ABSTRACT
Cowper’s writings, especially The Task (1785), mark a turning point in the intersection of literature and religion, in poetry, in England. His standing within the Romantic period seems secure when we recall that over a hundred editions of his works appeared in Britain between the early 1780s and 1830s, and that Coleridge placed him among the best modern poets and, like Wordsworth, took him as a model. 1 Cowper began as, and remains, an advocate of Evangelical Christianity, but his distinctive bequest to his successors was a philosophy of well-being rooted in the principle of interaction between self and nature. In framing this legacy he carried into the mainstream the longstanding Protestant tradition of contemplation of the Creation, where it was assumed, in the words of an early exponent, that ‘if [the heart] be sanctified, it ordinarily distils holy, sweet and useful meditation out of all objects’. 2 Response to God’s universe was both renovative and instructive.
