without, but makes the comfort within more ineffably endeared. The Poet and he are up betimes in the morning to see the various labours of the night, exemplified in the snow-scenery of the landscape, and the ice-works at the mill-dam. These form the fable of the fifth book, and The Winter's Walk at Noon occupies the sixth.

Considered in this view, there is an unity of time, place, and persons, a harmony of subjects, and a progress of the story, in this portion, not so conspicuous through the former more desultory books of The Task. The present Essay, having already exceeded the compass originally prescribed to the writer, must be concluded with a few brief notices of the most striking passages in this half of the poem.

Book IV. abounds with enchanting representations of fire-side felicity, contrasted not only with the war of elements without, but with the turbulence of the world, in the dissipation of high life, the cares and anxieties in the middle station, and the positive sufferings of ill-housed, ill-clothed, and ill-fed poverty. The coming in of the post, the boy, his horn and his bags, with the picturesque incident of the bridge, combine to give reality to the scene. The waggoner almost foundered with his wain and horses in the snow-storm; the cold colouring, and heartwithering pathos of the poor family-piece; the dark deeds and shrewd daring of the village robber; the metamorphosis of the simple rural lass, by the pains of the wig-weaver and milliner, into a creature

" of a rank

Too proud for dairy-work, or sale of eggs;"

and the more grotesque transmutation of the clown into a soldier, till nobody knows him, and himself least of all; the fume, the din and drunkenness of the learned and politic company at the low alehouse, -are all painted in a style so exquisitely true, and humorously chaste, that without the slightest daub of caricature, they at once move tears of pity and of laughter, at the miseries and absurdities of mankind. The following transformation of time is in Cowper's own manner, and has all the force and quaintness which he loved to employ in his casual sketches:

257 Time, as he passes us, has a dove's wing,

Unsoiled, and swift, and of a silken sound;
But the world's Time is Time in masquerade!
Theirs, should I paint him, has his pinions fledged
With motley plumes; and, where the peacock shows
His azure eyes, is tinctured black and red
With spots quadrangular of diamond form,
Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife,
And spades, the emblem of untimely graves.
What should be, and what was an hour-glass once,
Becomes a dice-box, and a billiard-mace

Well does the work of his destructive scythe."

Book V. In the Winter Morning Walk, the Poet, after a series of minute copies from nature, of circumstances which no pencil could delineate with half the truth and fineness of his pen, is suddenly rapt into Russia, to behold the ice-palace of the great Catharine. The use is admirable which he makes of this allusion, to break away into digression, and introduce, as it were unpremeditatedly, his invectives against tyrannical princes, and sing the praises of liberty,-next to religion, always the most inspir

ing theme to him. To contrive a natural link of connection between the objects of sight in wintermorning landscape, and the "game" of war, might seem impossible; but by the seasonable recollection of this gorgeous "wonder of the north," the transition is made with such triumphant art, that the subjects coalesce as perfectly as did the hewn blocks of ice, "with water interfused," of which the palace itself was built. The genuine and manly eulogium of a British king, "who loves the laws," very opportunely redeems the ardent and unsparing scourge of despots from the suspicion of disloyalty, even in thought, towards his own sovereign.-The famous passage on the Bastile has been quoted a thousand times, to show how he verified his own words in his own character, when, speaking of ancient times, he says,

"the sacred name

Of prophet and of poet were the same."

Cowper certainly devined more successfully concerning the possible futurity, when apostrophizing the walls of that" abode of broken hearts," than when addressing the "isles so lately found" in the south seas, on which some remarks have already been made. -The close of the fifth book, from

"So reads he nature, whom the lamp of truth
Illuminates," &c.

is one of the most finished portions of the whole; exemplifying the devotional spirit of the Author, with an affluence of thought, a beauty and selectness of phrase, and a harmony of numbers, seldom dis

played by his capricious muse through so considerable a length of lines.

The opening of Book VI. is of corresponding excellence, in a very different character. "The sympathy of souls with sounds," to which attention is called by the village bells, must touch to the quick all who have souls, and have heard sounds that awakened their most secret emotions. After the meditation which follows, and which is so natural, that it seems rather the spontaneous reflection of our own mind, than poured into it through melodious verse, the reader is suddenly reminded of the Poet at his side, when the latter takes up his wonted parable, and describes the scenery of "The Winter Walk at Noon," unexpectedly recurring to the original cause of the preceding rumination, in three lines, wherein the ideas of sound and sight, music and picture, are inimitably blended:

"Again the harmony comes o'er the vale;

And through the trees I view the embattled tower,
Whence all the music."

Who, at this pause, does not stand still, in imagination, to hearken to the bells, look out before him for the church, and perceive, through his inmost spirit,

"The soothing influence of the wafted strains ?"

-The poet began this Book with the sympathy of souls with sounds; but the soul's sympathies with living creatures furnish him with a loftier argument in the issue. The characters, habits, and sufferings,

of brutes, occupy much of the succeeding pages: the dumb creation never had a more eloquent advocate, nor one who could more heartily enter into their innocent enjoyments, assert their noble qualities, or feel an utter abhorrence of their wrongs. The story of Misagathus, however, is neither impressive, nor even satisfactory. If it be a fiction, it is a violent one; if a fact, it ought to have been authenticated. Having closed this division of his theme-a theme continually varying, but always, if the reader experiences a momentary regret when "the master" changes his hand, compensating him with a new exhibition of the same glorious and graceful mind,

"Thus lovely halcyons dive into the main,
Then show far off their shining plumes again,"

-he comes, in the present case, full upon man, in all the austerity of a virtuous censor, indignant without spleen, and stern without malignity. Never was there a satirist of equal power with Cowper, so thoroughly a humane, gentle, unoffending personage, who would not wilfully inflict pain upon any living thing, yet who never spared vice or folly, under whatever disguise, lashed them with a vengeance as if they could feel, and a sincerity, as if chastisement might amend them.-The strain, "Man praises man, "thrice repeated, and differently illustrated, though liable to misrepresentation, perhaps indeed too extravagant, is in Cowper's most felicitously sarcastic style. From man's idolatry of man, he returns to man's tyranny over brutes, and

"The groans of nature in this nether world."