" The passages of _The Task_ penned by conscience, taken
together, form a lamentably large proportion of the poem. An ordinary
reader can be carried through them, if at all, only by his interest in
the history of opinion, or by the companionship of the writer, who is
always present, as Walton is in his Angler, as White is in his
Selbourne. Cowper, however, even at his worst, is a highly cultivated
methodist; if he is sometimes enthusiastic, and possibly superstitious,
he is never coarse or unctuous. He speaks with contempt of "the twang
of the conventicle." Even his enthusiasm had by this time been
somewhat tempered. Just after his conversion he used to preach to
everybody. He had found out, as he tells us himself, that this was a
mistake, that "the pulpit was for preaching; the garden, the parlour,
and the walk abroad were for friendly and agreeable conversation." It
may have been his consciousness of a certain change in himself that
deterred him from taking Newton into his confidence when he was engaged
upon _The Task_.
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