A coal-pit has not often found its poet; but, that it may not want its due honour, Cleiveland has paralleled it with the sun : The moderate value of our guiltless ore Had he our pits, the Persian would admire The sun's heaven's coalery, and coal's our sun. DEATH, A VOYAGE. E'er rigg'd a soul for heaven's discovery, Their thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such as no figures or licence can reconcile to the understanding. A LOVER NEITHER DEAD NOR ALIVE. Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead, When back to its cage again I saw it fly And row her galley here again! Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn' Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee, A LOVER'S HEART, A HAND GRENADO. Wo to her stubborn heart, if once mine come Into the self-same room; "Twill tear and blow up all within, Like a grenado shot into a magazin. Shall out of both one new one make: THE POETICAL PROPAGATION OF LIGHT. The prince's favour is diffus'd o'er all, Then from their beams their jewels' lustres rise Donne They were in very little care to clothe their notions with elegance of dress, and therefore miss the notice and the praise which are often gained by those who think less, but are more diligent to adorn their thoughts. That a mistress beloved is fairer in idea than in reality, is by Cowley thus expressed : Thou in my fancy dost much higher stand, That prayer and labour should co-operate, a thus taught by Donne : In none but us are such mix'd engines found, As hands of double office; for the ground We till with them; and them to heaven we raise ; Who prayerless labours, or, without this, prays, Doth but one half, that's none. The love within too strong for❜t was, Like poison put into a Venice-glass. Cowley. In forming descriptions, they looked out, not for images, but for conceits. Night has been a By the same author a comon topic, the danger common subject, which poets have contended of procrastination, is thus illustrated: -That which I should have begun In my youth's morning, now late must be done; Which stray or sleep all day, and having lost All that man has to do is to live and die; the sum of humanity is comprehended by Donne in the following lines: Think in how poor a prison thou didst lie; Think, when 'twas grown to most, 'twas a poor inn, But think that death hath now enfranchis'd thee; -Thou tyrant, which leav'st no man free! Thou subtle thief, from whom nought safe can be! Thou murtherer, which hast kill'd; and devil, which wouldst damn me! Thus he addresses his mistress: Thou who, in many a propriety, So truly art the sun to me, Add one more likeness, which I'm sure you can, Thus he represents the meditations of a lover: Such charms thy beauty wears, as might Thou with strange adultery Dost in each breast a brothel keep; Awake all men do lust for thee, And some enjoy thee when they sleep. THE TRUE TASTE OF TEARS. to adorn. Dryden's night is well known; Donne's is as follows: Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest; It must be however confessed of these writers, that if they are upon uncommon subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle; yet, where scholastic speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon Hope shows an unequalled fertility of invention: Hope, whose weak being ruin'd is, Of blessing thee! If things then from their end we happy call, 'Tis Hope is the most hopeless thing of all. Hope, thou bold taster of delight, Who, whilst thou should'st but taste, devour'st it, Thou bring'st us an estate, yet leav'st us poor, By clogging it with legacies before ! The joys which we entire should wed, Come deflower'd virgins to our bed: Good fortunes without gain imported be, Such mighty custom's paid to thee: For joy, like wine kept close, does better taste, If it take air before its spirits waste To the following comparison of a man that travels and his wife that stays at home, with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted whether absurdity or ingenuity has better claim: Our two souls, therefore, which are one, A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat. As stiff twin compasses are two; Donne. In all these examples it is apparent, that whatever is improper or vicious, is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature in pursuit of something new and strange; and that the writers fail to give delight by their desire of exciting They were not always strictly curious, whether It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke Having thus endeavoured to exhibit a general representation of the style and sentiments of the metaphysical poets, it is now proper to examine particularly the works of Cowley, who was almost the last of that race, and undoubtedly the best. His and the critic, mingle their influence even in this airy frolic of genius. To such a performance, Suckling could have brought the gayety but not the knowledge: Dryden could have supplied the knowledge, but not the gayety. His Miscellanies contain a collection of short | pression, such varied similitude, such a succescompositions, written, some as they were dictat- sion of images, and such a dance of words, it is ed by a mind at leisure, and some as they were in vain to expect except from Cowley. called forth by different occasions, with great strength always appears in his agility; his volavariety of style and sentiment, from burlesque tility is not the flutter of a light, but the bound levity to awful grandeur. Such an assemblage of an elastic mind. His levity never leaves his of diversified excellence no other poet has hither-learning behind it; the moralist, the politician, to afforded. To choose the best, among many good, is one of the most hazardous attempts of criticism. I know not whether Scaliger himself has persuaded many readers to join with him in his preference of the two favourite odes, which he estimates in his raptures at the value of a The verses to Davenant, which are vigorouskingdom. I will, however, venture to recom-ly begun, and happily concluded, contain some mend Cowley's first piece, which ought to be in-hints of criticism very justly conceived and hapscribed "To my Muse," for want of which the pily expressed. Cowley's critical abilities have second couplet is without reference. When the not been sufficiently observed; the few decisions title is added, there will still remain a defect; and remarks, which his prefaces and his notes for every piece ought to contain in itself what- on the Davideis supply, were at that time accesever is necessary to make it intelligible. Pope sions to English literature, and show such skill has some epitaphs without names; which are as raises our wish for more examples. therefore epitaphs to be let, occupied indeed for the present, but hardly appropriated. The Ode on Wit is almost without a rival. It was about the time of Cowley that wit, which had been till then used for intellection, in contradistinction to will, took the meaning, whatever it be, which it now bears. Of all the passages in which poets have exemplified their own precepts, none will easily be found of greater excellence than that in which Cowley condemns exuberance of wit: Yet 'tis not to adorn and gild each part, If there be nothing else between. Men doubt, because they stand so thick i' the sky, In his verses to Lord Falkland, whom every man of his time was proud to praise, there are, as there must be in all Cowley's compositions, some striking thoughts, but they are not well wrought. His elegy on Sir Henry Wotton is vigorous and happy: the series of thoughts is easy and natural; and the conclusion, though a little weakened by the intrusion of Alexander, is elegant and forcible. The lines from Jersey are a very curious and pleasing specimen of the familar descending to the burlesque. His two metrical disquisitions for and against Reason, are no mean specimens of metaphysical poetry. The stanzas against knowledge produce little conviction. In those which are intended to exalt the human faculties, reason has its proper task assigned it; that of judging, not of things revealed, but of the reality of revelation. In the verses for Reason, is a passage which Bentley, in the only English verses which he is known to have written, seems to have copied, though with the inferiority of an imitator. The Holy Book like the eighth sphere doth shine So numberless the stars, that to our eye It makes all but one galaxy. Yet reason must assist, too; for, in seas Our course by stars above we cannot know Who travels in religious jars, Truth mix'd with error, shade with rays, Cowley seems to have had what Milton is be It may be remarked, that in this Elegy, and in most of his encomiastic poems, he has forgot-lieved to have wanted, the skill to rate his own ten or neglected to name his heroes. ambition. performances by their just value, and has thereIn his poem on the death of Hervey, there is fore closed his Miscellanies with the verses upon much praise, but little passion; a very just and Crashaw, which apparently excel all that have ample delineation of such virtues as a studious gone before them, and in which there are beauties privacy admits, and such intellectual excellence which common authors may justly think not as a mind not yet called forth to action can dis-only above their attainment, but above their play. He knew how to distinguish, and how to commend, the qualities of his companions; but, when he wishes to make us weep, he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his sorrow by imagining how his crown of bays, if he had it, would crackle in the fire. It is the odd fate of this thought to be the worse for being true. The bay leaf crackles remarkably as it burns, as therefore this property was not assigned it by chance, the mind must be thought sufficiently at ease that could attend to such minuteness of physiology. But the power of Cowley is not so much to move the affections, as to exercise the understanding. The Chronicle is a composition unrivalled and alone: such gayety of fancy, such facility of ex To the Miscellanies succeed the Anacreontiques, or paraphrastical translations of some little poems, which pass, however unjustly, under the same name of Anacreon. Of these songs dedicated to festivity and gayety, in which even the morality is voluptuous, and which teach nothing but the enjoyment of the present day, he has given rather a pleasing than a faithful representation, having retained their sprightliness, but lost their simplicity. The Anacreon of Cowley, like the Homer of Pope, has admitted the decoration of some modern graces, by which he is undoubtedly more amiable to common * Dodsley's Collection of Poems, vol. v.-R COWLEY. readers, and perhaps, if they would honestly declare their own perceptions, to far the greater part of those whom courtesy and ignorance are content to style the learned. tion the ancients, he might have found it fullblown in modern Italy. Thus Sannazaro: Aspice quam variis distringar Lesbia curis ! Uror, et heu! nostro manat ab igne liquor: Sum Nilus, sumque Eina simul; restringite flammas These little pieces will be found more finished O lacrimæ, aut lacrimas ebibe flamma meas. in their kind than any other of Cowley's works. One of the severe theologians of that time cenThe diction shows nothing of the mould of From the charge of protime, and the sentiments are at no great dis-sured him as having published a book of profane tance from our present habitudes of thought. Real mirth must always be natural, and nature faneness, the constant tenor of his life, which is uniform. Men have been wise in very dif- seems to have been eminently virtuous, and the ferent modes; but they have always laughed general tendency of his opinions, which discovers no irreverence of religion, must defend him; but that the accusation of lasciviousness is unjust, the perusal of his work will sufficiently evince. the same way. Levity of thought naturally produced familiarity of language, and the familiar part of language continues long the same; the dialogue of comedy, when it is transcribed from popular manners and real life, is read from age to age The artifices of inversion, with equal pleasure. by which the established order of words is changed, or of innovation, by which new words or meanings of words are introduced, is practised, not by those who talk to be understood, but by those who write to be admired. and lascivious verses. Cowley's Mistress has no power of seduction; she "plays round the head, but reaches not the heart." Her beauty and absence, her kindness His poetical and cruelty, her disdain and inconstancy, produce no correspondence of emotion. account of the virtues of plants, and colours of flowers, is not perused with more sluggish frigidity. The compositions are such as might have been written for penance by a hermit, or for hire by a philosophical rhymer who had only heard of another sex; for they turn the mind only on the writer, whom, without thinking on a woman but as the subject for his task, we sometimes esteem as learned, and sometimes despise as trifling, always admire as ingenious, and always con demn as unnatural. The Anacreontiques therefore of Cowley give now all the pleasure which they ever gave. If he was formed by nature for one kind of writing more than for another, his power seems to have been greatest in the familiar and in the festive. The next class of his poems is called The Mistress, of which it is not necessary to select any particular pieces for praise or censure. The Pindarique Odes are now to be consiThey have all the same beauties and faults, and nearly in the same proportion. They are writ-dered; a species of composition, which Cowley ten with exuberance of wit, and with copious- thinks Panciolus might have counted in his list ness of learning and it is truly asserted by of the lost inventions of antiquity, and which he Sprat, that the plenitude of the writer's know- has made a bold and vigorous attempt to reledge flows in upon his page, so that the reader is commonly surprised into some improvement. But considered as the verses of a lover, no man that has ever loved will much commend them. They are neither courtly nor pathetic, have neither gallantry nor fondness. His praises are too far sought, and too hyperbolical, either to express love or to excite it; every stanza is crowded with darts and flames, with wounds and death, with mingled souls and with broken hearts. The principal artifice by which The Mistress is filled with conceits is very copiously displayed by Addison. Love is by Cowley, as by other >poets, expressed metaphorically by flame and fire; and that which is true of real fire is said of love, for figurative fire, the same word in the same sentence retaining both significations. Thus, "observing the cold regard of his mistress's eyes, and at the same time their power of producing love in him, he considers them as burning-glasses made of ice. Finding himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love, he concludes the torrid zone to be habitable. Upon the dying of a tree on which he had cut his loves, he observes that his flames had burnt up and withered the tree." that These conceits Addison calls mixed wit; is, wit which consists of thoughts true in one sense of the expression, and false in the other. Addison's representation is sufficiently indulgent: that confusion of images may entertain for a moment; but, being unnatural, it soon grows wearisome. Cowley delighted in it, as much as if he had invented it; but, not to men cover. The purpose with which he has paraphrased an Olympic and Nemean ode is by himself sufficiently explained. His endeavour was, not to show precisely what Pindar spoke, but his manner of speaking. He was therefore not at all restrained to his expressions, nor much to his sentiments; nothing was required of him, but not to write as Pindar would not have written. Of the Olympic ode, the beginning is, I think, above the original in elegance, and the conclusion below it in strength. The connexion is supplied with great perspicuity; and thoughts, which to a reader of less skill seem thrown together by chance, are concatenated without any abruption. Though the English mode cannot be called a translation, it may be very properly consulted as a commentary. The spirit of Pindar is indeed not every where equally preserved. The following pretty lines are not such as his deep mouth was used to pour : Great Rhea's son, If in Olympus' top, where thou If in my verse thou take delight, In the Nemean ode the reader must, in mere justice to Pindar, observe, that whatever is said of the original new moon, her tender forehead and her horns, is superadded by his paraphrast, who has many other plays of words and fancy unsuitable to the original: as, The table, free for ev'ry guest, And feast more upon thee. than thou on it. He sometimes extends his author's thoughts without improving them. In the Olympionic an oath is mentioned in a single word, and Cowley spends three lines in swearing by the Castalian stream. We are told of Theron's bounty, with a hint that he had enemies, which Cowley thus enlarges in rhyming prose: But in this thankless world the giver It now an artifice does grow Lest men should think we owe. It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and wit, when he was dealing out such minute morality in such feeble diction, could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar. In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own subjects, he sometimes rises to dignity truly Pindaric; and if some deficiences of language be forgiven, his strains are such as those of the Theban bard were to his contemporaries: Begin the song, and strike the living lyre; Lo how the years to come, a numerous and well-fitted quire All hand in hand do decently advance, In the last trumpet's dreadful sound. After such enthusiasm, who will not lament to find the poet conclude with lines like these: But stop, my muse Hold thy Pindaric Pegasus closely in, Which does to rage begin -Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth'd horse"Twill no unskilful touch endure, But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure. The fault of Cowley, and perhaps all the writers of the metaphysical race, is that of pursuing his thoughts to the last ramifications, by which he loses the grandeur of generality; for of the greatest things the parts are little; what is little can be but pretty, and by claiming dignity becomes ridiculous. Thus all the power of description is destroyed by a scrupulous enumeration; and the force of metaphors is lost when the mind by the mention of particulars is turned more upon the original than the secondary sense, more upon that from which the illustration is drawn, than that to which it is applied. Of this we have a very eminent example in the ode intitled The Muse, who goes to take the air in an intellectual chariot, to which he harnesses fancy and judgment, wit and eloquence, memory and invention. How he distinguished wit from fancy, or how memory could properly contribute to motion, he has not explained: we are however content to suppose that he could have justified his own fiction, and wish to see the muse begin her career; but there is yet more to be done. Let the postillion Nature mount, and let And let the airy footmen, running all beside, Figures, conceits, raptures, and sentences, In a well-worded dress, And innocent loves, and pleasant truths, and useful lies, In all their gaudy liveries. Every mind is now disgusted with this cumber of magnificence; yet I cannot refuse myself the four next lines. Mount, glorious queen, thy travelling throne, For long though cheerful is the way, In the same ode, celebrating the power of the muse, he gives her prescience, or, in poetical language, the foresight of events hatching in futurity; but, having once an egg in his mind, he cannot forbear to show us that he knows what an egg contains: Thou into the close nests of Time dost peep, Through the firm shell and the thick white dost spy Close in their sacred secundine asleep. The same thought is more generally, and therefore more poetically expressed by Casimir, a writer who has many of the beauties and faults of Cowley; Omnibus Mundi Dominator horis Cowley, whatever was his subject, seems to have been carried, by a kind of destiny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which require still more ignoble epithets. A slaughter in the Red Sea, new dies the water's name and England, during the civil war, was Albion no more, nor to be named from white. It is surely by some fascination not easily surmounted, that a writer professing to revive the noblest and highest writing in verse, makes this address to the new year; Nay if thou lov'st me, gentle year, Let not so much as love be there, Vain, fruitless love I mean; for, gentle year, There's of this caution little need, Yet, gentle year, take heed Such a mistake; Such love I mean alone As by thy cruel predecessors has been shown! I fain would try, for once, if life can live without it. The reader of this will be inclined to cry out with Prior, Ye critics, say, How poor to this was Pindar's style! Even those who cannot perhaps find in the Isthmian or Nemaan songs what antiquity has disposed them to expect, will at least see that they are ill-represented by such puny poetry; and all will determine that if this be the old Theban strain, it is not worthy of revival. To the disproportion and incongruity of Cowley's sentiments must be added the uncertainty and looseness of his measures. He takes the liberty of using in any place a verse of any length from two syllables to twelve. The verses of Pindar have, as he observes, very little harmony to a modern ear; yet, by examining the syllables we perceive them to be regular, and have reason enough for supposing that the ancient audiences were delighted with the sound. The imitator ought therefore to have adopted what he found, and to have added what was wanting; to have preserved a constant return of the same numbers, and to have supplied smoothness of transition and continuity of thought. It is urged by Dr. Sprat, that the irregularity of numbers is the very thing which makes that |