It is related by Clarendon, that Cowley always acknowledged his obligation to the learning and induftry of Jonfon, but I have found no traces of Jonfon 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 allufion to facred things, by which readers far fhort of fanctity are frequently offended; and which would not be borne in the present age, when devotion, perhaps not more fervent, is more deli

cate.

Having produced one paffage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will recompenfe him by another which Milton feems

feems to have borrowed from him. He,

fays of Goliah,

His fpear, the trunk was of a lofty tree,. Which Nature meant fome tall fhip's mast should be.

Milton of Satan,

His fpear, to equal which the talleft pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of fome great admiral, were but a wand, He walk'd with.

His diction was in his own time cenfured as negligent. He feems not to have known, or not to have confidered, that words being arbitrary must owe their power to affociation, and have the influence, and that only, which custom has given them. Language is the dress

of thought; and as the nobleft mien, or most graceful action, would be degraded and obfcured by a garb appropriated to the grofs employments of rufticks or mechanicks, fo the most heroick fentiments will lose their efficacy, and the most fplendid ideas drop their magnificence, if they are conveyed by words ufed commonly upon low and trivial occafions, debafed by vulgar mouths, and contaminated by inelegant applications.

Truth indeed is always truth, and reafon is always reafon; they have an intrinfick and unalterable value, and conftitute that intellectual gold which defies destruction: but gold may be so

4

con

concealed in bafer matter that only a chymist can recover it, sense may be fo hidden in unrefined and plebeian words. that none but philofophers can distinguish it; and both may be fo buried in impurities, as not to pay the cost of their extraction.

The diction being the vehicle of the thoughts, first prefents itself to the intellectual eye; and if the first ap- pearance offends, a further knowledge is not often fought. Whatever profeffes to benefit by pleafing, muft please at once. The pleafures of reafon imply fomething sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always furprise. What is perceived by flow degrees may gratify us with the consciousness

of improvement, but will never ftrike with the fenfe of pleasure.

Of all this, Cowley feems to have been without knowledge, or without care. He makes no selection of words, nor feeks any neatness of phrafe: he has no elegancies either lucky or elaborate; as his endeavours were rather to impress fentences upon the understanding than images on the fancy, he has few epithets, and those scattered without peculiar propriety or nice adaptation. feems to follow from the neceffity of the fubject, rather than the care of the writer, that the diction of his heroick poem is lefs familiar than that of his flightest writings. He has given not the fame numbers, but the fame diction to

It

the