Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
William Cowper
William Browne, of Tavistock
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
William Cowper was born on 26 November 1731 in the rectory at Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, the fourth child of the Reverend John Cowper, rector of the parish, and Ann Donne Cowper. His family belonged to the educated clerical and professional class, and it possessed distinguished connections: his father’s lineage included the Lord Chancellor William Cowper, while his mother was descended from the poet John Donne. Such…
“Home is the nicest word there is.”
William Browne of Tavistock, born about 1588 and traditionally thought to have died about 1650, is one of the most attractive and elusive figures in early seventeenth-century English poetry. He was not a major public presence on the scale of Ben Jonson, John Donne, or George Wither, nor did he leave behind the unusually full documentary record that allows historians to reconstruct the lives of some contemporaries. Ye…
“You have given such a maintenance to that repute which your former deportment had begotten that it will need no other livelihood than a chronicle.”
About 284 km separate Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England from Tavistock, Devon, England. Both have ground in England.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
William Cowper: berkhamsted, john donne, on the receipt of my mother's picture, william hayley, theodora cowper, st. albans, olney hymns, god moves in a mysterious way. William Browne, of Tavistock: devonshire, britannia's pastorals, the shepherd's pipe, george wither, exeter college, inner temple, pastoral writing, classical pastoral.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
William Cowper: Peace, Tenderness, Wonder. William Browne, of Tavistock: Tenderness, Joy, Longing.
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