1618-1667. ANACREONTIQUES. 377 have written, seems to have copied, though with the inferiority of an imitator. "The Holy Book like the eighth sphere does shine With thousand lights of truth divine, So numberless the stars that to the eye It makes but all one galaxy: Yet Reason must assist too; for in seas So vast and dangerous as these, Our course by stars above we cannot know After this says Bentley: "Who travels in religious jars, Truth mix'd with error, shade with rays, In ocean wide or sinks or strays." Cowley seems to have had, what Milton is believed to have wanted, the skill to rate his own performances by their just value, and has therefore closed his Miscellanies' with the verses upon Crashaw, which apparently excel all that have gone before them, and in which there are beauties which common authors may justly think not only above their attainment, but above their ambition. 6 To the Miscellanies' succeed the Anacreontiques,' or paraphrastical translations of some little poems, which pass, however justly, under the name of Anacreon. Of those songs dedicated to festivity and gaiety, in which even the morality is voluptuous, and which teach nothing but the enjoyment of the present day, he has given rather a pleasing than a faithful representation, having retained their sprightliness, but lost their simplicity. The Anacreon of Cowley, like the Homer of Pope, has admitted the decoration of some modern graces, by which he is undoubtedly more amiable to common readers, and perhaps, if they would honestly declare their own preceptions,-to far the greater part of those whom courtesy and ignorance are content to style the learned. These little pieces will be found more finished in their kind than any other of Cowley's works. The diction shows nothing of the mould of time, and the sentiments are at no great distance Real mirth must be Men have been wise from our present habitudes of thought. always natural, and nature is uniform. in very different modes; but they have always laughed the same way. Levity of thought naturally produced familiarity of language, and the familiar part of language continues long the same; the dialogue of comedy, when it is transcribed from popular manners and real life, is read from age to age with equal pleasure. The artifice of inversion, by which the established order of words is changed, or of innovation, by which new words or meanings of words are introduced, is practised, 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 seems to have been greatest in the familiar and the festive. The next class of his poems is called The Mistress,' of which it is not necessary to select any particular pieces for praise or censure. They have all the same beauties and faults, and nearly in the same proportion. They are written with exuberance of wit, and with copiousness of learning; and it is truly asserted by Sprat, that the plenitude of the writer's knowledge flows in upon his page, so that the reader is commonly surprised into some improvement. But, considered as the verses of a lover, no man that has ever loved will much commend them. They are neither courtly nor pathetic, have neither gallantry nor fondness. His praises are too far sought, and too hyperbolical, either to express love, or to excite it; every stanza is crowded with darts and flames, with wounds and death, with mingled souls, and with broken hearts. The principal artifice by which 'The Mistress' is filled with conceits is very copiously displayed by Addison.39 Love is by Cowley, as by other poets, expressed metaphorically by flame and fire; and that which is true of real fire is said of love, or 39Spectator,' No. 62. 1618-1667. HIS MISTRESS.' 39 figurative fire, the same word in the same sentence retaining both significations. Thus, "observing the cold regard of his mistress's eyes, and at the same time their power of producing love in him, he considers them as burning-glasses made of ice. Finding himself 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 observes, that his flames had burnt up and withered the tree." These conceits Addison calls "mixed wit;" that is, wit which consists of thoughts true in one sense of the expression, and false in the other. Addison's representation is sufficiently indulgent. That confusion of images may entertain for a moment; but being unnatural, it soon grows wearisome. 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: "Aspice quam variis distringar Lesbia curis! Uror, et heu! nostro manat ab igne liquor; Sum Nilus, sumque Ætna simul; restringite flammas One of the severe theologians of that time censured him as having published a book of profane and lascivious verses. From the charge of profaneness, the constant tenor of his life, which seems to have been eminently virtuous, and the general tendency of his opinions, which discover no irreverence of religion, must defend him; but that the accusation of lasciviousness is unjust, the perusal of his works will sufficiently evince. Cowley's 'Mistress' has no power of seduction: "she plays round the head, but reaches not the heart." Her beauty and absence, her kindness and cruelty, her disdain and inconstancy, produce no correspondence of emotion. His poetical account of the virtues of plants, and colours of flowers, is not perused with more sluggish frigidity. The compositions are such as might have been written for penance by a hermit, or for hire by a philosophical rhymer who had only heard of another sex; for they turn the mind only on the writer, whom, without think ing on a woman but as the subject for his task, we sometimes esteem as learned, and sometimes despise as trifling, always admire as ingenious, and always condemn as unnatural. The Pindarique Odes are now to be considered; a species of composition which Cowley thinks Pancirolus might have counted in his list of the lost inventions of antiquity, and which he has made a bold and vigorous attempt to recover. The purpose with which he has paraphrased an Olympic and Nemæan Ode is by himself sufficiently explained. His endeavour was, not to show precisely what Pindar spoke, but his [way and] manner of speaking. He was therefore not at all restrained to his expressions, nor much to his sentiments; nothing was required of him, but not to write as Pindar would not have written. Of the Olympic Ode the beginning is, I think, above the original in elegance, and the conclusion below it in strength. The connection is supplied with great perspicuity, and the thoughts, which to a reader of less skill seem thrown together by chance, are concatenated without any abruption. Though the English ode cannot be called a translation, it may be very properly consulted as a commentary. The spirit of Pindar is indeed not everywhere equally preserved. The following pretty lines are not such as his deep mouth was used to pour: "[Great Rhea's son,] If in Olympus' top where thou COWLEY: 2nd Olympique Ode. In the Nemæan ode the reader must, in mere justice to Pindar, observe that whatever is said of the original new moon, her tender forehead and her horns, is superadded by his paraphrast, who has many other plays of words and fancy unsuitable to the original, as, 1618-1667. COWLEY AND PINDAR. "The table which is free for every guest, No doubt will thee admit, And feast more upon thee, than thou on it." COWLEY 1st Nemaan Ode. 41 He sometimes extends his author's thoughts without improving them. In the Olympionic an oath is mentioned in a single word, and Cowley spends three lines in swearing by the Castalian Stream. We are told of Theron's bounty, with a hint that he had enemies, which Cowley thus enlarges in rhyming prose: "But in this thankless world the givers Are envied even by the receivers ; It now an artifice does grow Wrongs and outrages to do, Lest men should think we owe." COWLEY: 2nd Ol. Ode. It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and wit, when he was dealing out such minute morality in such feeble diction, could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar. In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own subjects, he sometimes rises to dignity truly Pindaric; and, if some deficiencies of language be forgiven, his strains are such as those of the Theban bard were to his contemporaries: "Begin the song, 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 song with smooth and equal measures dance; While the dance lasts, how long soe'er it be, My music's voice shall bear it company; Till all gentle notes be drown'd In the last trumpet's dreadful sound." COWLEY: The Resurrection. After such enthusiasm, who will not lament to find the poet conclude with lines like these ? |