Savoy-missing Cowley came into the court, That Apollo gave heed to all he could say: the morose His vehement desire of retirement now came again upon him. "Not finding," says Wood, "that preferment conferred upon him which "he expected, while others for their money car"ried away most places, he retired discontented "into Surrey.' "He was now," says the courtly Sprat, "weary "of the vexations and formalities of an active con"dition. He had been perplexed with a long "compliance to foreign manners. He was satiated "with the arts of a court; which sort of life, though "his virtue made it innocent to him, yet nothing "could make it quiet. Those were the reasons "that made him to follow the violent inclination "of his own mind, which, in the greatest throng " of his former business, had still called upon him, "and represented to him the true delights of soli"tary studies, of temperate pleasures, and a moderate revenue, below the malice and flatteries of "fortune." So differently are things seen! and so differently are they shewn! but actions are visible, though motives are secret. Cowley certainly retired; first to Barn-Elms, and afterwards to Chertsey, in Surrey. He seems, however, to have lost part of his dread of the hum of men*. He thought himself now safe enough from intrusion, without the defence of mountains and oceans; and, instead of seeking shelter in America, wisely went only so far from the bustle of life as that he might easily find his way back, when solitude should grow tedious. His retreat was at first but slenderly accommodated; yet he soon obtained, by the interest of the earl of St Alban's and the Duke of Buckingham, such a lease of the Queen's lands as afforded him an ample income. By the lovers of virtue and of wit it will be solicitously asked, if he now was happy.. Let them peruse one of his letters accidentally preserved by Peck, which I recommend to the consideration of all that may hereafter pant for solitude. "To Dr THOMAS SPRAT. "Chertsey, May 21, 1665. "The first night that I came hither I caught "so great a cold, with a defluxion of rheum, as "made me keep my chamber ten days. And, two "after, had such a bruise on my ribs with a fall, "that I am yet unable to move or turn myself in 66 my bed. This is my personal fortune here to begin with. And, besides, I can get no money from my tenants, and have my meadows "eaten up every night by cattle put in by my neighbours. What this signifies, or may come "to in time, God knows; if it be ominous, it can "end in nothing less than hanging. Another 66 61 * L'Allegro of Milton. your "misfortune has been, and stranger than all the "rest, that you have broke word with me, "and failed to come, even though you told Mr "Bois that you would. This is what they call "Monstri simile. I do hope to recover my late "hurt so farre within five or six days (though it be 66 uncertain yet whether I shall ever recover it), as "to walk about again. And then, methinks, 66 you and I and the Dean, might be very merry 66 upon St Ann's Hill. You might very conve"niently come hither the way of Hampton Town, "lying there one night. I write this in pain, and can say no more: Verbum sapienti.” 66 He did not long enjoy the pleasure or suffer the uneasiness of solitude; for he died at the Porchhouse in Chertsey, in 1667, in the 49th year of his age. He was buried with great pomp near Chaucer and Spenser; and king Charles pronounced, "That "Mr Cowley had not left behind him a better "man in England." He is represented by Dr Sprat as the most amiable of mankind, and this posthumous praise may safely be credited, as it has never been contradicted by envy or by faction. Such are the remarks and memorials which I have been able to add to the narrative of Dr Sprat ; who, writing when the feuds of the civil war were yet recent, and the minds of either party were easily irritated, was obliged to pass over many transactions in general expressions, and to leave curiosity often unsatisfied. What he did not tell, can *Now in the possession of Mr Clarke, Alderman of London. not, however, now be known; I must therefore recommend the perusal of his work, to which my narration can be considered only as a slender sup> plement. COWLEY, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and, instead of tracing intellectual pleasures in the minds of men, paid their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too much praised, and too much neglected at another. Wit, like all other things subject by their nature to the choice of man, has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century, appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets; of whom, in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not improper to give some account. The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to shew their learning was their whole endea vour: but, unluckily resolving to shew it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables. If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry revenuen, an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong, lose their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be said to have imitated any thing; they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect. Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden confesses of him self and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne in wit; but maintains, that they surpass him in poetry. If wit be well described by Pope, as being "that which has been often thought, but was ne"ver before so well expressed," they certainly never attained, nor ever sought it; for they endea voured to be singular in their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he depresses it below its natural dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of language. If by a more noble and more adequate conception that be considered as wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that which he that never found it wonders how he missed; to wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found. But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the |