written, feems to have copied, though with the inferiority of an imitator. The holy Book like the eighth sphere doth shine Our course by ftars above we cannot know After this fays Bentley *. Who travels in religious jars, Truth mix'd with error, fhade with rays, In ocean wide or finks or ftrays. Cowley feems to have had, what Milton is believed to have wanted, the skill to rate his own performances by their juft value, and has therefore closed his Mifcellanies with the verses upon Crashaw, which apparently excel all that have gone before them, and in which there are beauties which common authors * DodЛley's Collection of Poems, vol. V. R. may may juftly think not only above their attain ment, but above their ambition. To the Mifcellanies fucceed the Anacreontiques, or paraphrastical translations of fome little poems, which pass, however justly, under the name of Anacreon. Of those fongs dedicated to festivity and gaiety, in which even the morality is voluptuous, and which teach nothing but the enjoyment of the prefent day, he has given rather a pleafing than a faithful representation, having retained their fpritelinefs, but loft their fimplicity. 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 readers, and perhaps, if they would honeftly declare their own preceptions, to far the greater part of those whom courtefy and ignorance are content to ftyle the Learned. These little pieces will be found more finished in their kind than any other of Cowley's works. The diction fhews nothing of the mould of time, and the fentments are at no great distance from our prefent habitudes of of thought. Real mirth must be always natural, and nature is uniform. Men have been wife 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 fame; the dialogue of comedy, when it is transcribed from popular manners and real life, is read from age to age with equal pleasure. The artifices of inverfion, by which the established order of words is changed, or of innovation, by which new words or meanings of words are introduced, is practifed, 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 feems to have been greatest in the familiar and the feftive. The next clafs of his poems is called The Mistress, of which it is not neceffary to select any any particular pieces for praise or cenfure. They have all the fame beauties and faults, and nearly in the fame proportion. They are written with exuberance of wit, and with copioufnefs of learning; and it is truly afferted by Sprat, that the plenitude of the writer's knowledge flows in upon his page, so that the reader is commonly furprised into fome improvement. But, confidered as the verfes of a lover, no man that has ever loved will much commend them. They are neither courtly nor pathetick, have neither gallantry nor fondness. His praifes are too far fought, and too hyperbolical, either to exprefs love, or to excite it; every ftanza is crowded with darts and flames, with wounds and death, with mingled fouls, and with broken hearts. The principal artifice by which The Miftrefs is filled with conceits is very copioufly 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 re"gard of his miftrefs'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." Thefe 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 reprefentation 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 Lefbia curis ! Uror, & heu noftro manat ab igne liquor; Sum Nilus, fumque Etna fimul; reftringite flammas O lacrimæ, aut lacrimas ebibe flamma meas. VOL. I. F One |