To-morrow, fleeps; when the condemned man,
Who when he opes his eyes, muft shut them then
Again by death, although fad watch he keep,
Doth practise dying by a little fleep,

Thou at this midnight feeft me.

IT must be however confeffed of thefe writers, that if they are upon common fubjects often unneceffarily and unpoetically fubtle; yet where fcholaftick speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and acuteness may juftly be admired. What Cowley has written upon Hope, fhews an unequalled fertility of invention:

Hope, whofe weak being ruin'd is,

Alike if it fucceed, and if it mifs;
Whom good or ill does equally confound,
And both the horns of Fate's dilemma wound.
Vain fhadow, which doft vanifh quite,
Both at full noon and perfect night!
The ftars have not a poffibility

Of bleffing thee;

If things then from their end we happy call,
'Tis Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.

Hope, thou bold tafter of delight,

Who, whilft thou should'st but tafte, devour'ft it quite!
Thou bring'ft us an eftate, yet leav'ft us poor,

By clogging it with legacies before!

The joys which we entire fhould wed,
Come deflower'd virgins to our bed;
Good fortunes without gain imported be,
Such mighty custom's paid to thee:

For joy, like wine, kept clofe does better tafte;
If it take air before, its fpirits waste.

To the following comparison of a man that travels, and his wife that stays at home, with a pair of compaffes, it may be doubted whether abfurdity or ingenuity has the better claim:

D 4

Our

Our two fouls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expanfion,

Like gold to airy thinnefs beat.
If they be two, they are two fo
As ftiff twin-compaffes are two,
Thy foul the fixt foot, makes no fhow
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre fit,

Yet when the other far dqth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot obliquely run.

Thy firmness makes my circle juft,

And makes me end, where I begun.

DONNE.

In all thefe examples it is apparent, that whatever is improper or vitious, is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature in purfuit of fomething new and firange; and that the writers fail to give delight, by their defire of exciting admiration.

HAVING thus endeavoured to exhibit a general reprefentation of the ftyle and fentiments of the metaphyfical poets, it is now proper to examine particularly the works of Cowley, who was almost the last of that race, and undoubtedly the best.

His Mifcellanies contain a collection of fhort compofitions, written fome as they were dictated by a mind at leifure, and fome as they were called forth by different occafions; with great variety of ftyle and fentiment, from burlefque levity to awful grandeur. Such anatomblage of diverfified excellence no other poet harto afforded. To choose the best, among

many good, is one of the moft hazardous attempts of

criticifm.

criticifm. I know not whether Scaliger himself has perfuaded many readers to join with him in his preference of the two favorite odes, which he estimates in his raptures at the value of a kingdom. I will however venture to recommend Cowley's firft piece, which ought to be infcribed To my mufe, for want of which the fecond couplet is without reference. When the title is added, there will ftill remain a defect; for every piece ought to contain in itself whatever is neceffary to make it intelligible. Pope has fome epitaphs without names; which are therefore epitaphs to be let, occupied indeed for the prefent, but hardly appropriated.

The ode on Wit is almoft without a rival. It was about the time of Cowley that Wit, which had been till then used for Intellection, in contradiftinction to "Will, took the meaning, whatever it be, which it now bears.

Of all the paffages in which poets have exemplified their own precepts, none will eafily be found of greater excellence than that in which Cowley condems exuberance of Wit:

Yet 'tis not to adorn and gild each part,

That fhews more coft than art.

Jewels at nofe and lips but ill appear;

Rather than all things wit, let none be there.
Several lights will not be feen,

If there be nothing elfe between.

Men doubt, because they stand fo thick i'th' fky,
If those be stars which paint the galaxy.

In his verfes to Lord Falkland, whom every man of his time was proud to praife, there are, as there must be in all Cowley's compofitions, fome ftriking thoughts;

...but

but they are not well wrought. His elegy on Sir Henry Wotton is vigorous and happy, the feries of thoughts is eafy and natural, and the conclufion, though a little weakened by the intrufion of Alexander, is elegant and forcible.

It may be remarked, that in this Elegy, and in moft of his encomiaftic poems, he has forgotten or ne glected to name his heroes.

In his poem on the death of Harvey, there is much praife, but little paffion, a very juft and ample delineation of fuch virtues as a ftudious privacy admits, and fuch intellectual excellence as a mind not yet called forth to action can difplay. He knew how to distinguifh, and how to commend the qualities of his companion; but when he wishes to make us weep, he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his forrow by imagining how his crown of bays, if he had it, would crackle in the fire. It is the odd fate of this thought to be worfe for being true, The bay-leaf crackles remarkably as it burns; as therefore this property was not asfigned it by chance, the mind must be thought fufficiently at eafe that could attend to fuch minuteness of phyfiology. But the power of Cowley is not fo much to move the affections, as to exercise the understanding. The Chronicle is a compofition unrivalled and alone : fuch gaiety of fancy, fuch facility of expreffion, fuch varied fimilitude, fuch a fucceffion of images, and fuch a dance of words, it is vain to expect except from Cowley. His ftrength always appears in his agility; his volatility is not the flutter of a light, but the bound of an claftic mind. His levity never leaves his learning behind it; the moralift, the politician, and the critick, mingle their influence even in this airy frolick of genius. To fuch a performance Suckling could have

brought

brought the gaiety, but not the knowledge; Dryden could have fupplied the knowledge, but not the gaiety.

The verses to Davenant, which are vigorously begun, and happily concluded, contain fome hints of criticism very justly conceived and happily expressed., Cowley's critical abilities have not been fufficiently obferved: the few decifions and remarks which his prefaces and his notes on the Davideis fupply, were at that time acceffions to English literature, and fhew fuch skill as raises our wifh for more examples.

The lines from Jersey are a very curious and pleasing fpecimen of the familiar defcending to the burlesque.

His two metrical difquifitions for and against Reason, are no mean fpecimens of metaphyfical poetry. The ftanzas against knowledge produce little conviction. In thofe which are intended to exalt the human faculties, Reason has its proper task affigned it; that of judging, not of things revealed, but of the reality of revelation. In the verses for Reafon is a paffage which Bentley, in the only English verfes which he is known to have written, feems to have copied, though with the infe riority of an imitator.

The holy Book like the eighth sphere doth fhine

With thousand lights of truth divine,

So numberless the ftars that to our eye

It makes all but one galaxy:

Yet Reafon muft aflift too; for in feas

So vaft and dangerous as these,

Our course by stars above we cannot know

Without the compafs too below.

After this fays Bentley :

Who travels in religious jars,

Truth mix'd with error, clouds with rays,
With Whiston wanting pyx and stars,

In the wide ocean finks or ftrays.

Cowley