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William Francis Cowper-Temple, 1st Baron Mount Temple, PC (13 December 1811 – 16 October 1888), known as William Cowper (pronounced "Cooper") before 1869 and as William Cowper-Temple between 1869 and 1880, was a British Liberal statesman.
Whilst in the Inner Temple, William Cowper served as a Commissioner of Bankrupts, from 1759 to 1765, but despite family pressure he lacked the confidence to secure a more lucrative appointment. An attempt to apply for the post of Clerk to the Journals of the House of Lords prompted a mental breakdown and led him to leave London for the country.
For Cowper, there is “A soul in all things, and that soul is God”—the God of divine revelation rather than mechanical causes. Yet he insists that this God is not only the end of inspired perception but also its source ("Acquaint thyself with God, if thou would’st taste / His works"), so that responsiveness to nature is made more ...
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- Reference Works
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Smith, Margaret M. Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. III, 1700-1800 . London: Mansell, 1986-1997. Pt. 1 Addison-Fielding. 233-292. Print. 4 volumes.
Baird, John D. and Charles Ryskamp, eds. The poems of William Cowper. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1980-1995. Print. 3 volumes.King, James et al., eds. The letters and prose writings of William Cowper. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979-86. Print. 5 volumes.Sambrook, James, ed. William Cowper: The Task and Selected Other Poems. London and New York: Longman, 1994. Print.Baines, Paul, Julian Ferraro, Pat Rogers, eds. The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Eighteenth-Century Writers and Writing, 1660-1789. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. 80-82. Print.Radcliffe, David H., ed. William Cowper (1731-1800). Spenser and the Tradition: ENGLISH POETRY 1579-1830. Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities, Virginia Tech, 2006. Web. 14 Oct. 2011....Arnold, Richard. Trinity of Discord: The Hymnal and Poetic Innovations of Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and William Cowper. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2012. Print.Carnochan, W. B. The Continuity of Eighteenth-Century Poetry: Gray, Cowper, Crabbe, and the Augustans. Eighteenth-Century Life12 (1988): 119-27. Print.Fulford, Tim. Wordsworth, Cowper and the Language of Eighteenth-Century Politics. Woodman, Thomas, ed. The Early Romantics: Perspectives in British Poetry from Pope to Wordsworth. Basingstoke: Macm...Golden, Morris. In Search of Stability: The Poetry of William Cowper. New York: Bookman Associates, 1960. Print.Griffin, Dustin. Redefining Georgic: Cowper's Task. ELH57 (1990): 565-79. Print.Matheson, Ann. The Influence of Cowper's The Task on Coleridge's Conversational Poems. Sultana, Donald, ed. New Approaches to Coleridge. London: Vision, 1981. 137-50. Print.Priestman, Martin. Cowper's Task: Structure and Influence. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Print.In 1773, Cowper experienced an attack of insanity, imagining not only that he was eternally condemned to hell, but that God was commanding him to make a sacrifice of his own life. Mary Unwin took care of him with great devotion, and after a year he began to recover.
William Cowper (1731-1800), pronounced “Cooper”, was a renowned 18th century poet and translator of Homer. His most famous works include his 5000-line poem ‘The Task’ and some charming and light-hearted verses, not least ‘The Diverting History of John Gilpin’.
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William came from a family of Middle Temple lawyers, the most distinguished of whom were his grandfather, Spencer Cowper, Attorney General to the Prince of Wales and Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and his great uncle, William, 1st Earl Cowper, appointed Lord Chancellor of Great Britain in 1707.
