ABSTRACT
In 1763 the positions of Reading Clerk and Clerk of Committees in the House of Lords became vacant. They were patent offices in the patronage of Major William Cowper, a member of a family brilliant in law and letters. Cowper was a Whig of the eighteenth century and of the great Whig tradition—a man of aristocratic descent and popular sympathies, who had that ease and lightness of touch which is the peculiar privilege of those in whom culture and humour are finely compounded. Cowper is perhaps the greatest master we have in English of the Horatian style. Cowper is one of the few English poets who have much influenced the hymnary. The poems win Cowper a monitor’s, though not a poet’s, praise, and they fell flat. Cowper often speaks of the great poverty of the place.
