pon the life and works of Cowper must
feel that there is an immense difference between the interest which
attaches to him, and that which attaches to any one among the far
greater poets of the succeeding age. Still there is something about
him so attractive, his voice has such a silver tone, he retains, even
in his ashes, such a faculty of winning friends that his biographer and
critic may be easily beguiled into giving him too high a place. He
belongs to a particular religious movement, with the vitality of which
the interest of a great part of his works has departed or is departing.
Still more emphatically and in a still more important sense does he
belong to Christianity. In no natural struggle for existence would he
have been the survivor, by no natural process of selection would he
ever have been picked out as a vessel of honour. If the shield which
for eighteen centuries Christ by His teaching and His death has spread
over the weak things of this world should fail, and might should again
become the title to existence and the measure of worth, Cowper will be
cast aside as a specimen of despicable infirmity, and all who have said
anything in his praise will be treated with the same scorn.

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