written, seems to have copied, though with the inferiority of an imitator.

The holy Book like the eighth sphere doth fhine
With thousand lights of truth divine,
So numberlefs the stars that to our eye
It makes all but one galaxy:
Yet Reason muft affift too; for in feas
So vaft and dangerous as thefe,

Our course by ftars above we cannot know
Without the compass too below.

After this fays Bentley *.

Who travels in religious jars,

Truth mix'd with error,

fhade with rays,

Like Whifton wanting pyx or ftars,
In ocean wide or finks or ftrays.

Cowley feems to have had, what Milton is believed to have wanted, the fkill to rate his own performances by their juft value, and has therefore closed his Mifcellanies with the verfes upon Crashaw, which apparently excel all that have gone before them, and in which there are beauties which common authors

*Dodfley's Collection of Poems, vol. V. R.

may

may justly think not only above their attainment, but above their ambition.

To the Mifcellanies fucceed the Anacreontiques, or paraphraftical tranflations of fome little poems, which pass, however justly, under the name of Anacreon. Of those songs dedicated to festivity and gaiety, in which even the morality is voluptuous, and which teach nothing but the enjoyment of the prefent day, he has given rather a pleasing than a faithful representation, having retained their fpritelinefs, but loft their fimplicity. The Anacreon of Cowley, like the Homer of Pope, has admitted the decoration of fome modern graces, by which he is undoubtedly more amiable to common readers, and perhaps, if they would honeftly declare their own preceptions, to far the greater part of those whom courtefy and ignorance are content to ftyle the Learned.

These little pieces will be found more finished in their kind than any other of Cowley's works. The diction fhews nothing of the mould of time, and the fentments are at no great distance from our prefent habitudes

of

of thought. Real mirth must be always natural, and nature is uniform. Men have been wife in very different modes; but they have always laughed the fame way.

Levity of thought naturally produced familiarity of language, and the familiar part of language continues long the fame; the dialogue of comedy, when it is transcribed from popular manners and real life, is read from age to age with equal pleasure. The artifices of inverfion, by which the established order of words is changed, or of innovation, by which new words or meanings of words are introduced, is practifed, not by those who talk to be understood, but by those who write to be admired.

The Anacreontiques therefore of Cowley give now all the pleasure which they ever. gave. If he was formed by nature for one kind of writing more than for another, his power seems to have been greatesft in the familiar and the feftive.

The next clafs of his poems is called The Miftrefs, of which it is not neceffary to select

any

any particular pieces for praise or cenfure. They have all the fame beauties and faults, and nearly in the fame proportion. They are written with exuberance of wit, and with copiousness of learning; and it is truly afferted by Sprat, that the plenitude of the writer's knowledge flows in upon his page, so that the reader is commonly furprised into fome improvement. But, confidered as the verses of a lover, no man that has ever loved will much commend them. They are neither courtly nor pathetick, have neither gallantry nor fondness. His praises are too far sought, and too hyperbolical, either to express love, or to excite it; every ftanza is crowded with darts and flames, with wounds and death, with mingled fouls, and with broken hearts.

The principal artifice by which The Miftrefs is filled with conceits is very copiously dif played by Addison. Love is by Cowley, as by other poets, expreffed metaphorically by flame and fire; and that which is true of real fire is faid of love, or figurative fire, the fame word in the fame fentence retaining both fignifications. Thus, "obferving the cold regard of his miftrefs's eyes, and at the fame

"time their power of producing love in him, "he confiders them as burning-glaffes made "of ice. Finding himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love, he concludes "the torrid zone to be habitable. Upon the dying of a tree, on which he had cut his loves, he obferves, that his flames had "burnt up and withered the tree."

Thefe conceits Addifon calls mixed wit; that is, wit which confifts of thoughts true in one fenfe of the expreffion, and falfe in the other. Addison's representation is fufficiently indulgent. That confufion of images may entertain for a moment; but being unnatural, it foon grows wearifome. Cowley delighted in it, as much as if he had invented it; but, not to mention the ancients, he might have found it full-blown in modern Italy. Thus Sannazaro:

Afpice quam variis diftringar Lefbia curis ! Uror, & heu! noftro manat ab igne liquor; Sum Nilus, fumque Etna fimul; reftringite flammas

O lacrimæ, aut lacrimas ebibe flamma meas.

VOL. I.

F

One