re of him, and it is well for
Milton that some sourness in his temper is the only vice with which
his memory has been charged; it is evident enough that if his
biographer could have discovered more, he would not have spared him.

As a poet, he has treated him with severity enough, and has plucked
one or two of the most beautiful feathers out of his Muse's wing, and
trampled them under his great foot. He has passed sentence of
condemnation upon Lycidas, and has taken occasion, from that charming
poem, to expose and ridicule (what is indeed ridiculous enough) the
childish prattlement of pastoral compositions, as if Lycidas was the
prototype and pattern of them all. The liveliness of the descriptions,
the sweetness of the numbers, the classical spirit of antiquity that
prevails in it, go for nothing. I am convinced, by the way, that he
has no ear for poetical numbers, or that it was stopt by prejudice
against the harmony of Milton's. Was there ever anything so delightful
as the music of the Paradise Lost? It is like that of a fine organ;
has the fullest and the deepest tones of majesty with all the softness
and elegance of the Dorian flute: variety without end, and never
equaled, unless perhaps by Virgil. Yet the Doctor has little or
nothing to say upon this copious theme, but talks something about the
unfitness of the English language for blank verse, and how apt it is,
in the mouths of some readers, to degenerate into declamation. Oh! I
could thrash his old jacket till I made his pension jingle in his
pockets.

III

ON THE PUBLICATION OF HIS BOOKS[60]

In the press, and speedily will be published, in one volume octavo,
price three shillings, Poems,[61] by William Cowper, of the Inner
Temple, Esq. You may suppose, by the size of the publication, that the
greatest part of them have never been long kept secret, because you
yourself have never seen them; but the truth is, that they are most of
them, except what you have in your possession, the produce of the last
winter. Two-thirds of the compilation will be occupied by four pieces,
the first of which sprung up in the month of December, and the last of
them in the month of March. They contain, I suppose, in all about two
thousand and five hundred lines; are known, or are to be known in due
time, by the names of Table-Talk, The Progress of Error, Truth,
Expostulation. Mr. Newton writes a preface, and Johnson is the
publisher. The principal, I may say the only rea