In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own fubjects, he fometimes rises to dignity truly Pindarick; and, if some deficiencies of language be forgiven, his strains are fuch 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 fong with smooth and equal measure dance;

While the dance lafts, how long foe'er it be, My mufick's voice shall bear it company; Till all gentle notes be drown'd

In the last trumpet's dreadful found.

After fuch enthusiasm, who will not lament to find the poet conclude with lines like thefe !

But ftop, my Muse

Hold thy Pindarick Pegafus clofely in,
Which does to rage begin-

'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth'd horse

'Twill no unskilful touch endure,

But flings writer and reader too that fits not sure.

The fault of Cowley, and perhaps of all the writers of the metaphyfical race, is that of pursuing his thoughts to their last ramifications, by which he lofes the grandeur of generality; for of the greatest things the parts are little; what is little can be but pretty, and by claiming dignity becomes ridiculous. Thus all the power of description is destroyed by a fcrupulous enumeration; and the force of metaphors is loft, when the mind by the mention of particulars is turned more upon the original than the fecondary fenfe, more upon that from which the illuftration is drawn than that to which it is applied.

Of this we have a very eminent example in the ode intituled The Mufe, who goes to take the air in an intellectual chariot, to which he harneffes Fancy and Judgement, Wit and Eloquence, Memory and Invention : how he distinguished Wit from Fancy, or how Memory could properly contribute to Motion, he has not explained; we are however content to fuppofe that he could have justified his own fiction, and wish to see the

Muse begin her career; but there is yet more

to be done.

Let the poftilion Nature mount, and let
The coachman Art be fet;

And let the airy footmen, running all befide,
Make a long row of goodly pride;

Figures, conceits, raptures, and fentences,
In a well-worded dress,

And innocent loves, and pleasant truths, and
ufeful lies,

In all their gaudy liveries.

Every mind is now difgufted with this cumber of magnificence; yet I cannot refuse myself the four next lines:

Mount, glorious queen, thy travelling throne,

And bid it to put on;

For long though cheerful is the way,
And life alas allows but one ill winter's day.

In the fame ode, celebrating the power of the Mufe, he gives her prefcience, or, in poetical language, the forefight of events hatching in futurity; but having once an egg in his mind, he cannot forbear to fhew us that he knows what an egg contains:

Thou into the clofe nefts of time doft peep,
And there with piercing eye

Through the firm fhell and the thick white

doft fpy

Years to come a-forming lie,

Close in their facred fecundine asleep.

The fame thought is more generally, and therefore more poetically, expreffed by Cafimir, a writer who has many of the beauties and faults of Cowley:

Omnibus mundi Dominator horis
Aptat urgendas per inane pennas,
Pars adhuc nido latet, & futuros

Crefcit in annos.

Cowley, whatever was his fubject, seems to have been carried, by a kind of destiny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which require still more ignoble epithets. A flaughter in the Red Sea, new dies the waters name; and England, during the Civil War, was Aibion no more, nor to be named from white. It is furely by fome fascination not easily furmounted, that a writer profeffing to revive the nobleft and bigbeft writing in verse, makes this addrefs to the new year:

Nay,

Nay, if thou lov'ft me, gentle year,
Let not fo much as love be there,

Vain fruitless love I mean; for, gentle year,
Although I fear,

There's of this caution little need,
Yet, gentle year, take heed

How thou dost make

Such a mistake;

Such love I mean alone

As by thy cruel predeceffors has been fhewn ; For, though I have too much cause to doubt it, I fain would try, for once, if life can live without it.

The reader of this will be inclined to cry out with Prior

-Ye Criticks, fay,

How poor to this was Pindar's ftyle!

Even those who cannot perhaps find in the Ifthmian or Nemeæan fongs what Antiquity has difpofed them to expect, will at least see that they are ill reprefented by fuch puny poetry; and all will determine that if this be the old Theban ftrain, it is not worthy of revival.

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