letter to "express my agreement with the alternative you put in the Times the other day. It really goes to the heart of the situation". "If only' – he exclaims – "the Evangelicals had leaders to make them clothe their Gospel in a Liberal Theology"! It is, perhaps, something that the Evangelicals as a body declined to follow the leading of the Dean of Canterbury, but they are very backward and unintelligent.

A long typed letter from Major A. E. J. Lister, I.M.S. King George's Medical College, Lucknow, dated July 7th 1918, arrived. He gave illustrations of the ill effect of denominational differences on the Hindoos.

"The other day a missionary told me an Indian Christian woman came to her & said 'Miss Sahiba, there is caste among Christians though you say there is none. A certain Christian Indian of my acquaintance was not allowed to partake of the Holy Communion with a certain Christian body".

He adds his own opinion 'that the C. of E. should admit to the Communion Service anyone who is admitted to the Communion in his own Church, whatever that may be".

---