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.
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