] The phrase improving taste is funny to me as well as contridictory; if it is improved by some employment on his part then Edward's taste will no longer be natural and I have to ask can Marianne's taste be natural considering how much reading she has probably done on the subject. :D

I mentioned in my first Romanantic movement post I find Marieanne's literary alertness a more attractive quality yet I find your query interesting.

I wonder how good a reader of the poet Cowper Marieanne really is. She exclaims, 'how spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading' and 'if he is not to be animated by Cowper !' (Ch.3)

Cowper was a forerunner of the Romantic poets in the Eighteenth-century. A quiet, contemplative yet troubled man, perhaps similiar to Edward himself.

R.Gill and S. Gregory ask; Is it inappropriate to read Cowper with what Marieanne calls little sensibility ? When a calm reading may allow the poet to speak for himself rather than have the emotional contours of his art obscured by the passions of the performer.

'Ah, why, since oceans, rivers, streams
That water all the nations,
Pay tribute to thy glorious beams,
In constant exhaltations.'

-a verse from 'Ode to Appollo'.

www.thepages.org/poems/cowper.