Having succeeded in one great poem, Cowper thought of writing another, and several subjects were started—­The Mediterranean, The Four Ages of Man, Yardley Oak. The Mediterranean would not have suited him well if it was to be treated historically, for of history he was even more ignorant than most of those who have had the benefit of a classical education, being capable of believing that the Latin element of our language had come in with the Roman conquest.  Of the Four Ages he wrote a fragment.  Of Yardley Oak he wrote the opening; it was apparently to have been a survey of the countries in connexion with an immemorial oak which stood in a neighbouring chace.  But he was forced to say that the mind of man was not a fountain but a cistern, and his was a broken one.  He had expended his stock of materials for a long poem in The Task.

These, the sunniest days of Cowper’s life, however, gave birth to many of those short poems which are perhaps his best, certainly his most popular works, and which will probably keep his name alive when The Task is read only in extracts. The Loss of the Royal George, The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk, The Poplar Field, The Shrubbery, the Lines on a Young Lady, and those To Mary, will hold their places for ever in the treasury of English Lyrics.  In its humble way The Needless Alarm_ is one of the most perfect of human compositions.  Cowper had reason to complain of Aesop for having written his fables before him.  One great charm of these little pieces is their perfect spontaneity.  Many of them were never published, and generally they have the air of being the simple effusions of the moment, gay or sad.  When Cowper was in good spirits his joy, intensified by sensibility and past suffering, played like a fountain of light on all the little incidents of his quiet life.  An ink-glass, a flatting mill, a halibut served up for dinner, the killing of a snake in the garden, the arrival of a friend wet after a Journey, a cat shut up in a drawer, sufficed to elicit a little jet of poetical delight, the highest and brightest jet of all being John Gilpin.  Lady Austen’s voice and touch still faintly live in two or three pieces which were written for her harpsichord.  Some of the short poems on the other hand are poured from the darker urn, and the finest of them all is the saddest.  There is no need of illustrations unless it be to call attention to a secondary quality less noticed, than those of more importance.  That which used to be specially called “wit,” the faculty of ingenious and unexpected combination, such as is shown in the similes of Hudibras, was possessed by Cowper in large measure.

  A friendship that in frequent fits
  Of controversial rage emits
    The sparks of disputation,
  Like hand-in-hand insurance plates,
  Most unavoidably creates
    The thought of conflagration.