The sentiment of these lines, which were familiar and dear to Cobden, is tempered by judicious professions of loyalty to a king who rules in accordance with the law.  At one time Cowper was inclined to regard the government of George III as a repetition of that of Charles I, absolutist in the State and reactionary in the Church; but the progress of revolutionary opinions evidently increased his loyalty, as it did that of many other Whigs, to the good Tory king.  We shall presently see, however, that the views of the French Revolution, itself expressed in his letters are wonderfully rational, calm, and free from the political panic and the apocalyptic hallucination, both of which we should rather have expected to find in him.  He describes himself to Newton as having been, since his second attack of madness, “an extramundane character with reference to this globe, and though not a native of the moon, not made of the dust of this planet.”  The Evangelical party has remained down to the present day non-political, and in its own estimation extramundane, taking part in the affairs of the nation only when some religious object was directly in view.  In speaking of the family of nations, an Evangelical poet is of course a preacher of peace and human brotherhood.  He has even in some lines of Charity, which also were dear to Cobden, remarkably anticipated the sentiment of modern economists respecting the influence of free trade in making one nation of mankind.  The passage is defaced by an atrociously bad simile:—­

  Again—­the band of commerce was design’d,
  To associate all the branches of mankind,
  And if a boundless plenty be the robe,
  Trade is the golden girdle of the globe. 
  Wise to promote whatever end he means,
  God opens fruitful Nature’s various scenes,
  Each climate needs what other climes produce,
  And offers something to the general use;
  No land but listens to the common call,
  And in return receives supply from all. 
  This genial intercourse and mutual aid
  Cheers what were else an universal shade,
  Calls Nature from her ivy-mantled den,
  And softens human rock-work into men.

Now and then, however, in reading The Task, we come across a dash of warlike patriotism which, amidst the general philanthropy, surprises and offends the reader’s palate, like the taste of garlic in our butter.

An innocent Epicurism, tempered by religious asceticism of a mild kind—­such is the philosophy of The Task, and such the ideal embodied in the portrait of the happy man with which it concludes.  Whatever may be said of the religious asceticism, the Epicurism required a corrective to redeem it from selfishness and guard it against self-deceit.  This solitary was serving humanity in the best way he could, not by his prayers, as in one rather fanatical passage he suggests, but by his literary work; he had need also to remember that humanity was serving