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both fignifications. Thus, "obferving the cold re"gard of his mistress'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"felf 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."

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These conceits Addifon calls mixed wit; that is. wit which confifts of thoughts true in one fenfe of the expreffion, and falfe 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 antients, he might have found it full-blown in modern Italy. Thus Sannazaro:

Afpice quam variis diftringar Lefbia curis !

Uror, & heu! noftro manat ab igne liquor:
Sum Nilus, fumque Etna fimul; reftringite flammas
O lacrimæ, aut lacrimas ebibe flamma meas.

One of the fevere theologians of that time cenfured him as having published 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 lafciviousness is unjust, the perufal of his work will fufficiently evince.

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

Her

Her beauty and abfence, her kindness and cruelty, her difdain and inconftancy, produce no correfpondence of emotion. His poetical account of the virtues of plants, and colours of flowers, is not perused with more fluggish frigidity. The compofitions are fuch as might have been written for penance by `a hermit, or for hire by a philofophical rhymer who had only heard of another fex; for they turn the mind only on the writer, whom, without thinking on a woman but as the fubject for his tafk, we fometimes efteem as learned, and fometimes defpife as trifling, always admire as ingenious, and always condemn as unnatural.

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The Pindarique Odes are now to be confidered; a fpecies of compofition, which Cowley thinks Pancirolus might have counted in his lift of the loft inventions of antiquity, and which he has made a bold and vigorous attempt to recover.

The purpose with which he has paraphrafed an Olympick and Nemaan Ode is by himself sufficiently explained. His endeavour was, not to fhew precisely what Pindar Spoke, but his manner of Speaking. He was therefore not at all reftrained to his expreffions, nor much to his fentiments; nothing was required of him, but not to write as Pindar would not have written.

Of the Olympick Ode, the beginning is, I think, above the original in elegance, and the conclufion below it in ftrength. The connection is fupplied with great perfpicuity; and the thoughts, which to a reader of lefs fkill feem thrown together by chance, are concatenated without any abruption. Though

the

the English ode cannot be called a translation, it may be very properly confulted as a commentary.

The fpirit of Pindar is indeed not every where equally preferved. The following pretty lines are not fuch as his deep mouth was used to pour:

Great Rhea's fon,

If in Olympus' top, where thou
Sitt'ft to behold thy facred show,
If in Alpheus' filver flight,
If in my verfe, thou take delight,
My verfe, great Rhea's fon, which is
Lofty as that and smooth as this.

In the Nemean ode the reader muft, in mere juftice to Pindar, obferve, that whatever is faid of the original new moon, her tender fore-head and her borns, is fuperadded by his paraphraft, who has many other plays of words and fancy unsuitable to the original,

as,

The table, free for ev'ry guest,

No doubt will thee admit,

And feast more upon thee, than thou on it.

He fometimes extends his author's thoughts without improving them. In the Olympionick an oath is mentioned in a fingle word, and Cowley fpends three lines in fwearing by the Caftalian Stream. We are told of Theron's bounty, with a hint that he had enemies, which Cowley thus enlarges in rhyming profe:

But in this thankless world the giver
Is envied even by the receiver;

'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 such 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 those of the Theban Bard were to his contemporaries:

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 fmooth 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 enthufiafin, who will not lament to find the poet conclude with lines like these:

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 pursuing 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 fcrupulous enumeration, and the force of metaphors is lost, when the mind by the mention of particulars is turned more upon the original than the secondary sense, 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 harnesses Fancy and Judgement, Wit and Eloquence, Memory and Invention: how he diftinguished 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 juftified his own fiction, and wish to fee the Mufe begin her career'; but there is yet more to be done.

Let the peftillion 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 pleafant truths, and ufeful

lies,

In all their gaudy liveries.

VOL. IX.

E

Every

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