On Cowley. To him no author was unknown, "Yet what he wrote was all his own; "Horace's wit, and Virgil's ftate, "He did not ftcal, but emulate! "And when he would like them appear, "Their garb, but not their cloaths, did wear." As one of Denham's principal claims to the regard of pofterity arifes from his improvement of our numbers, his verfification ught to be confidered. It will afford that pleasure which arifes from the observation of a man of right natural judgement forfaking bad copies by degrees, and advancing towards a better practice, as he gains more confidence in himself. In his tranflation of Virgil, written when he was about twenty-one years old, may be ftill found the old manner of continuing the fenfe ungracefully from verfe to verse. 66 Then all those "Who in the dark our fury did efcape, 66 shape, I 1 4 "And "And differing dialect: then their numbers "" fwell } "And grow upon us; firft Chorobus fell "Before Minerva's altar; next did bleed "Juft Ripheus, whom no Trojan did exceed "In virtue, yet the gods his fate decreed. "Then Hypanis and Dymas, wounded by "Their friends; nor thee, Pantheus, thy piety, "Nor confecrated mitre, from the fame "Ill fate could fave; my country's funeral "flame "And Troy's cold afhes I atteft, and call "To witnefs for myself, that in their fall "No foes, no death, nor danger I declin'd, “Did, and deserv'd no less, my fate to find." From this kind of concatenated inetre he afterwards refrained, and taught his followers the art of concluding their fenfe in couplets; which has perhaps been with rather too much conftancy purfued. This paffage exhibits one of thofe triplets which are not infrequent in this firft etlay, but which it is to be fuppofed his maturer judgement difapproved, fince in his latter works he has totally forborn them. His rhymes are fuch as feem found without difficulty, by following the fenfe; and are for the moft part as exact at least as those of other poets, though now and then the reader is shifted off with what he can get. "O how transform'd! "How much unlike that Hector, who return'd "Clad in Achilles' fpoils !" And again, "From thence a thousand leffer poets sprung, "Like petty princes from the fall of Rome.” Sometimes the weight of rhyme is laid upon a word too feeble to fuftain it : "Troy confounded falls "From all her glories: if it might have stood "By any power, by this right hand it fhou'd. "And though my outward ftate misfortune "bath "Depreft thus low, it cannot reach my faith." "Thus by his fraud and our own faith o'er 66 come, "A feigned tear deftroys us, against whom "Tydides "Tydides nor Achilles could prevail, He is not very careful to vary the ends of his verfes in one paffage the word die rhimes three couplets in fix. Most of these petty faults are in his first productions, when he was lefs fkilful, or at leaft lefs dexterous in the ufe of words; and though they had been more frequent, they could only have leffened the grace, not the ftrength, of his compofition. He is one of the writers that improved our tafte, and advanced our language, and whom we ought therefore to read with gratitude, though, having done much, he left much to do. MILTON. |