"Dean might be very merry upon S. Anne's "Hill. You might very conveniently come "hither the way of Hampton Town, lying "there one night. I write this in pain, and "can fay no more: Verbum fapienti.”

He did not long enjoy the pleasure or fuffer the uneafinefs of folitude; for he died at the Porch-house * in Chertsey in 1667, in the 49th year of his age.

He was buried with great pomp near Chaucer and Spenfer; 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 mot amiable of mankind; and this pofthumous praise may fafely 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 eafily irritated, was obliged

*Now in the poffeffion of Mr. Clarke, Alderman of London. Dr. J.

to

A

to pass over many tranfactions in general expreffions, and to leave curiofity often unfatisfied. What he did not tell, cannot however now be known. I must therefore recommend the perufal of his work, to which my narration can be confidered only as a flender fupplement.

COWLEY, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and, instead of tracing intellectual pleasures in the minds of man, 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 fubject 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 feventeenth century appeared a race of writers that be termed the metaphysical poets; of whom, in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not improper to give some ac

may

count.

The

The metaphyfical poets were men of learning, and to fhew their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily refolving to fhew it in rhyme, inftead of writing poetry they only wrote verfes, and very often fuch verfes as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was fo imperfect, that they were only found to be verfes by counting the fyllables.

If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry Texon μμnn, an imitative art, thefe writers will, without great wrong, lofe their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be faid to have imitated any thing; they neither copied nature for life; neither painted the forms of matter; nor represented the operations of intellect.

Thofe however who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden confeffes of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne in wit; but maintains, that they furpafs him in poetry.

If Wit be well defcribed by Pope, as being "that which has been often thought,

" but

"but was never before fo well expreffed," they certainly never attained, nor ever sought it; for they endeavoured to be fingular in their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he depreffes 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 confidered as Wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its firft production, acknowledged to be juft; if it be that which he that never found it wonders how he miffed; to wit of this kind the metaphyfical poets have feldom risen. Their thoughts are often new, but feldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they juft; and the reader, far from wondering that he miffed them, wonders more frequently by what perverfenefs of industry they were ever found.

But Wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philofophically confidered as a kind of difcordia concors; a combination of diffimilar images,

or

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 ranfacked for illuftrations, comparisons, and allufions; their learning instructs, and their fubtility surprifes; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he fometimes admires, is feldom pleased.

From this account of their compofitions it will be readily inferred, that they were not fuccessful in reprefenting or moving the af fections. As they were wholly employed on fomething unexpected and surprising, they had no regard to that uniformity of fentiment which enables us to conceive and to excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds: they never enquired what, on any occafion, they fhould have faid or done; but wrote rather as beholders than partakers of human nature; as Beings looking upon good and evil, impaffive and at leifure; as Epicurean deities, making remarks on the actions of men, and the viciffitudes of life, without intereft and without emotion. Their courtship was void

of