My imagination is so captivated upon these occasions that I seem to partake with the navigators in all the dangers they encountered. I lose my anchor; my mainsail is rent into shreds; I kill a shark, and by signs converse with a Patagonian, and all this without moving from the fireside. And here I cannot but regret again that we have not an edition of these letters interspersed with the passages of _The Task_, which describe the same scenes. I confess that two-thirds at least of that poem is indeed a task to-day. The long tirades against vice, and the equally long preaching of virtue, all in blank verse, lack, to my ear, the vivacity and the sustaining power of the earlier rhymed poems, such as _Hope_ (that superb moralising on the poet's own life) and _Retirement_, to name the best of the series. But the fourth book of _The Task_, and, indeed, all the exquisite genre pictures of the poem: Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column, and the cups That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each, So let us welcome peaceful evening in-- all this intimate correspondence with the world in verse is not only interesting in itself, but gains a double charm by association with the letters. "We were just sitting down to supper," writes Cowper to Mrs. Unwin's son, "when a hasty rap alarmed us. I ran to the hall window, for the hares being loose, it was impossible to open the door." It is fortunate for the reader if his memory at these words calls up those lines of _The Task_: One sheltered hare Has never heard the sanguinary yell Of cruel man, exulting in her woes. Innocent partner of my peaceful home, Whom ten long years' experience of my care Has made at last familiar; she has lost Much of her vigilant instinctive dread, Not needful here beneath a roof like mine. Yes--thou mayst eat thy bread, and lick the hand That feeds thee; _thou mayst frolic on the floor At evening_, and at night retire secure To thy straw couch, and slumber unalarmed; For I have gained thy confidence, have pledged All that is human in me, to protect Thine unsuspecting gratitude and love. If I survive thee, I will dig thy grave; And when I place thee in it, sighing say, I knew at least one hare that had a friend.