This biography of William Cowper by Goldwin Smith (1823 1910) was published in the first series of 'English Men of Letters' in 1880 (this reissue being from the 'ninth thousand' of 1881). Smith states in his opening chapter that Cowper (1731 1800) 'is the most important English poet of the period between Pope and the illustrious group headed by Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley he may perhaps himself be numbered among the precursors of the Revolution, though he was certainly the mildest of them all'. He also regards Cowper as the great poet of the religious revival of the eighteenth century....