_The Loss of the Royal George_, _The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk_, _The Poplar Field_, _The Shrubbery_, the _Lines on a Young Lady_, and those _To Mary, will hold their places for ever in the treasury of English Lyrics.

In its humble way _The Needless Alarm_ is one of the most perfect of human compositions.
Cowper had reason to complain of Aesop for having written his fables before him.

One great charm of these little pieces is their perfect spontaneity.

Many of them were never published, and generally they have the air of being the simple effusions of the moment, gay or sad.
When Cowper was in good spirits his joy, intensified by sensibility and past suffering, played like a fountain of light on all the little incidents of his quiet life.

An ink-glass, a flatting mill, a halibut served up for dinner, the killing of a snake in the garden, the arrival of a friend wet after a Journey, a cat shut up in a drawer, sufficed to elicit a little jet of poetical delight, the highest and brightest jet of all being _John Gilpin_.