More briskly moved by his severer toil;
Yet he too finds his own distress in theirs,
The taper soon extinguish'd, which I saw
Dangled along at the cold finger's end
Just when the day declined; and the brown loaf
Lodged on the shelf, half eaten without sauce
Of savoury cheese, or batter, costlier still:
Sleep seems their only refuge: for, alas'
Where penury is felt the thought is chained,
And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few!
With all this thrift they thrive not. All the care
Ingenious Parsimony takes, but just
Saves the small inventory, bed and stool,
Skillet, and old carved chest, from public sale.
They live, and live without extorted alms
from grudging hands: but other boast have none
To soothe their honest pride that scorns to beg,
Nor comfort else, but in their mutual love.

Here we have the plain, unvarnished record of visitings among the poor
of Olney. The last two lines are simple truth as well as the rest.

"In some passages, especially in the second book, you will observe me
very satirical." In the second book of _The Task_, there are some
bitter things about the clergy, and in the passage pourtraying a
fashionable preacher, there is a touch of satiric vigour, or rather of
that power of comic description which was one of the writer's gifts.
But of Cowper as a satirist enough has been said.

"What there is of a religious cast in the volume I have thrown towards
the end of it, for two reasons; first, that I might not revolt the
reader at his entrance, and secondly, that my best impressions might be
made last. Were I to write as many volumes as Lope de Vega or
Voltaire, not one of them would be without this tincture. If the world
like it not, so much the worse for them. I make all the concessions I
can, that I may please them, but I will not please them at the expense
of conscience." The passages of _The Task_ penned by conscience, taken
together, form a lamentably large proportion of the poem. An ordinary
reader can be carried through them, if at all, only by his interest in
the history of opinion, or by the companionship of the writer, who is
always present, as Walton is in his Angler, as White is in his
Selbourne. Cowper, however, even at his worst, is a highly cultivated
methodist; if he is sometimes enthusiastic, and possibly superstitious,
he is never coarse or unctuous. He speaks with contempt of "the twang
of the conventicle." Even his enthusiasm had