This wide pofition requires less limitation, when it is affirmed of Cowley, than perhaps of any other poet-He read much, and yet borrowed little.

His character of writing was indeed not his own he unhappily adopted that which was predominant. He faw a certain way to present praise, and not fufficiently enquiring by what means the ancients have continued to delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself with a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure in its fpring was bright and gay, but which time has been continually stealing from his brows.

He was in his own time confidered as of unrivalled excellence. Clarendon reprefents him as having taken a flight beyond all that went before him; and Milton is faid to have declared, that the three greatest English poets were Spenfer, Shakspeare, and Cowley.

His manner he had in common with others; but his fentiments were his own. Upon every fubject he thought for himself; and fuch was his copioufnefs of knowledge, that fome

fomething at once remote and applicable rufhed into his mind; yet it is not likely that he always rejected a commodious idea merely because another had ufed it: his known wealth was fo great, that he might have bor rowed without lofs of credit.

In his elegy on Sir Henry Wotton, the laft lines have fuch resemblance to the noble epigram of Grotius upon the death of Scaliger, that I cannot but think them copied from it, though they are copied by no fervile hand.

One paffage in his Mistress is fo apparently borrowed from Donne, that he probably would not have written it, had it not mingled with his own thoughts, fo as that he did not perceive himself taking it from another.

Although I think thou never found wilt be,
Yet I'm refolv'd to fearch for thee;
The fearch itself rewards the pains.
So, though the chymic his great fecret mifs,
(For neither it in Art nor Nature is)

Yet things well worth his toil he gains
And does his charge and labour pay

With good unfought experiments by the way,

COWLEY.

Some

Some that have deeper digg'd Love's mine

than I,

Say, where his centric happiness doth lie

I have lov'd, and got, and told;

But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,
I should not find that hidden mystery;

Oh, 'tis impofture all:

And as no chymic yet th' elixir got,
But glorifies his pregnant pot,
If by the way to him befal
Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,

So lovers dream a rich and long delight,
But get a winter-feeming fummer's night.
DONNE.

pur

It is related by Clarendon, that Cowley always acknowledged his obligation to the learning and induftry of Jonfon; but I have found no traces of Jonfon in his works to emulate Donne, appears to have been his pofe; and from Donne he may have learned that familiarity with religious images, and that light allufion to facred things, by which readers far fhort of fanctity are frequently offended; and which would not be borne in the present age, when devotion, perhaps not more fervent, is more delicate.

!

Having produced one paffage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will recompenfe him by another which Milton feems to have borrowed from him. He fays of Goliah,

His fpear, the trunk was of a lofty tree, Which Nature meant fome tall fhip's maft fhould be.

Milton of Satan,

His fpear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great admiral, were but a wand,
He walk'd with.-

His diction was in his own time cenfured as negligent. He seems not to have known, or not to have confidered, that words being arbitrary must owe their power to affociation, and have the influence, and that only, which custom has given them. Language is the drefs of thought; and as the noblest mien, or moft graceful action, would be degraded and obfcured by a garb appropriated to the grofs employments of rufticks or mechanicks, fo the most heroick fentiments will lose their efficacy, and the moft fplendid ideas drop

their magnificence, if they are conveyed by words used commonly upon low and trivial occafions, debased by vulgar mouths, and contaminated by inelegant applications.

Truth indeed is always truth, and reafon is always reafon; they have an intrinsick and unalterable value, and conftitute that intellectual gold which defies deftruction: but gold may be fo concealed in bafer matter that only a chymift can recover it; sense may! be fo hidden in unrefined and plebeian words that none but philofophers can distinguish it; and both may be fo buried in impurities, as not to pay the coft of their extraction.

The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself to the intellectual eye; and if the first appearance offends, a further knowledge is not often fought. Whatever profeffes to benefit by pleafing, must please at once. The pleasures of reafon imply fomething fudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always furprise. What is perceived by flow degrees may gratify us with the consciousness of improvement,