copiously displayed by Addifon. Love is by Cowley, as by other poets, expreffed metaphorically by flame and fire; and that which is true of real fire is faid of love, or figurative fire, the fame word in the fame fentence retaining both fignifications. Thus, "ob

ferving the cold regard of his mif"trefs's eyes, and at the fame time their

66 power of producing love in him, he "confiders them as burning-glaffes made "of ice. Finding himself able to live "in the greatest extremities of love, he "concludes, the torrid zone to be ha"bitable. Upon the dying of a tree,

on which he had cut his loves, he

"obferves, that his flames had burnt up and withered the tree."

Thefe conceits Addifon calls mixed

wit; that is, wit which confifts of thoughts true in one fenfe of the expreffion, and falfe in the other. Addifon's reprefentation is fufficiently indulgent. That confufion of images may entertain for a moment; but being unnatural, it foon grows wearifome. Cowley delighted in it, as much as if he had invented it; but, not to mention the ancients, he might have found it fullblown in modern Italy. Thus Sanna

zaro;

Afpice quam variis diftringar Vefbia curis, Uror, & heu! noftro manat ab igne liquor; Sum Nilus, fumque Etna fimul; reftringite flammas

O lacrimæ, aut lacrimas ebibe flamma

meas.

One

One of the fevere theologians of that time cenfured him as having published a book of profane and lafcivious Verfcs. From the charge of profaneness, the conftant tenour of his life, which feems to have been eminently virtuous, and the general tendency of his opinions, which discover no irreverence of religion, must defend him; but that the accufation of lafciviousness is unjuft, the perufal of his works will fufficiently evince.

Cowley's Mistress has no power of feduction" fhe plays round the head, but comes not at the heart." Her beauty and abfence, her kindness and cruelty, her disdain and inconftancy, produce no correfpondence of emotionHis poetical account of the virtues of plants,

plants, and colours of flowers, is not perufed with more fluggish frigidity. The compofitions are fuch as might have been written for penance by a hermit, or for hire by a philofophical rhymer who had only heard of another fex; for they turn the mind only on the writer, whom, without thinking on a woman but as the fubject for a task, we fometimes efteem as learned, and fometimes despise as trifling, always admire as ingenious, and always condemn. as unnatural.

The Pindarique Odes are now to be confidered; a fpecies of compofition, which Cowley thinks Pancirolus might have counted in his lift of the loft inventions of antiquity, and which he has made

made a bold and vigorous attempt to

recover.

The purpose with which he has paraphrafed an Olympick and Nemeæan Ode, is by himself fufficiently explained. His endeavour was not to fhew precisely what Pindar Spoke, but his manner of Speaking. He was therefore not at all reftrained to his expreffions, nor much to his fentiments; nothing was required of him, but not to write as Pindar would not have written.

Of the Olympick Ode the beginning is, I think, above the original in elegance, and the conclufion below it in ftrength. The connection is fupplied with great perfpicuity, and the thoughts, which to a reader of lefs skill feem

thrown