unrefined and plebeian words that none but philosophers can distinguish i, 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 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 elegances either lucky or elaborate; as his endeavours were rather to impress sentences upon the understanding than images upon 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 heroic 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 too 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 words do and did, 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 conscience does not bind, Who by resolves and vows engag'd does stand, Does like an unthrift, mortgage his estate The bondman of the cloister so, All that he does receive does always owe. He says of the Messiah, Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound, Yet bid him go securely, when he sends; Yet amidst his negligence he sometimes attempts an improved and scientific 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 over-runs the neighb3ring fields with violent course. In the second book; Down a precipice deep, down he casts them allAnd, And fella-down his shoulders with loose care In the third, Brass was his helmet, his boots brass, and o'er His breast a thick plate of strong brass he wore In the fourth, Like some fair pine o'erlooking all the 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 in numerable, and taken notice of by all judi cious 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. A boundless verse, a headlong verse, and a verse of brass or of strong brass, seem to comprise very incongruous and unsociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the sound of the line expressing loose care, I cannot discover; nor why the pine is taller in an Alexandrine than in ten syllables. But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example of representative versifi cation, which perhaps no other English line can his mind, for, in the verses on the government equal. of Cromwell he inserts theml iberally 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 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. Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise: He who defers this work from day to day, Does on a river's bank expecting stay Till 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 heroic of ten syllables; and from him Dry-verse and his prose at a greater distance from den borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He considered the verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestic, and has therefore deviated into that measure when he supposes the voice had heard of the Supreme Being. The author of the Davideis is commended by Dryden for having written it in couplets, be- It has been observed by Felton, in his Essay cause he discovered that any staff was too lyrical on the Classics, that Cowley was beloved by for an heroic poem; but this seems to have been every muse that he courted; and that he has known before by May and Sandys, the trans-rivalled the ancients in every kind of poetry but lators of the Pharsalia and the Metamorphoses. In the Davideis are some hemistichs, or verses It may be affirmed, without any encomiastic left imperfect by the author, in imitation of Vir- fervour, that he brought to his poetic labours a gil, whom he supposes not to have intended to mind replete with learning, and that his pages complete them that this opinion is erroneous, are embellished with all the ornaments which may be probably concluded, because this trun- books could supply; that he was the first who cation is imitated by no subsequent Roman imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of poet; because Virgil himself filled up one the greater ode, and the gayety of the less; that broken line in the heat of recitation; because he was equally qualified for sprightly sallies, and in one the sense is now unfinished; and be-for lofty flights; that he was among those who cause all that can be done by a broken verse, a ine intersected by a cæsura, and 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 tragedy. 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. DENHA M. OF SIR JOHN DENHAM very little is known but what is related of him by Wood, or by himself. He was born at Dublin in 1615; the only son of Sir John Denham, of Little Horseley, 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, Drought him away from his native country, and educated him in London. fore gave no prognostics 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 Gam 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 there-ing." In Hamilton's Memoirs of Count Grammont, Sir John Denham is said to have been 79 when he married Miss Brook, about the year 1664: according to which statement he was born in 1585. But Dr. Johnson, who has followed Wood, is right. He entered Trinity College, Oxford, at the age of 16, in 1631, as appears by the following entry, which I copied from the matri culation book: Trin. Coll. "1631. Nov. 18. Johannes Denham, Essex, filius J. Denham, de Horseley parva in com. prædict militis annos natus 16."- Malone He seems to have divided his studies between law and poetry: for, in 1636, he translated the second book of the Æneid. 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 1642, he published "The Sophy." This seems to have given him his first hold of the public attention; for Waller remarked, "That 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 how transform'd ! How much unlike that Hector, who return'd And again: From thence a thousand lesser poets sprung Like petty princes from the fall of Rome. -Troy confounded falls Nor ten years conflict, nor a thousand sail He is not very careful to vary the ends of his verses; in one passage the word die rhymes three couplets in six. Most of these petty faults are in his first productions, where he was less skilful, or at least less dexterous in the use of words; and though they had been more frequent, they could only have lessened the grace, not the strength, of his composition. He is one of the writers that improved our taste, and advanced our language; and whom we ought therefore to read with gra Sometimes the weight of rhyme is laid upon a titude, though, having done much, he left much word too feeble to sustain it. to do. MILTON. THE lite of Milton has been already written in | so many forms, and with such minute inquiry, that I might perhaps more properly have contented myself with the addition of a few notes on Mr. Fenton's elegant Abridgment, but that a new narrative was thought necessary to the uniformity of this edition. JOHN MILTON was by birth a gentleman, descended from the proprietors of Milton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate in the times of York and Lancaster. Which side he took I know not; his descendant inherited no veneration for the White Rose. His grandfather, John, was keeper of the forest of Shotover, a zealous papist, who disinherited his son because he had forsaken the religion of his ancestors. His father, John, who was the son disinherited, had recourse for his support to the profession of a scrivener. He was a man eminent for his skill in music, many of his compositions being still to be found; and his reputation in his profession was such, that he grew rich, and retired to an estate. He had probably more than common literature, as his son addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems. He married a gentlewoman of the name of Caston, a Welsh family, by whom he had two sons, John, the poet, and Christopher, who studied the law, and adhered, as the law taught him, to the King's party, for which he was a while persecuted; but having, by his brother's interest, obtained permission to live in quiet, he supported himself so honourably by chamber-practice, that, soon after the accession of King James, he was knighted, and made a judge; but, his constitution being too weak for business, he retired before any disreputable compliances became ne Philips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rose in the Crown-office to be secondary: by him, she had two sons, John and Edward, who were educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the only authentic account of his domestic manners. John, the poet, was born in his father's house, at the Spread Eagle, in Bread-street, Dec. 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning. His father appears to have been very solicitous about his education; for he was instructed at first by private tuition, under the care of Tho mas Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburg, and of whom we have reason to think well, since his scholar considered him as worthy of an epistolary elegy. He was then sent to St. Paul's School, under the care of Mr. Gill; and removed, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ's College, in Cambridge, where he entered a sizar,* Feb. 12, 1624. He was at this time eminently skilled in the Latin tongue; and he himself, by annexing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of which the learned Politian had given him an example, seems to commend the earliness of his own proficiency to the notice of posterity. But the products of his vernal fertility have been surpassed by many, and particularly by his contemporary Cowley. Of the powers of the mind it is difficult to form an estimate: many have excelled Milton in their first essays, who never rose to works like Paradise Lost. * In this assertion Dr. Johnson was mistaken. Milton was admitted a pensioner, and not a sizar. as will appear by the following extract from the College Register, Johannes Milton Londinensis, filius Johannis, institutus fuit in literarum elementis sub Mag'ro Gill Gymnasii Feb. 12, 1624, sub M'ro Chappell, solvitq. pro Ingr Paulini, præfecto; admissus est Pensionarius Minor 01. 108. Od."-R At fifteen, a date which he uses till he is sixteen, he translated or versified two Psalms, 114 and 136, which he thought worthy of the public eye; but they raise no great expectations; they would in any numerous school have obtained praise, but not excited wonder. Many of his elegies appear to have been written in his eighteenth year, by which it appears that he had then read the Roman authors with very nice discernment. I once heard Mr. Hampton, the translator of Polybius, remark, what I think is true, that Milton was the first Englishman who, after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classic elegance. If any exceptions can he made, they are very few: Haddon and Ascham, the pride of Elizabeth's reign, however they have succeeded in prose, no sooner attempt verse than they provoke derision. If we produced any thing worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was perhaps Alabaster's Roxana.* Of the exercises which the rules of the University required, some were published by him in his maturer years. They had been undoubtedly applauded, for they were such as few can perform; yet there is reason to suspect that he was regarded in his college with no great fondness. That he obtained no fellowship is certain; but the unkindness with which he was treated was not merely negative. I am ashamed to relate, what I fear is true, that Milton was one of the last students in either University that suffered the public indignity of corporal correction. It was, in the violence of controversial hostility, objected to him, that he was expelled: this he steadily denies, and it was apparently not true; but it seems plain, from his own verses to Diodati, that he had incurred rustication, a temporary dismission into the country, with perhaps the loss of a term: Me tenet urbs refluè quam Thamesis alluit undè, SI sit hoc erilium patrios addisse penates, I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence can give the term vetiti laris, "a habitation from which he is excluded;" or how exile can be otherwise interpreted. He declares yet more, that he is weary of enduring the threats of a rigorous master, and something else, which a temper like his cannot undergo. What was more than threat was probably punishment. This poem, which mentions his exile, proves likewise that it was not perpetual: for it concludes with a resolution of returning some time to Cambridge. And it may be conjectured from the willingness with which he has perpetuated the memory of his exile, that its cause was such as gave him no shame. He took both the usual degrees; that of bachelor in 1628, and that of master in 1632; but he left the University with no kindness for its institution, alienated either by the injudicious severity of his governors, or his own captious perverseness. The cause cannot now be known, but the effect appears in his writings. His scheme Published 1632,-R. of education, inscribed to Hartlib, supersedes all academical instruction, being intended to com prise the whole time which men usually spend in literature, from their entrance upon grammar, "till they proceed, as it is called, masters of arts." And in his discourse" on the likeliest way to remove hirelings out of the church," he ingeniously proposes, that "the profits of the lands forfeited by the act for superstitious uses should be applied to such academies, all over the land, where languages and arts may be taught together; so that youth may be at once brought up to a competency of learning and an honest trade, by which means, such of them as had the gift, being enabled to support themselves (without tithes) by the latter, may, by the help of the former, become worthy preachers." One of his objections to academical education, as it was then conducted, is, that men designed for orders in the church were permitted to act plays, "writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of Trincalos,* buffoons, and bawds, prostituting the shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the eyes of the courtiers and court ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles." This is sufficiently peevish in a man who, when he mentions his exile from the college, relates, with great luxuriance, the compensation which the pleasures of the theatre afford him. Plays were therefore only criminal when they were acted by academics. He went to the University with a design of entering into the church, but in time altered his mind; for he declared, that whoever became a clergyman must "subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a conscience that could not retch, he must straight perjure himself. He thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing." These expressions are, I find, applied, to the subscription of the Articles; but it seems more probable that they relate to canonical obedience. I know not any of the Articles which seem to thwart his opinions: but the thoughts of obedience, whether canonical or civil, raised his indignation. His unwillingness to engage in the ministry, perhaps not yet advanced to a settled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his friends, who had reproved his suspended and dilatory life, which he seems to have imputed to an insatiable curiosity, and fantastic luxury of various knowledge. To this he writes a cool and plausible answer, in which he endeavours to persuade him, that the delay proceeds not from the delights of desultory study, but from the desire of obtaining more fitness for his task; and that he goes on, "not taking thought of being late, so it gives advantage to be more fit." When he left the University, he returned to his father, then residing at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five years, in which * By the mention of this name, he evidently refers to Albemazor, acted at Cambridge in 1614. Ignoramus and other plays were performed at the same time. The practice was then very frequent. The last dramatic per formance at either University was "The Grateful Fair," written by Christopher Smart, and represented at Pem broke College, Cambridge, about 1747.-R, 24 time he is said to have read all the Greek and | residing at the French court as ambassador from Lati writers. With what limitations this uni-Christiana of Sweden. From Paris ne hasted versality is to be understood, who shall inform us ? It might be supposed, that he who read so much should have done nothing else; but Milton found time to write the mask of "Comus," which was presented at Ludlow, then the residence of the Lord President of Wales, in 1634; and had the honour of being acted by the Earl of Bridgewater's sons and daughter. The fiction is derived from Homer's Circe; but we never can refuse to any modern the liberty of borrowing from Homer: -a quo ceu fonte perenni Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis. His next production was "Lycidas," an elegy, written in 1637, on the death of Mr. King, the son of Sir John King, secretary for Ireland in the time of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. King was much a favourite at Cambridge, and many of the wits jomed to do honour to his memory. Milton's acquaintance with the Italian writers may be discovered by a mixture of longer and shorter verses, according to the rules of Tuscan poetry, and his malignity to the church, by some lines which are interpreted as threatening its extermination. He is supposed about this time to have written his "Arcades;" for, while he lived at Horton, he used sometimes to steal from his studies a few days, which he spent at Harefield, the house of the Countess-dowager of Derby, where the "Arcades" made part of a dramatic entertainment. He began now to grow weary of the country, and had some purpose of taking chambers in the Inns of Court, when the death of his mother set him at liberty to travel, for which he obtained his father's consent, and Sir Henry Wotton's directions; with the celebrated precept of prudence, i vensieri stretti, ed il viso, sciolto; "thoughts close, and looks loose." In 1638 he left England, and went first to Paris; where, by the favour of Lord Scudamore, he had the opportunity of visiting Grotius, then *It has, nevertheless, its foundation in reality. The Earl of Bridgewater being President of Wales in the year 153, had his residence at Ludlow Castle, in Shropshire, at which time Lord Brackly and Mr. Egerton, his sous, and Lady Alice Egerton, his daughter, passing through a place called the Haywood forest, or Haywood, in Herefordshire, were benighted, and the lady for a short time lost: this accident being related to their father, upon their arrival at his castle, Milton, at the request of his friend, Henry Lawes, who taught music in the family, wrote this mask. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night; the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes himself, bearing each a part in the represen tation. into Italy, of which he had with particular diligence studied the language and literature; and though he seems to have intended a very quick perambulation of the country, stayed two months at Florence; where he found his way into the academies, and produced his compositions with such applause as appears to have exalted him in his own opinion, and confirmed him in the hope, that, "by labour and intense study, which," says he, "I take to be my portion in this life, joined with a strong propensity of nature," he might "leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die." It appears in all his writings that he had the usual concomitant of great abilities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps not without some contempt of others; for scarcely any man ever wrote so much, and praised so few. Of his praise he was very frugal; as he set its value high, and considered his mention of a name as a security against the waste of time, and a certain preservative from oblivion. At Florence he could not, indeed, complain that his merit wanted distinction. Carlo Dati pre sented him with an encomiastic inscription, in the tumid lapidary style; and Francini wrote him an ode, of which the first stanza is only empty noise, the rest are perhaps too diffuse on common topics: but the last is natural and and beautiful. From Florence he went to Sienna, and from Sienna to Rome, where he was again received with kindness by the learned and the great. Holstenius, the keeper of the Vatican Library, who had resided three years at Oxford, introduced him to Cardinal Barberini: and he, at a musical entertainment, waited for him at the door, and led him by the hand into the assembly. Here Selvaggi praised him in a distich, and Salsilli in a tetrastic; neither of them of much value. The Italians were gainers by this literary commerce; for the encomiums with which Milton repaid Salsilli, though not secure against a stern grammarian, turn the balance indisputably in Milton's favour. Of these Italian testimonies, poor as they are, he was proud enough to publish them before his poems; though he says, he cannot be suspected but to have known that they were said non tam de se, quam supra se. At Rome, as at Florence, he stayed only two months; a time indeed sufficient, if he desired only to ramble with an explainer of its antiquities, or to view palaces and count pictures; but certainly too short for the contemplation of learning, policy, or manners. could be expected; yet to him Milton owed his introduction to Manso, Marquis of Villa, who had been before the patron of Tasso. Manso was enough delighted with his accomplishments to honour him with a sorry distich, in which he commends him for every thing but his religion: and Milton, in return, addressed him in a Latin poem, which must have raised a high opinion of English elegance and literature. From Rome he passed on to Naples, in comThe Lady Alice Egerton became afterwards the wife of the Earl of Carbury, who at his seat called Golden-pany of a hermit, a companion from whom little grove, in Caermarthenshire, harboured Dr. Jeremy Taylor in the time of the usurpation. Among the Doc tor's sermons is one on her death, in which her character is finely portrayed. Her sister, Lady Mary, was given in marriage to Lord Herbert, of Cherbury. Notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's assertion, that the fic. tion is derived from Homer's Circe, it may be conjectured, that it was rather taken from the Comus of Erycius Puteanus, in which, under the fiction of a dream, the character of Comus and his attendants is delineated, and the delights of sensualists exposed and reprobated. This little tract was published at Louvain in 1611, and afterwards at Oxford in 1634, the very year in which Milton's "Comus" was written.-H. Milton evidently was indebted to the "Old Wives Tale" of George Peele for the plan of "Comus.”—R. His purpose was now to have visited Sicily and Greece; but, hearing of the differences between the King and Parliament, he thought it proper to hasten home, rather than pass his life |