In an 1837 letter to Samuel Carter Hall, William Wordsworth praised John Langhorne's The Country Justice (1774-1777) as one of the first poems "to bring the Muse into the Company of Common Life." Langhorne's poetry, with its sincere piety, its gentle sentimentalism, and its freshness of expression was popular in its own day largely because the poet seems to have developed early a sure sense of his audience--a talent that certainly lies behind his fame as a lively pulpit orator. Langhorne succeeded in various poetic modes, including the elegy, the philosophical poem, the verse epistle, the topographical poem, and the dramatic poem. He had much prose published as well: an oriental tale, several volumes of sermons, and three popular works of epistolary fiction. He also produced translations from the Italian and, with his brother William, a still highly regarded translation of Plutarch's Lives (1770). His popularity in his own time...