the gentle Anacreon and the tempeftuous

Pindar.

His verfification feems to have had very little of his care; and if what he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmufical only when they are ill read, the art of reading them is at prefent loft; for they are commonly harth to modern ears. He has indeed many noble lines, fuch as the feeble care of Waller never could produce. The bulk of his thoughts fometimes fwelled his verse to unexpected and inevitable grandeur; but his excellence of this kind is merely fortuitous: he finks willingly down to his general carelessnefs, and avoids with very little care either meannefs or afperity.

His contractions are often rugged and harsh :

One flings a mountain, and its rivers too Torn up with't.

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 measuresis fometimes diffonant and unpleafing; he joins verfes together, of which the for-mer does not flide easily into the latter.

The words do and did, which so much degrade in prefent eftimation the line that admits them, were in the time of Cowley little cenfured or avoided: how often he used them, and with how

bad

bad an effect, at leaft to our ears, will appear by a paffage, in which every reader will lament to fee juft and noble thoughts defrauded of their praise by inelegance of language :

Where honour or where confcience does not bind,

No other law fhall fhackle me.

Slave to myself I ne'er will be;

Nor fhall my future actions be confin'd By my own prefent mind.

Who, by refolves and vows engag'd does ftand

For days, that yet belong to fate, Does like an unthrift mortgage his estate, Before it falls into his hand,

The bondman of the cloifter fo,

All that he does receive does always owe.

And

And ftill as Time come in, it goes away,

Not to enjoy, but debts to pay.

Unhappy flave, and pupil to a bell !

Which his hours' work as well as hours

does tell:

Unhappy till the last, the kind releafing knell.

His heroick lines are often formed of monofyllables; but yet they are fome

times fweet and fonorous.

He fays of the Meffiah,

Round the whole earth his dreaded name

fhall found,

And reach to worlds that must not yet be

found.

In another place, of David,

Yet

Yet bid him go fecurely, when he fends; 'Tis Saul that is his foe, and we his friends. The man who has his God, no aid can lack, And we who bid him go, will bring him back.

He did not write without attempting an improved and fcientifick verfification; of which it will be beft to give his own account fubjoined to this line,

Nor can the glory contain itself in th' endless space.

"I am forry that it is neceffary to ad, "monish the most part of readers, that "it is not by negligence that this verfe is "fo loose, long, and, as it were, vast; it "is to paint in the number the nature

"" of