William Cowper


 * For the Lord Chancellor, see William Cowper, 1st Earl Cowper.

William Cowper (26 November 1731 – 25 April 1800) was an English poet and hymnodist.

Quotes


And frustrate hope severer than despair.'''
 * '''Absence from whom we love is worse than death,
 * "Hope, like the short-lived ray that gleams awhile", line 35

To reach the distant coast; The breath of Heaven must swell the sail, Or all the toil is lost.
 * But oars alone can ne'er prevail
 * "Human Frailty", line 21 (1779)

Man yet mistakes his way, While meaner things, whom instinct leads, Are rarely known to stray.
 * Reasoning at every step he treads,
 * "The Doves", line 1. (1780)

Found oftenest in what least we dread, Frowns in the storm with angry brow, But in the sunshine strikes the blow.
 * Fate steals along with silent tread,
 * "A Fable" (or "The Raven"), line 36


 * True Charity, a plant divinely nurs'd.
 * "Charity", line 573. (1781)

Thy posterity shall sway'''; Where his eagles never flew, None invincible as they." Such the bard's prophetic words, Pregnant with celestial fire, Bending as he swept the chords Of his sweet but awful lyre.
 * "'''Regions Caesar never knew
 * "Boadicea" (1782)

Apt emblem of a virtuous maid Silent and chaste she steals along, Far from the world's gay busy throng: With gentle yet prevailing force, Intent upon her destined course; Graceful and useful all she does, Blessing and blest where'er she goes; Pure-bosom'd as that watery glass, And Heaven reflected in her face.'''
 * '''Sweet stream that winds through yonder glade,
 * "To a Young Lady" (1782)

Boys care but little whom they trust, An error soon corrected— For who but learns in riper years That man, when smoothest he appears Is most to be suspected?
 * Candid, and generous, and just,
 * "Friendship", line 19 (1782)


 * Thus neither the praise nor the blame is our own.
 * "From a Letter to the Rev. Mr. Newton", line 21. (1782)


 * I believe no man was ever scolded out of his sins.
 * Letter to John Newton, (17 June 1783)

Broadcloth without, and a warm heart within.
 * An honest man, close-buttoned to the chin,
 * "Epistle to Joseph Hill", line 62 (1785)

With such a luster, he that runs may read.
 * Shine by the side of every path we tread
 * "Tirocinium", line 79 (1785)

The brave! that are no more; All sunk beneath the wave, Fast by their native shore!'''
 * '''Toll for the brave &mdash;
 * "On the Loss of the Royal George", st. 1 (1791)

In wintry age to feel no chill, With me is to be lovely still, My Mary!
 * And still to love, though prest with ill,
 * "To Mary", st. 11 (1791)


 * I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original.
 * The Iliad of Homer: translated into English blank verse (1791), Preface

Shine in full splendor, and the winds are hush'd, The groves, the mountain-tops, the headland-heights Stand all apparent, not a vapor streaks The boundless blue, but ether open'd wide All glitters, and the shepherd's heart is cheer'd.
 * As when around the clear bright moon, the stars
 * The Iliad of Homer: translated into English blank verse (1791), Book VIII, line 643

Shall bear that also; for, by practice taught, I have learned patience, having much endured.
 * My soul
 * The Odyssey of Homer: translated into English blank verse (1791), Book V, line 264


 * Visits are insatiable devourers of time, and fit only for those who, if they did not that, would do nothing.
 * Letter to the Rev. John Johnson, (29 September1793)

(Live till tomorrow) will have passed away.
 * Beware of desp'rate steps! The darkest day
 * "The Needless Alarm, Moral" (1794)

This lesson seems to carry &mdash; Choose not alone a proper mate, But proper time to marry.
 * Misses! the tale that I relate
 * "Pairing Time Anticipated, Moral" (c. 1794)

Its semblance in another's case.
 * Misery still delights to trace
 * "The Castaway" (1799)

No light propitious shone; When, snatch'd from all effectual aid, We perish'd, each alone; But I beneath a rougher sea, And whelmed in deeper gulphs than he.
 * No voice divine the storm allay'd,
 * "The Castaway" (1799)

And, when by that of reason, a mere fool
 * A knave, when tried on honesty's plain rule,
 * Hope

Olney Hymns (1779)


A calm and heav'nly frame; A light to shine upon the road That leads me to the Lamb!
 * Oh! for a closer walk with God,
 * No. 1, "Walking With God"

How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void The world can never fill.
 * What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
 * No. 1, "Walking With God"


 * And Satan trembles when he sees The weakest saint upon his knees.
 * No. 29, "Exhortation to Prayer"

His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm.'''
 * '''God moves in a mysterious way,
 * The opening statement is often paraphrased: God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.
 * No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness"

He hides a smiling face.
 * Behind a frowning providence
 * No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness"

Of never failing skill, He treasures up his bright designs, And works his sovereign will.
 * Deep in unfathomable mines
 * No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness"

Unfolding every hour; The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower.'''
 * '''His purposes will ripen fast,
 * No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness"

And scan his work in vain; God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain. '''
 * '''Blind unbelief is sure to err,
 * No. 35, "Light Shining out of Darkness"

Drawn from Emmanuel's veins; And sinners, plung'd beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.
 * There is a fountain fill'd with blood
 * No. 79, "Praise for the Fountain Opened"

Table Talk (1782)

 * I play with syllables and sport in song
 * From:First of the Moral Satires
 * Glory, built On selfish principles, is shame and guilt.
 * Line 1


 * Is base in kind, and born to be a slave.
 * Line 28


 * As if the world and they were hand and glove.
 * Line 173

Less on exterior things than most suppose.
 * Thus happiness depends, as Nature shows,
 * Line 246

That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
 * Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
 * Line 260

The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.
 * Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,
 * Line 542

And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard: To carry nature lengths unknown before, To give a Milton birth, ask'd ages more.
 * Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appear'd,
 * Line 556

As ecstasy.
 * Elegant as simplicity, and warm
 * Line 588


 * Low ambition and the thirst of praise.
 * Line 591


 * Made poetry a mere mechanic art.
 * Line 654

Forms, opens, and gives scent to every flower; Spreads the fresh verdure of the field, and leads The dancing Naiads through the dewy meads.
 * Nature, exerting an unwearied power,
 * Line 690

The Progress of Error (1782)

 * Lights of the world, and stars of human race.
 * Line 97


 * Remorse, the fatal egg by Pleasure laid.
 * Line 240

Excels a dunce that has been kept at home!
 * How much a dunce that has been sent to roam
 * Line 415


 * No wild enthusiast ever yet could rest, Till half mankind were like himself possess'd.
 * Line 470

Conversation (1782)
A fool must now and then be right by chance.'''
 * Tis hard if all is false that I advance,
 * Line 96

Assert the nose upon his face his own.
 * He would not, with a peremptory tone,
 * Line 121

Will not affront me, and no other can.
 * A moral, sensible, and well-bred man
 * Line 193

Unfriendly to society's chief joys, Thy worst effect is banishing for hours The sex whose presence civilizes ours.
 * Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys,
 * Line 251

A fine puss-gentleman that's all perfume.
 * I cannot talk with civet in the room,
 * Line 283

A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge.
 * The solemn fop; significant and budge;
 * Line 299

But when you knock it never is at home.
 * His wit invites you by his looks to come,
 * Line 303

Of fancied scorn and undeserved disdain, And bear the marks upon a blushing face, Of needless shame, and self-impos'd disgrace.
 * I pity bashful men, who feel the pain
 * Line 347

Like hidden lamps in old sepulchral urns.
 * Our wasted oil unprofitably burns,
 * Line 357


 * That good diffused may more abundant grow.
 * Line 443


 * But that disease when soberly defined Is the false fire of an o'erheated mind.
 * Line 667; of fanaticism

And chiefly when religion leads the way, Should flow, like waters after summer show'rs, Not as if raised by mere mechanic powers.
 * But Conversation, choose what theme we may,
 * Line 703

Retirement (1782)
Furnishes always oil for its own wheels.
 * A business with an income at its heels
 * Line 615

A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.
 * Absence of occupation is not rest,
 * Line 623

As useless when it goes as when it stands.
 * An idler is a watch that wants both hands;
 * Line 681


 * Built God a church, and laugh'd his word to scorn.
 * Line 688

A panting syllable through time and space, Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's ark.
 * Philologists, who chase
 * Line 691

How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! But grant me still a friend in my retreat Whom I may whisper &mdash; solitude is sweet.
 * I praise the Frenchman [Voltaire], his remark was shrewd &mdash;
 * Line 739

Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk (1782)

 * This was Cowper's tribute to Alexander Selkirk the actual man whose shipwrecked existence upon an island inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe.

My right there is none to dispute; From the center all round to the sea I am lord of the fowl and the brute.'''
 * '''I am monarch of all I survey,
 * Line 1

That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms Than reign in this horrible place.'''
 * '''O solitude! where are the charms
 * Line 5

I must finish my journey alone, Never hear the sweet music of speech; I start at the sound of my own.'''
 * '''I am out of humanity's reach.
 * Line 9

Divinely bestow'd upon man, O had I the wings of a dove How soon I would taste you again!'''
 * '''Society friendship and love
 * Line 17


 * Religion! what treasure untold Resides in that heavenly word!
 * Line 25

A wish or a thought after me? '''O tell me I yet have a friend, Though a friend I am never to see.'''
 * My friends, do they now and then send
 * Line 37

And mercy, encouraging thought! Gives even affliction a grace And reconciles man to his lot.
 * There is mercy in every place,
 * Line 53

The Diverting History of John Gilpin (1785)
She had a frugal mind.
 * Though on pleasure she was bent,
 * St. 8

Up flew the windows all; And every soul cried out, "Well done!" As loud as he could bawl.
 * The dogs did bark, the children screamed,
 * St. 28


 * A hat not much the worse for wear.
 * St. 46

And Gilpin, long live he; And, when he next doth ride abroad, May I be there to see!
 * Now let us sing &mdash; Long live the king,
 * St. 63

Book I, The Sofa
So sit two kings of Brentford on one throne.
 * United yet divided, twain at once:
 * Line 77

Exhilarate the spirit, and restore The tone of languid nature.
 * Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds,
 * Line 181

Of desultory man, studious of change And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
 * The earth was made so various, that the mind
 * Line 506

Disinterested good, is not our trade.
 * Doing good,
 * Line 673


 * God made the country, and man made the town.
 * Line 749

Book II, The Timepiece
Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumor of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more.
 * Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
 * Line 1

Make enemies of nations, who had else Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.
 * Mountains interposed
 * Line 17

To carry me, to fan me while I sleep And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
 * I would not have a slave to till my ground,
 * Line 29


 * We have no slaves at home. ─ Then why abroad?
 * Line 37

Receive our air, that moment they are free! They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
 * Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
 * Line 40


 * Fast-anchor'd isle.
 * Line 151

My country! and, while yet a nook is left Where English minds and manners may be found, Shall be constrained to love thee.
 * England, with all thy faults, I love thee still—
 * Line 206

Of her magnificent and awful cause.
 * Presume to lay their hand upon the ark
 * Line 231

To fill the ambition of a private man, That Chatham's language was his mother tongue.
 * Praise enough
 * Line 235

Which only poets know.
 * There is a pleasure in poetic pains
 * Line 285

To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes Of gallery critics by a thousand arts.
 * Transforms old print
 * Line 363

Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work, And with a well-bred whisper close the scene.
 * Reading what they never wrote,
 * Line 411


 * Whoe'er was edified, themselves were not.
 * Line 444


 * O Popular Applause! what heart of man Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?
 * Line 481

That gives it all its flavour.'''
 * '''Variety's the very spice of life,
 * Line 606

Her dear five hundred friends.
 * She that asks
 * Line 642

Not yet by time completely silvered o'er, Bespoke him past the bounds of freakish youth, But strong for service still, and unimpaired.
 * His head,
 * Line 702

Book III, The Garden
Of Paradise that has survived the fall!
 * Domestic happiness, thou only bliss
 * Line 41

Long since.
 * I was a stricken deer that left the herd
 * Line 108

And still they dream that they shall still succeed; And still are disappointed.
 * Dream after dream ensues;
 * Line 127

Involves the combatants; each claiming truth, And truth disclaiming both.
 * Great contest follows, and much learned dust
 * Line 161

Of dropping buckets into empty wells, And growing old in drawing nothing up.
 * From reveries so airy, from the toil
 * Line 188


 * Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream.
 * Line 265

That owes its pleasures to another's pain.'''
 * '''Detested sport,
 * Line 326
 * Of fox-hunting

Calls idle, and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too!
 * How various his employments whom the world
 * Line 352


 * Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.
 * Line 566


 * So manifold, all pleasing in their kind, All healthful, are the employs of rural life, Reiterated as the wheel of time, Runs round; still ending, and beginning still.
 * Line 624

Book IV, The Winter Evening
And give them voice and utterance once again. Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer but not inebriate wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in.
 * I burn to set the imprison'd wranglers free,
 * Line 34


 * Which not even critics criticise.
 * Line 51

Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?
 * What is it but a map of busy life,
 * Line 55

At his own wonders, wondering for his bread. 'T is pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat, To peep at such a world,—to see the stir Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd.
 * And Katerfelto, with his hair on end
 * Line 86

Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.
 * While fancy, like the finger of a clock,
 * Line 118


 * O Winter, ruler of the inverted year!
 * Line 120

Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife, And spades, the emblems of untimely graves.
 * With spots quadrangular of diamond form,
 * Line 217


 * In indolent vacuity of thought.
 * Line 297


 * It seems the part of wisdom.
 * Line 336


 * All learned, and all drunk!
 * Line 478


 * Gloriously drunk, obey the important call.
 * Line 510

And those Arcadian scenes that Maro sings, And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose.
 * Those golden times
 * Line 514


 * The Frenchman's darling.
 * Line 765

Great talents. And God gives to every man The virtue, temper, understanding, taste, That lifts him into life, and lets him fall Just in the niche he was ordain'd to fill.
 * Some must be great. Great offices will have
 * Line 788

Book V, The Winter Morning Walk
No sound of hammer or of saw was there.
 * Silently as a dream the fabric rose &mdash;
 * Line 144

Kings would not play at.'''
 * '''But war's a game, which, were their subjects wise,
 * Line 187


 * The beggarly last doit.
 * Line 316

Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.
 * As dreadful as the Manichean god,
 * Line 444


 * The still small voice is wanted.
 * Line 685


 * He is the freeman whom the truth makes free.
 * Line 733

Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye, And smiling say, My Father made them all!
 * With filial confidence inspired,
 * Line 745

His works. Admitted once to his embrace, Thou shalt perceive that thou was blind before: Thine eye shall be instructed; and thine heart Made pure shall relish with divine delight Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought.
 * Acquaint thyself with God, if thou would'st taste
 * Line 779

And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.
 * Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor;
 * Line 905

Book VI, Winter Walk at Noon
And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased With melting airs or martial, brisk, or grave: Some chord in unison with what we hear Is touched within us, and the heart replies. How soft the music of those village bells Falling at intervals upon the ear In cadence sweet!
 * There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
 * Line 1

May give a useful lesson to the head, And Learning wiser grow without his books.
 * Here the heart
 * Line 85

Have oft-times no connexion, Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men, Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
 * Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
 * Line 88

The mere materials with which wisdom builds, Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place, Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich. '''Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.''' Books are not seldom talismans and spells.
 * Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,
 * Line 92

Surrender judgment hoodwink'd.
 * Some to the fascination of a name
 * ''The Task, book vi. Winter Walk at Noon, line 101

Whose cause is God.
 * Nature is but a name for an effect,
 * Line 223

But shows some touch, in freckle, streak or stain, Of his unrivall'd pencil.
 * Not a flower
 * Line 240

Is register'd in Heaven; and these no doubt Have each their record, with a curse annex'd. Man may dismiss compassion from his heart, But God will never.
 * But many a crime deem'd innocent on earth
 * Line 439

(Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail That crawls at evening in the public path; But he that has humanity, forewarn'd, Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
 * I would not enter on my list of friends,
 * Line 560

The Negro's Complaint (1788)
Afric's coast I left forlorn, To increase a stranger's treasures O'er the raging billows borne. Men from England bought and sold me, Paid my price in paltry gold; But, though slave they have enrolled me, Minds are never to be sold.
 * Forced from home and all its pleasures
 * Lines 1-8

Cannot forfeit nature's claim; Skins may differ, but affection Dwells in white and black the same.
 * Fleecy locks and black complexion
 * Lines 13-16

Till some reason ye shall find Worthier of regard and stronger Than the colour of our kind.
 * Deem our nation brutes no longer,
 * Lines 49-52

Ere you proudly question ours!
 * Prove that you have human feelings,
 * Lines 55-56

The Yardley Oak (1791)

 * Survivor sole, and hardly such, of all that once lived here
 * Lines 1-2


 * It seems idolatry with some excuse, When our forefather Druids in their oaks Imagined sanctity.
 * Lines 9-11


 * Thou wast a bauble once; a cup and ball, Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay Seeking her food, with ease might have purloined The auburn nut that held thee, swallowing down Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs And all thine embryo vastness at a gulp. But fate thy growth decreed.
 * Lines 18-23


 * So Fancy dreams. Disprove it, if ye can, Ye reasoners broad awake, whose busy search Of argument, employed too oft amiss, Sifts half the pleasures of short life away!
 * Lines 29-32

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)


A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew.
 * Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true,—
 * Truth, line 327


 * The sounding jargon of the schools.
 * Truth, line 367

Has fill'd his urn where these pure waters rise, And once more mingles with us meaner things, 'T is e'en as if an angel shook his wings.
 * When one that holds communion with the skies
 * ''Charity, line 435

May kill a sound divine.
 * A kick that scarce would move a horse
 * The Yearly Distress

These valleys and rocks never heard; Ne'er sigh'd at the sound of a knell, Or smiled when a Sabbath appear'd.
 * But the sound of the church-going bell
 * Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk

Compared with the speed of its flight The tempest itself lags behind, And the swift-winged arrows of light.
 * How fleet is a glance of the mind!
 * Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk

And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk.
 * There goes the parson, O illustrious spark!
 * On observing some Names of Little Note

May be follow'd perhaps by a smile.
 * And the tear that is wiped with a little address,
 * The Rose

In every change both mine and yours.
 * 'T is Providence alone secures
 * A Fable, Moral

If birds confabulate or no.
 * I shall not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau
 * Pairing Time Anticipated

Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.
 * The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
 * To an Afflicted Protestant Lady

With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
 * Oh that those lips had language! Life has pass'd
 * On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture


 * The son of parents pass'd into the skies.
 * On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture

And proves, by thumping on your back, His sense of your great merit, Is such a friend that one had need Be very much his friend indeed To pardon or to bear it.
 * The man that hails you Tom or Jack,
 * On Friendship

And at the root of age.
 * A worm is in the bud of youth,
 * Stanzas subjoined to a Bill of Mortality

And by the hoarseness of his note, Might be supposed a crow.
 * There is a bird who by his coat,
 * The Jackdaw (translation from Vincent Bourne)

The world, with all its motley rout, Church, army, physic, law, Its customs and its businesses, Is no concern at all of his, And says—what says he?—Caw.
 * He sees that this great roundabout
 * The Jackdaw (translation from Vincent Bourne)

That whatsoever thing is lost, We seek it, ere it come to light, In every cranny but the right.
 * For 't is a truth well known to most,
 * The Retired Cat

And lives contentedly between The little and the great, Feels not the wants that pinch the poor, Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door.
 * He that holds fast the golden mean, 22
 * Translation of Horace, book ii, Ode x


 * But strive still to be a man before your mother.
 * Connoisseur. Motto of No. iii

Misattributed
Pleasure never is at home.
 * Ever let the Fancy roam,
 * Actually the opening lines of Keats's "Fancy" (1820)


 * No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach.
 * From the writings of William Cowper Brann (1855 – 1898), known as Brann the Iconoclast.


 * The innocent seldom find an uncomfortable pillow.
 * A misquotation of "The innocent seldom find an uneasy pillow", from James Fenimore Cooper's The Red Rover (1827), ch. 23.

Quotes about Cowper

 * The mind of Cowper was, so to speak, naturally terrestrial. If a man wishes for a nice appreciation of the details of time and sense, let him consult Cowper's miscellaneous letters. Each simple event of every day—each petty object of external observation or inward suggestion, is there chronicled with a fine and female fondness, a wise and happy faculty, let us say, of deriving a gentle happiness from the tranquil and passing hour.
 * Walter Bagehot, "William Cowper" in The National Review (1855), p. 52


 * Cowper, writing after Pope, had the advantage of knowing what to avoid; but he was misled by a false analogy, and seeing in Milton a great epic poet, austere in his manner and repellent of meretricious ornament, attempted to force on Homer a style which, rightly considered, is almost as artificial as Virgil's, and which, moreover, he was himself unequal to wield.
 * John Conington, on Cowper's translation of Homer, in Oxford Essays (1855), "The Poetry of Pope", p. 30


 * Have you ever read the letters of the poet Cowper? He had nothing—literally nothing—to tell anyone about; private life in a sleepy country town where Evangelical distrust of "the world" denied him even such miserable society as the place would have afforded. And yet one reads a whole volume of his letters with unfailing interest. How his tooth came loose at dinner, how he made a hutch for a tame hare, what he is doing about his cucumbers—all this he makes one follow as if the fate of empires hung on it.
 * C. S. Lewis, letter to his father (25 February 1928) — in Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966), p. 124


 * We can not but admire a man who, subject to a lifelong illness that inflicted with frequent recurrence an intense mental agony, fought persistently against his weakness—at times their master, at times a victim to their influence. Still he did not flinch even under this torture, but held his pen and pressed it to write in a cause which was distinctly unpopular. Cowper was preeminently a poet of feelings; he may have been melancholy, but he pointed out to his readers how they were themselves subjects of emotion. He owed a debt to Providence, and he rebuked the people for their follies. In doing so he was regardless of his own fame and of their opprobrium. He gave them tolerable advice, and strove to awaken them from their apathy to a sense of their duty towards their neighbours. First of poets, since the days of Milton, to champion the sacredness of religion, he was the forerunner of a new school that disliked the political satires of the disciples of Pope, and aimed at borrowing for their lines of song from the simple beauties of a perfect nature.
 * A. Edmund Spender, "The Centenary of Cowper", in The Westminster Review, Vol. 153 (May, 1900), p. 545