Thus he addresses his Mistress: Thou who, in many a propriety, So truly art the sun to me, Add one more likeness, which I'm sure you can, Thus he represents the meditations of a Lover: Though in thy thoughts scarce any tracts have been Such charms thy beauty wears, as might Desires in dying confest saints excite. Thou with strange adultery Dost in each breast a brothel keep; The true Taste of Tears. Hither with crystal vials, lovers, come, And take my tears, which are love's wine, And try your mistress' tears at home; For all are false, that taste not just like mine. This is yet more indelicate: As the sweet sweat of roses in a still, As that which from chaf'd musk-cats pores doth trill, They seem no sweat-drops, but pearl coronets: DONNE. DONNE. Their expressions sometimes raise horror, when they intend perhaps to be pathetic: As men in hell are from diseases free, So from all other ills am I, Free from their known formality: COWLEY. They were not always strictly curious, whether the opinions from which they drew their illustrations were true; it was enough that they were popular. Bacon remarks, that some falsehoods are continued by tradition, because they supply commodious allusions. It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke; Like poison put into a Venice-glass. COWLEY. In forming descriptions, they looked out, not for images, but for conceits. Night has been a common subject, which poets have contended to adorn. Dryden's Night is well known; Donne's is as follows: Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest: Doth practise dying by a little sleep; Thou at this midnight seest me. It must be however confessed of these writers, that if they are upon common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle; yet, where scholastic speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon Hope shews an unequalled fertility of invention: Hope, whose weak being ruin'd is, Of blessing thee; If things then from their end we happy call, Hope, thou bold taster of delight, Who, whilst thou should'st but taste, devour'st it quite! By clogging it with legacies before! The joys which we entire should wed, Come deflower'd virgins to our bed: For joy, like wine kept close, does better taste, To the following comparison of a man that travels and his wife that stays at home, with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted whether absurdity or ingenuity has better claim: Our two souls, therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat, If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Yet, when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect as that comes home. Like th' other foot obliquely run. And makes me end where I begun. DONNE. In all these examples it is apparent, that whatever is improper or vicious is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature in pursuit of something new and strange; and that the writers fail to give delight by their desire of exciting admiration. HAVING thus endeavoured to exhibit a general representation of the style and sentiments of the metaphysical poets, it is now proper to examine particularly the works of Cowley, who was almost the last of that race, and undoubtedly the best. His Miscellanies contain a collection of short compositions, written, some as they were dictated by a mind at leisure, and some as they were called forth by different occasions; with great variety of style and sentiment, from burlesque levity to awful grandeur. Such an assemblage of diversified excellence no other poet has hitherto afforded. To choose the best, among many good, is one of the most hazardous attempts of criticism. I know not whether Scaliger himself has persuaded many readers to join with him in his preference of the two favourite odes, which he estimates in his raptures at the value of a kingdom. I will, however, venture to recommend Cowley's first piece, which ought to be inscribed To my Muse, for want of which the second couplet is without reference. When the title is added, there will still remain a defect; for every piece ought to contain in itself whatever is necessary to make it intelligible. Pope has some epitaphs without names; which are therefore epitaphs to be let, occupied indeed for the present, but hardly appropriated. The ode on Wit is almost without a rival. It was about the time of Cowley that wit, which had been till then used for intellection, in contradistinction to will, took the meaning, whatever it be, which it now bears. Of all the passages in which poets have exemplified their own precepts, none will easily be found of greater excellence than that in which Cowley condemns exuberance of wit: Yet 'tis not to adorn and gild each part, That shews more cost than art. Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear; Rather than all things wit, let none be there. If there be nothing else between. Men doubt, because they stand so thick i' th' sky, In his verses to Lord Falkland, whom every man of his time was proud to praise, there are, as there must be in all Cowley's compositions, some striking thoughts, but they are not well wrought. His elegy on Sir Henry Wotton is vigorous and happy: the series of thoughts is easy and natural; and the conclusion, though a little weakened by the intrusion of Alexander, is elegant and forcible. It may be remarked, that in this Elegy, and in most of his encomiastic poems, he has forgotten or neglected to name his heroes. In his poem on the death of Hervey, there is much praise, but little passion; a very just and ample delineation of such virtues as a studious privacy admits, and such intellectual excellence as a mind not yet called forth to action can display. He knew how to distinguish, and how to commend, the qualities of his companion; but, when he wishes, to make us weep, he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his sorrow by imagining how his crown of bays, if he had it, would crackle in the fire. It is the odd fate of this thought to be the worse for being true. The bay leaf crackles remarkably as it burns; as therefore this property was not assigned it by chance, the mind must be thought sufficiently at ease that could attend to such minuteness of physiology. But the power of Cowley is not so much to move the affections, as to exercise the understanding. The Chronicle is a composition unrivalled and alone: such gaiety of fancy, such facility of expression, such varied similitude, such a succession of images, and such a dance of words, it is in vain to expect except from Cowley. His strength always appears in his agility; his volatility is not the flutter of a light, but the bound of an elastic, mind. His levity never leaves his learning behind it; the moralist, the politician, and the critic, mingle their influence even in this airy frolic of genius. To such a performance, Suckling could have brought the gaiety, but not the knowledge: Dryden could have supplied the knowledge, but not the gaiety. The verses to Davenant, which are vigorously begun, and happily concluded, contain some hints of criticism very justly conceived and happily expressed. Cowley's critical abilities have not been sufficiently observed: the few decisions and remarks, which his prefaces and his notes on the Davideis supply, were at that time accessions to English literature, and shew such skill as raises our wish for more examples. The lines from Jersey are a very curious and pleasing specimen of the familiar descending to the burlesque. His two metrical disquisitions for and against Reason, are no mean specimens of metaphysical poetry. The stanzas against knowledge produce little conviction. In those which are intended to exalt the human faculties, reason has its proper task assigned it; that of judging, not of things revealed, but of the reality of revelation. In the verses for Reason, is a passage which Bentley, in the only English verses which he is known to have written, seems to have copied, though with the inferiority of an imitator. The Holy Book like the eighth sphere doth shine With thousand lights of truth divine, So numberless the stars, that to our eye It makes all but one galaxy. Yet reason must assist too; for, in seas So vast and dangerous as these, Our course by stars above we cannot know |