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real fire is faid of love, or figurative fire, the fame word in the fame fentence retaining both fignifications. Thus, “ obferving the "cold regard of his mistress's eyes, and at "the fame time their power of producing "love in him, he confiders them as burning

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glaffes made of ice. Finding himself able "to live in the greatest extremities of love, "he concludes the torrid zone to be habi"table. Upon the dying of a tree, on which " he had cut his loves, he obferves, that his "flames had burnt up and withered the "tree."

Thefe conceits Addifon calls mixed wit; that is, wit which confifts of thoughts true in one sense of the expreffion, and false in the other. Addison's representation is fufficiently indulgent. That confufion of images may entertain for a moment; but being unnatural, it foon grows wearifome. 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 :

Afpice quam variis diftringar Lefbia curis,

Uror, & heu! noftro manat ab igne liquor; Sum Nilus, fumque Etna fimul; reftringite flammas

O lacrimæ, aut lacrimas ebibe flamma meas.

One of the fevere theologians of that time cenfured him as having published a book of profane and lafcivious Verfes. From the charge of profaneness, the constant tenour of his life, which seems to have been eminently virtuous, and the general tendency of his opinions, which discover no irreverence of religion, muft defend him; but that the accufation of lasciviousness is unjuft, the perusal of his works will fufficiently evince.

Cowley's Mistress has no power of feduction: "fhe plays round the head, but comes not at the heart." Her beauty and abfence, her kindness and cruelty, her difdain and inconftancy, produce no correfpondence of emotion. His poetical account of the virtues of plants, and colours of flowers, is not perused. with more sluggish frigidity. The compositions are fuch as might have been written for penance by a hermit, or for hire by a philofophi

VOL. I.

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cal rhymer who had only heard of another fex; for they turn the mind only on the writer, whom, without thinking on a woman but as the subject for a talk, we fometimes esteem as learned, and sometimes despise as trifling, always admire as ingenious, and always condemn as unnatural.

The Pindarique Odes are now to be confidered; a species of compofition, which Cowley thinks Pancirolus might have counted in his lift of the loft inventions of antiquity, and which he has made a bold and vigorous attempt to recover.

The purpose with which he has paraphrased an Olympick and Nemeæan Ode, is by himself sufficiently explained. His endeavour was, not to fhew precisely what Pindar Spoke, but his manner of Speaking. He was therefore not at all reftrained to his expreffions, nor much to his fentiments; nothing was required of him, but not to write as Pindar would not have written.

Of the Olympick Ode the beginning is, I think, above the original in elegance, and the conclufion below it in ftrength. The

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connection is fupplied with great perfpicuity, 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, may be very properly confulted as a commentary.

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The spirit of Pindar is indeed not every where equally preferved. The following pretty lines are not fuch as his deep mouth was used to pour:

Great Rhea's fon,

If in Olympus' top where thou
Sitt'ft to behold thy facred fhow,
If in Alpheus' filver flight,

If in my verse thou take delight,
My verse, great Rhea's fon, which is
Lofty as that, and smooth as this.

In the Nemeæan ode the reader muft, in mere justice to Pindar, obferve that whatever is faid of the original new moon, her tender forehead and her horns, is fuperadded by his paraphraft, who has many other plays of words and fancy unfuitable to the original,

as,

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The table, free for every guest,

No doubt will thee admit,

And feast more upon thee, than thou on it.

He fometimes extends his author's thoughts without improving them. In the Olympionick an oath is mentioned in a fingle word, and Cowley spends three lines in swearing by the Caftalian Stream. We are told of Theron's bounty, with a hint that he had enemies, which Cowley thus enlarges in rhyming profe:

But in this thanklefs world the giver
Is envied even by the receiver;

"Tis now the cheap and frugal fashion
Rather to hide than own the obligation:
Nay, 'tis much worse than fo;
It now an artifice does grow
Wrongs and injuries to do,

Left men fhould think we owe.

It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and wit, when he was dealing out fuch minute morality in fuch feeble diction, could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar.