Near the end of William Cowper’s The Task (1785), embarking on a quiet passage in praise of countryside contemplation, the poem suddenly shifts away from this kind of timeless retreat. We are in the city, and in a shop – or rather, in a series of similar fashion shops. What these represent, for Cowper, is the place not to be; they are where a man would find himself if he made the mistake of passing his time not in philosophical thoughtfulness but in the company of the sort of young lady who always has to be drifting about from one such place to another. These are the lines that describe that fool