_The Mediterranean_ would not have suited him well if it was to be treated historically, for of history he was even more ignorant than most of those who have had the benefit of a classical education, being capable of believing that the Latin element of our language had come in with the Roman conquest.

Of the _Four Ages_ he wrote a fragment.

Of _Yardley Oak_ he wrote the opening; it was apparently to have been a survey of the countries in connexion with an immemorial oak which stood in a neighbouring chace.

But he was forced to say that the mind of man was not a fountain but a cistern, and his was a broken one.

He had expended his stock of materials for a long poem in _The Task_.
These, the sunniest days of Cowper's life, however, gave birth to many of those short poems which are perhaps his best, certainly his most popular works, and which will probably keep his name alive when _The Task_ is read only in extracts.