104 105 106 107 108 intelligible. Pope has some epitaphs without names; which are therefore epitaphs to be let, occupied indeed for the present, but hardly appropriated 1. 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 2. 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; Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear; If there be nothing else between. Men doubt, because they stand so thick i' th' sky, In his verses to lord Falkland, whom every man of his time was proud to praise 5, 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". It may be remarked that in this Elegy, and in most of his encomiastick poems, he has forgotten or neglected to name his heroes'. In his poem on the death of Hervey there is much praise, and the art of an historian can effect • Post, COWLEY, 176 n. 8 Eng. Poets, vii. 129; post, MILTON, 181. 'This elegy,' writes but little passion, a very just and ample delineation of such virtues as a studious privacy admits, and such intellectual excellence as a mind not yet called forth to action can display'. He knew how to distinguish and how to commend the qualities of his companion, 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 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 3. The Chronicle is a composition unrivalled and alone: such 109 gaiety of fancy, such facility of expression, such varied simili- ell tude, such a succession of images, and such a dance of words, 3 Condemn it to the fire, and joy to hear It rage and crackle there.' lb. p. 132. Time was, we two had wept to have continues: Cowley's exquisite "Was there a tree that did not The love betwixt us two?" not know.' Eng. Poets, vii. 131. To such a performance Suckling could have brought the gaiety, but not the knowledge; Dryden could have supplied the knowledge, but not the gaiety. The verses to Davenant', which are vigorously begun and happily concluded, contain some hints of criticism very justly conceived and happily expressed. Cowley's critical abilities have not been sufficiently observed: the few decisions and remarks which his prefaces and his notes on the Davideis supply were at that time accessions to English literature, and shew such skill as raises our wish for more examples. 2 The lines from Jersey3 are a very curious and pleasing specimen of the familiar 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 5. 'The holy Book like the eighth sphere does shine So numberless the stars that to our [the] eye Yet Reason must assist too; for in seas So vast and dangerous as these, Our course by stars above we cannot know After this says Bentley : 'Who travels in religious jars, Truth mix'd with error, clouds [shades] with rays, Eng. Poets, vii. 141. 56 Ib. vii. 142. 4 lb. vii. 144-7. Johnson however added, "Yes, they are very well, Sir; but you may observe in what manner they are well. They are the forcible verses of a man of a strong mind, but not accustomed to write verse; for there is some uncouthness in the expression."' Boswell's Johnson, iv. 23, where the verses are given. 6 Eng. Poets, vii. 147. Cowley seems to have had, what Milton is believed to have 114 wanted, the skill to rate his own performances by their just value, and has therefore closed his Miscellanies with the verses upon Crashaw, which apparently excel all that have gone before them, and in which there are beauties which common authors may justly think not only above their attainment, but above their ambition 2. how t 1 To the Miscellanies succeed the Anacreontiques, or para- 115 phrastical translations of some little poems, which pass, however justly, under the name of Anacreon. Of those songs 《 no a platy dedicated to festivity and gaiety, 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 spriteliness, but lost their simplicity. The Anacreon of Cowley, like the Homer of Pope3, has admitted the decoration of some modern graces, by which he is undoubtedly made more amiable to common 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. These little pieces will be found more finished in their kind 116 than any other of Cowley's works. The diction shews nothing of the mould of time, and the sentiments are at no great distance from our present habitudes of thought*. Real mirth 1 Post, MILTON, 146. 2 Eng. Poets, vii. 148. The verses begin : 'Poet and Saint! to thee alone are given The two most sacred names of Earth and Heaven.' For 'Poet and Saint' see post, WEST, 5. The following couplet :'His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might Be wrong; his life, I'm sure was in has been imitated by Pope: His can't be wrong whose life is in the + Crabbe's son tells how when a child he was taken by his father to hear John Wesley, on one of the Poor Anacreon! thou growest old; 'My father,' the son adds, 'was must be always natural, and nature is uniform. Men have been wise in very different modes; but they have always laughed 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 with equal pleasure'. The artifice of inversion, by which the established order of words is changed, or of innovation, by which new words or new meanings of words are introduced, is practised, not by those who talk to be understood, but by those who write to be admired. 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 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. They have all the same beauties and faults, and nearly in the same proportion. They are written with exuberance of wit, and with copiousness of learning; and it is truly asserted by Sprat that the plenitude of the writer's knowledge flows in upon his page, so that the reader is commonly surprised into some improvement 2. But, considered as the verses of a lover, no man that has ever loved will much commend them. They are neither courtly nor pathetick, have neither gallantry nor fondHis praises are too far-sought and too hyperbolical, either to express love or to excite it every stanza is crouded with darts and flames, with wounds and death, with mingled souls, and with broken hearts3. ness. 'The polite are always catching modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness and below refinement, where propriety resides, and where this poet [Shakespeare] seems to have gathered his comick dialogue. He is therefore more agreeable to the ears of the present age than any other author equally remote.' JOHNSON, Works, v. 114. |