of consistency and regularity, when somebody had bethought himself to use, be'st, in the Second Person, for art. Hence, what grammarians call, the double form in the Indicative Present of the Auxiliary, to be. It is, now, deservedly exploded. ODE FROM CATULLUS.-PAGE 115. With such a husband, such a wife, It is to be observed, to the honour of our author's mo rals, and good taste, that, by this little deviation from his original, he has converted a loose love-poem into a sober epithalamium. We have all the grace, and, what is more, all the warmth of Catullus, without his indecency. THE COMPLAINT.-PAGE 136. The plan of this poem is highly poetical: and, though the numbers be not the most pleasing, the expression is almost every where natural and beautiful. But its principal charm is that air of melancholy, thrown over the whole, so expres. sive of the poet's character. The address of the writer is seen in conveying his just reproaches on the court, under a pretended vindication of it against the Muse. PAGE 137. Among the spiritual lords of peaceful fame. Alluding to the style of the House of Lords-the Lords Spiritual and Temporal. But see the note on spiritual dignities, on the Poem on the Death of Mrs. Philips. PAGE 139. The Rachel, for which twice seven years and more. The mastership of the Savoy. PAGE 140. Where once such Fairies dance, no grass doth ever grow. i. e. no grass which turns to profit.-The poet alludes, in this verse, to the sour ringlets, which are sometimes found in pasture-grounds, and, according to the philosophy of the country people, are occasioned by fairies dancing upon them. He had probably his eye on that fine passage of Shakspeare, "ye demy-puppets, that "By moon-shine do the green sour ringlets make, PAGE 141. Tempest, Act 5. S. ii. Teach me not, then, o thou fallacious Muse, i. e. better in his own nature, than the court [his ministers] would allow him to be. The supposition was decent, but not true. The minister of that time was just, nay generous, to our poet. [See Lord Clarendon's Life, Parti. 16.] But, unluckily, the poet's patrons were the minister's most determined enemies. In the mean time, the better king cared neither for the minister, nor the poet. ON THE DEATH OF MRS. KATHARINE PHILIPS. PAGE 143. This poem is preserved, in honour of the lady, here celebrated, who had the fortune to be equally esteemed by the best poet and best divine of her age. On th' inwurd holiest holy of her wit?—I wish the poet had forborn this allusion. PAGE 144. That ev'n judge Paris would not know. Familiar, again, or rather burlesque; quite out of season. When the best woman for her guide she chose. Alluding to the introduction of the statue of Cybele into Rome: Liv. 1. xxix. The goddess, indeed, had a long train of Roman matrons for her attendants. But, as the historian tells the story, she chose the best man in Rome for her host; not the best woman, for her guide. Whether the poet forgot himself, or purposely falsified the story for the sake of his application, I know not. To the two tops of spiritual dignities. The English word, spiritual, as applied to dignities, means religious or ecclesiastical, in opposition to civil or temporal. But the French word, spirituel, of like sound, means, also, witty or intellectual. Hence the equivoque; with which our poet was not a little pleased, as we may see by his repetition of it, in the Complaint, St. ii. 66 Among the spiritual lords of peaceful fame." -He forgot, on this and other occasions, his own definition of true wit by negatives "Tis not, when two like words make up one noise." PAGE 146. St. ii. 6. The fame of friendship, which so long had told. Mrs. Philips was as much famed for her friendships, as for her poetry. Dr. J. Taylor addressed his discourse on the nature and offices of friendship, to this lady. HYMN TO LIGHT.-PAGE 146. The moral strokes in this hymn amply atone for the false wit and quaint imagery, in which it too much abounds.-It was the malady of that age, to be only taken, "With glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line." Pope. And the abundance of Mr. Cowley's wit made it but too easy for him to regale the vitiated taste of his readers with this sort of entertainment. PAGE 147. Let a post-angel start with thee. One of the most glaring faults in the poetry of Mr. Cowley's age was the debasing of great sentiments and images by low allusion, and vulgar expressions. What the reader looked for, was wit; and he looked no farther: as if that rule of common sense had been a discovery of yesterday 66 Expression is the dress of thought, and still Pope, Essay on Crit. ver. 318. PAGE 148. Night, and her ugly subjects, thou dost fright. "Night, and all her sickly dews, "Her spectres wan," &c. Mr. Gray, in The Progress of Poesy. This excellent writer, not unfrequently, alludes to passages in Mr. Cowley, whose manners and genius much resembled his own. Both charm us with the spleen of virtue: and both were equally qualified, by the gifts of nature, to adorn the nobler and the more familiar poetry.-The taste, the execution, the success, were happily on the side of our late poet. Ill omens and ill sights removes out of thy way. Alluding to the old Roman superstition, which anxiously provided, when a great general marched out of the city, that no inauspicious object should obstruct or pollute his passage. PAGE 149. A crown of studded gold thou bear'st. In the flower so called, or Crown Imperial. The name of the flower, and of its bearing, being the same, he could not well express them both. Yet, in the connection which this line has with the foregoing, the mention of one only, has an ill effect. PAGE 150. Thou cloth'st it in a gay and party-colour'd coat. Prettily alluding to Joseph's coat of many colours. Gen. xxxvii. 3, 4. To me the sun is more delightful far. An inimitable stanza, in which the whole soul of the poet comes out, and shines through the purest and clearest expression: like one of the virgin-lilies he before celebrates, -“ clad with the lawn of almost naked light." PAGE 151. TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY. This poem (besides its intrinsic merit) is entitled to distinction, from the relation it has to the Proposition for the advancement of experimental philosophy; which the reader will find in the third volume. It gives, too, an amiable pic ture of the poet's mind, in the concluding panegyric on his friend Dr. Sprat, who had written the history of the Royal Society. A science so well bred and nurs'd. By Pythagoras and Democritus. PAGE 152. With the desserts of poetry they fed him. Much of the ancient philosophy was only a luscious mythology. The way of accounting for a natural phænomenon, was to tell a pleasant story. I suppose, the author had especially in view Lord Bacon's Sapientia veterum, where that wise man amused himself and others-with the sports of wanton wit. Into the pleasant labyrinths of ever-fresh discourse. The Platonic school, which joined eloquence to philosophy. His curious, but not covetous eye. i. e. ingenious speculation, and not use, was the object of that philosophy. With painted scenes and pageants of the brain. The peripatetic fancies "tricks to shew the stretch of human brain." Pope. Some few exulted spirits this lutter age has shown. P. Ramus, and his followers, who laboured to assert the liberty of philosophy from the usurped dominion of the Aristotelians; men, who, under colour of guarding the rights of the old philosophy, tyrannized over reason herself. To graves from whence it rose, &c. Dr. Hurd, in his text, has omitted the remainder of this stanza. PAGE 153. He pressed them wisely the mechanic way. i. e. in the way of experiment. PAGE 154. Must not from others' work a copy take. As Gassendi did, whose philosophy is nothing more than a copy, a fine one indeed from that of Epicurus. ANON. |