nor fondness. His praises are too far-fought, and too hyperbolical, either to exprefs love or to excite it: every ftanza is crouded with darts and flames, with wounds and death, with mingled fouls, and with broken hearts.

The principal artifice by which The Mistress is filled with conceits is very copiously dif played by Addison. Love is by Cowley, as by other poets, expreffed metaphorically by flame and fire; and that which is true of real fire is faid of love, or figurative fire, the fame word in the fame fentence retaining both fignifications. Thus, " obferving the cold regard of "his mistress's eyes, and at the fame time "their power of producing love in him, he "confiders them as burning-glaffes 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 obferves, that his flames had burnt up and withered the tree."

These conceits Addifon calls mixed wit; that is, wit which confifts of thoughts true in one sense of the expreffion, and false in the other. Addifon's representation is fufficiently indulgent. That confufion of images may entertain for a moment; but being unnatural, it foon grows wearifome. Cowley delighted in it, as much as if he had invented it; but, not to mention the ancients, he might have found it full-blown in modern Italy. Thus Sannazaro ;

Afpice quam variis diftringar Vefbia curis,
Uror, & heu! noftro manat ab igne liquor;

Sum

Sum Nilus, fumque Etna fimul; reftringit flammas

O lacrimæ, aut lacrimas ebibe flamma meas.

One of the fevere theologians of that time cenfured him as having published a book of profane and lafcivious Verfes. From the charge of profanenefs, the conftant tenour of his life, which feems to have been eminently virtuous, and the general tendency of his opinions, which discover no irreverence of religion, must defend him; but that the accufation of lasciviousness is unjuft, the perufal of his works will fufficiently evince.

Cowley's Miftrefs has no power of seduction : "the plays round the head, but comes not at the heart." Her beauty and absence, her kindness and cruelty, her disdain and inconftancy, produce no correfpondence of emotion. His poetical account of the virtues of plants, and colours of flowers, is not perused with more fluggish frigidity. The compofitions are fuch as might have been written for penance by a hermit, or for hire by a philofophical rhymer who had only heard of another fex; for they turn the mind only on the writer, whom, without thinking on a woman but as the subject for a task, we sometimes esteem as learned, and fometimes defpife as trifling, always admire as ingenious, and always condemn as unnatural.

The Pindarique Odes are now to be confidered; a fpecies of compofition, which Cowley thinks Pancirolus might have counted in bis lift of the loft inventions of antiquity, and which

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which he has made a bold and vigorous attempt to recover.

The purpose with which he has paraphra fed an Olympick and Nemeæan Ode, is by himfelf fufficiently explained. His endeavour was not to fhew precifely what Pindar Spoke, but his manner of Speaking. He was therefore not at all reftrained to his expreffions, nor much to his fentiment: nothing was required of him, but not to write as Pindar would not have written.

Of the Olympick Ode the beginning is, I think, above the original in elegance, and the conclufion below it in ftrength. The connection is fupplied with great perfpicuity, and the thoughts, which to a reader of lefs fkill feem thrown together by chance, are concatenated without any abruption. Though the English ode cannot be called a tranflation, it may be very properly confulted as a commentary.

The fpirit of Pindar is indeed not every where equally preferved. The following pretty lines are not such as his deep mouth was used

to pour :

Great Rhea's fon,

If in Olympus' top where thou
Sitt'ft to behold thy facred show,
If in Alpheus filver flight,
If in my verse thou take delight,
My verfe, great Rhea's fon, which is
Lofty as that, and smooth as this.

In the Nemeæan Ode the reader muft, in mere justice to Pindar, obferve that whatever

is faid of the original new moon, her tender forehead and her borns, is fuperadded by his paraphraft, who has many other plays of words and fancy unfuitable to the original, as,

The table free for every guest,

No doubt will thee admit,

And feast more upon thee, than thou on it.

He sometimes extends his author's thoughts without improving them. In the Olympionick an oath is mentioned in a fingle word, and Cowley spends three lines in fwearing by the Caftalian 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
Is envied even by the receiver;

'Tis now the cheap and frugal fashion
Rather to hide than own the obligation:
Nay, 'tis much worse than fo;
It now an artifice does grow
Wrongs and injuries to do,

Left men fhould think we owe.

It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and wit, when he was dealing out fuch minute morality in fuch feeble diction, could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar.

In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own fubjects, he sometimes rises to dignity truly Pindarick; and, if fome deficiencies of language be forgiven, his strains are

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fuch

fuch as those of the Theban bard were to his

contemporaries :

Begin the fong, and strike the living lyre : Lo how the years to come, a numerous and well-fitted quire,

All hand in hand do decently advance,

And to my fong with smooth and equal meafure dance;

While the dance lafts, how long foe'er it be,

My mufick's voice fhall bear it company;
Till all gentle notes be drown'd

In the last trumpet's dreadful found.

After fuch enthusiasm, who will not lament to find the poet conclude with lines like these!

But ftop, my Mufe

Hold thy Pindarick Pegasus closely in,
Which does to rage begin-

-Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth'd horse"Twill no unfkilful touch endure,

But flings writer and reader too that fits not sure.

The fault of Cowley, and perhaps of all the writers of the metaphyfical race, is that of pursuing his thoughts to their laft ramifications, by which he lofes 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 fcrupulous enumeration; and the force of metaphors is loft, when the mind by the men