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their convictions and aspirations find expression in verse have come so
near the mark.

Wordsworth's verse--that which was written at the same age--is studded
with prophecy of evils that never occurred. It was not because of any
supermundane intelligence, such as latter-day poets have been pleased to
affect and latter-day critics to assume for them, that Cowper wrote in
anticipation of the fall of the Bastille in those thrilling lines, but
because his exceedingly sane outlook upon the world showed him that
France was riding fast towards revolution.

We have been told that Cowper's poetry lacked the true note of passion,
that there was an absence of the "lyric cry." I protest that I find the
note of passion in the "Lines on the Receipt of my Mother's Picture," in
his two sets of verses to Mrs. Unwin, in his sonnet to Wilberforce not
less marked than I find it in other great poets. I find in _The Task_
and elsewhere in Cowper's works a note of enthusiasm for human
brotherhood, for man's responsibility for man, for universal kinship,
that had scarcely any place in literature before he wrote quietly here at
Olney thoughts wiser and saner than he knew. To-day we call ourselves by
many names, Conservatives or Liberals, Radicals, or Socialists; we differ
widely as to ways and means; but we are all practically agreed about one
thing--that the art of politics is the art of making the world happier.
Each politician who has any aspirations beyond mere ambition desires to
leave the world a little better than he found it. This is a commonplace
of to-day. It was not a commonplace of Cowper's day. Even the great-
hearted, lovable Dr. Johnson was only concerned with the passing act of
kindliness to his fellows; patriotism he declared to be the last refuge
of a scoundrel; collective aspiration was mere charlatanry in his eyes,
and when some one said that he had lost his appetite because of a British
defeat, Johnson thought him an impostor, in which Johnson was probably
right. There have been plenty of so-called patriots who were scoundrels,
there has been plenty of affectation of sentiment which is little better
than charlatanry, but we do not consider when we weigh the influence of
men whether Rousseau was morally far inferior to Johnson. We know that
he was. But Rousseau, poor an instrument as he may have been, helped to
break many a chain, to relieve many a weary heart, to bring to whole
peoples a new era in which the ho