"moderate revenue below the malice and flatteries of " fortune."

So differently are things feen, and fo differently are they shown; but actions are visible, though motives are fecret. Cowley certainly retired; first to Barn-elms, and afterwards to Chertfey, in Surry. He feems, however, to have loft part of his dread of the hum of men. He thought himself now fafe enough from intrufion, without the defence of mountains and oceans; and, instead of seeking shelter in America, wifely went only fo far from the bustle of life as that he might easily find his way back, when folitude should grow tedious. His retreat was at first but flenderly accommodated; yet he foon obtained, by the intereft of the earl of St. Albans and the duke of Buckingham, fuch a lease of the Queen's lands as afforded him an ample income.

By the lover of virtue and of wit it will be folicitoufly afked, if he now was happy. Let them perufe one of his letters accidentally preferved by Peck, which I recommend to the confideration of all that may hereafter pant for folitude.

"The first night that I came hither I caught fo great a cold, with a defluction of rheum, as made me keep my chamber ten days. And, two after, had fuch a bruise on my ribs with a fall, that I am yet "unable to move or turn myself in my bed. This "is my perfonal fortune here to begin with. And, be

* L'Allegro of Milton. Orig. edit.

«fides,

"fides, I can get no money from my tenants, and "have my meadows eaten up every night by cattle put "in by my neighbours. What this fignifies, or may "come to in time, God knows; if it be ominous, it "can

can end in nothing less than hanging. Another mis"fortune has been, and stranger than all the reft, that 66 you have broke your word with me, and failed to "come, even though you told Mr. Bois that you "would. This is what they call Monftri fimile. I do "hope to recover my late hurt fo farre within five or "fix days (though it be uncertain yet whether I fhall ever recover it) as to walk about again. And then, methinks, you and I and the Dean might be very "merry upon S. Anne's Hill. You might very con*veniently come hither the way of Hampton Town, "lying there one night. I write this in pain, and "can fay no more: Verbum fapienti."

He did not long enjoy the pleasure or fuffer the uneafinefs of folitude; for he died at the Porch-house * in Chertsey in 1667, in the 49th year of his age.

He was buried with great pomp near Chaucer and Spenfer; and king Charles pronounced, "That Mr. "Cowley had not left behind him a better man in "England." He is reprefented by Dr. Sprat as the moft amiable of mankind; and this pofthumous praise may fafely be credited, as it has never been contradicted by envy or by faction.

Such are the remarks and memorials which I have been able to add to the narrative of Dr. Sprat; who, writing when the feuds of the civil war were yet

*Now in the poffeffion of Mr. Clark, Alderman of London. Orig.

edit.

C 3

recent,

recent, and the minds of either party were easily irritated, was obliged to pafs over many tranfactions in general expreffions, and to leave curiofity often unfatisfied. What he did not tell, cannot however now be known. I must therefore recommend the perufal of his work, to which my narration can be confidered only as a flender supplement.

COWLEY, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and, instead of tracing intellectual pleafures in the minds of man, paid their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time much praised, and too much neglected at another.

2

Wit, like all other things fubject by their nature to the choice of man, has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes different forms. About the beginning of the feventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphyfical poets; of whom, in a criticifin on the works of Cowley, it is not improper to give fome account.

The metaphyfical poets were men of learning, and to fhew their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily refolving to fhew it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only wrote verfes, and very often fuch verfes as ftood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was fo imperfect, that they were only found to be verfes by counting the fyllables.

If the father of criticifin has rightly denominated poetry Texon plan, an imitative art, thefe writers will, without great wrong, lofe their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be faid to have imitated. any thing; they neither copied nature nor life; neither

painted

painted the forms of matter, nor represented the

tions of intellect.

opera

Those however who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden confeffes of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne in wit, but maintains that they surpass him in poetry.

"that

If Wit be well defcribed by Pope, as being, "which has been often thought, but was never before fo "well expreffed," they certainly never attained, nor ever fought it; for they endeavoured to be fingular in their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he deprcffes it below its natural dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of language.

If by a more noble and more adequate conception that be confidered as Wit, which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be juft; if it be that, which he that never found it wonders how he miffed; to wit of this kind the metaphyfical poets have seldom rifen. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he miffed them, wonders more frequently by what perverfeness of industry they were ever found.

But Wit, abftracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philofophically confidered as a kind of difcordia concors; a combination of diffimilar images, or discovery of occult refemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough. The moft heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ranfacked for illuftrations, comparisons, and allufions; their learn

ing inftructs, and their fubtility furprifes; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he fometimes admires, is feldom pleased.

From this account of their compofitions it will be readily inferred, that they were not fuccefsful in representing or moving the affections. As they were wholly employed on fomething unexpected and surprising, they had no regard to that uniformity of fentiment which enables us to conceive and to excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds: they never enquired what, on any occafion, they should have faid or done; but wrote rather as beholders than partakers of human nature; as Beings looking upon good and evil, impaffive and at leifure; as Epicurean deities making remarks on the actions of men, and the viciffitudes of life, without interest and without emotion. Their courtship was void of fondnefs, and their lamentation of forrow. Their wifh was only to fay what they hoped had been never faid before.

Nor was the fublime more within their reach than the pathetick; for they never attempted that comprehenfion and expanfe of thought which at once fills the whole mind, and of which the firft effect is fudden astonifhment, and the fecond rational admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dif perfion. Great thoughts are always general, and confift in pofitions not limited by exceptions, and in defcriptions not defcending to minutenefs. It is with great propriety that Subtlety, which in its original import means exility of particles, is taken in its metaphorical meaning for nicety of diftinction. Thofe writers who lay on the watch for novelty could have little hope of greatnefs; for great things cannot have efcaped for

mer