COWLEY Free from their known formality: But all pains eminently lie in thee.'-COWLEY 1. THEY were not always strictly curious whether the opinions from which they drew their illustrations were true; it was enough that they were popular. Bacon remarks that some falsehoods are continued by tradition, because they supply commodious allusions 2. 'It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke; In vain it something would have spoke: The love within too strong for 't was, Like poison put into a Venice-glass.'-COWLEY 3. IN forming descriptions they looked out not for images, but 98 for conceits. Night has been a common subject, which poets have contended to adorn. Dryden's Night is well known*; Donne's is as follows: 'Thou seest me here at midnight; now all rest, Thou at this midnight seest me". IT must be however confessed of these writers that if they 99 are upon common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle, yet where scholastick speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon Hope shews an unequalled fertility of invention: 'Hope, whose weak being ruin'd is, Alike if it succeed, and if it miss; Whom good or ill does equally confound, And both the horns of Fate's dilemma wound; Eng. Poets, viii. 75. 2 'As things now are, in nature be once on foot, what by 100 If things then from their end we happy call, Hope, thou bold taster of delight, Who, whilst thou should'st but taste, devour'st it quite! By clogging it with legacies before! The joys which we entire should wed, For joy, like wine, kept close does better taste: If it take air before, its spirits waste'.' To the following comparison of a man that travels and his wife that stays at home with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted whether absurdity or ingenuity has the better claim: 1 "Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so And though it in the centre sit, And grows erect, as that comes home. Eng. Poets, viii. 54. 2 Grosart's Donne, ii. 211, where the poem is entitled Upon Partinge from his Mistris. Walton, quoting the whole poem (A Valediction, Forbidding to Mourn), says 'they were given by Mr. Donne to his wife at the time he parted from her,' when he accompanied the English am In all these examples it is apparent that whatever is im- 101 proper or vicious is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature in pursuit of something new and strange, and that the writers fail to give delight by their desire of exciting admiration. HAVING thus endeavoured to exhibit a general representation 102 of the style and sentiments of the metaphysical poets, it is now proper to examine particularly the works of Cowley, who was almost the last of that race and undoubtedly the best. His Miscellanies contain a collection of short compositions, 103 written some as they were dictated by a mind at leisure, and some as they were called forth by different occasions; with great variety of style and sentiment, from burlesque levity to awful grandeur. Such an assemblage of diversified excellence no other poet has hitherto afforded. To choose the best among many good is one of the most hazardous attempts of criticism. I know not whether Scaliger himself has persuaded many readers to join with him in his preference of the two favourite odes, which he estimates in his raptures at the value of a kingdom'. I will however venture to recommend Cowley's first piece, which ought to be inscribed To my Muse, for want of which the second couplet is without reference2. When the title is added, there will still remain a defect; for every piece ought to contain in itself whatever is necessary to make it heads (sc. our feet) we have one body; when we have fixed the centre for our circle we bring our heads (sc. feet) together at the end." E. FITZGERALD, Omar Khayyám, 1898, p. 67. 'Tennyson would quote the last four stanzas of this poem, praising its wonderful ingenuity? Life of Tennyson, ii. 503. [My friend Mr. John Marshall of Lewes informs me that the reference is to the elder Scaliger, who is writing of Horace's Odes. The passage runs: 'Omnes inquam tantae sunt venustatis ut et mihi et aliis prudentioribus omnem ademerint spem talium studiorum. Inter caeteras vero, duas animadverti quibus ne ambrosiam quidem aut nectar dulciora putem. Altera est tertia quarti libri: "Quem tu Melpomene ..." Altera nona ex tertio: "Donec gratus eram ... Quarum similes a me compositas malim quam Pythionicarum multas Pindari et Nemeonicarum, quarum 2 It is inscribed The Motto. It And make the age to come my I shall like beasts or common people Unless you write my elegy.' 'We have had in our language,' 104 105 106 107 108 intelligible. Pope has some epitaphs without names; which are therefore epitaphs to be let, occupied indeed for the present, but hardly appropriated'. The ode on Wit is almost without a rival. It was about the time of Cowley that Wit, which had been till then used for Intellection in contradistinction to Will, took the meaning whatever it be which it now bears2. Of all the passages in which poets have exemplified their own precepts none will easily be found of greater excellence than that in which Cowley condemns exuberance of Wit: 'Yet 'tis not to adorn and gild each part; If there be nothing else between. Men doubt, because they stand so thick i' th' sky, In his verses to lord Falkland, whom every man of his time was proud to praise 5, there are, as there must be in all Cowley's compositions, some striking thoughts; but they are not well wrought. His elegy on Sir Henry Wotton is vigorous and happy, the series of thoughts is easy and natural, and the conclusion, though a little weakened by the intrusion of Alexander, is elegant and forcible". It may be remarked that in this Elegy, and in most of his encomiastick poems, he has forgotten or neglected to name his heroes". In his poem on the death of Hervey there is much praise, and the art of an historian can effect than in the character of this lord, who seems to have been a virtuous, well-meaning man with a moderate understanding; who got knocked on the head early in the Civil War because it boded ill; and yet, by the happy solemnity of my Lord Clarendon's diction, Lord Falkland is the favourite personage of that noble work.' HORACE Walpole, Works, i. 501. See Clarendon's Hist, (1826), iv. 240. Post, COWLEY, 176 n. 1 Ante, COWLEY, 103. 8 Eng. Poets, vii. 129; post, MILTON, 181. 'This elegy,' writes but little passion, a very just and ample delineation of such virtues as a studious privacy admits, and such intellectual excellence as a mind not yet called forth to action can display. He knew how to distinguish and how to commend the qualities of his companion, but when he wishes to make us weep he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his sorrow by imagining how his crown of bays, if he had it, would crackle in the fire". It is the odd fate of this thought to be worse for being true. The bay-leaf crackles remarkably as it burns; as therefore this property was not assigned it by chance, the mind must be thought sufficiently at ease that could attend to such minuteness of physiology. But the power of Cowley is not so much to move the affections, as to exercise the understanding 3. The Chronicle is a composition unrivalled and alone*: such 109 gaiety of fancy, such facility of expression, such varied similitude, such a succession of images, and such a dance of words, it is vain to expect except from Cowley. His strength always appears in his agility; his volatility is not the flutter of a light, but the bound of an elastick mind. His levity never leaves his learning behind it; the moralist, the politician, and the critick, mingle their influence even in this airy frolick of genius. Time was, we two had wept to have 46 Cowley's exquisite The love betwixt us two?"" 4 Eng. Poets, vii. 130. 2 'Had I a wreath of bays above my brow I should contemn that flourishing honour now, |