provement, but will never ftrike with the fense of pleasure.

Of all this, Cowley feems to have been without knowledge, or without care. He makes no selection of words, nor feeks any neatnefs of phrafe: 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 those scattered 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 heroick poem is less familiar than that of his flighteft writings. He has given not the fame numbers, but the fame diction, to the gentle Anacreon and the tempestuous 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 many noble lines, fuch as the feeble care of

Waller

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 meannefs or afperity.

His contractions are often rugged and barth :

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 destroy 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 easily into the latter.

The words do and did, which fo much degrade in prefent eftimation the line that admits them, were in the time of Cowley little cenfured or avoided; how often he used them,

them, and with how bad an effect, at leaft to our ears, will appear by a paffage, in which every reader will lament to see just and noble thoughts defrauded of their praise 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.

Who by refolves and vows engag'd does stand
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 so,

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

His heroick lines are often formed of monofyllables; but yet they are fometimes sweet and fonorous.

He fays of the Meffiah,

4

Round

Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall

found,

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.

He did not write without attempting an improved and scientifick 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 admo"nish the most part of readers, that it is not

by negligence that this verfe is fo loose, "long, and, as it were, vaft; it is to paint

in the number the nature of the thing "which it defcribes, which I would have ob"ferved in divers other places of this poem, "that else will pass for very careless verses "as before,

And over-runs the neighb'ring fields with violent

course.

VOL. I.

H

"In

"In the fecond book;

Down a precipice deep, down be cafts them all.

66 -And,

And fell a-down bis fhoulders with loofe care.

"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 "instance 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 re"presented. This the Greeks were not so "accurate as to bind themselves to; neither "have our English poets obferved it, for

66

aught I can find. The Latins (qui mufas "volunt feveriores) fometimes did it, and "their prince, Virgil, always: in whom the examples are innumerable, and taken no6

❝tice