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The Task, With Intr. and Notes by F. Storr
The Task With Intr and Notes by F Storr Author:William Cowper General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1874 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: NOTES BOOK I. -- THE SOFA. The title of the Sofa has been already explained in the Life. We may here add the Author's Introduction: -- "The history of the following production is briefly this: -- A lady, fond of blank verse, demanded a poem of that kind from the author, and gave him the Sofa for a subject. He obeyed ; and having much leisure, connected another subject with it; and pursuing the train of thought to which his situation and turn of mind led him, brought forth, at length, instead of the trifle which heat first intended, a serious affair -- a Volume." He thus defends the title against Newton's criticism (Letter 184) : -- " As to the title, I take it to be the best that is to be had. It is not possible that a book including such a variety of subjects, and in which no particular one is predominant, should find a title adapted to them all. In such a case, it seemed almost necessary to accommodate the name to the incident that gave birth to the poem ; nor does it appear to me that because I performed more than my task, therefore the Task is not a suitable title. A house would still be a house, though the builder of it should make it ten times as big as he at first intended. I might, indeed, following the example of the Sunday newspaper, call it the Olio ; but I should do myself wrong ; for though it have much variety, it has, I trust, no confusion." As to the scope and purpose of the poem, we cannot do better than quote his own words (Letter 181) : -- "My principal purpose is to allure the reader, by character, by scenery, by imagery, and such poetical embellishments, to the reading of...« less