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 defcription is destroyed by a scrupulous enumeration; and the force of metaphors is loft, when the mind by the mention of particulars is turned more upon the original than the fecondary fenfe, more upon that from which the illuftration is drawn than that to which it is applied.

Of this we have a very eminent example in the ode entitled The Mufe, who goes to take the air in an intellectual chariot, to which he harneffes Fancy and Judgement, Wit and Eloquence, Memory and Invention; how he

diftinguished Wit from Fancy, or how Memory could properly contribute to Motion, he has not explained: we are however content to fuppofe that he could have juftified his own fiction, and wish to see the Muse begin her career; but there is yet more to be done.

Let the poftilion Nature mount,

The coachman Art be fet;

and let

And let the airy footmen, running all

befide,

Make a long row of goodly pride; Figures, conceits, raptures, and fen

tences,

In a well-worded drefs,

And innocent loves, and pleasant truths,

and useful lies,

In all their gaudy liveries.

Every mind is now difgufted 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 fame ode, celebrating the power of the Mufe, he gives her prescience, or, in poetical language, the forefight of events hatching in futurity; but having once an egg in his mind, he cannot forbear to fhew us that he knows what an egg contains:

Thou into the close nefts of time do'ft

peep,

And there with piercing eye

Through the firm fhell and the thick white dost spy

Years to come a-forming lie,

Close in their facred fecundine asleep.

The fame thought is more generally, and therefore more poetically, expreffed by Cafimir, a writer who has many of the beauties and faults of Cowley :

Omnibus mundi Dominator horis

Aptat urgendas per inane pennas,
Pars adhuc nido latet, & futuros
Crefcit in annos.

Cowley, whatever was his fubject, feems to have been carried, by a kind

of

of destiny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which require ftill more ignoble epithets. A flaughter in the Red Sea, new dies the waters name; and England, during the Civil War, was Albion no more, nor to be named from white. It is furely by fome fascination not eafily furmounted, that a writer, profeffing to revive the nobleft and highest writing in verfe, makes this addrefs to the new year:

Nay, if thou lov'ft me, gentle year,
Let not fo much as love be there,

Vain fruitless love I mean; for, gentle

year,

Although I fear,

There's of this caution little need,

Yet, gentle year, take heed