of pursuing his thoughts to the last ramifica tions, 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 destroyed by a ferupulous 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 fense, 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 diftinguished Wit from Faucy, or how Memory could properly contribute to Motion, he has not explained: we are how ever content to fuppofe that he could have juftified his own fiction, and wish to see the Mute begin her career; but there is yet more to be done.

Let the poftilion Nature mount, and let
The coachman Art be set ;

And let the airy footman, 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 ufeful lies,

In all their gaudy liveries.

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

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

For long though cheerful 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

Thou into the clofe nefts of Time doft peep, And there with piercing eye

Through the firm shell and the thick white doft fpy

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 defliny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which require still 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. It is furely by fome fascination not easily furmounted, that a writer, profeffing to revive the nobleft and highest writing in verfe, makes this address to the new year:

Nay,

Nay, if thou lov'ft me, gentle year,
Let not so much as love be there,

Vain, fruitless love I mean; for, gentle year,
Although I fear,

There's of this caution little need,

Yet, gentle year, take heed

How thou doft make

Such a mistake;

Such love I mean alone

As by thy cruel predeceffors has been shewn;
For, though I have too much caufe to doubt it,
I fain would try, for once, if life can live with--
out it.

The reader of this will be inclined to cry out with Prior

Ye Critics, fay,

How poor to this was Pindar's ftyle!

Even those who cannot perhaps find in the Ihmian or Nemean fongs what Antiquity has ditpofed them to expect, will at least fee that they are ill reprefented by fuch puny poetry; and all will determine that, if this be the old Theban ftrain, it is not worthy of revival.

To the difproportion and incongruity of Cowley's fentiments must be added the uncertainty and looseness of his measures. He takes the liberty of using in any place a verse of any length, from two fyllables to twelve. The verfes of Pindar have, as he obferves, very little harmony to a modern ear; yet by examining the fyllables we perceive them to be regular, and have reafon enough for fuppofing that the ancient audiences were delighted with the found. The imitator ought therefore to have adopted what he found, and to have added what was wanting; to have preferved a conftant return of the fame numbers, and to have fupplied fmoothness of tranfition and continuity of thought.

It is urged by Dr. Sprat, that the irregularity of numbers is the very thing which makes that kind of poefy fit for all manner of subjects. But he should have remembered, that what is fit for every thing can fit nothing well. The great pleasure of verfe arifes from the known measure of the lines, and uniform ftructure of the ftanzas, by which the voice is regulated, and the memory relieved.