tude should grow tedious. His retreat was at first but flenderly accommodated; yet he foon obtained, by the intereft of the Earl of St. Albans and the duke of Buckingham, fuch a lease of the Queen's lands as afforded him an ample income.

By the lover of virtue and of wit it will be folicitoufly afked, if he now was happy. Let them peruse one of his letters accidentally preferved by Peck, which I recommend to the confideration of all that may hereafter pant for folitude.

"To Dr. THOMAS SPRAT.

Chertsey, 21 May, 1665.

"The first night that I came hither I "caught fo great a cold, with a defluxion of

66

“ rheum, as made me keep my chamber ten

days. And, two after, had fuch a bruife

"on my ribs with a fall, that I am yet un"able to move or turn myfelf in my bed. "This is my personal fortune here to begin with. And, befides, I can get no money from my tenants, and have my meadows

4

eaten

"eaten up every night by cattle put in by "my neighbours. What this fignifies, or

66

may come to in time, God knows; if it "be ominous, it can end in nothing less "than hanging. Another misfortune has “been, and stranger than all the rest, that 66 you have broke your word with me, and "failed to come, even though you told Mr. "Bois that you would. This is what they "call Monftri fimile. I do hope to recover $6 my late hurt fo farre within five or fix "days (though it be uncertain yet whether "I shall ever recover it) as to walk about "again. And then, methinks, you and I "and the Dean might be very merry upon "S. Anne's Hill. You might very conve

66

niently come hither the way of Hampton "Town, lying there one night, I write this "in pain, and can fay no more: Verbum " Sapienti."

He did not long enjoy the pleasure or fuffer the uneafinefs of folitude; for he died at the Porch-house * in Chertsey in 1667, in the 49th year of his age.

Now in the poffeffion of Mr. Clarke, Alderman of London.

He

He was buried with great pomp near Chaucer and Spenfer; and king Charles pronounced, "That Mr. Cowley had not left a "better man behind him in England." He is reprefented by Dr. Sprat as the most amiable of mankind; and this pofthumous praise may be fafely credited, as it has never been contradicted by envy or by faction.

Such are the remarks and memorials which I have been able to add to the narrative of Dr. Sprat; who, writing when the feuds of the civil war were yet recent, and the minds of either party easily irritated, was obliged to pafs over many tranfactions in general expreffions, and to leave curiofity often unfatisfied. What he did not tell, cannot however now be known. I must therefore recommend the perufal of his work, to which my narration can be confidered only as a flender fupplement.

COW

COWLEY, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and, instead of tracing intellectual pleasure to its natural fources in the mind of man, paid their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too much praised, and too much neglected at another.

Wit, like all other things subject by their nature to the choice of man, has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes. different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets; of whom, in a criticism on the works of Cowley, the last of the race, it is not improper to give some account.

The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to fhew their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily refolving to fhew it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verfes, and very often fuch verfes as ftood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation

was

was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the fyllables.

If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry TÉxun μpenin, an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong, lofe their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be faid to have imitated any thing; they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted the forms of mattér, nor reprefented the operations of intellect.

Those however who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden confeffes of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne in wit, but maintains that they furpafs him in poetry.

If Wit be well defcribed by Pope, as being, "that which has been often thought, "but was never before fo well expreffed," they certainly never attained, nor ever fought it; for they endeavoured to be fingular in their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he depreffes it below