He fometimes extends his author's thoughts without improving them. In the Olympionick an oath is mentioned in a fingle word, and Cowley fpends three lines in fwearing by the Caftalian Stream. We are told of Theron's bounty, with a hint that he had enemies, which Cowley thus enlarges in rhyming profe:

But in this thankless world the giver

Is envied even by the receiver;

'Tis now the cheap and frugal fashion
Rather to hide than own the obligation:
Nay, 'tis much worse than fo;

It now an artifice does grow
Wrongs and injuries to do,

Left men fhould think we owe.

It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and wit, when he was dealing out fuch minute morality in fuch feeble diction, could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar.

In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own fubjects, he fometimes rifes to dignity truly Pindarick; and, if fome deficiencies of language be forgiven, his ftrains are fuch as those of the Theban bard were to his contemporaries:

Begin the fong, and strike the living lyre:

Lo how the years to come, a numerous and well-fitted quire,

All hand in hand do decently advance,

And to my fong with smooth and equal measure dance;
While the dance lafts, how long foe'er it be,

My mufick's voice fhall bear it company;

Till all gentle notes be drown'd

In the last trumpet's dreadful found.

After fuch enthusiasm, who will not lament to find the poet conclude with lines like thefe!

VOL. II.

E

But

But ftop, my Mufe

Hold thy Pindaric Pegasus closely in,

Which does to rage begin

'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth'd horfe

'Twill no unfkilful touch endure,

But flings writer and reader too that fits not sure.

The fault of Cowley, and perhaps of all the writers of the metaphyfical race, is that of pursuing his thoughts to their last ramifications, by which he loses the grandeur of generality; for of the greatest things the parts are little; what is little can be but pretty, and by claiming dignity becomes ridiculous. Thus all the power of defcription is deftroyed by a fcrupulous enumeration; and the force of metaphors is loft, when the mind by the mention of particulars is turned more upon the original than the fecondary fenfe, more upon that from which the illuftration is drawn than that to which it is applied.

Of this we have a very eminent example in the ode intituled The Mufe, who goes to take the air in an intellectual chariot, to which he harneffes Fancy and Judgement, Wit and Eloquence, Memory and Invention: how he diftinguished Wit from Fancy, or how Memory could properly contribute to Motion, he has not explained; we are however content to fuppofe that he could have juftified his own fiction, and wish to see the Mufe begin her career; but there is yet more to be done.

Let the poftilion Nature mount, and let
The coachman Art be fet;

And let the airy footmen, running all befide,
Make a long row of goodly pride;

Figures, conceits, raptures, and sentences,
In a well-worded dreis,

And

And innocent loves, and pleasant truths, and useful lies,
In all their gaudy liveries.

Every mind is now difgufted with this cumber of magnificence; yet I cannot refufe myself the four next lines:

Mount, glorious queen, thy travelling throne,
And bid it to put on;

For long though cheerful is the way,

And life alas allows but one ill winter's day.

In the fame ode, celebrating the power of the Muse, he gives her prescience, or, in poetical language, the forefight of events hatching in futurity; but having once an egg in his mind, he cannot forbear to fhew us that he knows what an egg contains:

Thou into the clofe nefts of Time doft peep,

And there with picing eye

Through the firm shell and the thick white doft spy
Years to come a-forming lie,

Close in their facred fecundine asleep.

The fame thought is more generally, and therefore more poetically, expreffed by Cafimir, a writer, who has many of the beauties and faults of Cowley :

Omnibus mundi Dominator horis

Aptat urgendas per inane pennas,
Pars adhuc nido latet, & futuros

Crefcit in annos.

Cowley, whatever was his fubject, feems to have been carried, by a kind of deftiny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which require ftill more ignoble epithets. A flaughter in the Red Sea new dies the waters name; and England, during the Civil War, was Albion no more, nor to be named from white. It is furely by fome fafcination not eafily furmounted, that

a writer profeffing to revive the nobleft and highest writing in verse, makes this address to the new year :

Nay, if thou lov'ft me, gentle year,

Let not fo much as love be there,

Vain fruitless love I mean; for, gentle year,

Although I fear,

There's of this caution little need,

Yet, gentle year, take heed

How thou doft make

Such a mistake;

Such love I mean alone

As by thy cruel predeceffors has been shewn;
For, though I have too much caufe to doubt it,

I fain would try, for once, if life can live without it.

The reader of this will be inclined to cry out with Prior

Ve Critics, fay,

How poor to this was Pindar's ftyle!

Even those who cannot perhaps find in the Ifthmian or Nemeæan fongs what Antiquity has difpofed them to expect, will at leaft fee that they are ill reprefented by fuch puny poetry; and all will determine that, if this be the old Theban ftrain, it is not worthy of revival.

To the difproportion and incongruity of Cowley's fentiments must be added the uncertainty and loofenefs of his meafures. He takes the liberty of uting in any place a verfe of any length, from two fyllables to twelve. The verfes of Pindar have, as he obferves, very little harmony to a modern ear; yet by examining the fyllables we perceive them to be regular, and have reafon enough for fuppofing that the ancient audiences were delighted with the found. The imitator ought therefore to have adopted what he found, and to have added what was wanting; to have preferved a con

fant

ftant return of the fame numbers, and to have fupplied fmoothness of tranfition and continuity of thought.

It is urged by Dr. Sprat, that the irregularity of numbers is the very thing which makes that kind of poefy fit for all manner of fubjects. But he fhould have remembered, that what is fit for every thing can fit nothing well. The great pleasure of verfe arifes from the known measure of the lines, and uniform structure of the ftanzas, by which the voice is regulated, and the memory relieved.

If the Pindaric ftyle be, what Cowley thinks it, the bigbeft and noblest kind of writing in verfe, it can be adapted only to high and noble subjects; and it will not be easy to reconcile the poet with the critick, or to conceive how that can be the highest kind of writing in verfe, which, according to Sprat, is chiefly to be preferred for its near affinity to profe.

This lax and lawless verfification fo much concealed the deficiences of the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle, that it immediately overspread our books of poetry; all the boys and girls caught the pleasing fashion, and they that could do nothing elfe could write like Pindar. The rights of antiquity were invaded, and disorder tried to break into the Latin: a poem on the Sheldonian Theatre, in which all kinds of verse are shaken together, is unhappily inferted in the Mufa Anglicana. Pindarifm prevailed above half a century; but at laft died gradually away, and other imitations fupply its place.

The Pindarique Odes have fo long enjoyed the highest degree of poetical reputation, that I am not willing to difinifs them with unabated cenfure; and furely though the mode of their compofition be er