increased Cowper's disorder. After this he resigned himself to a perfectly
simple life, occupied with the writing of poetry, the care of pets,
gardening, and carpentry. The bulk of his work consists of long moralizing
poems, prosy, prolix, often trivial, and to-day largely unreadable. Same of
them are in the rimed couplet and others in blank verse. His blank-verse
translation of Homer, published in 1791, is more notable, and 'Alexander
Selkirk' and the humorous doggerel 'John Gilpin' are famous; but his most
significant poems are a few lyrics and descriptive pieces in which he
speaks out his deepest feelings with the utmost pathetic or tragic power.
In the expression of different moods of almost intolerable sadness 'On the
Receipt of My Mother's Picture' and 'To Mary' (Mrs. Unwin) can scarcely be
surpassed, and 'The Castaway' is final as the restrained utterance of
morbid religious despair. Even in his long poems, in his minutely loving
treatment of Nature he is the most direct precursor of Wordsworth, and he
is one of the earliest outspoken opponents of slavery and cruelty to
animals. How unsuited in all respects his delicate and sensitive nature was
to the harsh experiences of actual life is suggested by Mrs. Browning with
vehement sympathy in her poem, 'Cowper's Grave.'

WILLIAM BLAKE. Still another utterly unworldly and frankly abnormal poet,
though of a still different temperament, was William Blake (1757-1827), who
in many respects is one of the most extreme of all romanticists. Blake, the
son of a London retail shopkeeper, received scarcely any book education,
but at fourteen he was apprenticed to an engraver, who stimulated his
imagination by setting him to work at making drawings in Westminster Abbey
and other old churches. His training was completed by study at the Royal
Academy of Arts, and for the rest of his life he supported himself, in
poverty, with the aid of a devoted wife, by keeping a print-and-engraving
shop. Among his own engravings the best known is the famous picture of
Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, which is not altogether free from the weird