Weigh, for a moment, classical desert
Against a heart depraved, and temper hurt,
Hurt, too, perhaps for life, for early wrong
Done to the nobler part, affects it long,
And you are staunch indeed in learning's cause,
If you can crown a discipline that draws
Such mischiefs after it, with much applause.
He might have done more, if he had been able to point to the
alternative of a good day school, as a combination of home affections
with the superior teaching hardly to be found, except in a large
school, and which Cowper, in drawing his comparison between the two
systems, fails to take into account.
To the same general class of poems belongs _Anti-Thelypthora_, which it
is due to Cowper's memory to say was not published in his lifetime. It
is an angry pasquinade on an absurd book advocating polygamy on
Biblical grounds, by the Rev. Martin Madan, Cowper's quondam spiritual
counsellor. Alone among Cowper's works it has a taint of coarseness.
The Moral Satires pleased Franklin, to whom their social philosophy was
congenial, as at a later day, in common with all Cowper's works, they
pleased Cobden, who no doubt specially relished the passage in
_Charity_, embodying the philanthropic sentiment of Free Trade.
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