d been the popularity of Brown's
now-forgotten 'Estimate.'

The inestimable estimate of Brown
Rose like a paper kite, and charmed the town,

says Cowper; and he proceeds to show that, though Chatham's victorious
administration had for a moment restored the self-respect of the
country, the evils denounced by Brown were symptoms of a profound and
lasting disease. The poems called the 'Progress of Error,'
'Expostulation,' 'Truth,' 'Hope,' 'Charity,' and 'Conversation,' all
turn upon the same theme. Though Cowper is for brief spaces playful or
simply satirical, he always falls back into his habitual vein of
meditation. For the ferocious personalities of Churchill, the
coarse-fibred friend of his youth, we have a sad strain of lamentation
over the growing luxury and effeminacy of the age. It is a continued
anticipation of the lines in the 'Task,' which seem to express his most
serious and sincere conviction.

The course of human ills, from good to ill,
From ill to worse, is fatal, never fails.
Increase of power begets increase of wealth,
Wealth luxury, and luxury excess:
Excess the scrofulous and itchy plague,
That seizes first the opulent, descends
To the next rank contagious, and in time
Taints downwards all the graduated scale
Of order, from the chariot to the plough.

That is his one unvariable lesson, set in different lights, but
associated more or less closely with every observation. The world is
ripening or rotting; and, as with Rousseau, luxury is the most
significant name of the absorbing evil. That such a view should commend
itself to a mind so clouded with melancholy would not be at any time
surprising, but it fell in with a widely spread conviction. Cowper had
not, indeed, learnt the most effective mode of touching men's hearts.
Separated by a retirement of twenty years from the world, with which he
had never been very familiar, and at which he only 'peeped through the
loopholes of retreat,' his satire wanted the brilliance, the quickness
of illustration from actual life, which alone makes satire readable. His
tone of feeling too frequently suggests that the critic represents the
querulous comments of old ladies gossiping about the outside world over
their tea-cups, easily scandalised by very simple things. Mrs. Unwin was
an excellent old lady, and Newton a most zealous country clergyman.
Probably they were intrinsically superior to the fine ladies and
gentlemen