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common readers, and perhaps, if they would honestly declare their own perceptions, to far the greater part of those whom courtefy and ignorance are content to ftyle the Learned.

Thefe 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 fentiments are at no great distance from our present habitudes 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 pleafure. The artifices of inverfion, by which the established order of words is changed, or of innovation, by which new words or new 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 feems to have been greatest in the familiar and the feftive.

The next class of his poems is called The Mistress, of which it is not neceffary to felect 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 copioufness of learning; and it is truly afferted by Sprat, that the ple

nitude

tude of the writer's knowledge flows in upon his page, fo 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 fondnefs. His praises are too far fought, and too hyperbolical, either to express love, or to excite it; every stanza is crouded 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 copioufly displayed by Addifon. 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 mistress's eyes, and at the fame time their power of producing "love in him, he confiders them as burning glaffes "made of ice. Finding himfelf 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."

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Thefe conceits Addifon calls mixed wit; that is, wit which confifts of thoughts true in one fense of the expreffion, and false in the other. Addison's reprefentation 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.

Afpice quam variis diftringar Lesbia curis,
Uror, & heu! noftro manat ab igne liquor
Sum Nilus, fumque Ætnæ fimul; reftringite flammas
O lacrimiæ, aut lacrimas ebibe flamma meas.

One of the fevere theologians of that time cenfured 13) him as having published a book of profane and lafcivious Verses. From the charge of profanenefs, the conftant tenour of his life, which feems to have been eminently virtuous, and the general tendency of his opi nions, which difcover no irreverence of religion, mult defend him; but that the accufation of lafcivioufnefs is unjuft, the perufal of his works will fufficiently

evince.

Cowley's Miftrefs has no power of feduction

"The

plays round the head, but comes not at the heart." Her beauty and abfence, her kindness and cruelty, her difdain and inconftancy, produce no correfpondence of emotion. His poetical account of the virtues of plants, and colours of flowers, is not perufed with more fluggish frigidity. The compofitions are fuch as might have been written for penance by a hermit, or for hire by a philofophical rhymner who had only heard of another sex; for they turn the mind only on the writer, whom, without thinking on a woman but as the fubje&t for his tafk, we fometimes esteem as learned, and fometimes defpife as trifling, always admire as ingenious, and always condemn as unnatural.

The Pindarique Odes are now to be confidered; a fpecies of composition, which Cowley thinks Pancirolos might have counted in his lift of the loft inventions of antiquity, and which he has made a bold and vigorous attempt to recover.

The purpose with which he has paraphrafed an Olympick and Nemæan Ode, is by himself fuffici

ently

ently explained. His endeavour was, not to fhew precifely what Pindar spoke, but his manner of speaking. He was thererefore not at all restrained to his expreffions, nor much to his fentiments; nothing was required of him, but not to write as Pindar would not have written.

Of the Olympick Ode the beginning is, I think, above the original in elegance, and the conclufion below it it in ftrength. The connection is fupplied with great perfpicuity, and the thoughts, which to a reader of lefs fkill feem thrown together by chance, are concatenated without any abruption. Though the Englifh ode cannot be called a tranflation, it may be very properly confulted as a commentary.

The fpirit of Pindar is indeed not every where equally preferved. The following pretty lines are not fuch as his deep mouth was used to pour :

Great Rhea's fon,

If in Olympus' top where thou
Sitt'ft to behold thy facred fhow,
If in Alpheus' filver flight,

If in my verfe thou take delight,
My verfe, great Rhea's fon, which is
Lofty as that, and smooth as this.

In the Nemeæan ode the reader muft, in mere juftice to Pindar, obferve that whatever is faid of the original new moon, her tender forehead and her horns, is fuperadded by his paraphraft, who has many other plays of words and fancy unfuitable to the original, as,

The table, free for every guest,

No doubt will thee admit,

And feast more upon thee, than thou on it.

He

He fometimes extends his author's thoughts with- 138 out improving them. In the Olympionick an oath is mentioned in a fingle word, and Cowley fpends three lines in fwearing by the Caftalian Stream. We are told of Theron's bounty, with a hint that he had enemies, which Cowley thus enlarges in rhyming profe:

But in this thankless world the giver

Is envied even by the receiver;

'Tis now the cheap and frugal fashion

Rather to hide than own the obligation:

Nay, 'tis much worse than fo;

It now an artifice does grow
Wrongs and injuries to do,

Left men fhould think we owe.

It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and wit, when he was dealing out fuch minute morality in fuch feeble diction, could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar.

In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own fubjects, he fometimes rifes to dignity truly Pindarick; and, if fome deficiencies of language be forgiven, his ftrains are fuch as thofe of the Theban bard were to his contemporaries :

Begin the fong, and strike the living lyre:

Lo how the years to come, a numerous and well-fitted
quire,

All hand in hand do decently advance,

And to my fong with smooth and equal measure dance ;
While the dance lafts, how long foe'er it be,

My mufick's voice shall bear it company;
Till all gentle notes be drown'd

In the last trumpet's dreadful found.

After fuch enthusiasm, who will not lament to find the poet conclude with lines like thefe!

VOL. II.

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