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. To the Mifcellanies fucceed the Anacreontiques, or paraphraftical tranflations of fome little poems, which pafs, however juftly, under the name of Anacreon. Ofthofe fongs 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 pleafing than a faithful reprefentation, having retained their spriteliness, but lost their fimplicity. The Anacreon of Cowley, like the Homer of Pope, has admitted the decoration of fome 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 courtefy and ignorance are content to ftyle the Learned. Thefe little pieces will be found more finished in their kind than any other of Cowley's works. The diction thews nothing of the mould of time, and the fentiments are at no great dif tance tance from our present habitudes 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 fame 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 tranfcribed 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 new 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 fa miliar and the feftive. The The next clafs of his poems is called The Mistress, of which it is not neceffary to select 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 af ferted by Sprat, that the plenitude of the writer's knowledge flows in upon his page, fo 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 fondnefs. His praifes are too farfought, and too hyperbolical, either to exprefs love, or to excite it every stanza is crouded with darts and flames, with wounds and death, with mingled fouls, and with broken hearts. The principal artifice by which The Miftress is filled with conceits is very copiously displayed by Addifon. Love is by Cowley, as by other poets, expreffed metaphorically by flame and fire; and that which is true of real 66 real fire is faid of love, or figurative fire, the same word in the fame sentence retaining both fignifications. Thus, "obferving the "cold regard of his miftrefs's eyes, and at "the fame time their power of producing "love in him, he confiders them as burningglaffes made of ice. Finding himself able "to live in the greatest extremities of love, "he concludes the torrid zone to be habi"table. 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 Lesbia curis, 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 profaneness, 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 accusation of lasciviousness is unjuft, the perufal of his works will fufficiently evince. Cowley's Miftrefs has no power of seduc-、 tion: "fhe plays round the head, but comes not at the heart." Her beauty and absence, her kindness and cruelty, her disdain and inconftancy, produce no correspondence of emotion. His poetical account of the virtues of plants, and colours of flowers, is not perused with more sluggish frigidity. The compofitions are fuch as might have been written for penance by a hermit, or for hire by a philosophi VOL. I. F cal |