Excerpt from The Task: And Other Poems; Of Inner Temple The accompanying volume is, however, devoted to selec tions from his poetry, excluding any of his translations. His Homer, as Matthew Arnold has shown, has little merit, and the translations from Madame Guyon and Vincent Bourne are hardly of enough weight to appear in a limited choice of his poems. The guiding principle in making up the present volume was to give the pupil a view of the true Cowper, and Cowper at his best. Some minor poems have been omitted of equal merit with those given. But they only exhibit the same type of poetic execution. One reason for study of Cowper is found in his position as forerunner of the change in English poetry, imperfectly defined often as a change from the Classical to the Romantic School. Signs that the change was coming had indeed appeared long before Cowper sang, in Thompson's Seasons and the Odes of Collins and Gray. But not till Cowper and Burns were heard was it seen that the change had come, and Cowper had great part in bringing it on. Words worth was a far greater poet than Cowper. But Cowper heralded Wordsworth, not only in choice of poetic material, but also in the poetic treatment of Nature and Man. What Wordsworth found in the beautiful lake region, Cowper found before him in Olney, and 'along the banks of slow winding Ouse. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.