discursive familiar essay in smooth-flowing blank verse, he dwelt fondly
upon those satisfactions which his life of uneventful retirement offered;
intimated that truth and wisdom were less surely found by poring upon
books than by meditating among beloved rural scenes; and, turning his sad
gaze toward the distant world of action, deplored that mankind strained
"the natural bond of brotherhood" by tolerating cruel imprisonments,
slavery, and warfare. Such humanitarian views, when they seek the aid of
religious ethics, ought normally to find support in that sentimentalized
Christianity which professes the entire goodness of the human heart;
but the discordant element in Cowper's mind was his inclination towards
Calvinism, which goes to the opposite extreme by insisting on total
depravity. Personally he believed that he had committed the unpardonable
sin (against the Holy Spirit),--a dreadful thought which underlies
his tragic poem, _The Castaway_; and probably unwholesome, though
well-intentioned, was the influence upon him of his spiritual adviser,
John Newton, whose gloomy theology may be seen in the hymn, _The Vision
of Life in Death_. Cowper's sense of the reality of evil not only
distracted his mind to madness, but also prevented him from carrying his
sentimental principles to their logical goal. What the hour demanded were
poets who, discountenancing any mistrust of the natural emotions, should
give them free rein. They were found at last in Burns and in Blake.

The sentimentalists had long yearned for the advent of the ideal poet.
Macpherson had presented him,--but as of an era far remote; latterly
Beattie, in _The Minstrel_, had set forth his growth under the
inspiration of Nature,--but in a purely imaginary tale. Suddenly Burns
appeared: and the ideal seemed incarnated in the living present. The
Scottish bard was introduced to the world by his first admirers as "a
heaven-taught ploughman, of humble unlettered station," whose "simple
strains, artless and unadorned, seem to flow without effort from the