Jonson and Donne, as Dr. Hurd remarks, of pleasure. were then in the highest esteem.

It is related by Clarendon that Cowley always acknowledges his obligation to the learning and industry of Jonson; but I have found no traces of Jonson in his works: to emulate Donne appears to have been his purpose; and from Donne he may have learned that familiarity with religious images, and that light allusion to sacred things, by which readers far short of sanctity are frequently offended; and which would not be borne in the present age, when devotion, perhaps not more fervent, is more delicate.

Having produced one passage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will recompense him by another which Milton seems to have borrowed from him. He says of Goliah,

Which nature meant some tall ship's mast should be. ill-read, the art of reading them is at present

Who by resolves and vows engaged does stand,
For days that yet belong to fate,
Does, like an unthrift, mortgage his estate
Before it falls into his hand;

The bondman of the cloister so,

All that he does receive does always owe.
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 hour's work as well as hours does tell :
Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell.

His heroic lines are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they are sometimes sweet and

Yet amidst his negligence he sometimes attempted an improved and scientific versification; of which it will be best to give his own account subjoined to this line:

Nor can the glory contain itself in the 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,

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.

But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example of representative versifi cation, which perhaps no other English line can equal:

Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise:
He, who defers this work from day to day,
Does on a river's bank expecting stay
Till the whole stream that stopp'd him shall be gone,
Which runs, and as it runs, for ever shall run on.

Cowley was, I believe, the first poet that mingled Alexandrines at pleasure with the common heroic of ten syllables; and from him Dryden borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He considered the verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestic, 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 having written it in couplets, because he discovered that any staff was too lyrical

And over-runs the neighbouring fields with violent for an heroic poem ; but this seems to have been

course.'

"In the second book;

known before by May and Sandys, the translators of the Pharsalia and the Metamorphoses.

In the Davideis are some hemistichs, or verses

‹ Down a precipice deep, down he casts them all,~' left imperfect by the author, in imitation of Vir

"And,

'And fell adown 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.'

"In the fourth,

gil, whom he supposes not to have intended to complete them; that this opinion is erroneous, may be probably concluded, because his 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

Like some fair Pine o'er-looking all the ignobler by a cæsura, and a full stop, will equally effect.

wood.'

"And,

'Some from the rocks cast themselves down headlong.'

"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:

Of triplets in his Davideis he makes no use, and perhaps 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 with great happiness.

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

It may be affirmed, without any encomiastic ing poets to improve it.

DENHA M.

When he was, three years afterwards, removed to Lincoln's Inn, he prosecuted the com- He was after that pricked for sheriff of Surry, mon law with sufficient appearance of applica- and made governor of Farnham Castle for the tion; yet did not lose his propensity to cards and King; but he soon resigned that charge, and redice; but was very often plundered by game-treated to Oxford, where, in 1643, he published

procured.

Of the King's condescension he uncertain; a second marriage brought upon him so much disquiet, as for a time disordered his understanding; and Butler lampooned him for his lunacy. I know not whether the malignant lines were then made public, nor what provocation incited Butler to do that which no provocation can excuse.

has given an account in the dedication of his works.

He was afterwards employed in carrying on the King's correspondence; and, as he says, discharged this office with great safety to the royalists: and, being accidentally discovered by the adverse party's knowledge of Mr. Cowley's hand, he escaped happily both for himself and his friends.

He was yet engaged in a greater undertaking. In April, 1648, he conveyed James the duke of York from London into France, and delivered him there to the queen and prince of Wales. This year he published his translation of " Cato Major."

He now resided in France as one of the followers of the exiled king; and to divert the melancholy of their condition, was sometimes enjoined by his master to write occasional verses; one of which amusements was probably his ode or song upon the Embassy to Poland, by which he and Lord Crofts procured a contribution of ten thousand pounds from the Scotch that wandered over that kingdom. Poland was at that time very much frequented by itinerant traders, who, in a country of very little commerce and of great extent, where every man resided on his own estate, contributed very much to the accommodation of life, by bringing to every man's house those little necessaries which it was very inconvenient to want, and very troublesome to fetch. I have formerly read, without much reflection, of the multitude of Scotchmen that travelled with their wares in Poland; and that their numbers were not small, the success of this negotiation gives sufficient evidence.

About this time, what estate the war and the gamesters had left him, was sold, by order of the parliament; and when, in 1652, he returned to England, he was entertained by the earl of Pembroke.

Of the next years of his life there is no account. At the restoration he obtained that which many missed the reward of his loyalty; being made surveyor of the king's buildings, and dignified with the order of the Bath. He seems now to have learned some attention to money; for Wood says, that he got by this place seven thousand pounds.

After the restoration, he wrote the poem on Prudence and Justice, and perhaps some of his other pieces and, as he appears, whenever any Serious question comes before him, to have been aman of piety, he consecrated his poetical powers to religion, and, made a metrical version of the Psalms of David. In this attempt he has failed; but in sacred poetry who has succeeded?

It might be hoped that the favour of his master, and esteem of the public, would now make him happy. But human felicity is short and

His frenzy lasted not long ;* and he seems to have regained his full force of mind; for he wrote afterwards his excellent poem upon the death of Cowley, whom he was not long to survive; for on the 19th of March, 1668, he was buried by his side.

Denham is deservedly considered as one of the fathers of English poetry. "Denham and Waller," says Prior, "improved our versification, and Dryden perfected it." He has given specimens of various composition, descriptive, ludicrous, didactic, and sublime.

He appears to have had, in common with almost all mankind, the ambition of being upon proper occasion "a merry fellow," and in common with most of them to have been by nature, or by early habits, debarred from it. Nothing is less exhilarating than the ludicrousness of Denham; he does not fail for want of efforts: he is familiar, he is gross; but he is never merry, unless the "Speech against Peace in the close Committee" be excepted. For grave burlesque, however, his imitation of Davenant shows him to be well qualified.

Of his more elevated occasional poems, there is perhaps none t'at does not deserve commendation. In the verses to Fletcher, we have an image that has since been often adopted :†

But whither am I stray'd? I need not raise
Trophies to thee, from other men's dispraise;
Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built,
Nor need thy juster title the foul guilt

Of Eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain.

After Denham, Orrery, in one of his prologues,

Poets are sultans, if they had their will;
For every author would his brother kill.
And Pope,

Should such a man too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne."

But this is not the best of his little pieces: it is excelled by his poem to Fanshaw, and his Elegy on Cowley.

* In Grammont's Memoirs, many circumstances are related, both of his marriage and his frenzy, very little favourable to his character.-R.

+ It is remarkable that Johnson should not have recollected, that this image is to be found in Bacon. Aristoteles more othomannoram, regna: re se haud tuto posse putabat, nisi fratres suos, omnes contra udasset.-De augment. scient. lib. iii.

His praise of Fanshaw's version of Guarini | ciously collected, and every mode of excellence ontains a very sprightly and judicious character separated from its adjacent fault by so'nice a of a good translator:

That servile path thou nobly dost decline,
Of tracing word by word and line by line.
Those are the labour'd birth of slavish brains,
Not the effect of poetry, but pains;
Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords
No flight for thoughts, but poorly stick at words.
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue,
To make translations and translators too.
They but preserve the ashes; thou the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.

The excellence of these lines is greater, as the truth which they contain was not at that time generally known.

line of limitation; the different parts of the sentence are so accurately adjusted; and the flow of the last couplet is so smooth and sweet; that the passage, however celebrated, has not been praised above its merit. It has beauty peculiar to itself, and must be numbered among those felicities which cannot be produced at will by wit and labour, but must arise unexpectedly in some hour propitious to poetry.

He appears to have been one of the first that understood the necessity of emancipating translation from the drudgery of counting lines and interpreting single words. How much this servile practice obscured the clearest and deformed the most beautiful parts of the ancient authors, His poem on the death of Cowley was his last, may be discovered by a perusal of our earlier and, among his shorter works, his best perform-versions; some of them are the works of men ance: the numbers are musical, and the thoughts well qualified, not only by critical knowledge, are just. but by poetical genius, who yet, by a mistaken ambition of exactness, degraded at once their originals and themselves.

"Cooper's Hill" is the work that confers upon him the rank and dignity of an original author. He seems to have been, at least among us, the Denham saw the better way, but has not purauthor of a species of composition that may be sued it with great success. His versions of denominated local poetry, of which the funda-Virgil are not pleasing; but they taught Drymental subject is some particular landscape, to be poetically described, with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection or incidental meditation.

To trace a new scheme of poetry, has in itself a very high claim to praise, and its praise is yet more when it is apparently copied by Garth and Pope;* after whose names little will be gained by an enumeration of smaller poets, that have left scarcely a corner of the island not dignified either by rhyme or blank verse. "Cooper's Hill," if it be maliciously inspected, will not be found without its faults. The digressions are too long, the morality too frequent, and the sentiments sometimes such as will not bear a rigorous inquiry.

The four verses, which, since Dryden has commended them, almost every writer for a century past has imitated, are generally known:

O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!

den to please better. His poetical imitation of Tully on " Old Age" has neither the clearness of prose, nor the sprightliness of poetry.

The "strength of Denham," which Pope so emphatically mentions, is to be found in many lines and couplets, which convey much meaning in few words, and exhibit the sentiment with more weight than bulk.

ON THE THAMES.

Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,
Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold;
His genuine and less guilty wealth t'explore,
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore.

ON STRAFFORD.

His wisdom such, at once it did appear
Three kingdoms' wonder, and three kingdoms' fear
While single he stood forth, and seem'd, although
Each had an army, as an equal foe,

Such was his force of eloquence, to make
The hearers more concern'd than he that spake :

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; Each seem'd to act that part he came to see,
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.

The lines are in themselves not perfect: for most of the words, thus artfully opposed, are to be understood simply on one side of the comparison, and metaphorically on the other; and if there be any language that does not express intellectual operations by material images into that language they cannot be translated.

But

so much meaning is comprised in so few words; the particulars of resemblances are so perspica

By Garth, in his "Poem on Claremont;" and by Pope, in his "Windsor Forest."

And none was more a looker-on than he ;
So did he move our passions, some were known
To wish, for the defence, the crime their own.
Now private pity strove with public hate,
Reason with rage, and eloquence with fate.

ON COWLEY.

To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he wrote was all his own,
Horace's wit, and Virgil's state,

He did not steal, but emulate!
And when he would like them appear,
Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear.

As one of Denham's principal claims to the regard of posterity arises from his improve