The jocund orbs shall break their measur'd pace,
And stubborn poles change their allotted place.

Heaven's gilded troops shall flutter here and there,

Leaving their boasting songs tun'd to a sphere,

Every reader feels himself weary with this useless talk of an allegorical Being. It is not only when the events are confessedly miraculous, that fancy and Action lose their effect: the whole system of life, while the Theocracy was yet visible, has an appearance so different from all other scenes of human action, that the reader of the Sacred Volume habitually considers it as the peculiar mode of existence of a distinct species of mankind, that lived and acted with manners uncommunicable; so that it is difficult even for imagination to place us in the state of them whose story is related, and by consequence their joys and griefs are not easily adopted, nor can the attention be often interested in any thing that befalls them.

To the subject thus originally indisposed to the reception of poetical embellishments, the writer brought little that could reconcile impatience, or attract curiosity. Nothing can be more disgusting than a narrative spangled with conceits, and conceits are all that the Davideis supplies.

One of the great sources of poetical delight is description, or the power of presenting pictures to the mind. Cowley gives inferences instead of images, and shews not what may be supposed to have been seen, but what thoughts the sight might have suggested. When Virgil describes the stone which Turnus lifted against Æneas, he fixes the attention on its bulk and weight:

Saxum circumspicit ingens,

Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat
Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis.

Cowley says of the stone with which Cain slew his brother,

I saw him fling the stone, as if he meant

At once his murther and his monument.

Of the sword taken from Goliah, he says,

A sword so great, that it was only fit

To cut off his great head that came with it.

Other poets describe death by some of its common appearances. Cowley says, with a learned allusion to sepulchral lamps real or fabulous,

'Twixt his right ribs deep pierc'd the furious Blade,

And open'd wide those secret vessels where

Life's light goes out, when first they let in air,

But he has allusions vulgar as well as learned. In a visionary succession of kings: Joas at first does bright and glorious show,

In life's fresh morn his fame does early crow.

Describing an undisciplined army, after having said with elegance,
His forces seem'd no army, but a crowd
Heartless, unarm'd, disorderly, and loud,

he gives them a fit of the ague.

The allusions, however, are not always to vulgar things: he offends by exaggeration as much as by diminution :

The king was plac'd alone, and o'er his head

A well-wrought heaven of silk and gold was spread.

Whatever he writes is always polluted with some conceit:
Where the sun's fruitful beams give metals birth,
Where he the growth of fatal gold does see,

Gold, which alone more influence has than he.

In one passage he starts a sudden question, to the confusion of philosophy:
Ye learned heads, whom ivy garlands grace,

Why does that twining plant the oak embrace?
The oak for courtship most of all unfit,

And rough as are the winds that fight with it.

His expressions have sometimes a degree of meanness that surpasses expectation:

Nay, gentle guests, he cries, since now your 're in,
The story of your gallant friend begin.

In a simile descriptive of the Morning:

As glimmering stars just at th' approach of day,
Cashier'd by troops, at, last drop all away.

The dress of Gabriel deserves attention:

He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,
Than e'er the midday sun pierc'd through with light,
Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,
Wash'd from the morning beauties deepest red,
An harmless flattering meteor shone for hair,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care;

He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies,
Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes:
This he with starry vapours sprinkles all,
Took in their prime ere they grow ripe and fall;
Of a new rainbow ere it fret or fade,

The choicest piece cut out, a scarfe is made.

This is a just specimen of Cowley's imagery: what might in general expressions be great and forcible, he weakens and makes ridiculous by branching it into small parts. That Gabriel was invested with the softest or brightest colours of the sky, we might have been told, and been dismissed to improve the idea in our different proportions of conception; but Cowley could not let us go-till he had related where Gabriel got first his skin, and then his mantle, then his lace, and then his scarfe, and related it in the terms of the mercer and the taylor. Sometimes he indulges himself in a digression, always conceived with his natural exuberance, and commonly, even where it is not long, continued till it is tedious:

VOL. I

As the Davideis affords only four books, though intended to consist of twelve, there is no opportunity for such criticisms as Epick poems commonly supply. The plan of the whole work is very imperfectly shewn by the third part. The duration of an unfinished action cannot be known. Of characters either not yet introduced, or shewn hut apon few occasions, the full extent and the pice discriminations cannot be ascertained. The fable is plainly implex, formed rather from the Odyssey than the Iliad: and many artifices of diversification are employed, with the skill of a man acquainted with the best models. The past is recalled by narration, and the future anticipated by vision: but he has been so lavish of his poetical art, that it is difficult to imagine how he could fill eight books more without practising again the same modes of disposing his matter; and perhaps the perception of this growing incumbrance inclined him to stop. By this abruption, posterity lost more instruction than delight. If the continuation of the Davideis can be missed, it is for the learning that had been diffused over it, and the notes in which it had been explained.

Had not his characters been depraved like every other part by improper deçorations, they would have deserved uncommon praise. He gives Saul both the body and mind of a hero:

His way once chose, he forward thrust outright,

Nor turn'd aside for danger or delight.

And the different beauties of the lofty Merah and the gentle Michol are very justly conceived and strongly painted.

Rymer has declared the Davideis superior to the Jerusalem of Fasso, “which," says he, the poet, with all his care, has not totally purged from pedantry." If by pedantry is meant that minute knowledge which is derived from particular sciences and studies, in opposition to the general notions supplied by a wide survey of life and nature, Cowley certainly errs, by introducing pedantry far more frequently than Tasso. I know not, indeed, why they should be compared; for the resemblance of Cowley's work to Tasso's is only that they both exhibit the agency of celestial and infernal spirits, in which however they differ widely; for Cowley supposes them to operate commonly upon the mind by suggestion; Tasso represents them as promoting or obstructing events by external agency.

Of particular passages that can be properly compared, I remember only the description of Heaven, in which the different manner of the two writers

is sufficiently discernible. Cowley's is scarcely description, unless it be possible to describe by negatives; for he tells us only what there is not in heaven. Tasso endeavours to represent the splendours, and pleasures of the regions of happiness. Tasso affords images, and Cowley sentiments. It happens, however, that Tasso's description affords some reason for Rynier's censure. He says the Supreme Being,

Hà fotto i piedi e fato e la natura

Ministri humili, e'l moto, e ch'il misura:

of

The second line has in it more of pedantry than perhaps can be found it any other stanza of the poem.

In the perusal of the Davideis, as of all Cowley's works, we find wit and learning unprofitably squandered. Attention has no relief, the affections are never moved; we are sometimes surprised, but never delighted, and find much to admire, but little to approve. Still however it is the work of Cowley, of a Rind capacious by nature, and replenished by study.

In the general review of Cowley's poetry it will be found, that he wrote with abundant fertility, but negligent or unskilful selection; with much thought, but with little imagery; that he is never pathetick, and rarely sub lime, but always either ingenious or learned, either acute or profound It is said by Denham in his elegy,

To him no author was unknown;

Yet what he writ was all his own.

This wide position requires less limitation, when it is affirmed of Cowley, thank perhaps of any other poet.-He read much, and yet borrowed little.

His character of writing was indeed not his own: he unhappily adopted that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise, and not suffciently enquiring by what means the ancierits have continued to delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself with a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure in its spring was bright and gay, but which time has been continually stealing from his brows.

He was in his own time considered as of unrivalled excellence. Clatendon represents him as having taking a flight beyond all that went before him; and Milton is said to have declared, that the three greatest English poets were Spenser, Shakspeare, and Cowley,

His manner he had in common with others: but his sentiments were his own. Upon every subject he thought for himself: and such was his copiousness of knowledge, that something at once remote and applicable-inshed into his mind; yet it is not likely that he always rejected a commodious idea merely because another had used it: his known wealth was so great, that he might have borrowed without loss of credit.

In his elegy on Sir Henry Wotton, the last lines have such resemblance to the noble epigram of Grotius upon the death of Scaliger, that I cannot but think them copied from it, though they are copied by no servile hand.

F 2

One

One passage in his Mistress is so apparently borrowed from Donne, that he probably would not have written it, had it not mingled with his own thoughts, so as that he did not perceive himself taking it from another:

Although I think thou never found wilt be,

Yet I'm resolved to search for thee;
The search itself rewards the pains.
So, though the chymist his great secret miss,
(For neither it in Art nor Nature is)

Yet things well worth his toil he gains:
And does his charge and labour pay

With good unsought experiments by the way.

Jonson and Donne, as Dr. Hurd renrarks, were then in the highest esteem. It is related by Clarendon, that Cowley always acknowledges his obligation to the learning and industry of Jonson; but I have found no traces of Jonson in his works: to emulate Donne, appears to have been his purpose; and from Donne, he may have learned that familiarity with religious images, and that light allusion to sacted things, by which readers far short of sanctity are fre quently offended, and which would not be borne in the present age, wher devotion, perhaps not more fervent, is more delicate.

Having produced one passage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will recom pense him by another which Milton seems to have borrowed from him, He says of Goliah,

His spear, the trunk was of a lofty tree,

Which Nature meant some tall ship's mast should be.'

Milton of Satan:

His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great admiral, were but a wand,
He walked with.

ול.