vive; for on the 19th of March, 1668, he was buried by his side, 15 Denham is deservedly considered as one of the fathers of English poetry. "Denham and Waller," says Prior, "improved our versification, and Dryden perfected it." 16 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 occasions 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 have been well qualified. Of his more elevated occasional poems there is perhaps none that does not deserve commendation. In the verses to Fletcher we have an image that has since been adopted: "But whither am I stray'd? I need not raise Nor need thy juster title the foul guilt Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign, Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain." 15 Denham died 19th March, 1668-9, and was buried on the 23rd in Westminster Abbey, beneath a nameless stone. His poem on Cowley's death was published in Aug. 1667. He delighted much in bowls, and did bowl very well. He was of the tallest, but a little incurvetting at his shoulders, not very robust. His hair was but thin and flaxen, with a moist colour. His gait was slow and was rather a stalking (he had long legges). His eye was a kind of light goose gray, not big, but it had a strange piercingness. He was generally temperate as to drinking.-AUBREY'S Lives. 16 Prior does not mention Denham. "Heroic with continued rhyme, as Donne and his contemporaries used it, carrying the sense of the verse most commonly into the other, was found too dissolute and wild, and came very often too near prose. As Davenant and Waller corrected and Dryden perfected it, it is too confined."-PRIOR: Preface to Solomon. 1615-1668. COOPER'S HILL.-LOCAL POETRY. 73 After Denham, Orrery, in one of his prologues, "Poets are sultans, if they had their will; 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. His praise of Fanshaw's version of Guarini' contains a very sprightly and judicious character of a good translator :— "That servile path thou nobly dost decline, Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords The excellence of these lines is greater, as the truth which they contain was not at that time generally known. His poem on the death of Cowley was his last, and, among his shorter works, his best performance: the numbers are musical, and the thoughts are just. '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 species of composition that may be denominated local poetry, of which the fundamental 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 17 Copied by Dryden : When these translate and teach translators too. Epistle to the Earl of Roscommon, 1684. 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. 18 '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 Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; 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 which does not express intellectual operations by material images, into that language they cannot be translated. But so much meaning is comprised in few words; the particulars of resemblance are so perspicaciously 18 Of this species of local poetry we have Waller's 'St. James's Park,' Pope's 'Windsor Forest,' Garth's Claremont,' Tickell's Kensington Gardens,' Dyer's Grongar Hill,' Jago's Edge Hill,' Scott's 'Amwell, Bruce's 'Lochleven,' Crowe's' Lewisdon Hill,' and Kirke White's Clifton Grove.' 6 19 I am sure there are few who make verses have observed the sweetness of these two lines in 'Cooper's Hill:' Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; And there are yet fewer who can find the reason of that sweetness. I have given it to some of my friends in conversation, and they have allowed the criticism to be just."-DRYDEN: Ded. of Eneid. 1697. If Anna's happy reign you praise, SWIFT: Apollo's Edict. 1615-1668. DENHAM'S STRENGTH. 75 collected, and every mode of excellence separated from its adjacent fault by so nice a 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, may be discovered by a perusal of our earlier versions, some of them the works of men well qualified, not only by critical knowledge, but by poetical genius, who yet, by a mistaken ambition of exactness, degraded at once their originals and themselves. Denham saw the better way, but has not pursued it with great success. His versions of Virgil are not pleasing; but they taught Dryden 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," 20 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, His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore, Search not his bottom, but survey his shore." "1 20 And praise the easy vigour of a line Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join. 21 Originally: And tho' his clearer sand no golden veins On Strafford. "His wisdom such, as once it did appear Three kingdoms' wonder, and three kingdoms' fear. Such was his force of eloquence, to make The hearers more concern'd than he that spake: On Cowley. "To him no author was unknown, Yet what he wrote was all his own; 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 improvement of our numbers, his versification ought to be considered. It will afford that pleasure which arises from the observation of a man of judgment, naturally right, forsaking bad copies by degrees, and advancing towards a better practice as he gains more confidence in himself. In his translation of Virgil, written when he was about twenty-one years old, may be still found the old manner of continuing the sense ungracefully from verse to verse. "Then all those Who in the dark our fury did escape, Returning, know our borrow'd arms, and shape, |