artifices of inverfion, by which the eftablished order of words is changed, or of innovation, by which new words or meanings of words are introduced, is practised, not by those who talk to be understood, but by thofe who write to be admired.

The Anacreontiques therefore of Cowley give now all the pleasure which they ever gave. If he was formed by nature for one kind of writing more than for another, his power feems to have been greatest in the familiar and the feftive.

The next clafs of his poems is called The Miftrefs, of which it is not neceffary to felect any particular pieces for praife or cenfure. They have all the fame beautics and faults, and nearly in the fame proportion. They are written with exuberance of wit, and with copioufnefs of learning; and it is truly afferted by Sprat, that the plenitude of the writer's knowledge flows in upon his page, fo that the reader is commonly furprifed into fome improvement. But, confidered as the verfes of a lover, no man that has ever loved will much commend them. They are neither courtly nor pathetick, have neither gallantry nor fondnefs. His praifes are too far fought, and too hyperbolical, either to exprefs love, or to excite it; every ftanza is crowded with darts and flames, with wounds and death, with mingled fouls and with broken hearts.

The principal artifice by which The Mistress is filled with conceits is very copioufly difplayed by Addifon. Love is by Cowley, as by other poets, expreffed metaphorically by flame and fire; and that which is true of real fire is faid of love, or figurative fire, the fame word in the fame fentence retaining

both fignifications. Thus, " obferving the cold re"gard of his miftrefs's eyes, and at the fame time "their power of producing love in him, he confiders "them as burning-glaffes made of ice. Finding him"self able to live in the greatest extremities of love, "he concludes the torrid zone to be habitable. "Upon the dying of a tree, on which he had cut. "his loves, he obferves, that his flames had burnt 66 up and withered the tree."

These conceits Addifon calls mixed wit; that is, wit which confifts of thoughts true in one fense of the expreffion, and false in the other. Addifon'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
Uror, & heu! noflro manat ab igne liquor;
Sum Nilus, fumque Etna fimul; reftringite flar as:
O lacrime, aut lacrimas ebibe flamma meas.

variis diftringar Lesbia curis !!

One of the fevere theologians of that time cenfured him as having publifhed a book of profane and lafcivious Verfes. From the charge of profanenefs, the conftant tenour of his life, which feems to have been eminently virtuous, and the general tendency of his opinions which difcover no irreverence of religion, muft defend him; but that the accufation of lafcivioufness is unjuft, the perufal of his works will fufficiently evince.

Cowley's Mifirefs has no power of feduction: "fhe "plays round the head, but reaches not the heart."

Her

'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.

In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own fubjects, he fometimes rifes to dignity truly Pindarick; and, if fome deficiencies of language be forgiven, his ftrains are fuch as thofe of the Theban Bard were to his contemporaries :

the

Begin the fong, and ftrike 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 fhall bear it company;

Till all gentle notes be drown'd

In the last trumpet's dreadful found.

After fuch enthufiafm, who will not lament to find conclude with lines like these !

poet

But ftop, my Mufe

Hold thy Pindarick Pegafus clofely in,

Which does to rage begin

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

'Twill no unfkilful touch endure,

But flings writer and reader too that fits not fure.

The fault of Cowley, and perhaps of all the writers of the metaphyfical race, is that of purfuing his thoughts to the laft 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 defcription is deftroyed by a scrupu lous 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 Mufe 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 useful

lies,

In all the gaudy liveries.

VOL. IX.

E

Every

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

Mount, glorious queen, thy travelling throne,
And bid it to put on ;

For long though chearful 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 close nefts of Time doft peep,
And there with piercing eye

Through the firm shell and the thick white doft spy
Years to come a-forming lie,

Close in their facred fecundine afleep.

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, feems to have been carried, by a kind of destiny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which require ftill more ignoble epithets. A flaughter in the Red Sea new dies the waters name; and England, during the Civil War, was Albion no more, nor to be named from white. is furely by fome fascination not eafily furmounted, 5

that