The writer of The Task also deserves the crown which he has himself claimed as a close observer and truthful painter of nature.  In this respect, he challenges comparison with Thomson.  The range of Thomson is far wider, he paints nature in all her moods, Cowper only in a few and those the gentlest, though he has said of himself that “he was always an admirer of thunderstorms, even before he knew whose voice be heard in them, but especially of thunder rolling over the great waters.”  The great waters he had not seen for many years; he had never, so far as we know, seen mountains, hardly even high hills; his only landscape was the flat country watered by the Ouse.  On the other hand he is perfectly genuine, thoroughly English, entirely emancipated from false Arcadianism, the yoke of which still sits heavily upon Thomson, whose “muse” moreover is perpetually “wafting” him away from the country and the climate which he knows to countries and climates which he does not know, and which he describes in the style of a prize poem.  Cowper’s landscapes, too, are peopled with the peasantry of England; Thomson’s, with Damons, Palaemons, and Musidoras, tricked out in the sentimental costume of the sham idyl.  In Thomson, you always find the effort of the artist working up a description; in Cowper, you find no effort; the scene is simply mirrored on a mind of great sensibility and high pictorial power.

  And witness, dear companion of my walks,
  Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceive
  Fast lock’d in mine, with pleasure such as love,
  Confirm’d by long experience of thy worth
  And well-tried virtues, could alone inspire—­
  Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long. 
  Thou know’st my praise of nature most sincere,
  And that my raptures are not conjured up
  To serve occasions of poetic pomp,
  But genuine, and art partner of them all. 
  How oft upon yon eminence our pace
  Has slacken’d to a pause, and we have borne
  The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,
  While Admiration, feeding at the eye,
  And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene! 
  Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned
  The distant plough slow moving, and beside
  His labouring team that swerved not from the track,
  The sturdy swain diminish’d to a boy! 
  Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain
  Of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o’er,
  Conducts the eye along his sinuous course
  Delighted.  There, fast rooted in their bank,
  Stand, never overlook’d, our favourite elms,
  That screen the herdsman’s solitary hut;
  While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,
  That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,
  The sloping land recedes into the clouds;
  Displaying on its varied side the grace
  Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,
  Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells
  Just undulates upon the listening ear,
  Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote. 
  Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily viewed,
  Please daily, and whose novelty survives
  Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years—­
  Praise justly due to those that I describe.