But if Cowper deceives himself in fancying that there is a plan or a close connexion of parts, he is right as to the existence of a pervading tendency.

The praise of retirement and of country life as most friendly to piety and virtue, is the perpetual refrain of The Task, if not its definite theme.

From this idea immediately now the best and the most popular passages: those which please apart from anything peculiar to a religious school; those which keep the poem alive; those which have found their way into the heart of the nation, and intensified the taste for rural and domestic happiness, to which they most winningly appeal.

In these Cowper pours out his inmost feelings, with the liveliness of exhilaration, enhanced by contrast with previous misery.

The pleasures of the country and of home, the walk, the garden, but above all the "intimate delights" of the winter evening, the snug parlour, with its close-drawn curtains shutting out the stormy night, the steaming and bubbling tea-urn, the cheerful circle, the book read aloud, the newspaper through which we look out into the unquiet world, are painted by the writer with a heartfelt enjoyment, which infects the reader.