(“Progress of Error”)
Among the short pieces in this volume are the famous lines put into the mouth of Alexander Selkirk, which contain a fine example of the apostrophic personification, the oft-quoted
O Solitude! where are thy charms
That sages have seen in thy face,
where the passion and sincerity of the appeal give dignity and animation to an otherwise lifeless abstraction, and, despite the absence of detail, really call up a definite picture.
From the blank verse of his most famous work nearly every trace of the mechanical abstraction has disappeared—a great advance when we remember that “The Task” is in the direct line of the moral and didactic verse that had occupied so many of Cowper’s predecessors.
The first Books (“The Sofa”) contain but one instance and that in a playful manner:
Ingenious Fancy, never better pleased
Than when employed to accommodate the fair.
(ll. 72 foll.)