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resemblance that he purposes. Verfe can imitate only found and motion. A boundless verfe, a beadlong verse, and a verse of brass or of ftrong brass, feem to comprise very incongruous and unfociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the found of the line expreffing loofe care, I cannot difcover; nor why the pine is taller in an Alexandrine than in ten fyllables.

But, not to defraud him of his due praife, he has given one example of reprefentative verfification, which perhaps no other English line can equal:

Begin, be bold, and venture to be wife :
He, who defers this work from day to day,
Does on a river's bank expecting stay

Till the whole stream that stopp'd him shall be gone,

Which runs, and, as it runs, for ever shall run or

Cowley was, I believe, the first poet that mingled Alexandrines at pleasure with the common heroick of ten fyllables; and from him Dryden borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He confidered the verfe of twelve fyllables as elevated and majeftick

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jeftick, and has therefore deviated into that measure when he fuppofes the voice heard of the Supreme Being.

The Author of the Davideis is commended by Dryden for having written it in couplets, because he discovered that any staff was too lyrical for an heroick poem; but this feems to have been known before by May and Sandys, the tranflators of the Pharfalia and the Metamorphofes.

In the Davideis are fome hemiftichs, or verfes left imperfect by the author, in imitation of Virgil, whom he fuppofes not to have intended to complete them: that this opinion is erroneous, may be probably concluded, becaule this truncation is imitated by no fubfequent Roman poet; because Virgil himself filled up one broken line in the heat of recitation; because in one the fenfe is now unfinished; and because all that can be done by a broken verfe, a line interfected by a cafura, and a full flop, will equally effect.

Of triplets in his Davideis he makes no ufe, and perhaps did not at first think them allowa

allowable; but he appears afterwards to have changed his mind, for in the verses on the government of Cromwell he inferts them liberally with great happiness.

After fo much criticism on his Poems, the Effays which accompany them must not be forgotten. What is faid by Sprat of his conversation, that no man could draw from it any fufpicion of his excellence in poetry, may be applied to thefe compofitions. No author ever kept his verse and his profe at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural, and his ftyle has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-fought, or hard-laboured; but all is eafy without feeblenefs, and familiar without groffnefs.

It has been obferved by Felton, in his Effay on the Clafficks, that Cowley was beloved by every Mufe that he courted; and that he has rivalled the Ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy.

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It may be affirmed, without any encomi aftick fervour, that he brought to his poetick labours a mind replete with learning, and that his pages are embellished with all the ornaments which books could fupply; that he was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode, and the gaiety of the less; that he was equally qualified for spritely fallies, and for lofty flights; that he was among thofe who freed tranflation from fervility, and, instead of following his author at a distance, walked by his fide; and that, if he left verfification yet improveable, he left likewife from time to time fuch fpecimens of excellence as enabled fucceeding poets to improve it.

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F Sir JOHN DENHAM very little is known but what is related of him by Wood, or by himself.

He was born at Dublin in 1615; the only fon of Sir John Denham, of Little Horfely in Effex, then chief baron of the Exchequer in Ireland, and of Eleanor, daughter of Sir Garret More, baron of Mellefont.

Two years afterwards, his father, being made one of the barons of the Exchequer in England, brought him away from his native country, and educated him in London.

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