Those are the labour'd births of "flavish brains, Not the effect of poetry, but pains; "Cheap vulgar arts, whofe narrow"nefs affords "No flight for thoughts, but poorly "ftick at words. A new and nobler way thou doft "purfue To make tranflations and tranflators ❝ too. They but preserve the ashes, thou ❝ the flame, True to his fenfe, but truer to his ❝ fame." The excellence of thefe lines is greater, as the truth which they con tain was not at that time generally known. His poem on the death of Cowley was his laft, and, among his shorter works, his best performance: the numbers are mufical, and the thoughts are juft. 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 author of a fpecies of compofition that may be denominated local poetry, of which the fundamental fubject is fome particular landfchape, to be poetically defcribed, with the addition of fuch embellishments as may be fupplied by hifto hiftorical retrospection, or incidental me ditation. To trace a new scheme of poetry has in itself a very high claim to praife, and its praife 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 fcarce a corner of the ifland undignified by rhime, or blank verfe. COOPER'S HILL, if it be maliciously infpected, will not be found without its faults. The digreffions are too long, the morality too frequent, and the fentiments fometimes fuch as will not bear a rigorous enquiry. The four verfes, which, fince 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 ftream "My great example, as it is my "theme! "Tho'deep yet clear; tho' gentle, yet "not dull; "Strong without rage, without o'er "flowing full." The lines are in themfelves not perfect; for most of the words, thus artfully oppofed, are to be understood fimply on one fide of the comparison, and metaphorically on the other; and if there there be any language which does not exprefs intellectual operations by material images, into that language they cannot be tranflated. But fo much meaning is comprifed in fo few words; the particulars of refemblance are fo perfpicaciously collected, and every mode of excellence feparated from its adjacent fault by fo nice a line of limitation; the different parts of the fentence are fo accurately adjusted; and the flow of the last couplet is fo fmooth and fweet, that the paffage, however celebrated, has not been praised above its merit. It has beauty peculiar to itfelf, and must be numbered among those felicities which cannot be produced C 2 |