artifices of inverfion, by which the eftablished order of words is changed, or of innovation, by which new words or meanings of words are introduced, is practised, not by those who talk to be understood, but by those who write to be admired.

The Anacreontiques therefore of Cowley give now all the pleasure which they ever gave. If he was formed by nature for one kind of writing more than for another, his power feems to have been greatest in the familiar and the feftive.

The next clafs of his poems is called The Mistress, of which it is not neceffary to felect any particular pieces for praise or cenfure. They have all the fame beauties and faults, and nearly in the fame proportion. They are written with exuberance of wit, and with copiousness of learning; and it is truly afferted by Sprat, that the plenitude of the writer's knowledge flows in upon his page, fo that the reader is commonly furprized into fome improvement. But, confidered as the verses of a lover, no man that has ever loved will much commend them. They are neither courtly nor pathetick, have neither gallantry nor fondness. His praises are too far fought, and too hyperbolical, either to exprefs love, or to excite it; every ftanza is crowded with darts and flames, with wounds and death, with mingled fouls and with broken hearts.

The principal artifice by which The Mistress is filled with conceits is very copiously displayed by Addifon. Love is by Cowley, as by other poets, expreffed metaphorically by flame and fire; and that which is true of real fire is faid of love, or figurative fire, the fame word in the fame fentence retaining

both

both fignifications. Thus, "obferving the cold regard of his miftrefs'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 greateft 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."

Thefe 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 profaneness, 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.

66

Cowley's Miftrefs 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 philosophical 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 subject for his tafk, we fometimes efteem as learned, and fometimes defpife as trifling, always admire as ingenious, and always condemn as unnatural.

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 paraphrased an Olympick and Nemæan Ode is by himself fufficiently explained. His endeavour was, not to fhew precifely what Pindar fpoke, but his manner of Speaking. He was therefore not at all restrained 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 supplied 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 tranflation, 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 fhow,
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, observe, 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 unfuitable to the original,

as,

The table, free for ev'ry guest,

No doubt will thee admit,

And feaft more upon thee, than thou on it.

He sometimes 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 fuch minute morality in fuch feeble diction, could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar.

In the following odes, where Cowley choofes his own fubjects, he fometimes rifes to dignity truly Pindarick; and, if fome deficiencies of language be forgiven, his ftrains are fuch as thofe 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 enthusiasm, who will not lament to find the poet conclude with lines like these :

But ftop, my Mufe

Hold thy Pindarick Pegafus closely in,
Which does to rage begin-

'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth'd horse