who laughed at them. But a mind acclimatised to the atmosphere
which they breathed inevitably lost its nervous tone. There was true
masculine vigour underlying Cowper's jeremiads; but it was natural that
many people should only see in him an amiable valetudinarian, not
qualified for a censorship of statesmen and men of the world. The man
who fights his way through London streets can't stop to lament over
every splash and puddle which might shock poor Cowper's nervous
sensibility.

The last poem of the series, however, 'Retirement,' showed that Cowper
had a more characteristic and solacing message to mankind than a mere
rehearsal of the threadbare denunciations of luxury. The 'Task' revealed
his genuine power. There appeared those admirable delineations of
country scenery and country thoughts which Sainte-Beuve detaches so
lovingly from the mass of serious speculation in which they are
embedded. What he, as a purely literary critic, passed over as
comparatively uninteresting, gives the exposition of Cowper's
intellectual position. The poem is in fact a political, moral, and
religious disquisition interspersed with charming vignettes, which,
though not obtrusively moralised, illustrate the general thesis. The
poetical connoisseur may separate them from their environment, as a
collector of engravings might cut out the illustrations from the now
worthless letterpress. The poor author might complain that the most
important moral was thus eliminated from his book. But the author is
dead, and his opinions don't much matter. To understand Cowper's mind,
however, we must take the now obsolete meditation with the permanently
attractive pictures. To know why he so tenderly loved the slow windings
of the sinuous Ouse, we must see what he thought of the great Babel
beyond. It is the distant murmur of the great city that makes his little
refuge so attractive. The general vein of thought which appears in every
book of the poem is most characteristically expressed in the fifth,
called 'A Winter Morning Walk.' Cowper strolls out at sunrise in his
usual mood of tender playfulness, smiles at the vast shadow cast by the
low winter sun, as he sees upon the cottage wall the

Preposterous sight! the legs without the man.

He remarks, with a passing recollection of his last sermon, that we are
all shadows; but turns to note the cattle cowering behind the fences;
the labourer carving the haystack; the woodman going to work, followed
by