Who by resolves and vows engag'd does stand The bondman of the cloister so, All that he does receive does always owe: And still, as time comes in, it goes away, Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell, Which his hour's work, as well as hours, does tell! His heroick lines are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they are sometimes sweet and sonorous. He says of the Messiah : Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound, In another place, of David: Yet bid him go securely, when he sends; Yet, amidst his negligence, he sometimes attempted an improved and scientifick versification; of which it will be best to give his own account subjoined to this line: Nor can the glory contain itself in th' endless space. "I am sorry that it is necessary to admonish the most part of readers, that it is not by negligence that this verse is so loose, long, and, as it were, vast; it is to paint in the number the nature of the thing which it describes, which I would have observed in divers other places of this poem, that else will pass for very careless verses: as before, Down a precipice deep, down he casts them all. “And, And fell a-down his shoulders with loose care "In the third, Brass was his helmet, his boots brass, and o'er "In the fourth, Like some fair pine o'erlooking all th' ignobler wood. "And, Some from the rocks cast themselves down headlong. And many more: but it is enough to instance in a few. The thing is, that the disposition of words and numbers should be such, as that, out of the order and sound of them, the things themselves may be represented. This the Greeks were not so accurate as to bind themselves to; neither have our English poets observed it, for aught I can find. The Latins (qui musas colunt severiores) sometimes did it; and their prince, Virgil, always, in whom the examples are innumerable, and taken notice of by all judicious men, so that it is superfluous to collect them." I know not whether he has, in many of these instances, attained the representation or resemblance that he purposes. Verse can imitate only sound and motion. A boundless verse, a headlong verse, and a verse of brass, or of strong brass, seem to comprise very incongruous and unsociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the sound of the line expressing loose care, I cannot discover; nor why the pine is taller in an alexandrine than in ten syllables. But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example of representative versification, which, perhaps, no other English line can equal: Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise: He, who defers this work from day to day, Does on a river's bank expecting stay Till the whole stream that stopp'd him shall be gone, Cowley was, I believe, the first poet that mingled alex andrines, at pleasure, with the common heroick of ten syllables; and from him Dryden borrowed the practice, whe-> ther ornamental or licentious. He considered the verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestick, and has, therefore, deviated into that measure, when he supposes the voice heard of the supreme being. The author of the Davideis is commended by Dryden for having written it in couplets, because he discovered that any staff was too lyrical for an heroick poem; but this seems to have been known before by May and Sandys, the translators of the Pharsalia and the Metamorphoses. In the Davideis are some hemistichs, or verses left imperfect by the author, in imitation of Virgil, whom he supposes not to have intended to complete them: that this opinion is erroneous, may be probably concluded, because this truncation is imitated by no subsequent Roman poet; because Virgil himself filled up one broken line in the heat of recitation; because in one the sense is now unfinished; and because all that can be done by a broken verse, a line intersected by a casura and a full stop, will equally effect. Of triplets, in his Davideis, he makes no use, and, perhaps, did not, at first, think them allowable; but he appears afterwards to have changed his mind, for, in the verses on the government of Cromwell, he inserts them liberally with great happiness. After so much criticism on his poems, the essays which accompany them must not be forgotten. What is said by Sprat of his conversation, that no man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, may be applied to these compositions. No author ever kept his verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought, or hard-laboured; but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without gross ness. It has been observed by Felton, in his essay on the Clas sicks, that Cowley was beloved by every muse that he courted; and that he has rivalled the ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy. It may be affirmed, without any encomiastick fervour, that he brought to his poetick labours a mind replete with learning, and that his pages are embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply; that he was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode, and the gaiety of the less; that he was equally qualified for sprightly sallies, and for lofty flights; that he was among those who freed translation from servility, and, instead of following his author at a distance, walked by his side; and that if he left versification yet improvable, he left likewise, from time to time, such specimens of excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it. The insertion of Cowley's epitaph may be interesting to our readers. Epitaphium In Ecclesia D. Petri apud Westmonasterienses Sepulti. Abrahamus Cowleius, Anglorum Pindarus, Flaccus, Maro, Aurea dum volitant late tua scripta per orbem, Sic vovatque Votumque suum apud posteros sacratum esse voluit Georgius Dux Buckinghamiæ. Excessit e vita Anno Ætatis suæ 49° et honorifica pompa elatus ex Edibus Buckinghamianis, viris illustribus omnium ordinum exequias celebrantibus, sepultus est die 3o M. Augusti, Anno Domini 1667. DENHAM. OF sir John Denham very little is known but what is related of him by Wood, or by himself. He was born at Dublin, 1615; the only son of sir John Denham, of Little Horsley, in Essex, then chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland, and of Eleanor, daughter of sir Garret More, baron of Mellefont. Two years afterwards, his father, being made one of the barons of the exchequer in England, brought him away from his native country, and educated him in London. In 1631 he was sent to Oxford, where he was considered as a dreaming young man, given more to dice and cards than study:" and, therefore, gave no prognosticks of his future eminence; nor was suspected to conceal, under sluggishness and laxity, a genius born to improve the literature of his country. When he was, three years afterwards, removed to Lincoln's inn, he prosecuted the common law with sufficient appearance of application; yet did not lose his propensity to cards and dice; but was very often plundered by gamesters. Being severely reproved for this folly, he professed, and, perhaps, believed, himself reclaimed; and, to testify the sincerity of his repentance, wrote and published an Essay upon Gaming. He seems to have divided his studies between law and poetry; for, in 1636, he translated the second book of the Æneid. r In Hamilton's memoirs of count Grammont, sir John Denham is said to have been seventy-nine, when he married Miss Brook, about the year 1664; according to which statement he was born in 1585. But Dr. Johnson, who has followed Wood, is right. He entered Trinity college, Oxford, at the age of sixteen, in 1631, as appears by the following entry, which I copied from the matriculation book. Trin. Coll. "1631. Nov. 18. Johannes Denham, Essex. filius J. Denham de Horsleyparva in com. prædict. militis, annos natus 16." MALONE. |