In urging her companion to write poetry, Mrs. Unwin was on the right path, her puritanism led her astray in the choice of a theme.  She suggested The Progress of Error as a subject for a “Moral Satire.”  It was unhappily adopted, and The Progress of Error was followed by Truth, Table Talk, Expostulation, Hope, Charity, Conversation, and Retirement.  When the series was published, Table Talk was put first, being supposed to be the lightest and the most attractive to an unregenerate world.  The judgment passed upon this set of poems at the time by the Critical Review seems blasphemous to the fond biographer, and is so devoid of modern smartness as to be almost interesting as a literary fossil.  But it must be deemed essentially just, though the reviewer errs, as many reviewers have erred, in measuring the writer’s capacity by the standard of his first performance.  “These poems,” said the Critical Review, “are written, as we learn from the title-page, by Mr. Cowper of the Inner Temple, who seems to be a man of a sober and religious turn of mind, with a benevolent heart, and a serious wish to inculcate the precepts of morality; he is not, however, possessed of any superior abilities or the power of genius requisite for so arduous an undertaking. . . . .  He says what is incontrovertible and what has been said over and over again with much gravity, but says nothing new, sprightly or entertaining; travelling on a plain level flat road, with great composure almost through the whole long and tedious volume, which is little better than a dull sermon in very indifferent verse on Truth, the Progress of Error, Charity, and some other grave subjects.  If this author had followed the advice given by Caraccioli, and which he has chosen for one of the mottoes prefixed to these poems, he would have clothed his indisputable truths in some more becoming disguise, and rendered his work much more agreeable.  In its present shape we cannot compliment him on its beauty; for as this bard himself sweetly sings:—­

  “The clear harangue, and cold as it is clear,
  Falls soporific on the listless ear.”

In justice to the bard it ought to be said that he wrote under the eye of the Rev. John Newton, to whom the design had been duly submitted, and who had given his imprimatur in the shape of a preface which took Johnson the publisher aback by its gravity.  Newton would not have sanctioned any poetry which had not a distinctly religious object, and he received an assurance from the poet that the lively passages were introduced only as honey on the rim of the medicinal cup, to commend its healing contents to the lips of a giddy world.  The Rev. John Newton must have been exceedingly austere if he thought that the quantity of honey used was excessive.