that only a chymift can recover it; fenfe may be fo hidden in unrefined and plebeian words, that none but philofophers can distinguish it; and both may be fo buried in impurities, as not to pay the coft of their extraction.

The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself to the intellectual eye: and if the first appearance offends, a further knowledge is not often fought. Whatever profeffes to benefit by pleasing, must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply fomething fudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always furprise. What is perceived by flow degrees may gratify us with consciousness of improvement, but will never strike with the fense of pleasure.

Of all this, Cowley appears to have been without knowledge, or without care. He makes no selection of words, nor feeks any neatness of phrase: he has no elegancies either lucky or elaborate: as his endeavours were rather to imprefs fentences upon the understanding than images on the fancy; he has few epithets, and thofe fcattered without peculiar propriety or nice adaptation. It seems to follow from the neceffity of the fubject, rather than the care of the writer, that the diction of his heroic poem is lefs familiar than that of his flighteft writings. He has given not the fame numbers, but the fame diction, to the gentle Anacreon and the tempeftuous Pindar.

His verfification feems to have had very little of his care; and if what he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmufical only when they are ill-read, the art of reading them is at prefent loft; for they are commonly harsh to modern ears. He has indeed VOL. IX.

F

many

many noble lines, fuch as the feeble care of Waller never could produce. The bulk of his thoughts fometimes fwelled his verfe to unexpected and inevitable grandeur; but his excellence of this kind is merely fortuitous: he finks willingly down to his general careleffnefs, and avoids with very little care either meanness or afperity.

His contractions are often rugged and harsh :

One flings a mountain, and its rivers too
Torn up with 't.

His rhymes are very often made by pronouns, or particles, or the like unimportant words, which disappoint the ear, and deftroy the energy of the line.

His combination of different measures is fometimes diffonant and unpleafing; he joins verfes together, of which the former does not flide eafily into the latter.

The words do and did, which fo much degrade in prefent estimation the line that admits them, were in the time of Cowley little cenfured or avoided; how often he used them, and with how bad an effect, at leaft to our ears, will appear by a paffage, in which every reader will lament to fee juft and noble thoughts defrauded of their praife by inelegance of language:

Where honour or where confcience does not bind,

No other law fhall fhackle me;

Slave to myself I ne'er will be;

Nor fhall my future actions be confin'd

By my own prefent mind.

Whe

4

Who by refolves and vows engag'd does ftand

For days, that yet belong to fate,
Does like an unthrift mortgage his eftate,
Before it falls into his hand;

The bondman of the cloister fo,

All that he does receive does always owe.
And ftill as Time comes in, it goes away,
Not to enjoy, but debts to pay !
Unhappy flave, and pupil to a bell!

Which his hour's work as well as hours does tell:
Unhappy till the laft, the kind releafing knell.

His heroic lines are often formed of monofyllables but yet they are fometimes fweet and fonorous.

He fays of the Meffiah,

Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound,
And reach to worlds that must not yet be found.

In another place, of David,

Yet bid him go fecurely, when he fends;
'Tis Saul that is his foe, and we his friends.
The man who has his God, no aid can lack; ·
And we who bid him go, will bring him back:

Yet amidst his negligence he fometimes attempted an improved and fcientifick verfification; of which it will be beft to give his own, account fubjoined to this line:

Nor can the glory contain itself in th' endless fpace..

"I am forry that it is neceffary to admonish the "moft part of readers, that it is not by negligence "that this verfe is fo loofe, long, and, as it were,

F 2

" vaft A

"vaft; is to paint in the number the nature of "the thing which it defcribes, which I would have ❝observed in divers other places of this poem, "that elfe will pafs for very careless verses: as ❝ before,

રં

And over-runs the neighb'ring fields with violent course.

"In the fecond book;

66

Down a precipice deep, down he cafts them all,

"And,

And fell a-down his fhoulders with loose cares

"In the third,

Brafs was his helmet, his boots brafs, and o'er
His breaft a thick plate of strong brass he wore.

"In the fourth,

Like fome fair pine o'er-looking all th' ignobler wood.

"And,

Some from the rocks caft themselves down headlong.

"And many more: but it is enough to inftance in a few. The thing is, that the difpofition of words and numbers should be fuch, as that, out of the "order and found of them, the things themselves may be represented. This the Greeks were not fo " accurate as to bind themselves to; neither have our English poets obferved it, for aught I can "find. The Latins (qui Mufas colunt feveriores) fome"times did it; and their prince, Virgil, always: in "whom the examples are innumerable, and taken

❝ notice

"notice of by all judicious men, fo that it is fuper"fluous to collect them."

I know not whether he has, in many of these inftances, attained the reprefentation or refemblance that he purposes. Verte can imitate only found and motion. A boundless verfe, a beadlong verfe, and a verfe of brass or of ftrong brass, feem to comprise very incongruous and unfociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the found of the line expreffing loose care, I cannot discover; nor why the pine is taller in an Alexandrine than in ten fyllables.

But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example of reprefentative verfification, which perhaps no other English line can equal; Begin, be bold, and venture to be wife:

He, who defers this work from day to day,
Does on a river's bank expecting stay

Till the whole ftream 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 heroick of ten fyllables; and from him Dryden borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He confidered the verfe of twelve fyllables as elevated and majestick, and has therefore deviated into that measure when he fuppofes 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 ftaff was too lyrical for an heroick poem; but this feems to have been known before by May and Sandys, the tranflators of the Pharfalia and the Metamorphofes.