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In the third,

Brass was his helmet, his boots brass, and o'er
His breast a thick plate of strong brass he wore.'

In the fourth,

And,

Like some fair pine o'erlooking all th' ignobler wood.'

'Some from the rocks cast themselves down headlong.'

And many more: but it is enough to instance in a few. The thing is, that the disposition of words and numbers should be such, as that, out of the order and sound of them, the things themselves may be represented. This the Greeks were not so accurate as to bind themselves to; neither have our English poets observed it, for aught I can find. The Latins (qui Musas colunt severiores) sometimes did it; and their prince, Virgil, always, in whom the examples are innumerable, and taken notice of by all judicious men, so that it is superfluous to collect them."

I know not whether he has, in many of these instances, attained the representation or resemblance that he purposes. Verse can imitate only sound and motion. A boundless verse, a headlong verse, and a verse of brass or of strong brass, seem to comprise very incongruous and unsociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the sound of the line expressing loose care, I cannot discover; nor why the pine is taller in an Alexandrine than in ten syllables.

But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example of representative versification, which, perhaps, no other English line can equal:

"Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise:

He who defers this work from day to day,

Does on a river's bank expecting stay

Till the whole stream that stopp'd him shall be gone,
Which runs, and as it runs, for ever shall run on."

Cowley was, I believe, the first poet that mingled Alexandrines at pleasure with the common heroic of ten syllables; and from him Dryden borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He considered the verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestic, and has, therefore, deviated into that measure when he supposes the voice heard of the Supreme Being.

The author of the Davideis is commended by Dryden for having written it in couplets, because he discovered that any staff was too lyrical for an heroic poem ; but this seems to have been known before by May and Sandys, the translators of the Pharsalia and the Metamorphoses.

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In the Davideis are some hemistichs, or verses left imperfect by the author, in imitation of Virgil, whom he supposes not to have intended to complete them. That this opinion is erroneous, may be probably concluded, because this truncation is imitated by no subsequent Roman poet; because Virgil himself filled up one broken line

in the heat of recitation; because in one the sense is now unfinished; and because all that can be done by a broken verse, a line intersected by a cæsura and a full-stop will equally effect.

Of triplets in his Davideis he makes no use, and perhaps did not at first think them allowable; but he appears afterwards to have changed his mind, for in the verses on the government of Cromwell he inserts them liberally with great happiness.

After so much criticism on his poems, the essays which accompany them must not be forgotten. What is said by Sprat of his conversation, that no man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, may be applied to these compositions. No author ever kept his verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural; and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought or hard-laboured, but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness.

It has been observed by Felton, in his Essay on the Classics, that Cowley was beloved by every Muse that he courted; and that he has rivalled the ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy.

It may be affirmed, without any encomiastic fervour, that he brought to his poetic labours a mind replete with learning, and that his pages are embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply; that he was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode, and the gaiety of the less; that he was equally qualified for sprightly sallies and for lofty flights; that he was among those who freed translation from servility, and, instead of following his author at a distance, walked by his side; and that, if he left versification yet improvable, he left likewise, from time to time, such specimens of excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it.*

* Cowley had designed also A Discourse concerning Style and A Review of the Principles of the Primitive Christian Church, but was prevented by death. A spurious piece, entitled The Iron Age, was published under his name, during his absence abroad, of which he speaks, in the preface to his poems, with some asperity and concern. "I wondered very much," says he, "how one who could be so foolish to write so ill verses should yet be so wise to set them forth as another man's rather than his own; though perhaps he might have made a better choice, and not fathered the bastard upon such a person whose stock of reputation is, I fear, little enough for the maintenance of his own numerous legitimate offspring of that kind. It would have been much less injurious if it had pleased the author to put forth some of my writings under his own name, rather than his own under mine. He had been in that a more pardonable plagiary, and had done less wrong by robbery than he does by such a bounty: for nobody can be justified by the imputation even of another's merit; and our own coarse clothes are like to become us better than those of another man's, though never so rich. But these, to say the truth, were so beggarly that I myself was ashamed to wear them." This extract shows Mr. Cowley to be as great a wit in prose as he is in verse; and Mr. Addison has observed, that of all the authors that ever wrote, none ever abounded so much in wit, according to Mr. Locke's true definition of it, as Mr. Cowley.

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Richard Lovelace, the eldest son of Sir William Lovelace, of Woolwich, in Kent, was born in 1618, and entered on his studies at the Charterhouse, from whence he went to Oxford, and became a gentleman commoner of Gloucester Hall in 1634, being then sixteen years old. He was accounted the most amiable and beautiful person that ever eye beheld; of innate modesty, virtue, and courtly deportment, which made him then, but especially after, when he retired to the great city, much admired and adored by the female sex. In 1636, on the king and queen's visit to Oxford, he was, at the request of a great lady belonging to the queen, created master of arts. Although about two years' standing, his conversation and conduct on this occasion displayed his ingenuity and generous soul; and he became as much the idol of the male as he was before of the female sex.

On leaving the University, he attended the court in great splendour; and being patronised by Lord Goring (afterwards Earl of Norwich), was by him sent with the Scotch expedition in 1639, serving as an ensign. In the second expedition he obtained a captain's commis sion; and wrote a tragedy called The Soldier, which has never been printed, and the stage being soon after suppressed, was never acted. After the pacification at Berwick, he retired to Lovelace Place, in the parish of Bethersden, at Canterbury. His estate there and at Chart

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