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The whole scene is so defined, that one longs to see it transferred to painting.

He is one of the few poets, who have indulged neither in descriptions nor acknowledgments of the passion of love; but there is no poet, who has given us a finer conception of the amenity of female influence. Of all the verses that have been ever devoted to the subject of domestic happiness, those in his winter evening, at the opening of the fourth book of the Task, are perhaps the most beautiful. In perusing that scene of "intimate delights," "fireside enjoyments," and "home-born happiness," we seem to recover a part of the forgotten value of existence, when we recognize the means of its blessedness so widely dispensed, and so cheaply attainable, and find them susceptible of description at once so enchanting and so faithful.

Though the scenes of "The Task" are laid in retirement, the poem affords an amusing perspective of human affairs. Remote as the poet was from the stir of the great Babel, from the "confusæ sonus urbis et illætabile murmur," he glances at most of the subjects of public interest, which engaged the attention of his contemporaries. On those subjects, it is but faint praise to say, that he espoused the side of justice and humanity. Abundance of mediocrity of talent is to be found on the same side, rather injuring than promoting the cause, by its officious declamation. But nothing can be farther from the stale common-place and cuckooism of sentiment, than

the philanthropic eloquence of Cowper-he speaks "like one having authority." Society is his debtor. Poetical expositions of the horrors of slavery may, indeed, seem very unlikely agents in contributing to destroy it; and it is possible that the most refined planter in the West Indies, may look with neither shame nor compunction, on his own image in the pages of Cowper, exposed as a being degraded by giving stripes and tasks to his fellow creature. But such appeals to the heart of the community are not lost. They fix themselves silently in the popular memory, and they become, at last, a part of that public opinion, which must, sooner or later, wrench the lash from the hand of the oppressor.

I should have ventured to offer a few remarks on the shorter poems of Cowper, as well as on his translation of Homer, if I had not been fearful, not only of trespassing on the reader's patience, but on the boundaries which I have been obliged to prescribe to myself, in the length of these notices. There are many zealous admirers of the poet, who will possibly refuse all quarter to the observations on his defects, which I have freely made; but there are few, who have read him, I conceive, who have been so slightly delighted as to think I have over-rated his descriptions of external nature, his transcripts of human manners, or his powers as a moral poet, of inculcating those truths and affections which make the heart feel itself better and more happy.

FROM THE TASK.

BOOK I.

Colonnades commended-Alcove, and the view from it-The Wilderness-The Grove-The Thresher-The necessity and benefits of Exercise.

Nor distant far, a length of colonnade
Invites us. Monument of ancient taste,
Now scorn'd, but worthy of a better fate.
Our fathers knew the value of a screen
From sultry suns: and, in their shaded walks
And long protracted bow'rs, enjoy'd at noon
The gloom and coolness of declining day.
We bear our shades about us; self-depriv'd
Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread,
And range an Indian waste without a tree.
Thanks to Benevolus-he spares me yet
These chesnuts rang'd in corresponding lines;
And, though himself so polish'd, still reprieves
The obsolete prolixity of shade.

Descending now (but cautious, lest too fast)
A sudden steep upon a rustic bridge,
We pass a gulf, in which the willows dip
Their pendent boughs, stooping as if to drink.
Hence, ancle deep in moss and flow'ry thyme,
We mount again, and feel at ev'ry step
Our foot half sunk in hillocks green and soft,
Rais'd by the mole, the miner of the soil.
He, not unlike the great ones of mankind,

Disfigures earth: and, plotting in the dark,
Toils much to earn a monumental pile,
That may record the mischiefs he has done.

The summit gain'd, behold the proud alcove,
That crowns it! yet not all its pride secures
The grand retreat from injuries impress'd
By rural carvers, who with knives deface
The pannels, leaving an obscure, rude name,
In characters uncouth, and spelt amiss.
So strong the zeal t' immortalize himself
Beats in the breast of man, that ev'n a few,
Few transient years, won from th' abyss abhorr'd
Of blank oblivion, seem a glorious prize,
And even to a clown. Now roves the eye;
And, posted on this speculative height,
Exults in its command. The sheepfold here
Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe.
At first, progressive as a stream, they seek
The middle field; but, scatter'd by degrees,
Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land.
There from the sunburnt hayfield homeward creeps
The loaded wain; while, lighten'd of its charge,
The wain that meets it passes swiftly by ;
The boorish driver leaning o'er his team

Vocif'rous, and impatient of delay.

Nor less attractive is the woodland scene,
Diversified with trees of ev'ry growth,

Alike, yet various. Here the gray smooth trunks
Of ash, or lime, or beech, distinctly shine,
Within the twilight of their distant shades;

There, lost behind a rising ground, the wood
Seems sunk, and shorten'd to its topmost boughs.
No tree in all the grove but has its charms,
Though each its hue peculiar; paler some,
And of a wannish gray; the willow such,
And poplar, that with silver lines his leaf,
And ash far-stretching his umbrageous arm;
Of deeper green the elm; and deeper still,
Lord of the woods, the long-surviving oak.
Some glossy-leav'd, and shining in the sun,
The maple, and the beech of oily nuts
Prolific, and the lime at dewy eve
Diffusing odours: nor unnoted pass
The sycamore, capricious in attire,

Now green, now tawny, and, ere autumn yet
Have chang'd the woods, in scarlet honours bright.
O'er these, but far beyond (a spacious map
Of hill and valley interpos'd between),
The Ouse, dividing the well-water'd land,
Now glitters in the sun, and now retires,
As bashful, yet impatient to be seen.

Hence the declivity is sharp and short,
And such the re-ascent; between them weeps
A little naiad her impov'rish'd urn

All summer long, which winter fills again.
The folded gates would bar my progress now,
But that the lord of this inclos'd demesne,
Communicative of the good he owns,
Admits me to a share; the guiltless eye

Commits no wrong, nor wastes what it enjoys.

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