SOURCE: “The Moral Satires and Retirement,” in Cowper's Poetry: A Critical Study and Reassessment, Liverpool University Press, 1982, pp. 50-90.

In the following excerpt, Newey examines the moral content of Cowper's satires and compares them to the poet's freer style in Retirement.

Table Talk, which comes first in the volume of 1782, is in a way the odd poem out among the Moral Satires, being the only one to move to any real extent in the realm of public affairs. Indeed, no poem in English concerns itself more directly with pressing political issues: the catastrophic course of the war against the American colonies; the efforts of George III to maintain the position of the Crown, which Cowper hotly defends; the mild conduct of the magistrates during the Gordon Riots, which he deplores as a threat to the security and freedom of the individual; the plight of England at a time...