Note 440 — CANTO THE EIGHTH.
Reading edition
{348}[The Task, bk. i. line 749. It was pointed out to Cowper that the same thought had been expressed by Isaac Hawkins Browne, in The Fire-side, a Pastoral Soliloquy, lines 15, 16 (Poems, ed. 1768, p. 125)—
"I have said it at home, I have said it abroad, That the town is Man's world, but that this is of God."
There is a parallel passage in M.T. Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, lib. iii. I. 4, "Nee minim, quod divina natura dedit agros, ars humami aedificavit urbes."—See The Task, etc., ed. by H.T. Griffith, 1896, ii. 234.]