can ultimately counterbalance the loss of sight, and that long train of nervous diseases superinduced by unremitted application.

"I mean not to excite your sympathy: nor will I exaggerate my evils by description. My appearance has already convinced you that I am the victim of disease. Nor will you hesitate to believe that the stone, the gout, the hypochondria, which have worn out my tender frame, were derived from an attention unrelieved by the usual and necessary relaxations, Had I been wise enough to have mounted a horse during the intervals of reading, and to have entered into cheerful company at the close of a thoughtful day, I might have prolonged my favourite enjoyments to a happy old age.

"I am philosopher enough to bear with patience a condition which I cannot alter; yet I sometimes think, though without the least degree of envy, that an old schoolfellow of mine, of a very different turn from myself, is far happier. I remember I used to laugh at him, and think him very silly, when, at the time we were at the University together, he used to miss an ingenious lecture for the sake of a ride, and spend the three shillings with which I should have bought a book, in the hire of a horse. It is true, indeed, that he need not, and ought not to have neglected his mental improvement, because he had many opportunities of relaxation after the hours of study were elapsed. Yet if I judge of his conduct by the apparent effects of it at present, it appears to me in a less blamable light than it used to do. He is now at the age of sixty-three, for he was somewhat older than myself, and retains all the vigour and alertness of a young man. His countenance is hale, his limbs muscular, and he reads the service and the newspaper, the only things he does read, without spectacles.

"He set out in life as friendless as myself. He engaged in a curacy in a sporting country. His love of field diversions soon introduced him to what was called the best company. He possessed the external graces of behaviour, and at the same time was deeply skilled in horseflesh, and had Bracken's Farriery by heart. Such merits could not long pass unrewarded. A baronet in the neighbourhood grew fond of him, and introduced him to his family; one of whom was an only daughter, of no great personal or mental accomplishments. My friend, however, admired her fortune, and found no difficulty in obtaining her hand. The living on which he now resides was part of her portion; and, though of no great value, yet it furnishes him with a pretty snug sporting box. He commonly reads prayers in his boots and spurs, while his hunter stands neighing in the porch till honest Moses has twanged through his nose the final and joyful Amen. It is true, my old friend has no taste, no learning, no refinement, but he has the use of his eyes, and a never ceasing flow of spirits; he can walk as well as ever, has an excellent digestion, and plenty to furnish it with constant employment.

"But his example is not to be followed, since he has run into an extreme, more culpable, though less pernicious to himself than mine is to me. Far happier and wiser the philosophical Euphranor, who, with the warmest affection for learning, restrained it, as he has every other inordinate attachment, by the rules of prudence; and by paying all the attention which nature and reason require, to his body and to his mind, has advanced the condition of both to a high degree of attainable perfection."

264

173.

No. CLXXIII.

On the Merits of Cowley as a Poet.

THE biographers of our English authors have sometimes fallen into a mistake, which renders the truth of their story suspected. Their accounts are truly panegyrics. The hero of their tales, like the lover in the romance, is adorned with every good quality. Not content to relate facts with impartiality, they extenuate what is culpable, and exaggerate all that can admit of commendation. In truth, they who have exhibited the lives of our authors, have usually been the editors of their works; and either from a real and natural fondness for those things on which they have bestowed care, or from the less laudable motive of promoting the circulation of a book in which they were interested, I have spoken too highly even of those who merit moderate applause. But i is not wonderful if the trader represents his own merchandize as the best in the marketplace.

It was the lot of Cowley to be handed down to posterity by a writer who was famous in his day for eloquence. Dr. Sprat probably undertook the office of a biographer, with a design to display his talent in a species of oratory which the Roman rhetorician called the demonstrative. He discharged it well a an artist, but failed as an accurate historian. B placing Cowley in the first rank of poets, he has i effect degraded him from the subaltern station whic he had else preserved unmolested. Dr. Sprat owe much of his own fame to the poet who had compare his style to the gentle and majestic current of th

Thames; and returned the compliment, perhaps from other motives than those of gratitude; for the higher Cowley was exalted, the greater honour was reflected on those whom he had commended. Of this celebrated Bishop of Rochester, Lord Orrery has said, few men have gained a greater character for elegance and correctness, and few men have deserved it less. And of the poet whom he praised, the great Dryden has with diffidence remarked, that somewhat of the purity of English, somewhat of more equal thoughts, somewhat of sweetness in the numbers; in one word, somewhat of a finer turn and more lyrical verse is yet wanting.

Whatever are his defects, no poet has been more liberally praised. Lord Clarendon has said, he made a flight above all men; Addison, in his account of the English Poets, that he improved upon the Theban bard; the Duke of Buckingham upon his Tombstone, that he was the English Pindar, the Horace, the Virgil, the Delight, the Glory, of his Times. And with respect to the harshness of his numbers, the eloquent Sprat tells us, that if his verses in some places seem not as soft and flowing as one would have them, it was his choice, and not his fault.

Such is the applause lavished on a writer who is now seldom read. That he could ever be esteemed as a pindaric poet is a curious literary phenomenon. He totally mistook his own genius when he thought of imitating Pindar. He totally mistook the genius of Pindar when he thought his own incoherent sentiments and numbers bore the least resemblance to the wild, yet regular sublimity of the Theban. He neglected even those forms, the strophe, antistrophe, and epode, which even imitative dulness can copy. Sublime imagery, vehement pathos, poetic fire, which constitute the essence of the Pindaric ode, are inVOL. III.

A A

compatible with witty conceits, accurate antitheses, and vulgar expression. All these imply the coolness of deliberate composition, or the meanness of a little mind; both of them most repugnant to the truly Pindaric ode, in which all is rapturous and noble. Wit of any kind would be improperly displayed in such composition; but to increase the absurdity, the wit of Cowley is often false.

If the end of poetry is to please, harmony of verse is essential to poetry, for, without it, poetry cannot please. It is not possible that any, whose ear has been attuned to the melody of good composition, should read a single ode of Cowley without being shocked with discord. There is often nothing left but the jingle at the end to distinguish poems, renowned for their sublimity, from affected prose. Such poetry may justly incur the ridiculous title of Prose run mad.

Yet is there sometimes interwoven a purple patch, as Horace calls it; a fine expression, a truly poetical thought, an harmonious couplet; but it occurs not often enough to repay the reader for the toilsome task of wading through a tedious assemblage of disproportioned and discordant stanzas. Of such consist his Pindarics; which, though they procured him the greatest share of his reputation, deserved it least. Many of his other poems, if we consider the rude state of versification, and the bad taste of the times, have great merit; and had he made Tibullus his model, instead of Pindar, his claim to the first rank of poets had not been called in question. The tenderness of love, and the soft language of complaint, were adapted to his genius. But he chose to tread in the footsteps of Alcæus, as he says himself, who, according to the Halicarnassian, combined the μεγαλοφνες και ηδν, or adopted the grand as well as the sweet.