The world into which Cowper came was one very adverse to him, and at the same time very much in need of him. It was a world from which the spirit of poetry seemed to have fled. There could be no stronger proof of this than the occupation of the throne of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, by the arch-versifier Pope. The Revolution of 1688 was glorious, but unlike the Puritan Revolution which it followed, and in the political sphere partly ratified, it was profoundly prosaic. Spiritual religion, the source of Puritan grandeur and of the poetry of Milton, was almost extinct; there was not much more of it among the Nonconformists, who had now become to a great extent mere Whigs, with a decided Unitarian tendency. The Church was little better than a political force cultivated and manipulated by political leaders for their own purposes. The Bishops were either politicians, or theological polemics collecting trophies of victory over free-thinkers as titles to higher preferment.

License information: nan
MPAA: G
Go to source: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19923/19923-h/19923-h.htm#xcii