His satire is also excellent. It is pointed and forcible, with the polished manners of the gentleman, and the honest indignation of the virtuous man. His religious poetry, except where it takes a tincture of controversial heat, wants elevation and fire. His Muse had not a seraph’s wing. I might refer, in illustration of this opinion, to the laboured anticipation of the Millennium at the end of the sixth book. He could describe a piece of shell-work as well as any modern poet: but he could not describe the New Jerusalem so well as John Bunyan;—nor are his verses on Alexander Selkirk so good as Robinson Crusoe. The one is not so much like a vision, nor is the other so much like the reality. The first volume of Cowper’s poems has, however, been less read than it deserved. The comparison in these poems of the proud and humble believer to the peacock and the pheasant, and the parallel between Voltaire and the poor cottager, are exquisite pieces of eloquence and poetry, particularly the last. ‘Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door, Pillow and bobbins all her little store; Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay, Shuffling her threads about the live-long day, Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night, Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light; She, for her humble sphere by nature fit, Has little understanding, and no wit, Receives no praise; but, though her lot be such, (Toilsome and indigent) she renders much; Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true— A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew; And in that charter reads with sparkling eyes Her title to a treasure in the skies. O happy peasant! Oh unhappy bard! His the mere tinsel, hers the rich reward; He prais’d, perhaps, for ages yet to come, She never heard of half a mile from home: He lost in errors his vain heart prefers, She safe in the simplicity of hers.’ His character of Whitfield, in the poem on Hope, is one of his most spirited and striking things. It is written _con amore_. ‘But if, unblameable in word and thought, A man arise, a man whom God has taught, With all Elijah’s dignity of tone, And all the love of the beloved John, To storm the citadels they build in air, To smite the untemper’d wall (’tis death to spare,) To sweep away all refuges of lies, And place, instead of quirks, themselves devise, Lama Sabachthani before their eyes; To show that without Christ all gain is loss, All hope despair that stands not on his cross; Except a few his God may have impressed, A tenfold phrensy seizes all the rest.’