SOURCE: MacLean, Kenneth. “William Cowper.” In The Age of Johnson: Essays Presented to Chauncey Brewster Tinker, edited by Wilmarth S. Lewis, pp. 257-67. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949.

In the following essay, MacLean presents an overview of Cowper's life and writings, suggesting that “neurotic terror” principally informs his poetry and other works.

Everyone knows Cowper's poems and letters, but how many have seen that small volume, the Memoir of the Early Life of William Cowper, Esq. Written by Himself? Beginning ominously, this little piece of psychic Hogarth achieves the ultimate in terror. We see a young man, thirty-two years old, unnerved by the prospect of a public examination for a parliamentary clerkship, for which he had been studying a half year without any perception. He takes a vacation at Margate, but returns little improved for the final push. The day preceding the public examination was one of confused...