1618-1667.

DEATH AND BURIAL.

17

He did not long enjoy the pleasure or suffer the uneasiness of solitude, for he died at the Porch-house29 in Chertsey in 1667,30 in the 49th year of his age.31

.32

He was buried with great pomp near Chaucer and Spenser ;3 and King Charles pronounced, "That Mr. Cowley had not left behind him a better man in England." He is represented by Dr. Sprat as the most amiable of mankind; and this posthumous praise may safely be credited, as it has never been contradicted by envy or by faction.

Such are the remarks and memorials which I have been able

began to consider with myself which way I might recommend no less to posterity the happiness and innocence of the men of Chertsey; but to confess the truth, I perceived quickly, by infallible demonstrations, that I was still in Old England, and not in Arcadia or La Forrest.-COWLEY: The Dangers of an Honest Man in much Company. Johnson's 'Dick Shifter' ('The Idler,' No. 71) is an admirable carrying out of Cowley's desire by a Cockney smit with the charms of rural life as described by poets.

29 Now [1779] in the possession of Mr. Clarke, alderman of London.JOHNSON.

30 28th July, 1667.

31 Cowley's allowance was at last not above three hundred a-year. He died at Chertsey; and his death was occasioned by a mean accident whilst his great friend Dean Sprat was with him on a visit there. They had been together to see a neighbour of Cowley's, who (according to the fashion of those times) made them too welcome. They did not set out for their walk home till it was too late, and had drank so deep that they lay out in the fields all night. This gave Cowley the fever that carried him off. The parish still talk of the drunken Dean.-POPE: Spence by Singer, p. 13.

32 Whitehall, Aug. 4 [1667].-Yesterday, in the evening, the body of Mr. Abraham Cowley, who died the 28th past, was conveyed from Wallingford House to Westminster Abbey, accompanied by divers persons of eminent quality, who came to perform this last office to one who had been the great ornament of our nation, as well by the candour of his life as the excellency of his writings.-The London Gazette, Aug. 1 to Aug. 5, 1667.

3rd Aug. 1667.—Went to Mr. Cowley's funeral, whose corpse lay at Wallingford House, and was thence conveyed to Westminster Abbey in a hearse with six horses and all funeral decency, near a hundred coaches of noblemen and persons of quality following; among these all the wits of the town, divers bishops and clergymen.-EVELYN.

The monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey was erected in May, 1675, at the expense of Villiers Duke of Buckingham, though Tom Brown, in his 'Walk round London,' says it was never paid for by the Duke. Cowley and the Duke were at Trinity College, Cambridge, together. Sprat (or, it is said, Clifford) wrote the inscription, which Johnson tells us (Essay on Epitaphs') he could never read but with "indignation or contempt."

VOL. I.

C

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 were easily irritated, was obliged to pass over many transactions in general expressions, and to leave curiosity often unsatisfied. What he did not tell, cannot however now be known. I must therefore recommend the perusal of his work, to which my narration can be considered only as a slender supplement.

33

Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and, instead of tracing intellectual pleasures 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, it is not improper to give some account.

The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show

33 There are several portraits of Cowley. The great Lord Clarendon's portrait is now at Bothwell Castle; a fair original (but poorly engraved by Faithorne before his Works) is in the Bodleian Gallery; and at Drayton Manor is the famous Lely, representing him as a Shepherd, the picture bought by the minister Sir Robert Peel at the Strawberry-hill sale, and fairly engraved by Harding.

The designation is not fortunate; but so much respect is due to Johnson that it would be unbecoming to substitute, even if it were easy to propose, one which might be unexceptionable.-SOUTHEY: Life of Couper, ii. 127. But Johnson follows his favourite Dryden:

Donne affects the metaphysics not only in his Satires, but in his amorous verses, where Nature only should reign.-DRYDEN: Dedication of Juvenal,

1693.

Pope adopted the expression, when, in speaking to Spence of Cowley, he observed, "He as well as Davenant borrowed his metaphysical style from Donne."-Spence by Singer, p. 173.

The metaphysical school, which marred a good poet in Cowley, and found its proper direction in Butler, expired in Norris of Bemerton.--SOUTHEY: Quar. Rev. xii. 82.

1618-1667.

METAPHYSICAL POETS.

19

their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables.

If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry TÉXIN μuntin, an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong, lose their right to the name of poets, for they cannot be said to have imitated anything; they neither copied nature for life, neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect.

Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden confesses of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne in wit, but maintains that they surpass him in poetry.35

If wit be well described by Pope,36 as being "that which has been often thought, but was never before so well expressed," they certainly never attained, nor ever sought it; for they endeavoured to be singular in their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he depresses it below its natural dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of lan

guage.

If by a more noble and more adequate conception that be considered as wit which is at once natural and new that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that which he that never found it wonders how he missed, to wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the

35 Dr. Donne, the greatest wit, though not the best poet, of our nation.— DRYDEN: Dedication of Eleonora, 1692.

Would not Donne's Satires, which abound with so much wit, appear more charming if he had taken care of his words and of his numbers?. . . . I may safely say it of this present age, that if we are not so great wits as Donne, yet certainly we are better poets.-DRYDEN: Dedication of Juvenal, 1693.

36 Essay on Criticism.'

WIT?

reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found.

But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are (yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtility surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

From this account of their compositions it will be readily inferred that they were not successful in representing or moving the affections. As they were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising, they had no regard to that uniformity of sentiment which enables us to conceive and to excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds: they never inquired what, on any occasion, they should have said or done, but wrote rather as beholders than partakers of human nature; as beings looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as Epicurean deities, making remarks on the actions of men, and the vicissitudes of life, without interest and without emotion. Their courtship was void of fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish was only to say what they hoped had been never said before.

Nor was the sublime more within their reach than the pathetic; for they never attempted that comprehension and expanse of thought which at once fills the whole mind, and of which the first effect is sudden astonishment, and the second rational admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion. Great thoughts are always general, and consist in positions not limited by exceptions, and in descriptions not descending to minuteness. It is with great propriety that subtlety, which in its original import means exility of particles, is taken in its metaphorical meaning for nicety of distinction.

1618-1667.

METAPHYSICAL POETS.

21

16

Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty could have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation. Their attempts were always analytic; they broke every image into fragments; and could no more represent, by their slender conceits and laboured particularities, the prospects of nature, or the scenes of life, than he who dissects a sun-beam with a prism can exhibit the wide effulgence of a summer noon.

What they wanted however of the sublime, they endeavoured to supply by hyperbole their amplification had no limits; they left not only reason but fancy behind them; and produced combinations of confused magnificence, that not only could not be credited, but could not be imagined.

Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost: if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth; if their conceits were far-fetched, they were often worth the carriage. To write on their plan, it was at least necessary to read and think. No man could be born a metaphysical poet, nor assume the dignity of a writer, by descriptions copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by traditional imagery, and hereditary similes, by readiness of rhyme, and volubility of syllables.

In perusing the works of this race of authors, the mind is exercised either by recollection or inquiry; either something already learned is to be retrieved, or something new is to be examined. If their greatness seldom elevates, their acuteness often surprises: if the imagination is not always gratified, at least the powers of reflection and comparison are employed; and in the mass of materials which ingenious absurdity has thrown together, genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes found buried perhaps in grossness of expression, but useful to those who know their value; and such as, when they are expanded to perspicuity, and polished to elegance, may give lustre to works which have more propriety though less copiousness of sentiment.

This kind of writing, which was, I believe, borrowed from Marino and his followers, had been recommended by the