And still as Time comes in, it goes away, Not to enjoy, but debts to pay. Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell, Which his hours' work as well as hours does tell! His heroick lines are often formed of monosyllables, but yet 190 they are sometimes sweet and sonorous 2. He says of the Messiah, 191 'Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound, And reach to worlds that must not yet be found3. 192 In another place, of David, 'Yet bid him go securely, when he sends; 'Tis Saul that is his foe, and we his friends. And we who bid him go, will bring him back*.' Yet amidst his negligence he sometimes attempted an im- 193 proved and scientifick versification; of which it will be best to give his own account subjoined to this line, 'Nor can the glory contain itself in th' endless space".' 'I am sorry that it is necessary to admonish the most part of readers that it is not by negligence that this verse is so loose, long, and, as it were, vast; it is to paint in the number the nature of the thing which it describes, which I would have observed in divers other places of this poem that else will pass for very careless verses: as before, "And over-runs the neighb'ring fields with violent course".' Eng.Poets, ix. 24. For Johnson's dislike of vows see Johnson's Shakespeare, vi. 12, 399; Johnson's Letters, i. 217; and Boswell's Johnson, iii. 357. "It is pronounced by Dryden that a line of monosyllables is almost always harsh. This, with regard to our language, is evidently true, not because monosyllables cannot compose harmony, but because our monosyllables, being of Teutonick original, or formed by contraction, commonly begin and end with consonants.' Rambler, No. 88. Dryden, in the Dedication of Troilus and Cressida, says :-'We are full of monosyllables, and those clogged with consonants, and our pronunciation is effeminate; all which are enemies to a sounding language.' Works, vi. 252. In the Dedication of the Aeneis he speaks of 'the mono- forced by fate.” ' Ib. xiv. 218. 'And ten low words oft creep in one POPE, Essay on Criticism, 1. 347. 3 • Ib. p. 192. 5 lb. p. 191. 6 lb. p. 181. 194 195 'In the second book, 'And, "Down a precipice deep, down he casts them all." "And fell a-down his shoulders with loose care"." 'In the third, "Brass was his helmet, his boots brass, and o'er His breast a thick plate of strong brass he wore 3." 'In the fourth, "Like some fair pine o'er-looking all th' ignobler wood"." 'And, "Some from the rocks cast themselves down headlong 5." 'And many more: but it is enough to instance in a few. The thing is, that the disposition of words and numbers should be such as that, out of the order and sound of them, the things themselves may be represented. This the Greeks were not so accurate as to bind themselves to; neither have our English poets observed it, for aught I can find. The Latins (qui musas colunt severiores) sometimes did it, and their prince, Virgil, always; in whom the examples are innumerable, and taken notice of by all judicious men, so that it is superfluous to collect them ". I know not whether he has in many of these instances attained the representation or resemblance that he purposes. Verse can imitate only sound and motion. A boundless verse, a headlong verse, and a verse of brass or of strong brass, seem to comprise very incongruous and unsociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the sound of the line expressing loose care I cannot discover; nor why the pine is taller in an Alexandrine than in ten syllables 3. But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example of representative versification, which perhaps no other English line can equal: 'Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise. 1 Eng. Poets, viii. 233. • Ib. p. 240. 3 lb. p. 258. 4 Ib. p. 295. 5 Ib. p. 316. " 'Nobis non licet esse tam disertis Qui Musas colimus severiores.' MARTIAL, Epig. ix. 12, 15. Cowley's Works, ed. 1674, Davideis, p. 32. 7 8 Post, POPE, 331. Till the whole stream that [which] stopp'd him shall [should] be gone, Which [That] runs, and as it runs, for ever shall [will] run on1.' Cowley was, I believe, the first poet that mingled Alexandrines 196 at pleasure with the common heroick of ten syllables, and from him Dryden borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious 2.' He considered the verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestick, and has therefore deviated into that measure when he supposes the voice heard of the Supreme Being. The Author of the Davideis is commended by Dryden for 197 having written it in couplets, because he discovered that any staff was too lyrical for an heroick poem 3; but this seems to have been known before by May and Sandys, the translators of the Pharsalia and the Metamorphoses. 4 In the Davideis are some hemistichs, or verses left im- 198 perfect by the author, in imitation of Virgil, whom he supposes not to have intended to complete them": that this opinion is erroneous may be probably concluded, because this truncation is imitated by no subsequent Roman poet; because Virgil himself filled up one broken line in the heat of recitation'; because in one the sense is now unfinished; and because all that can be done by a broken verse, a line intersected by a cæsura and a full stop will equally effect. Of triplets in his Davideis he makes no use, and perhaps 199 did not at first think them allowable; but he appears afterwards to have changed his mind, for in the Verses on the government of Cromwell he inserts them liberally 10 with great happiness. I Eng. Poets, ix. 116. Cf. HORACE, Epis. i. 2. 40. Post, DRYDEN, 344, 348; POPE, 376. 3 'Mr. Cowley had found out that no kind of staff [stanza] is proper for a heroic poem, as being all too lyrical.' DRYDEN, Works, xiv. 222. 4 Ante, COWLEY, 33. 5 Post, DRYDEN, 223; GARTH, 14 n.; POPE, 5. 6 Cowley's Works, 1674, Davideis, p. 28. Post, ADDISON, 158. 7'Erotem librarium et libertum eius... tradunt referre solitum, quondam in recitando eum duos dimidiatos versus complesse extempore, et huic, Misenum Aeoliden, ΙΟ 200 After so much criticism on his Poems, the Essays which accompany them must not be forgotten. What is said by Sprat of his conversation, that no man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, may be applied to these compositions. No author ever kept his verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought, or hard-laboured ; but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness. It has been observed by Felton, in his Essay on the Classicks, that Cowley was beloved by every Muse that he courted, and that he has rivalled the Ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy 3. 201 202 It may be affirmed without any encomiastick 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 supply; 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 sallies and for lofty flights; that he was among those who freed translation from servility 5, and, instead of following 'He never willingly recited any of his own writings. None but his intimate friends ever discovered he was a great poet by his discourse.' Hurd's Cowley, i. 44. 'There is not methinks an handsomer thing said of Mr. Cowley in his whole life than that none but his intimate friends ever discovered he was a great poet by his discourse.' The Guardian, No. 24. According to Aubrey 'he discoursed very ill and with hesitation.' Brief Lives, i. 190. For the conversation of other poets see post, DRYDEN, 168; ADDISON, 106, 117; POPE, 264. Tell me,' wrote Lamb to Coleridge, if Cowley's prose essays, in particular, as well as no inconsiderable part of his verse, be not delicious. I prefer the graceful rambling of his essays even to the courtly elegance and ease of Addison; abstracting from this the latter's exquisite humour.' Lamb's Letters, i. 64. Francis Horner 'resolved to read the Essays over again three or four times, till (he wrote) I fix some of those beauties in my memory, and accustom my ear to the tune.' Memoirs, 1843, i. 197. For these Essays see Eng. Poets, vii. 7; viii. 109, 325; ix. 3, and Hurd's Cowley. For Addison's prose see post, ADDISON, 168. 3 A Dissertation on Reading the Classics, by Henry Felton, Ď.D., 4th ed. 1730, p. 27. The Bishop of Asaph wrote to Jones the year of the publication of the Lives:-'I don't know whether I can assent to your criticism on the word replete, that it is never used in a good sense.... It was never naturalized in conversation or in prose.' Life of Sir William Jones, p. 256. The four instances given in Johnson's Dict. are all in a bad sense. himself uses it in a good sense here, and so does Fielding in Tom Jones, bk. i. ch. 4-'a human being replete with benevolence.' He 5 Ante, COWLEY, 125; post, DRYDEN, 107, 223. his author at a distance, walked by his side; and that if he left versification yet improvable, he left likewise from time to time such specimens of excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it. APPENDIX A (PAGE 3) 'Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holy-days and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them, and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or with some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then, too, so much an enemy to all constraint, that my masters could never prevail on me, by any persuasions or encouragements, to learn without book the common rules of grammar; in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation.' Eng. Poets, ix. 120. Mr. Sargeaunt, in his Annals of Westminster School, p. 30, speaking of the elections of the boys to scholarships at the universities (post, SMITH, 4), says 'There was one point on which the Electors for many years showed great strictness. They would allow no genius to atone for ignorance of the rules of grammar. This Cowley found to his cost in 1636. He was rejected by Trinity in favour of four boys, no one of whom afterwards made any figure.' Mr. Aldis Wright has kindly sent me the following from the records of Trinity College : 'March 30th, 1636. 'It is ordered by the Master and Seniors in the Chappel the 30th of March 1636, that Abraham Cowley was chosen into a drie Chorister's place in reversion, and that the Colledge shal allowe him the benefit thereof till it fall, or that he be chosen Scholler att the Election of Schollers next following. 'June 14, 1637. 'Cowley chosen and admitted Scholler by the Kinges letters dispensatory.' Mr. Wright conjectures that "a drie Chorister" was a Chorister who did not sing.' He entered Trinity on April 21, 1636. In his poem on young Hervey's death (see COWLEY, 108) he thus mentions his university : 'Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say, Dryden was of the same College. 'Six of the translators of James the First's Bible were found among the resident Fellows.' Monk's Bentley, i. 141. |