One of the great sources of poetical delight is description,* or the power of presenting pictures to the mind. Cowley gives inferences instead of images, and shows not what may be supposed to have been seen, but what thoughts the sight might have suggested. When Virgil describes the stone which Turnus lifted against Eneas, he fixes the attention on its bulk and weight:

Saxum circumspicit ingens,
Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat
Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis.
Cowley says of the stone with which Cain
slew his brother,

I saw him fling the stone, as if he meant
At once his murther and his monument.

Of the sword taken from Goliah, he says,

A sword so great, that it was only fit

To cut off his great head that came with it. Other poets describe death by some of its common appearances. Cowley says, with a learned allusion to sepulchral lamps, real or fabulous,

Twixt his right ribs deep pierc'd the furious blade,
And open'd wide those secret vessels where
Life's light goes out, when first they let in air.

But he has allusions vulgar as well as learned. In a visionary succession of kings,

Joas at first does bright and glorious show,

In life's fresh morn his fame does early crow.

This he with starry vapours sprinkles all,
Took in their prime ere they grow ripe and fall;
Of a new rainbow ere it fret or fade,

The choicest piece cut out, a scarf is made.

what might in general expressions be great and This is a just specimen of Cowley's imagery: forcible, he weakens and makes ridiculous by branching it into small parts. That Gabriel was invested with the softest or brightest colours of the sky, we might have been told, and been dismissed to improve the idea in our different proportions of conception; but Cowley could not let us go till he had related where Gabriel got first his skin, and then his mantle, then his lace, and then his scarf, and related it in the terms of the mercer and tailor.

Sometimes he indulges himself in a digression, always conceived with his natural exuberance, and commonly, even where it is not long, continued till it is tedious.

I' th' library a few choice authors stood,

Yet 'twas well stor❜d, for that small store was good,
Writing, man's spiritual physic, was not then
Itself, as now, grown a disease of men.
Learning, (young virgin,) but few suitors knew
The common prostitute she lately grew,

And with the spurious brood loads now the press;
Laborious effects of idleness.

As the Davidcis affords only four books, though intended to consist of twelve, there is no opportunity for such criticisms as epic poems commonly supply. The plan of the whole work is

His forces seem'd no army, but a crowd,
Heartless, unarm'd, disorderly, and loud;

he gives them a fit of the ague.

The allusions however are not always to vulgar things; he offends by exaggeration as much as by diminution:

The king was plac'd alone, and o'er his head
A well-wrought heaven of silk and gold was spread

some conceit :

Where the sun's fruitful beams give metals birth,
Where he the growth of fatal gold does see,
Gold, which alone more influence has than he.

so lavish of his poetical art, that it is difficult to imagine how he could fill eight books more without practising again the same modes of disposing of his matter: and perhaps the perception of this growing incumbrance inclined him to stop. By

than delight. If the continuation of the Davideis can be missed it is for the learning that had been diffused over it, and the notes in which it had been explained.

Had not his characters been depraved, like

Nay, gentle guests, he cries, since now you're in,
The story of your gallant friend begin.

In a simile descriptive of the morning:
As glimmering stars just at th' approach of day,
Cashier'd by troops, at last all drop away.
The dress of Gabriel deserves attention:
He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,
That e'er the mid-day sun pierc'd through with light;
Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,
Wash'd from the morning beauties' deepest red:
An harmless flatt'ring meteor shone for hair,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care;
He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies,
Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes;

would have deserved uncommon praise. He gives Saul both the body and mind of a hero : His way once chose, he forward thrust outright, Nor turn'd aside for danger or delight. And the different beauties of the lofty Merah and the gentle Michol are very justly conceived and strongly painted.

Rymer has declared the Davideis superior to the Jerusalem of Tasso, "which," says he, "the poet, with all his care, has not totally purged from pedantry." If by pedantry is meant that minute knowledge which is derived from particular sciences and studies, in opposition to the general notions supplied by a wide survey of life and nature, Cowley certainly errs, by introducing pedantry, far more frequently than Tasso. I know not, indeed, why they should be compared; for the resemblance of Cowley's work

to Tasso's is only that they both exhibit the agency of celestial and infernal spirits, in which however they differ widely; for Cowley supposes them commonly to operate upon the mind by suggestion; Tasso represents them as promoting or obstructing events by external agency. Of particular pages that can be properly compared, I remember only the description of Heaven, in which the different manner of the two writers is sufficiently discernible. Cowley's is scarcely description, unless it be possible to describe by negatives; for he tells us only what there is not in Heaven. Tasso endeavours to represent the splendours and pleasures of the regions of happiness. Tasso affords images, and Cowley sentiments. It happens, however, that Tasso's descriptions afford some reason for Rhymer's censure. He says of the Supreme Being,

Hà sotto i piedi e fato e la natura

Ministri humili, e'l moto, e ch'il misura.

The second line has in it more of pedantry than perhaps can be found in any other stanza of the poem.

In the perusal of the Davideis, as of all Cowley's works, we find wit and learning unprofitably squandered. Attention has no relief; the affections are never moved; we are sometimes surprised, but never delighted, and find much to admire, but little to approve. Still however it is the work of Cowley, of a mind capacious by nature, and replenished by study.

In the general review of Cowley's poetry it will be found that he wrote with abundant fertility, but with negligent or unskilful selection: with much thought, but with little imagery; that he is never pathetic, and rarely sublime; but always either ingenious or learned, either acute or pro

found.

It is said by Denham in his elegy,

To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he writ was all his own.

This wide position requires less limitation, when it is affirmed of Cowley, than perhaps of any other poet.- He read much, and yet borrowed little.

His character of writing was indeed not his own: he unhappily adopted that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise; and, not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued to delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself with a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure in its spring was bright and gay, but which time has been continually stealing from his brows.

lines have such resemblance to the noble epigram of Grotius on the death of Scaliger, that I cannot but think them copied from it, though they are copied by no servile hand.

One passage in his Mistress is so apparently borrowed from Donne, that he probably would not have written it, had it not mingled with his own thoughts, so as that he did not perceive himself taking it from another:

Although I think thou never found wilt be,
Yet I'm resolved to search for thee;
The search itself rewards the pains.
So, though the chymic his great secret miss,
(For neither it in Art or Nature is,)

Yet things well worth his toil he gains:
And does his charge and labour pay
With good unsought experiments by the way.
Cowley.
Some that have deeper digg'd Love's mine than I,
Say, where his centric happiness doth lie:
I have lov'd and got, and told;
But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,
I should not find that hidden mystery;
Oh, 'tis imposture all !

And as no chymic yet th' elixir got,
But glorifies his pregnant pot,
If by the way to him befall

Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,

So lovers dream a rich and long delight, But get a winter-seeming summer's night. Jonson and Donne, as Dr. Hurd remarks, were then in the highest esteem.

It is related by Clarendon that Cowley always industry of Jonson; but I have found no traces acknowledges his obligation to the learning and of Jonson in his works: to emulate Donne appears to have been his purpose; and from Donne he may have learned that familiarity with religious images, and that light allusion to sacred things, by which readers far short of sanctity be borne in the present age, when devotion, perare frequently offended; and which would not haps not more fervent, is more delicate.

Having produced one passage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will recompense him by another which Milton seems to have borrowed from him. He says of Goliah,

His spear, the trunk was of a lofty tree,
Which Nature meant some tall ship's mast should be.
Milton of Satan:

His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great admiral, were but a wand,
He walked with.

His manner he had in common with others; but his sentiments were his own. Upon every subject he thought for himself; and such was his copiousness of knowledge, that something at once remote and applicable rushed into his mind; yet it is not likely that he always rejected a commodious idea merely because another had used it: his known wealth was so great that he might have borrowed without loss of credit.

In his elegy on Sir Henry Wotton, the last

or mechanics: so the most heroic sentiments will lose their efficacy, and the most splendid ideas drop their magnificence, if they are conveyed by words used commonly upon low and trivial occasions, debased by vulgar mouths, and contaminated by inelegant applications.

Truth indeed is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have an intrinsic and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectua! gold which defies destruction; but gold may be so concealed in baser matter, that only a chymist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in

unrefined and plebeian words that none but philosophers can distinguish it; and both may be so buried in impurities, as not to pay the cost of their extraction.

The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself to the intellectual eye; and

And still as Time comes in, it goes away,

Not to enjoy, but debts to pay! Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell! Which his hour's work as well as hours does tell: Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell. His heroic lines are often formed of monosyl

sonorous.

He says of the Messiah,

Of all this, Cowley appears to have been without knowledge, or without care. He makes no selection of words, nor seeks any neatness of phrase; he has no elegances either lucky or elaborate; as his endeavours were rather to impress sentences upon the understanding than images upon the fancy; he has few epithets, and those scattered without peculiar propriety or nice adaptation. It seems to follow from the necessity of the subject, rather than the care of the writer, that the diction of his heroic poem is less familiar than that of his slightest writings. He has given not the same numbers, but the same diction, to the gentle Anacreon and the tempestuous Pindar.

His versification seems to have had very little of his care; and if what he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmusical only when they are ill-read, the art of reading them is at present lost; for they are commonly harsh to modern ears. He has indeed many noble lines, such as the feeble care of Waller never could produce. The bulk of his thoughts sometimes swelled his verse to unexpected and inevitable grandeur; but his excellence of this kind is merely fortuitous he sinks willingly down to his general carelessness, and avoids with very little care either meanness or asperity.

His contractions are often rugged and harsh :

One flings a mountain, and its rivers too
Torn up with 't.

His rhymes are very often made by pronouns, or particles, or the like unimportant words, which disappoint the ear, and destroy the energy of the line.

His combination of different measures is sometimes dissonant and unpleasing; he joins verses together, of which the former does not slide easily into the latter.

The words do and did, which so much degrade in present estimation the line that admits them, were, in the time of Cowley, little censured or avoided how often he used them, and with how bad an effect, at least to our ears, will appear by a passage, in which every reader will lament to see just and noble thoughts defrauded of their praise by inelegance of language:

Where honour or where conscience does not bind,
No other law shall shackle me;
Slave to myself I ne'er will be;
Nor shall my future actions be confin'd
By my own present mind.

Who by resolves and vows engag'd does stand,
For days that yet belong to fate,

Does like an unthrift, mortgage his estate
Before it falls into his hand;

The bondman of the cloister so,

All that he does receive does always owe.

Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound,
And reach to worlds that must not yet be found.
In another place, of David,

Yet bid him go securely, when he sends;
'Tis Saul that is his foe, and we his friends.
The man who has his God, no aid can lack;
And we who bid him go, will bring him back.

Yet amidst his negligence he sometimes attempts an improved and scientific 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,

And over-runs the neighb'ring fields with violent

course.

In the second book;

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 His breast a thick plate of strong brass he wore. In the fourth,

Like some fair pine o'erlooking all the 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 in numerable, and taken notice of by all judi cious men, so that it is superfluous to collect them."

I know not whether he has, in many of these instances, attained the representation or resem blance 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 versifi.