Grace of form he never lacks, but this was a part of his nature, improved by his classical training.
The character and the thoughts presented are those of a recluse who was sometimes a hypochondriac; the life is life at Olney.

But simple self-revelation is always interesting, and a garrulous playfulness with great happiness of expression can lend a certain charm even to things most trivial and commonplace.

There is also a certain pleasure in being carried back to the quiet days before railways and telegraphs, when people passed their whole lives on the same spot, and life moved always in the same tranquil round.

In truth it is to such days that letter-writing, as a species of literature belongs, telegrams and postal cards have almost killed it now.
The large collection of Cowper's letters is probably seldom taken from the shelf; and the "Elegant Extracts" select those letters which are most sententious, and therefore least characteristic.

Two or three specimens of the other style may not be unwelcome or needless as elements of a biographical sketch; though specimens hardly do justice to a series of which the charm, such as it is, is evenly diffused, not gathered, into centres of brilliancy like Madame de Sevigne's letter on the Orleans Marriage.