The Cowper & Newton Museum

The collections

Works: 'To the Rev. William Bull' by William Cowper (A poem about friendship - and smoking)

The following poem was written by Cowper as a verse epistle to Bull, after his friend had left a box of tobacco behind on one of his regular visits to Orchard Side. Though the last couplet about Bull is often quoted, the complete poem is seldom printed in standard editions of Cowper - perhaps because it originated as a letter - but is worth reviving as an example of his skill in this kind of occasional verse. As well as a testament of friendship, it is an ode to the joys of tobacco - whether smoked or taken as snuff ('pulverized it gain/ A speedy passage to the brain'). Cowper was a snuff-taker.

The Summer House -
Cowper's smoking room

The poem divides into two sections. In the first, Cowper laments the absence of inspiration for the poem he wishes to write for his friend: even though the sun is shining and its god, Apollo (also the god of poetry), should be helping the writer, he remains aloof. The poet looks for an alternative 'succedaneum' (a curious word meaning 'substitute', 'remedy' or 'drug', also used by Wordsworth in The Prelude, Bk II, line 219). There follow several lines of comic dog Latin ('Quod caput...') which roughly translated mean 'Oh for a quick remedy, which may liberate head, brain and skull from the heavy weight pressing upon them, and also from the disease of dullness'.

Tobacco comes to the rescue, and proves more efficacious than hellebore: Anticyra was a town in ancient Greece famed for the growing of that plant, which was used in the production of a drug for the treatment of insanity. We may find this a poignant reference, in view of Cowper's own mental problems.

The poem's second section begins by addressing the Nymph responsible for making tobacco grow and flourish in the New World. It praises her for the divine weed which 'Does thought more quicken and refine/ Than all the breath of all the Nine' (Muses) - and which might even bring a peaceful resolution to the American War of Independence raging at the time. A prayer is offered up that her worshippers ('votaries') may continue to increase, 'And fumigation never cease'.

The last lines return full circle to the theme of friendship celebrated at the beginning, and leave us with a picture of Bull and Newton calmly enjoying their smokes, but never satiated - 'Always filling, never full.'

June 22, 1782
My dear Friend,
If reading verse be your delight,
'Tis mine as much, or more, to write;
But what we would, so weak is man,
Lies oft remote from what we can.
For instance, at this very time
I feel a wish by cheerful rhyme
To soothe my friend, and, had I power,
To cheat him of an anxious hour;
Not meaning (for I must confess,
It were but folly to suppress)
His pleasure, or his good alone,
But squinting partly at my own.
But though the sun is flaming high
In the centre of yon arch, the sky,
And he had once (and who but he?)
The name for setting genius free;
Yet whether poets of past days
Yielded him undeserved praise,
And he by no uncommon lot
Was famed for virtues he had not;
Or whether, which is like enough,
His highness may have taken huff,
So seldom sought with invocation,
Since it has been the reigning fashion
To disregard his inspiration,
I seem no brighter in my wits,
For all the radiance he emits,
Than if I saw, through midnight vapour,
The glimmering of a farthing taper.
Oh for a succedaneum, then,
To accelerate a creeping pen!
Oh for a ready succedaneum,
Quod caput, cerebrum, et cranium
Pondere liberet exoso,
Et morbo jam caliginoso!
'Tis here; this oval box well filled
With best tobacco, finely milled,
Beats all Anticyra's pretences
To disengage the encumbered senses.
Oh Nymph of transatlantic fame,
Where'er thine haunt, whate'er thy name,
Whether reposing on the side
Of Oroonoquo's spacious tide,
Or listening with delight not small
To Niagara's distant fall,
'Tis thine to cherish and to feed
The pungent nose-refreshing weed,
Which, whether pulverized it gain
A speedy passage to the brain,
Or whether, touched with fire, it rise
In circling eddies to the skies,
Does thought more quicken and refine
Than all the breath of all the Nine -
Forgive the bard, if bard he be,
Who once too wantonly made free,
To touch with a satiric wipe
That symbol of thy power, the pipe;
So may no blight infest thy plains,
And no unseasonable rains;
And so may smiling peace once more
Visit America's sad shore;
And thou, secure from all alarms
Of thundering drums and glittering arms,
Rove unconfined beneath the shade
Thy wide expanded leaves have made:
So may thy votaries increase,
And fumigation never cease.
May Newton, with renewed delights,
Perform thine odoriferous rites,
While clouds of incense half divine
Involve thy disappearing shrine;
And so may smoke-inhaling Bull
Be always filling, never full.

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