The verses to Davenant, which are vigorously begun and happily concluded, contain some hints of criticism very justly conceived and happily expressed. Cowley's critical abilities have not been sufficiently observed: the few decisions and remarks, which his prefaces and his notes on the Davideis supply, were, at that time, accessions to English literature, and show such skill as raises our wish for more examples.
The lines from Jersey are a very curious and pleasing specimen of the familiar descending to the burlesque.
His two metrical disquisitionsforandagainstreason are no mean specimens of metaphysical poetry. The stanzas against knowledge produce little conviction. In those which are intended to exalt the human faculties, reason has its proper task assigned it; that of judging, not of things revealed, but of the reality of revelation. In the verses for reason, is a passage which Bentley, in the only English verses which he is known to have written, seems to have copied, though with the inferiority of an imitator.
The holy book like the eighth sphere doth shineWith thousand lights of truth divine,So numberless the stars, that to our eyeIt makes all but one galaxy.Yet reason must assist too; for, in seasSo vast and dangerous as these,Our course by stars above we cannot knowWithout the compass too below.
After this, says Bentley[20]:
Who travels in religious jars,Truth mix'd with error, shade with rays,Like Whiston wanting pyx or stars,In ocean wide or sinks or strays.
Cowley seems to have had what Milton is believed to have wanted, the skill to rate his own performances by their just value, and has, therefore, closed his miscellanies with the verses upon Crashaw, which apparently excel all that have gone before them, and in which there are beauties which common authors may justly think not only above their attainment, but above their ambition.
To the miscellanies succeed the Anacreontiques, or paraphrastical translations of some little poems, which pass, however justly, under the name of Anacreon. Of these songs dedicated to festivity and gaiety, in which even the morality is voluptuous, and which teach nothing but the enjoyment of the present day, he has given rather a pleasing, than a faithful representation, having retained their sprightliness, but lost their simplicity. The Anacreon of Cowley, like the Homer of Pope, has admitted the decoration of some modern graces, by which he is undoubtedly more amiable to common readers, and, perhaps, if they would honestly declare their own perceptions, to far the greater part of those whom courtesy and ignorance are content to style the learned.
These little pieces will be found more finished in their kind than any other of Cowley's works. The diction shows nothing of the mould of time, and the sentiments are at no great distance from our present habitudes of thought. Real mirth must be always natural, and nature is uniform. Men have been wise in very different modes; but they have always laughed the same way.
Levity of thought naturally produced familiarity of language, and the familiar part of language continues long the same; the dialogue of comedy, when it is transcribed from popular manners, and real life, is read, from age to age, with equal pleasure. The artifices of inversion, by which the established 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 seems to have been greatest in the familiar and the festive.
The next class of his poems is called the Mistress, of which it is not necessary to select any particular pieces for praise or censure. They have all the same beauties and faults, and nearly in the same proportion. They are written with exuberance of wit, and with copiousness of learning; and it is truly asserted by Sprat, that the plenitude of the writer's knowledge flows in upon his page, so that the reader is commonly surprised into some improvement. But, considered 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-sought, and too hyperbolical, either to express love, or to excite it; every stanza is crowded with darts and flames, with wounds and death, with mingled souls, and with broken hearts.
The principal artifice by which the Mistress is filled with conceits, is very copiously displayed by Addison. Love is by Cowley, as by other poets, expressed metaphorically by flame and fire; and that which is true of real fire is said of love, or figurative fire, the same word in the same sentence retaining both significations. Thus, "observing the cold regard of his mistress's eyes, and, at the same time, their power of producing love in him, he considers them as burning-glasses made of ice. Finding himself able to live in the greatest 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 observes that his flames had burnt up and withered the tree."
These conceits Addison calls mixed wit; that is, wit which consists of thoughts true in one sense of the expression, and false in the other. Addison's representation is sufficiently indulgent: that confusion of images may entertain for a moment; but, being unnatural, it soon grows wearisome. Cowley delighted in it, as much as if he had invented it; but, not to mention the ancients, he might have found it full-blown in modern Italy. Thus Sannazaro:
Aspice quam variis distringar, Lesbia, curis!Uror, et heu! nostro manat ab igne liquor:Sum Nilus, sumque Aetna simul; restringite flammasO lacrimae, aut lacrimas ebibe, flamma, meas.
One of the severe theologians of that time censured him, as having published "a book of profane and lascivious verses." From the charge of profaneness, the constant tenour of his life, which seems to have been eminently virtuous, and the general tendency of his opinions, which discover no irreverence of religion, must defend him; but that the accusation of lasciviousness is unjust, the perusal of his work will sufficiently evince.
Cowley's Mistress has no power of seduction: she "plays round the head, but reaches not the heart." Her beauty and absence, her kindness and cruelty, her disdain and inconstancy, produce no correspondence of emotion. His poetical account of the virtues of plants, and colours of flowers, is not perused with more sluggish frigidity. The compositions are such as might have been written for penance by a hermit, or for hire by a philosophical rhymer, who had only heard of another sex; for they turn the mind only on the writer, whom, without thinking on a woman but as the subject for his task, we sometimes esteem as learned, and sometimes despise as trifling, always admire as ingenious, and always condemn as unnatural.
The Pindarique odes are now to be considered; a species of composition, which Cowley thinks Pancirolus might have counted in "his list of the lost 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 Nemaean ode, is, by himself, sufficiently explained. His endeavour was, not to show "precisely what Pindar spoke, but his manner of speaking." He was, therefore, not at all restrained to his expressions, nor much to his sentiments; 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 conclusion below it in strength. The connexion is supplied with great perspicuity; and the thoughts, which, to a reader of less skill, seem thrown together by chance, are concatenated without any abruption. Though the English ode cannot be called a translation, it may be very properly consulted as a commentary.
The spirit of Pindar is, indeed, not every where equally preserved. The following pretty lines are not such as hisdeep mouthwas used to pour:
Great Rhea's son,If in Olympus' top, where thouSitt'st to behold thy sacred show,If in Alpheus' silver flight,If in my verse thou take delight,My verse, great Rhea's son, which isLofty as that, and smooth as this.
In the Nemaean ode the reader must, in mere justice to Pindar, observe, that whatever is said of "the original new moon, her tender forehead, and her horns," is super-added by his paraphrast, who has many other plays of words and fancy unsuitable to the original, as
The table, free for ev'ry guest,No doubt will thee admit,And feast 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 single word, and Cowley spends three lines in swearing by the Castalian stream. We are told of Theron's bounty, with a hint that he had enemies, which Cowley thus enlarges in rhyming prose:
But in this thankless world the giverIs envied even by the receiver;'Tis now the cheap and frugal fashionRather to hide than own the obligation:Nay, 'tis much worse than so;It now an artifice does growWrongs and injuries to do,Lest men should think we owe.
It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and wit, when he was dealing out such minute morality in such feeble diction, could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar.
In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own subjects, he sometimes rises to dignity truly Pindarick; and, if some deficiencies of language be forgiven, his strains are such as those of the Theban bard were to his contemporaries:
Begin the song, and strike 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 song with smooth and equal measure dance;While the dance lasts, how long soe'er it be,My musick's voice shall bear it company;Till all gentle notes be drown'dIn the last trumpet's dreadful sound.
After such enthusiasm, who will not lament to find the poet conclude with lines like these:
But stop, my muse—Hold thy Pindarick Pegasus closely in,Which does to rage begin—'Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth'd horse—'Twill no unskilful touch endure,But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure.
The fault of Cowley, and, perhaps, of all the writers of the metaphysical race, is that of pursuing his thoughts to the last ramifications, by which he loses the grandeur of generality; for of the greatest things the parts are little; what is little can be but pretty, and, by claiming dignity, becomes ridiculous. Thus all the power of description is destroyed by a scrupulous enumeration, and the force of metaphors is lost, when the mind, by the mention of particulars, is turned more upon the original than the secondary sense, more upon that from which the illustration is drawn, than that to which it is applied.
Of this we have a very eminent example in the ode entitled the Muse, who goes to "take the air" in an intellectual chariot, to which he harnesses fancy and judgment, wit and eloquence, memory and invention: how he distinguished wit from fancy, or how memory could properly contribute to motion, he has not explained; we are, however, content to suppose that he could have justified his own fiction, and wish to see the muse begin her career; but there is yet more to be done:
Let thepostillion, nature, mount, and letThecoachmanart be set;And let the airyfootmen, running all beside,Make a long row of goodly pride;Figures, conceits, raptures, and sentences,In a well-worded dress,And innocent loves, and pleasant truths, and useful lies,In all their gaudyliveries.
Every mind is now disgusted with this cumber of magnificence; yet I cannot refuse myself the four next lines:
Mount, glorious queen, thy travelling throne,And bid it to put on;For long, though cheerful, is the way,And life, alas! allows but one ill winter's day.
In the same ode, celebrating the power of the muse, he gives her prescience, or, in poetical language, the foresight of events hatching in futurity; but, having once an egg in his mind, he cannot forbear to show us that he knows what an egg contains:
Thou into the close nests of time dost peep,And there with piercing eyeThrough the firm shell and the thick white dost spyYears to come a-forming lie,Close in their sacred fecundine asleep.
The same thought is more generally, and, therefore, more poetically expressed by Casimir, a writer who has many of the beauties and faults of Cowley:
Omnibus mundi dominator horisAptat urgendas per inane pennas,Pars adhuc nido latet, et futurosCrescit in annos.
Cowley, whatever was his subject, seems to have been carried, by a kind of destiny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which require still more ignoble epithets. A slaughter in the Red sea "new dies the water's name;" and England, during the civil war, was "Albion no more, nor to be named from white." It is, surely, by some fascination not easily surmounted, that a writer professing to revive "the noblest and highest writing in verse," makes this address to the new year:
Nay, if thou lov'st me, gentle year,Let not so much as love be there,Vain, fruitless love I mean; for, gentle year,Although I fearThere's of this caution little need,Yet, gentle year, take heedHow thou dost makeSuch a mistake;Such love I mean aloneAs by thy cruel predecessors has been shewn:For, though I have too much cause to doubt it,I fain would try, for once, if life can live without it.
The reader of this will be inclined to cry out, with Prior,
Ye criticks, say,How poor to this was Pindar's style!
Even those who cannot, perhaps, find in the Isthmian or Nemaean songs what antiquity has disposed them to expect, will, at least, see that they are ill represented by such puny poetry; and all will determine, that if this be the old Theban strain, it is not worthy of revival.
To the disproportion and incongruity of Cowley's sentiments, must be added the uncertainty and looseness of his measures. He takes the liberty of using, in any place, a verse of any length, from two syllables to twelve. The verses of Pindar have, as he observes, very little harmony to a modern ear; yet, by examining the syllables, we perceive them to be regular, and have reason enough for supposing that the ancient audiences were delighted with the sound. The imitator ought, therefore, to have adopted what he found, and to have added what was wanting; to have preserved a constant return of the same numbers, and to have supplied smoothness of transition and continuity of thought.
It is urged by Dr. Sprat, that the "irregularity of numbers is the very thing" which makes "that kind of poesy fit for all manner of subjects." But he should have remembered, that what is fit for every thing can fit nothing well. The great pleasure of verse arises from the known measure of the lines, and uniform structure of the stanzas, by which the voice is regulated, and the memory relieved.
If the Pindarick style be, what Cowley thinks it, "the highest and noblest kind of writing in verse," it can be adapted only to high and noble subjects; and it will not be easy to reconcile the poet with the critick, or to conceive how that can be the highest kind of writing in verse, which, according to Sprat, is "chiefly to be preferred for its near affinity to prose."
This lax and lawless versification so much concealed the deficiencies of the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle, that it immediately overspread our books of poetry; all the boys and girls caught the pleasing fashion, and they that could do nothing else could write like Pindar. The rights of antiquity were invaded, and disorder tried to break into the Latin: a poem[21] on the Sheldonian theatre, in which all kinds of verse are shaken together, is unhappily inserted in the Musae Anglicanae. Pindarism prevailed about half a century; but, at last, died gradually away, and other imitations supply its place.
The Pindarick odes have so long enjoyed the highest degree of poetical reputation, that I am not willing to dismiss them with unabated censure; and, surely, though the mode of their composition be erroneous, yet many parts deserve, at least, that admiration which is due to great comprehension of knowledge, and great fertility of fancy. The thoughts are often new, and often striking; but the greatness of one part is disgraced by the littleness of another; and total negligence of language gives the noblest conceptions the appearance of a fabrick, august in the plan, but mean in the materials. Yet, surely, those verses are not without a just claim to praise; of which it may be said with truth, that no man but Cowley could have written them.
The Davideis now remains to be considered; a poem which the author designed to have extended to twelve books, merely, as he makes no scruple of declaring, because the Aeneid had that number; but he had leisure or perseverance only to write the third part. Epick poems have been left unfinished by Virgil, Statius, Spenser, and Cowley. That we have not the whole Davideis, is, however, not much to be regretted; for in this undertaking Cowley is, tacitly, at least, confessed to have miscarried. There are not many examples of so great a work, produced by an author generally read, and generally praised, that has crept through a century with so little regard. Whatever is said of Cowley, is meant of his other works. Of the Davideis no mention is made; it never appears in books, nor emerges in conversation. By the Spectator it has been once quoted; by Rymer it has once been praised; and by Dryden, in Mac Flecknoe, it has once been imitated; nor do I recollect much other notice from its publication till now, in the whole succession of English literature.
Of this silence and neglect, if the reason be inquired, it will be found partly in the choice of the subject, and partly in the performance of the work.
Sacred history has been always read with submissive reverence, and an imagination overawed and controlled. We have been accustomed to acquiesce in the nakedness and simplicity of the authentick narrative, and to repose on its veracity with such humble confidence as suppresses curiosity. We go with the historian as he goes, and stop with him when he stops. All amplification is frivolous and vain; all addition to that which is already sufficient for the purposes of religion seems not only useless, but, in some degree, profane.
Such events as were produced by the visible interposition of divine power are above the power of human genius to dignify. The miracle of creation, however it may teem with images, is best described with little diffusion of language: "He spake the word, and they were made."
We are told, that Saul "was troubled with an evil spirit;" from this Cowley takes an opportunity of describing hell, and telling the history of Lucifer, who was, he says,
Once gen'ral of a gilded host of sprites,Like Hesper leading forth the spangled nights;But down, like lightning which him struck, he came,And roar'd at his first plunge into the flame.
Lucifer makes a speech to the inferiour agents of mischief, in which there is something of heathenism, and, therefore, of impropriety; and, to give efficacy to his words, concludes by lashing "his breast with his long tail." Envy, after a pause, steps out, and, among other declarations of her zeal, utters these lines:
Do thou but threat, loud storms shall make reply,And thunder echo to the trembling sky:Whilst raging seas swell to so bold an height,As shall the fire's proud element affright.Th' old drudging sun, from his long-beaten way,Shall, at thy voice, start, and misguide the day.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 fiction 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 shows 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 Aeneas, 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 meantAt 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 whereLife'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 shew,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 crowdHeartless, 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 headA 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 doth 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 you're in,The story of your gallant friend begin.
In a simile descriptive of the morning:
As glimm'ring 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,That e'er the mid-day sun pierc'd through with light;Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,Wash'd from the morning beauties' deepest red;An harmless flatt'ring 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 scarf 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 scarf, and related it in the terms of the mercer and tailor.
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.
I' th' library a few choice authors stood,Yet 'twas well stor'd, for that small store was good;Writing, man's spiritual physick, was not thenItself, as now, grown a disease of men.Learning (young virgin) but few suitors knew;The common prostitute she lately grew,And with the spurious brood loads now the press;Laborious effects of idleness.
As the Davideis affords only four books, though intended to consist of twelve, there is no opportunity for such criticism as epick poems commonly supply. The plan of the whole work is very imperfectly shown by the third part. The duration of an unfinished action cannot be known. Of characters, either not yet introduced, or shown but upon few occasions, the full extent and the nice 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 decorations, 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 superiour to the Jerusalem of Tasso; "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 commonly to operate 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 Rymer's censure. He says of the supreme being,
Ha sotto i piedi e fato e la natura,Ministri umili, e'l moto, e chi'l misura.
The second line has in it more of pedantry than, perhaps, can be found in 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 mind 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 sublime; 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, than, 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 sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients 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.Clarendon represents him as having taken a flight beyond all that wentbefore him; and Milton is said to have declared, that the three greatestEnglish poets were Spenser, Shakespeare, 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 rushed 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 on the death of Scaliger, that I cannot but think them copied from it, though they are copied by no servile hand.
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 resolv'd to search for thee:The search itself rewards the pains.So, though the chymic his great secret miss(For neither it in art or nature is,)Yet things well worth his toil he gains;
And does his charge and labour payWith good unsought experiments by the way. COWLEY.
Some that have deeper digg'd love's mine than I,Say, where his centric happiness doth lie:I have lov'd, and got, and told;But should I love, get, tell, till I were old;I should not find that hidden mystery;Oh, 'tis imposture all!And as no chymic yet th' elixir got,But glorifies his pregnant pot,If by the way to him befallSome odoriferous thing, or medicinal,So lovers dream a rich and long delight,But get a winter-seeming summer's night. DONNE.
Jonson and Donne, as Dr. Hurd remarks, 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 sacred things, by which readers far short of sanctity are frequently offended; and which would not be borne, in the present age, when devotion, perhaps, not more fervent, is more delicate.
Having produced one passage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will recompense 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 pineHewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mastOf some great admiral, were but a wand,He walked with.
His diction was, in his own time, censured as negligent. He seems not to have known, or not to have considered, that words, being arbitrary, must owe their power to association, and have the influence, and that only, which custom has given them. Language is the dress of thought: and, as the noblest mien, or most graceful action, would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanicks; so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy, and the most splendid ideas drop their magnificence, if they are conveyed by words used commonly upon low and trivial occasions, debased by vulgar mouths, and contaminated by inelegant applications.
Truth, indeed, is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have an intrinsick and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual gold which defies destruction; but gold may be so concealed in baser matter, that only a chymist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in unrefined and plebeian words, that none but philosophers can distinguish it; and both may be so buried in impurities, as not to pay the cost 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 sought. Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing, must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise. What is perceived by slow degrees may gratify us with the consciousness of improvement, but will never strike with the sense of pleasure.
Of all this, Cowley appears to have been without knowledge, or without care. He makes no selection of words, nor seeks any neatness of phrase: he has no elegancies, either lucky or elaborate: as his endeavours were rather to impress sentences 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 necessity of the subject, rather than the care of the writer, that the diction of his heroick poem is less familiar than that of his slightest writings. He has given not the same numbers, but the same diction, to the gentle Anacreon and the tempestuous Pindar.
His versification seems to have had very little of his care; and, if what he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmusical only when they are ill read, the art of reading them is at present lost; for they are commonly harsh to modern ears. He has, indeed, many noble lines, such as the feeble care of Waller never could produce. The bulk of his thoughts sometimes swelled his verse to unexpected and inevitable grandeur; but his excellence of this kind is merely fortuitous: he sinks willingly down to his general carelessness, and avoids, with very little care, either meanness or asperity.
His contractions are often rugged and harsh:
One flings a mountain, and its rivers tooTorn 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, sometimes, dissonant and unpleasing; he joins verses together, of which the former does not slide easily into the latter.
The wordsdoanddid, which so much degrade, in present estimation, the line that admits them, were, in the time of Cowley, little censured or avoided; how often he used them, and with how bad an effect, at least to our ears, will appear by a passage, in which every reader will lament to see just and noble thoughts defrauded of their praise by inelegance of language:
Where honour or where consciencedoesnot bind,No other law shall shackle me;Slave to myself I ne'er will be;Nor shall my future actions be confin'dBy my own present mind.
Who by resolves and vows engag'ddoesstandFor days, that yet belong to fate,Does, like an unthrift, mortgage his estate,Before it falls into his hand;The bondman of the cloister so,All that hedoesreceivedoesalways owe:And still, as time comes in, it goes away,Not to enjoy, but debts to pay!Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell,Which his hour's work, as well as hours,doestell!Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell.
His heroick lines are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they are sometimes sweet and sonorous.
He says of the Messiah:
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 securely, when he sends;'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 sometimes attempted an improved and scientifick versification; of which it will be best to give his own account subjoined to this line:
Nor can the glory contain itself in th' endless space.
"I am sorry that it is necessary to admonish the most part of readers, that it is not by negligence that this verse is so loose, long, and, as it were, vast; it is to paint in the number the nature of the thing which it describes, which I would have observed in divers other places of this poem, that else will pass for very careless verses: as before,
And overruns the neighb'ring fields with violent course.
"In the second book,
Down a precipice deep, down he casts them all.
"And,
And fell a-down his shoulders with loose care
"In the third,
Brass was his helmet, his boots brass, and o'erHis breast a thick plate of strong brass he wore.
"In the fourth,
Like some fair pine o'erlooking all th' ignobler wood.
"And,
Some from the rocks cast themselves down headlong.
"And many more: but it is enough to instance in a few. The thing is, that the disposition of words and numbers should be such, as that, out of the order and sound of them, the things themselves may be represented. This the Greeks were not so accurate as to bind themselves to; neither have our English poets observed it, for aught I can find. The Latins (qui musas colunt severiores) sometimes did it; and their prince, Virgil, always, in whom the examples are innumerable, and taken notice of by all judicious men, so that it is superfluous to collect them."
I know not whether he has, in many of these instances, attained the representation or resemblance that he purposes. Verse can imitate only sound and motion. Aboundlessverse, aheadlongverse, and a verse ofbrass, or ofstrong brass, seem to comprise very incongruous and unsociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the sound of the line expressingloose care, I cannot discover; nor why thepineistallerin an alexandrine than in ten syllables.
But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example of representative versification, which, perhaps, no other English line can equal:
Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise:He, who defers this work from day to day,Does on a river's bank expecting stayTill the whole stream 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 syllables; and from him Dryden borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He considered the verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestick, and has, therefore, deviated into that measure, when he supposes 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 staff was too lyrical for an heroick poem; but this seems to have been known before by May and Sandys, the translators of the Pharsalia and the Metamorphoses.
In the Davideis are some hemistichs, or verses left imperfect by the author, in imitation of Virgil, whom he supposes not to have intended to complete them: that this opinion is erroneous, may be probably concluded, because this truncation is imitated by no subsequent Roman poet; because Virgil himself filled up one broken line in the heat of recitation; because in one the sense is now unfinished; and because all that can be done by a broken verse, a line intersected by acaesuraand a full stop, will equally effect.
Of triplets, in his Davideis, he makes no use, and, perhaps, did not, at first, think them allowable; but he appears afterwards to have changed his mind, for, in the verses on the government of Cromwell, he inserts them liberally with great happiness.
After so much criticism on his poems, the essays which accompany them must not be forgotten. What is said by Sprat of his conversation, that no man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, may be applied to these compositions. No author ever kept his verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought, or hard-laboured; but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness.
It has been observed by Felton, in his essay on the Classicks, that Cowley was beloved by every muse that he courted; and that he has rivalled the ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy.
It may be affirmed, without any encomiastick fervour, that he brought to his poetick labours a mind replete with learning, and that his pages are embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply; that he was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode, and the gaiety of the less; that he was equally qualified for sprightly sallies, and for lofty flights; that he was among those who freed translation from servility, and, instead of following his author at a distance, walked by his side; and that if he left versification yet improvable, he left likewise, from time to time, such specimens of excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it.
* * * * *
The insertion of Cowley's epitaph may be interesting to our readers.
EpitaphiumAutorisIn Ecclesia D. Petri apud WestmonasteriensesSepulti.Abrahamus Cowleius,Anglorum Pindarus, Flaccus, Maro,Deliciae, Decus, Desiderium, Aevi sui,Hic juxta situs est.
Aurea dum volitant late tua scripta per orbem,Et fama aeternum vivis, divine poeta,Hic placida jaceas requie: custodiat urnamCana fides, vigilentque perenni lampade musaeSit sacer iste locus; nee quis temerarius ausitSacrilega turbare manu venerabile bustum.Intacti maneant; maneant per saecula dulcesCowleii cineres, serventque immobile saxum.
Sic vovatqueVotumque suum apud posteros sacratum esse voluitQui viro incomparabili posult sepulchrale marmor,Georgius Dux Buckinghamiae.Excessit e vita Anno Aetatis suae 49° et honorifica pompa elatusex AedibusBuckinghamianis, viris illustribus omnium ordinum exequiascelebrantibus,sepultus est die 3° M. Augusti, Anno Domini 1667.
[Footnote 6: This volume was not published before 1633, when Cowley was fifteeyears old. Dr. Johnson, as well as former biographers, seems to have been misled by the portrait of Cowley being, by mistake, marked with the age of thirteen years. R.]
[Footnote 7: He was a candidate this year at Westminster school for election to Trinity college, but proved unsuccessful.]
[Footnote 8: In the first edition of this life, Dr. Johnson wrote, "which was never inserted in any collection of his works;" but he altered the expression when the Lives were collected into volumes. The satire was added to Cowley's works by the particular direction of Dr. Johnson. N.]
[Footnote 9: Consulting the Virgilian lots, Sortes Virgilianae, is a method of divination by the opening of Virgil, and applying to the circumstances of the peruser the first passage in either of the two pages that he accidentally fixes his eye on. It is said, that king Charles the first, and lord Falkland, being in the Bodleian library, made this experiment of their future fortunes, and met with passages equally ominous to each.
That of the king was the following:
At bello audacis populi vexatus et armis,Finibus extorris, complexu avulsus luli,Auxilium imploret, videatque indigna suorumFunera, nec, cum se sub leges pacis iniquaeTradiderit, regno aut optata luce fruatur:Sed cadat ante diem, mediaque inhumatus arena. Aeneid. iv. 615.
Yet let a race untam'd, and haughty foes,His peaceful entrance with dire arms oppose,Oppress'd with numbers in th' unequal field,His men discourag'd and himself expell'd:Let him for succour sue from place to place,Torn from his subjects and his son's embrace.First let him see his friends in battle slain,And their untimely fate lament in vain:And when, at length, the cruel war shall cease,On hard conditions may he buy his peace;Nor let him then enjoy supreme command.But fall untimely by some hostile hand,And lie unburied on the barren sand. DRYDEN.
Lord Falkland's:
Non haec, O Palla, dederas promissa parenti,Cautius ut saevo velles te credere Marti.Haud ignarus eram, quantum nova gloria in armis,Et praedulce decus primo certamine posset.Primitiae juvenis miserae, bellique propinquiDura rudimenta, et nulli exaudita deorum,Vota precesque meae! Aeneid. xi. 152.
O Pallas, thou hast fail'd thy plighted word,To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword;I warn'd thee, but in vain, for well I knewWhat perils youthful ardour would pursue,That boiling blood would carry thee too far,Young as thou wert to dangers, raw to war.O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom,Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come!Hard elements of unauspicious war,Vain vows to heaven, and unavailing care! DRYDEN
Hoffman, in his Lexicon, gives a very satisfactory account of this practice of seeking fates in books: and says, that it was used by the pagans, the jewish rabbins, and even the early Christians; the latter taking the New Testament for their oracle.]
[Footnote 10: Johnson has exhibited here us little feeling for the neglected servant of the thankless house of Stewart, as he displayed in the cold contempt of his sixth Rambler. An unmeaning compliment from a worthless king was Cowley's only recompense for years of faithful and painful services. A heart loyal and affectionate, like his, may well be excused the utterance of its pains, when wounded by those for whom it would so cheerfully have poured forth its blood. We repeat, that Cowley's misfortune was his devotion to a family, who invariably forgot, in their prosperity, those who had defended them in the day of adversity. ED.]
[Footnote 11: See Campbell's Poets, iv. 75.]
[Footnote 12: By May's poem, we are here to understand a continuation of Lucan's Pharsalia, to the death of Julius Caesar, by Thomas May, an eminent poet and historian, who flourished in the reigns of James and Charles the first, and of whom a life is given in the Biographia Britannica. The merit of Cowley's Latin poems is well examined in Censura Literatia, vol. viii. See also Warton's Preface to Milton's Juvenile Poems. ED.]
[Footnote 13: 1663.]
[Footnote 14: Here is an error in the designation of this comedy, which our author copied from the title page of the latter editions of Cowley's works: the title of the play itself is without the article, "Cutter of Coleman street," and that, because a merry sharking fellow about the town, named Cutter, is a principal character in it.]
[Footnote 15: L'Allegro of Milton. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 16: About three hundred pounds per annum. See Campbell's Poets, iv.]
[Footnote 17: Now in the possession of Mr. Clark, alderman of London. Dr. J.—Mr. Clark was, in 1798, elected to the important office of chamberlain of London; and has every year since been unanimously reelected. N.]
[Footnote 18: For metaphysical poets, see Brydges' Restituta, vol. iv.]
[Footnote 19: It is but justice to the memory of Cowley, to quote here an exquisite stanza which Johnson has inserted in the Idler, No. 77, where he says; "Cowley seems to have possessed the power of writing easily beyond any other of our poets; yet his pursuit of remote thought led him often into harshness of expression." The stanza is to a lady elaborately dressed:
Th' adorning thee with so much artIs but a barb'rous skill,'Tis like the pois'ning of a dartToo apt before to kill. ED.]
[Footnote 20: Dodsley's Collection of Poems, vol. v. R.]
[Footnote 21: First published in quarto, 1669, under the title of CarmenPindaricum in Theatrum Sheldonianum in solennibus magnifici operisencaeniis. Recitatum Julii die 9, anno 1669, a Corbetto Owen, A. B. Aed.Chr. Alumno, authore. R.]
Of sir John Denham very little is known but what is related of him byWood, or by himself.
He was born at Dublin, 1615[22]; the only son of sir John Denham, of Little Horsley, in Essex, then chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland, and of Eleanor, daughter of sir Garret More, baron of Mellefont.
Two years afterwards, his father, being made one of the barons of the exchequer in England, brought him away from his native country, and educated him in London.
In 1631 he was sent to Oxford, where he was considered "as a dreaming young man, given more to dice and cards than study:" and, therefore, gave no prognosticks of his future eminence; nor was suspected to conceal, under sluggishness and laxity, a genius born to improve the literature of his country.
When he was, three years afterwards, removed to Lincoln's inn, he prosecuted the common law with sufficient appearance of application; yet did not lose his propensity to cards and dice; but was very often plundered by gamesters.
Being severely reproved for this folly, he professed, and, perhaps, believed, himself reclaimed; and, to testify the sincerity of his repentance, wrote and published an Essay upon Gaming.
He seems to have divided his studies between law and poetry; for, in 1636, he translated the second book of the Aeneid. Two years after, his father died; and then, notwithstanding his resolutions and professions, he returned again to the vice of gaming, and lost several thousand pounds that had been left him.
In 1641, he published the Sophy. This seems to have given him his first hold of the publick attention; for Waller remarked, "that he broke out like the Irish rebellion, three score thousand strong, when nobody was aware, or in the least suspected it;" an observation which could have had no propriety had his poetical abilities been known before.
He was after that pricked for sheriff of Surrey, and made governour of Farnham castle for the king; but he soon resigned that charge, and retreated to Oxford, where, in 1643, he published Cooper's Hill.
This poem had such reputation as to excite the common artifice by which envy degrades excellence. A report was spread, that the performance was not his own, but that he had bought it of a vicar for forty pounds. The same attempt was made to rob Addison of his Cato, and Pope of his Essay on Criticism.
In 1647, the distresses of the royal family required him to engage in more dangerous employments. He was intrusted, by the queen, with a message to the king; and, by whatever means, so far softened the ferocity of Hugh Peters, that, by his intercession, admission was procured. Of the king's condescension he has given an account in the dedication of his works.
He was, afterwards, employed in carrying on the king's correspondence; and, as he says, discharged this office with great safety to the royalists: and, being accidentally discovered by the adverse party's knowledge of Mr. Cowley's hand, he escaped happily both for himself and his friends.
He was yet engaged in a greater undertaking. In April, 1648, he conveyed James, the duke of York, from London into France, and delivered him there to the queen and prince of Wales. This year he published his translation of Cato Major. He now resided in France, as one of the followers of the exiled king; and, to divert the melancholy of their condition, was sometimes enjoined by his master to write occasional verses; one of which amusements was probably his ode, or song, upon the Embassy to Poland, by which he and lord Crofts procured a contribution of ten thousand pounds from the Scotch, that wandered over the kingdom. Poland was, at that time, very much frequented by itinerant traders, who, in a country of very little commerce and of great extent, where every man resided on his own estate, contributed very much to the accommodation of life, by bringing to every man's house those little necessaries which it was very inconvenient to want, and very troublesome to fetch. I have formerly read, without much reflection, of the multitude of Scotchmen that travelled with their wares in Poland; and that their numbers were not small, the success of this negotiation gives sufficient evidence.
About this time, what estate the war and the gamesters had left him was sold, by order of the parliament; and when, in 1652, he returned to England, he was entertained by the earl of Pembroke.
Of the next years of his life there is no account. At the restoration he obtained that which many missed, the reward of his loyalty; being made surveyor of the king's buildings, and dignified with the order of the Bath. He seems now to have learned some attention to money; for Wood says, that he got by this place seven thousand pounds.
After the restoration, he wrote the poem on Prudence and Justice, and, perhaps, some of his other pieces; and as he appears, whenever any serious question comes before him, to have been a man of piety, he consecrated his poetical powers to religion, and made a metrical version of the psalms of David. In this attempt he has failed; but in sacred poetry who has succeeded?
It might be hoped that the favour of his master, and esteem of the publick, would now make him happy. But human felicity is short and uncertain; a second marriage brought upon him so much disquiet, as, for a time, disordered his understanding; and Butler lampooned him for his lunacy. I know not whether the malignant lines were then made publick, nor what provocation incited Butler to do that which no provocation can excuse.
His phrensy lasted not long[23]; and he seems to have regained his full force of mind; for he wrote afterwards his excellent poem upon the death of Cowley, whom he was not long to survive; for, on the 19th of March, 1668, he was buried by his side.
Denham is deservedly considered as one of the fathers of English poetry."Denham and Waller," says Prior, "improved our versification, andDryden perfected it." He has given specimens of various compositions,descriptive, ludicrous, didactick, and sublime.
He appears to have had, in common with almost all mankind, the ambition of being, upon proper occasions,a merry fellow, and, in common with most of them, to have been by nature, or by early habits, debarred from it. Nothing is less exhilarating than the ludicrousness of Denham; he does not fail for want of efforts; he is familiar, he is gross; but he is never merry, unless the Speech against Peace in the close Committee be excepted. For grave burlesque, however, his imitation of Davenant shows him to have been well qualified.
Of his more elevated occasional poems, there is, perhaps, none that does not deserve commendation. In the verses to Fletcher, we have an image that has since been often adopted[24]:
But whither am I stray'd? I need not raiseTrophies to thee from other men's dispraise;Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built,Nor need thy juster title the foul guilt
Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred, slain.
After Denham, Orrery, in one of his prologues,
Poets are sultans, if they had their will;For ev'ry author would his brother kill.
And Pope,
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne.
But this is not the best of his little pieces: it is excelled by his poem to Fanshaw, and his elegy on Cowley.
His praise of Fanshaw's version of Guarini contains a very sprightly and judicious character of a good translator:
That servile path thou nobly dost decline,Of tracing word by word and line by line.Those are the labour'd births of slavish brains,Not the effect of poetry but pains;Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affordsNo flight for thoughts, but poorly stick at words,A new and nobler way thou dost pursue,To make translations and translators too,They but preserve the ashes; thou the flame,True to his sense, but truer to his fame.
The excellence of these lines is greater, as the truth which they contain was not, at that time, generally known.
His poem on the death of Cowley was his last, and, among his shorter works, his best performance: the numbers are musical, and the thoughts are just.
Cooper's Hill is the work that confers upon him the rank and dignity of an original author. He seems to have been, at least among us, the author of a species of composition that may be denominatedlocal poetry, of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be poetically described with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection, or incidental meditation.
To trace a new scheme of poetry, has, in itself, a very high claim to praise, and its praise is yet more, when it is apparently copied by Garth and Pope[25]; after whose names little will be gained by an enumeration of smaller poets, that have left scarcely a corner of the island not dignified either by rhyme or blank verse.
Cooper's Hill, if it be maliciously inspected, will not be found without its faults. The digressions are too long, the morality too frequent, and the sentiments, sometimes, such as will not bear a rigorous inquiry.
The four verses, which, since Dryden has commended them, almost every writer for a century past has imitated, are generally known:
O could I flow like thee, and make thy streamMy great example, as it is my theme!Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.
The lines, are, in themselves, not perfect; for most of the words, thus artfully opposed, are to be understood simply on one side of the comparison, and metaphorically on the other; and, if there be any language which does not express intellectual operations by material images, into that language they cannot be translated. But so much meaning is comprised in so few words; the particulars of resemblance are so perspicaciously collected, and every mode of excellence separated from its adjacent fault by so nice a line of limitation; the different parts of the sentence are so accurately adjusted; and the flow of the last couplet is so smooth and sweet; that the passage, however celebrated, has not been praised above its merit. It has beauty peculiar to itself, and must be numbered among those felicities which cannot be produced at will by wit and labour, but must rise unexpectedly in some hour propitious to poetry.
He appears to have been one of the first that understood the necessity of emancipating translation from the drudgery of counting lines, and interpreting single words. How much this servile practice obscured the clearest, and deformed the most beautiful parts of the ancient authors, may be discovered by a perusal of our earlier versions; some of them are the works of men well qualified, not only by critical knowledge, but by poetical genius, who yet, by a mistaken ambition of exactness, degraded, at once, their originals and themselves.
Denham saw the better way, but has not pursued it with great success. His versions of Virgil are not pleasing; but they taught Dryden to please better. His poetical imitation of Tully on Old Age has neither the clearness of prose, nor the sprightliness of poetry.
The "strength of Denham," which Pope so emphatically mentions, is to be found in many lines and couplets, which convey much meaning in few words, and exhibit the sentiment with more weight than bulk.
On the Thames.
Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold;His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,Search not his bottom, but survey his shore.
On Strafford.
His wisdom such, at once, it did appearThree kingdoms' wonder, and three kingdoms' fear.While single he stood forth, and seem'd, althoughEach had an army, as an equal foe;Such was his force of eloquence to makeThe hearers more concern'd than he that spake:Each seem'd to act that part he came to see,And none was more a looker-on than he;So did he move our passions, some were knownTo wish, for the defence, the crime their own.Now private pity strove with public hate,Reason with rage, and eloquence with fate.
On Cowley.
To him no author was unknown,Yet what he wrote was all his own;Horace's wit, and Virgil's state,He did not steal, but emulate!And, when he would like them appear,Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear.
As one of Denham's principal claims to the regard of posterity arises from his improvement of our numbers, his versification ought to be considered. It will afford that pleasure which arises from the observation of a man of judgment naturally right, forsaking bad copies by degrees, and advancing towards a better practice, as he gains more confidence in himself.
In his translation of Virgil, written when he was about twenty-one years old, may be still found the old manner of continuing the sense ungracefully from verse to verse:
Then all thoseWho in the dark our fury did escape,Returning, know our borrow'd arms, and shape,And differing dialect; then their numbers swellAnd grow upon us; first Choroebus fellBefore Minerva's altar; next did bleedJust Ripheus, whom no Trojan did exceedIn virtue, yet the gods his fate decreed.Then Hypanis and Dymas, wounded byTheir friends; nor thee, Pantheus, thy piety,Nor consecrated mitre, from the sameIll fate could save; my country's funeral flameAnd Troy's cold ashes I attest, and callTo witness for myself, that in their fallNo foes, no death, nor danger, I declin'd,Did, and deserv'd no less, my fate to find.
From this kind of concatenated metre he afterwards refrained, and taught his followers the art of concluding their sense in couplets; which has, perhaps, been with rather too much constancy pursued.
This passage exhibits one of those triplets which are not unfrequent in this first essay, but which it is to be supposed his maturer judgment disapproved, since, in his latter works, he has totally forborne them.
His rhymes are such as seem found without difficulty, by following the sense; and are, for the most part, as exact, at least, as those of other poets, though now and then the reader is shifted off with what he can get:
O howtransform'd!How much unlike that Hector, whoreturn'dClad in Achilles' spoils!
And again:
From thence a thousand lesser poetssprungLike petty princes from the fall ofRome.
Sometimes the weight of rhyme is laid upon a word too feeble to sustain it:
Troy confounded fallsFrom all her glories: if it might have stoodBy any power, by this right hand itshou'd.