The Time-piece appears to me, (though by some accident the import of that title has escaped you) to have a degree of propriety beyond the most of them. The book to which it belongs is intended to strike the hour that gives notice of approaching judgment; and, dealing pretty largely in the signs of the times, seems to be denominated, as it is, with a sufficient degree of accommodation to the subject.
As to the word worm, it is the very appellation which Milton himself, in a certain passage of the Paradise Lost, gives to the serpent. Not having the book at hand, I cannot now refer to it, but I am sure of the fact. I am mistaken too if Shakspeare's Cleopatra do not call the asp by which she thought fit to destroy herself by the same name: but, not having read the play these five-and-twenty years, I will not affirm it. They are however without all doubt convertible terms. A worm is a small serpent, and a serpent is a large worm. And when an epithet significant of the most terrible species of those creatures is adjoined, the idea is surely sufficiently ascertained. No animal of the vermicular or serpentine kind is crested but the most formidable of all.
Yours affectionately,
W. C.
The passages alluded to by Cowper are as follows:—
O Eve, in evil hour thou didst give ear
To that false worm, of whomsoever taught
To counterfeit man's voice; &c.
Paradise Lost, book 9.
Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there,
That kills and pains not?
Shakspeare's Anthony & Cleopatra, Act 5.