The Retired Cat Comments

a charming poem, and so humorous. Thanks for this introduction to William Cowper

I have a special fondness for the work of William Cowper as I spent most of my childhood very close to Olney, where he wrote most of work.The house in which he lived is still there, substantially unchanged and is well worth a visit for an insight into middle-class country life 250 years ago.I have chosen this poem of his rather than the rather gloomy and depressive late poems such as 'The Castaway' or any of the hymns, as I find their Calvinism rather oppressive, famous though some of them are. Cowper is sometimes described as a pre-romantic.But the vast majority of his writing falls much more easily into the classical tradition of moralism.This is a fine example of a style very popular in the 18th century, the mock heroic. In it Cowper lifts a very common everyday incident, a cat sleeping in a drawer, into a wonderful mini-epic of charming, self-deprecating ironic moralising. Cowper wrote several poems about pets including the splendid 'Colubriad' which is unfortunately not printed here, which recounts the titanic struggle of his pet cat with a snake...