Some that have deeper digg'd Love's mine than I,

Say, where his centric happiness doth lie:

I have lov'd, and got, and told;

But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,
I fhould not find that hidden myftery;
Oh, 'tis impofture all:

And as no chymic yet th' elixir got,
But glorifies his pregnant pot,
If by the way to him befal
Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,

So lovers dream a rich and long delight,
But get a winter-feeming fummer's night.
DONNE.

It is related by Clarendon, that Cowley always acknowledged his obligation to the learning and industry of Jonfon; but I have found no traces of Jonfon in his works: to emulate Donne, appears to have been his purpofe; and from Donne he may have learned that familiarity with religious images, and that light allufion to facred things, by which readers far fhort of fanctity are frequently offended; and which would not be borne in the present age, when devotion, perhaps not more fervent, is more delicate.

Having produced one paffage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will recompense him by another which Milton feems to have borrowed from him. He fays of Goliah,

His fpear, the trunk was of a lofty tree, Which Nature meant fome tall ship's mast fhould be.

Milton of Satan,

His fpear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of fome great admiral, were but a wand,
He walk'd with.-

His diction was in his own time cenfured as negligent. He feems not to have known, or not to have confidered, that words being arbitrary muft owe their power to affociation, and have the influence, and that only, which custom has given them. Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien, or moft graceful action, would be degraded and obfcured by a garb appropriated to the grofs employments of rufticks or mechanicks, fo the moft heroick fentiments will lofe their fficacy, and the moft fplendid ideas drop

C

their magnificence, if they are conveyed by words used commonly upon low and trivial occafions, debafed by vulgar mouths, and contaminated by inelegant applications.

Truth indeed is always truth, and reason is always reafon; they have an intrinsick and unalterable value, and conftitute that intellectual gold which defies deftruction: but gold may be fo concealed in bafer matter that only a chymift can recover it; fenfe may be fo hidden in unrefined and plebeian words that none but philofophers can distinguish it; and both may be fo buried in impurities, as not to pay the coft of their extraction.

The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, firft prefents itself to the intellectual and if the first appearance of

eye;

fends, a further knowledge is not often fought. Whatever profeffes to benefit by pleafing, must please at once. The pleasures of reafon imply fomething fudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always furprise. What is perceived by flow degrees may gratify us with the confcioufnefs of improvement,

provement, but will never ftrike with the fense of pleasure.

Of all this, Cowley feems to have been without knowledge, or without care. He makes no selection of words, nor feeks any neatness of phrafe: he has no elegancies either lucky or elaborate; as his endeavours were rather to imprefs fentences upon the understanding than images on the fancy, he has few epithets, and those scattered without peculiar propriety or nice adaptation. It seems to follow from the neceffity of the subject, rather than the care of the writer, that the diction of his heroick poem is lefs familiar than that of his flightest writings. He has given not the fame numbers, but the fame diction, to the gentle Anacreon and the tempeftuous Pindar.

His verfification feems to have had very little of his care; and if what he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmusical only when they are ill read, the art of reading them is at prefent loft; for

monly harsh to modern ears.

many noble lines, fuch as the

they are com

He has indeed feeble care of Waller

Waller never could produce. The bulk of his thoughts fometimes fwelled his verfe to unexpected and inevitable grandeur; but his excellence of this kind is merely fortuitous: he finks willingly down to his general careleffuefs, and avoids with very little care either meanness or afperity.

His contractions are often rugged and harsh :

One flings a mountain, and its rivers too
Torn up with't-

His rhymes are very often made by pronouns or particles, or the like unimportant words, which disappoint the ear, and destroy the energy of the line.

His combination of different measures is sometimes diffonant and unpleasing; he joins verses together, of which the former does not flide easily into the latter.

The words do and did, which fo much degrade in prefent eftimation the line that admits them, were in the time of Cowley little cenfured or avoided; how often he used them,