Lucifer makes a fpeech to the inferior agents of mischief, in which there is fomething of heathenifm, and therefore of impropriety; and, to give efficacy to his words, concludes by lafhing his breaft with his long tail. Envy, after a paufe, fteps out, and among other declarations of her zeal utters lines:

Do thou but threat, loud ftorms shall make reply,

And thunder echo to the trembling sky.
Whilst raging feas swell to so bold an height,
As fhall the fire's proud element affright.
Th' old drudging Sun, from his long-beaten

way,

Shall at thy voice ftart, and misguide the day.
The jocund orbs fhall break their measur'd

pace,

And stubborn Poles change their allotted place. Heaven's gilded troops fhall flutter here and there,

Leaving their boafting fongs tun'd to a sphere.

Every reader feels himself weary with this useless talk of an allegorical Being.

It

It is not only when the events are confeffedly miraculous, that fancy and fiction lose their effect the whole fyftem of life, while the Theocracy was yet visible, has an appearance fo different from all other scenes of human action, that the reader of the Sacred Volume habitually confiders it as a peculiar mode of existence of a distinct species of mankind, that lived and acted with manners uncommunicable; fo that it is difficult even for imagination to place us in the state of them whose ftory is related, and by confequence their joys and griefs are not eafily adopted, nor can the attention be often interested in any thing that befals them.

To the fubject, thus originally indifpofed to the reception of poetical embellishments, the writer brought little that could reconcile impatience, or attract curiofity. Nothing can be more difgufting than a narrative fpangled with conceits, and conceits are all that the Davideis fupplies.

One of the great fources of poetical delight is defcription, or the power of prefent

ing pictures to the mind. Cowley gives inferences instead of images, and fhews not what may be fuppofed to have been seen, but what thoughts the fight might have suggested. When Virgil describes the ftone which Turnus lifted against Æneas, he fixes the attention on its bulk and weight:

Saxum circumfpicit ingens,

Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat

Limes agro pofitus, litem ut difcerneret arvis.

Cowley fays of the ftone with which Cain flew his brother,

I faw him fling the ftone, as if he meant
At once his murther and his monument.

Of the sword taken from Goliah, he says,

A fword fo great, that it was only fit
To cut off his great head that came with it.

Other poets describe death by fome of its common appearances; Cowley fays, with a learned allufion to fepulchral lamps real or fabulous,

'Twixt his right ribs deep pierc'd the furious

blade,

VOL. I.

G

And

And open'd wide thofe fecret veffels where Life's light goes out, when firft they let in air.

But he has allufions vulgar as well as learned. In a vifionary fucceffion of kings:

Joas at firft does bright and glorious fhow,
In life's frefh morn his fame does early crow.

Defcribing an undifciplined army, after having faid with elegance,

His forces feem'd no army, but a crowd Heartless, unarm'd, diforderly, and loud; he gives them a fit of the ague.

The allufions however are not always to vulgar things:

The King was plac'd alone, and o'er his head A well-wrought heaven of filk and gold was fpread.

Whatever he writes is always polluted with fome conceit:

Where the fun's fruitful beams give metals birth, Where he the growth of fatal gold does fee, Gold, which alone more influence has than he.

In one paffage he starts a fudden question, to the confufion of philofophy:

Ye learned heads, whom ivy garlands grace,
Why does that twining plant the oak embrace $
The oak, for courtship most of all unfit,
And rough as are the winds that fight with it.

His expreffions have sometimes a degree of meannefs that furpaffes expectation:

Nay, gentle guests, he cries, fince now you're in, The story of your gallant friend begin.

In a fimile descriptive of the Morning:

As glimmering stars just at th' approach of day, Cashier'd by troops, at laft drop all away.

The dress of Gabriel deferves attention :

He took for skin a cloud moft foft and bright, That ere the midday fun pierc'd through with light,

Upon his cheeks a lively blufh he fpread, Wash'd from the morning beauties deepest red; An harmless flattering meteor fhone for hair, And fell adown his fhoulders with loofe care; He cuts out a filk mantle from the skies, Where the most spritely azure pleas'd the eyes