With Goldsmith and Crabbe he shares the honour of improving English taste in the sense of truthfulness and simplicity.

To Burns he felt his affinity, across a gulf of social circumstance, and in spite of a dialect not yet made fashionable by Scott.

Besides his poetry, he holds a high, perhaps the highest place, among English letter writers: and the collection of his letters appended to Southey's biography forms, with the biographical portions of his poetry, the materials for a sketch of his life.

Southey's biography itself is very helpful, though too prolix and too much filled out with dissertations for common readers.

Had its author only done for Cowper what he did for Nelson! [Our acknowledgments are also due to Mr.Benham, the writer of the Memoir prefixed to the Globe Edition of Cowper.] William Cowper came of the Whig nobility of the robe.