"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 St. Anne's Hill. "You might very conveniently come hither "the way of Hampton Town, lying there one

night. I write this in pain, and can say no "more: Verbum fapienti.'

He did not long enjoy the pleasure or fuffer the uneafiness 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 pronounc ed, "That Mr. Cowley had not left a better

man behind him in England." He is reprefented by Dr. Sprat as the most amiable of mankind; and this pofthumous praise may be fafely 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 recent, and the minds of either party easily irritated, was obliged to pass over many tranfactions in general expreffions, and to leave curiofity often unfatisfied. What he did

don.

Now in the poffeffion of Mr. Clarke, Alderman of Lon

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 fupplement.

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

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 criticifm on the works of Cowley, the last of the race, it is not improper to give fome account.

The metaphyfical poets were men of learning, and to flew their learning, was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily refolving to fhew it in rhyme, inftead 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 criticifm has rightly denominated poetry τέχνη μιμητικές an imitative art, these 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 the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect.

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 furpafs him in poetry.

If Wit be well defcribed by Pope, as being "that 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 depreffes 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 feldom rifen. Their thoughts are often new, but feldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they juft; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverfeness of industry they were ever found.

But Wit, abstracted 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

or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ranfacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allufions; their learning instructs, and their fubtilty furprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and though he sometimes admires is feldom pleased.

From this account of their compofitions it will be readily inferred, that they were not fuccessful in reprefenting or moving the affections. As they were wholly employed on something unexpected and furprizing, 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 fhould 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 intereft and without emotion. Their courtship was void of fondness, and their lamentation of forrow. Their wifh was only to fay what they hoped had been never faid before.

Nor was the Sublime 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 aftonishment, and the fecond rational admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and lit

tleness

tleness by difperfion. 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. Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty could have little hope of greatnefs; for great things cannot have escaped former obfervation. Their attempts were always analytick; they broke every image into fragments; and could no more represent, by their flender conceits and laboured particularities, the profpect of nature, or the scenes of life, than he, who diffects a fun-beam with a prism, can exhibit the wide effulgence of a fummer

noon.

What they wanted however of the fublime, they endeavoured to fupply by hyperbole; their amplification had no limits; they left not only reafon but fancy behind them; and produced combinations of confufed magnificence, that not only could not be credited, but could not be imagined.

Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly loft: if they frequently threw away their wit upon falfe conceits, they likewife fometimes ftruck out unexpected truth: if their conceits were far fetched, they were often worth the carriage. To write on their plan, it was at leaft neceffary to read and think. No man could be born a metaphyfical poet, nor affume the dignity of a writer, by defcriptions copied from defcriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by tradi