The poems of William Cowper ed. by John D. Baird and Charles Ryskamp (review)

HUMANITIES 219 volume 2' ....,''''....__......'''r:-· Clarendon Press 1995- Volume 2: xxix,454- "I'.......'v.'!JJ, Given the nature tas,Clflatllng discoveries. Volume 2 with a concise and students of The Task will wish to consult The LO;::I'.LI..I.I;.I.J. IJ''-'J.J.\..,U•• ~ abs~en(:e of 220 ,LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 on air balloons) announced that he "Supplies the loss of teeth as usual." , To read such notes is to encolUlter a Cowper who is aufait and engage- selfsequestered in his rural nook but responding ardently to events in the urban macrocosm. Throughout their commentary, Baird and Ryskamp refresh our understanding of the poem's dialectic, its polyphony, and its unique amalgamation of genres. In volume 3 the textual choices are more complicated, thanks to the survival of manuscripts (some of them holograph) for many of the later poems. The introduction describes the surviving evidence with admirable clarity and concision. Following their preference for the 'unsocialized' version (to adopt McGannian terminology), Baird and Ryskamp take as copy-text the holograph when available, or the copy with the greatest authority. This decision allows them to restore the original punctuation, and thereby to free the reader from those editions that 'impose on Cowper's easy syntax and fluid rhythms a grammar alien to the poet which constantly interrupts the flow of the verse.' Now Fanny will be able to quote lYe fallen avenues' with confidence in the accidentals. (BRUCE REDFORD) Joseph de Maistre. Against Rousseau. Edited by Richard A. Lebrun McGill-Queen's University Press. xxxv, 204. $55.00 This translation of three major essays - 'On the State of Nature,' 'On the Sovereignty ofthe People,' and the unfinished 'Onthe Nature ofSovereignty ' - is preceded by an elucidating introduction by Richard Lebrun, who is known for his work on Maistre, an intellectual who supported the monarchy and who fled the army of the French Revolution in 1792. Lebrun immediately answers the first criticism that might be levelled at a project now making available essays that were unfinished, unpublished for fifty years after their composition, and largely unknown then as now. Maistre, who might be viewed as an important 'modern' figure, was a contemporary of Rousseau, representing a significant and unique point of view. (Maistre saw Rousseau as an 'archtypical philosopher,' not as the more frequently depicted natural manI anti-phllosopher.) Furthermore, the evolution of Maistre's thought in these essays and the ambiguity of his understanding of Rousseau make the study of his work valuable to our appreciation of eighteenth-century history and thought. Maistrebaseshis critique on the following syllOgism,whichhe attributes to Rousseau. Man is good. Vices do not come from nature. Thus vices come from society which is, ergo, against nature and bad. Maistre avers that this is not a sufficient demonstration and he posits that, on the contrary, there is no such thing as a state of nature and that man is a social being. Art and perfectibility are part of man's nature and are gifts which can only be ...