"The Maker of all these wonders is my friend!"

From Patrick Kurp's "I Myself Perhaps May Proceed Also" on William Cowper:

Here is Cowper on May 3, 1780, writing to his friend the Rev. John Newton and making piety playful:

I delight in baubles, and know them to be so; for rested in, and viewed without a reference to their author, what is the Earth, what are the planets, what is the sun itself, but a bauble? Better for a man never to have seen them, or to see them with the eyes of a brute, stupid and unconscious of what he beholds, than not to be able to say, ‘The Maker of all these wonders is my friend!’ Their eyes have never been opened, to see that they are trifles; mine have been, and will be till they are closed for ever.”

Cowper’s metaphors often mingle playfulness and precision. A bauble is a plaything, a toy or trinket. Cowper finds in them an endorsement of his faith.

Patrick Kurp, "I Myself Perhaps May Proceed Also," Anecdotal Evidence, May 3, 2026.

The contemporary essay

Patrick Kurp has come across an essay he saved, “What’s Wrong With the American Essay.” First, a portion he quotes from it, and then some of his reaction:

“The problem, of course, is not merely our essayists; it’s our culture. We have grown terribly—if somewhat hypocritically—weary of larger truths. The smarter and more intellectual we count ourselves, the more adamantly we insist that there is no such thing as truth, no such thing as general human experience, that everything is plural and relative and therefore undiscussable. Of course, everything is plural, everything is arguable, and there are limits to what we can know about other persons, other cultures, other genders. But there is also a limit to such humility; there is a point at which it becomes narcissism of a most myopic sort, a simple excuse to talk only about one’s own case, only about one’s own small area of specialization.”

Things have only gotten worse in subsequent decades. Contemporary essays are characterized principally by the writer’s desire to impress readers with his sensitivity and virtue, usually of a political nature, as though the essay were a form of loyalty oath. Of course, a few first-rate essayists are still at work, still getting published: Cynthia Ozick (age 98), Joseph Epstein (89), Gary Saul Morson (78), Theodore Dalrymple (76), Peter Hitchens (74). All are lineal descendants of the father of essays, Montaigne.... (more)

I read anything I come across by Epstein, Dalrymple, or Peter Hitchens.

Patrick Kurp, "Our Essayists Have Defected," Anecdotal Evidence, May 2, 2026.

May Day

Once upon a time, May Day had nothing to do with politics:

We've been a-rambling all this night,
And sometime of this day;
And now returning back again
We bring a branch of May.

A branch of May we bring you here,
And at your door it stands;
It is a sprout well budded out,
The work of the Lord's hands.

The hedges and trees they are so green,
As green as any leek;
Our Heavenly Father, He watered them
With His heavenly dew so sweet.

The heavenly gates are open wide,
Our paths are beaten plain;
And if a man be not too far gone,
He may return again.

So dear, so dear as Christ loved us,
And for our sins was slain,
Christ bids us turn from wickedness
Back to the Lord again.

The moon shines bright, the stars give a light,
A little before it is day,
So God bless you all, both great and small,
And send you a joyful May.

The Mayers' Song

When May Day was about things like May Poles and May Baskets and the celebration of the coming of Spring.

Happy May Day!

The verse and the illustration are from The Children's Book of Rhymes, by Cicely Mary Barker