admire, but little to approve. Still however it is the work of Cowley, of a mindi capacious by nature, and replenished by ftudy.

1

In the general review. of Cowley's poetry it will be found, that he wrote with abundant fertility, but negligent or unskilful felection; with much.thought, but with little imagery; that he is never. pathetick, and rarely fublime, but always.. either ingenious or learned, either acute> or profound.

It is faid by Denham in his elegy,
To him no author was unknown;
Yet what he writ was all his own.

This wide pofition requires lefs limitation, when it is affirmed of Cowley than perhaps of any other poet

He

He faw

His character of writing was indeed not his own he unhappily adopted that which was predominant. a certain way to prefent praife, and not. fufficiently enquiring 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 fpring was bright and gay, but which time has been continually stealing from his brows.

He was in his own time confidered as of unrivalled excellence. Clarendon represents him as having taken a flight beyond all that went before him; and

Milton is faid to have declared, that the three greatest English poets were Spenfer, Shakespeare, and Cowley.

His manner he had in common with others; but his fentiments were his own. Upon every fubject he thought for himfelf; and fuch was his copioufnefs of knowledge, that fomething at once remote and applicable rufhed 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. fo great, that he might have borrowed without lofs of credit.

In his elegy on Sir Henry Wotton, the laft lines have fuch resemblance to the noble epigram of Grotius upon the death

L

death of Scaliger, that I cannot but think them copied from it, though they are copied by no fervile hand.

One paffage in his Mistress is fo apparently borrowed from Donne, that he probably would not have written it, ‘had it not mingled with his own thoughts, fo as that he did not perceive himfelf taking it from another.

Altho' I think thou never found wilt be,
Yet I'm refolv'd to fearch for thee;
The search itself rewards the pains.
So, tho' the chymic his great fecret miss,
(For neither it in Art nor Nature is)
Yet things well worth his toil he gains:
And does his charge and labour pay
With good unfought experiments by the

way.

COWLEY.

Some

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 impofture all :

And as no chymic yet th' elixir got,
But glorifies his pregnant pot,
If by the way to him befal
Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,
So, lovers dream a rich and long delight,
But get a winter-feeming fummer's

night,

DONNE.