The regions of fiction he left others to explore; the artificial manners of a polished age; the martial deeds of heroic periods he relinquished to their admirers, and devoted himself to the socialities of domestic life, to the promotion of pure morals, and the elevation of public sentiment on a proper basis, and to a worthy standard. “He impresses us,” says Campbell, “with the idea of a being, whose fine spirit had been long enough in the mixed society of the world to be polished by its intercourse, and yet withdrawn so soon as to retain an unworldly degree of purity and simplicity.” He listened with alacrity to the secret suggestions of the spirit of philanthropy, and at times rose to the solemn dignity and fervor of a prophet’s strain, thus realizing the classic, nay, the Hebraic idea of the union of poet and prophet in the same venerated person. Among those sentiments which have been incorporated into the thinking and speaking of men, may be found many of the conceptions of Cowper’s genius, especially as embodied in the Task, near the conclusion of which he ascends to so lofty a height, as to remind us of the sublimity of Milton. It is perfectly obvious, that before his muse took that flight, she had bathed her wing in the fountain of inspiration. The voice of the bard seems to echo that of the Hebrew prophet, as he stood upon the Mount of Vision, and beheld the unfolding glories of the latter day. The satire of Cowper was at times as keen as his own sensibilities, yet blending itself with a gentle manner and a genial humor, it disarmed all suspicion of malignity in its composition, thus augmenting its moral power. Vice, folly, and even finery, felt the sharpness of his satire. In his themes, as in so many clear mirrors, we see reflected the multiplied images of the spirit of the man. Truth, Hope, Charity, Retirement, Ode to Peace, Human Frailty, the Rose, the Doves, the Glowworm, Lily, Nosegay, Epitaph on a Hare, such are the subjects that wakened in him congenial thought and feeling. The lines on his Mother’s Portrait are exquisitely tender and affecting, instinct with love, overflowing with affection, with that love which is never so intense as when softened by affliction, and intertwined with pensive recollections of the past. His pieces are not wrought with the perfection and coldness of artistic skill, like those of the sculptor, but flow from the imagination right through the channel of the heart, taking the most natural shape and costume of the moment and the occasion.