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 reason why I never mentioned to you, till now, an affair which I am just going to make known to all the world (if that Mr. All-the-world should think it worth his knowing) has been this--that, till within these few days, I had not the honor to know it myself. This may seem strange, but it is true; for, not knowing where to find underwriters who would choose to insure them, and not finding it convenient to a purse like mine to run any hazard, even upon the credit of my own ingenuity, I was very much in doubt for some weeks whether any bookseller would be willing to subject himself to an ambiguity that might prove very expensive in case of a bad market. But Johnson has heroically set all peradventures at defiance, and takes the whole charge upon himself.