That eagle's fate and mine are one, But of his voice, the boy had burn'd. Here * is matter enough compressed toge'ther for Voiture to have spun out into fifty lines. If I was to name my favourite among Waller's smaller pieces, it should be his apology for having loved before. He begins by saying that "they who never had been used to the surprising juice of the grape, render up their reason to the first delicious cup :" this is fufficiently gallant, but what he adds has much of the fublime, and is like a thought of Milton's. * To man that was i' th' evening made, Spenser and Waller were POPE's great favourites, as he told Mr. Spence, in the order they are named, in his early reading. Then at Aurora, whose fair hand Remov'd them from the skies, He gazing tow'rds the East did stand, Which of the French writers has produced any thing at once fo gallant and so lofty? The English verfification was much fmoothed by Waller; who used to own that he derived the harmony of his numbers from Fairfax's Tasso, who well* vowelled his lines, though Sandys was a melodious verfifier, and Spenfer has perhaps more variety of music than either of them *. A poet who addresses his pieces to living characters, and confines himself to the subjects and anecdotes of his own times, like this courtly author, bids fairer to become popular, than he that is em * "Even little poems, faid POPE, should be written by a plan. This method is evident in Tibullus, and Ovid's elegies, and almost all the pieces of the ancients. A poem on a flight subject requires the greater care to make it considerable enough to be read." ployed ployed in the higher scenes of poetry and fiction, which are more remote from common manners. It may be remarked lastly of Waller, that there is no paffion in his love verses, and that one elegy of Tibullus, so well imitated by Hammond, excels a volume of the most refined panegyric. THE next imitation is of COWLEY, in two pieces, on a garden, and on weeping, in which POPE has properly enough, in conformity to his original, extorted fome moral, or darted forth some witticism on every object he mentions: It is not enough to say that the laurels sheltered the fountain from the heat of the day, but this idea must be accompanied with a conceit. - Daphne, now a tree, as once a maid, The flowers that grow on the water-fide could not be fufficiently described without saying, that The pale Narcissus on the bank, in vain, In the lines on a lady weeping, you might expect a touching picture of beauty in distress; you will be disappointed. Wit on the present occasion is to be preferred to tenderness; the babe in her eye is faid to resemble Phaeton so much, That heav'n the threat'ned world to spare, His Let not this strained affectation of striving to be witty upon all occafions, be thought exaggerated, or a caricatura of Cowley. It is painful to censure a writer of so amiable a mind, such integrity of manners, and such a sweetness of temper. fancy was brilliant, strong, and sprightly; but his taste false and unclassical, even though he had much learning. In his latin compositions, his fix books on plants, where the subject might have led him to a contrary practice, he imitates Martial rather than Virgil, and has given us more Epigrams than Descriptions. I do not remember member to have seen it enough obferved, that Cowley had a most happy talent of imitating the easy manner of Horace's epistolary writings; I must therefore infert a specimen of this, his excellence. Ergo iterum verfus? dices. O Vane! quid ergo Morbum ejurasti toties, tibi qui infidet altis, Non evellendus, vi vel ratione, medullis? Numne poetarum (merito dices) ut amantum Derifum ridere deum perjuria censes ? Parcius hæc, sodes, neve inclementibus urge Infelicem hominem dictis; nam fata trahunt me Magna reluctantem, et nequicquam in vincla mi nacem. Helleborum fumpfi, fateor, pulchreque videbar There is another epistle also, well worthy perusal, to his friend Mat. Clifford *, at the end of the fame volume. POPE†, in * Settle was assisted in writing the Anti-Achitophel by Clifford, and others the best wits of that time, who combined against Dryden. † Another line likewise of POPE exactly characterises him. The pensive Cowley's moral lay. - Vol. VI. p. 37. His general preface; his discourse concerning Cromwell; his essays on liberty, on obfcurity, on agriculture, on greatness, and on himself, are full of pleasing and virtuous fentiments, expressed without any affectation, so that he appears to be one of the best prose writers of his time. one |