[Ida-libavap] His disappointment to Theodora's sister, and w

[Ostberg K. <ble...@wo...>]

E me very satirical." In the second book of _The Task_, there are some
bitter things about the clergy, and in the passage pourtraying a
fashionable preacher, there is a touch of satiric vigour, or rather of
that power of comic description which was one of the writer's gifts. But
of Cowper as a satirist enough has been said. "What there is of a
religious cast in the volume I have thrown towards the end of it, for
two reasons; first, that I might not revolt the reader at his entrance,
and secondly, that my best impressions might be made last. Were I to
write as many volumes as Lope de Vega or Voltaire, not one of them would
be without this tincture. If the world like it not, so much the worse
for them. I make all the concessions I can, that I may please them, but
I will not please them at the expense of conscience." The passages of
_The Task_ penned by conscience, taken together, form a lamentably large
proportion of the poem. An ordinary reader can be carried through them,
if at all, only by his interest in the history of opinion, or by the
companionship of the writer, who is always present, as Walton is in his
Angler, as White is in his Selbourne. Cowper, however, even at his
worst, is a highly cultivated methodist; if he is sometimes
enthusiastic, and possibly superstitious, he is never coarse or
unctuous. He speaks with contempt of "the twang of the conventicle."
Even his enthusiasm had by this time been somewhat tempered. Just after
his conversion he used to preach to everybody. He had found out, as he
tells us himself, that this was a mistake, that "the pulpit was for
preaching; the garden, the parlour, and the walk abroad were for
friendly and agreeable conversation." It may have been his consciousness
of a certain change in himself that deterred him from taking Newton into
his confidence when he was engaged upon _The Task_. The worst passages
are those which betray a fana