irreligion, but against the hardness of the world; and in a world which
worshipped Chesterfield the protest was not needless, nor was it
ineffective. Among the most tangible characteristics of this special
sensibility is the tendency of its brimming love of humankind to
overflow upon animals, and of this there are marked instances in some
passages of _The Task_.

I would not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.

Of Cowper's sentimentalism (to use the word in a neutral sense), part
flowed from his own temperament, part was Evangelical, but part
belonged to an element which was European, which produced the _Nouvelle
Heloise_ and the _Sorrows of Werther_, and which was found among the
Jacobins in sinister companionship with the cruel frenzy of the
Revolution. Cowper shows us several times that he had been a reader of
Rousseau, nor did he fail to produce in his time a measure of the same
effect which Rousseau produced; though there have been so many
sentimentalists since, and the vein has been so much worked, that it is
difficult to carry ourselves back in imagination to the day in which
Parisian ladies could forego balls to read the _Nouvelle Heloise_, or
the stony heart of people of the world could be melted by _The Task_.

In his versification, as in his descriptions, Cowper flattered himself
that he imitated no one. But he manifestly imitates the softer
passages of Milton, whose music he compares in a rapturous passage of
one of his letters to that of a fine organ. To produce melody and
variety, he, like Milton, avails himself fully of all the resources of
a composite language. Blank verse confined to short Anglo-Saxon words
is apt to strike the ear, not like the swell of an organ, but like the
tinkle of a musical-box.

_The Task_ made Cowper famous. He was told that he had sixty readers
at the Hague alone. The interest of his relations and friends in him
revived, and those of whom he had heard nothing for many years
emulously renewed their connexion. Colman and Thurlow reopened their
correspondence with him, Colman writing to him "like a brother."
Disciples, young Mr. Rose, for instance, came to sit at his feet.
Complimentary letters were sent to him, and poems submitted to his
judgment. His portrait was taken by famous painters. Literary
lion-hunters began to fix their eyes upon him