" A regular plan, assuredly, _The Task_ has not. It
rambles through a vast variety of subjects, religious, political,
social, philosophical, and horticultural, with as little of method as
its author used in taking his morning walks. Nor as Mr. Benham has
shown, are the reflections, as a rule, naturally suggested by the
preceding passage. From the use of a sofa by the gouty to those, who
being free from gout, do not need sofas,--and so to country walks and
country life is hardly a natural transition. It is hardly a natural
transition from the ice palace built by a Russian despot, to despotism
and politics in general. But if Cowper deceives himself in fancying
that there is a plan or a close connexion of parts, he is right as to
the existence of a pervading tendency. The praise of retirement and of
country life as most friendly to piety and virtue, is the perpetual
refrain of The Task, if not its definite theme. From this idea
immediately now the best and the most popular passages: those which
please apart from anything peculiar to a religious school; those which
keep the poem alive; those which have found their way into the heart of
the nation, and intensified the taste for rural and domestic happiness,
to which they most winningly appeal.
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