he gives them a fit of the ague.

The allufions however are not always to vulgar things:

The king was plac'd alone, and o'er his head

A well wrought heav'n of filk and gold was fpread.

Whatever he writes is always polluted with fome conceit :

Where the fun's fruitful beams give metals birth,

Where he the growth of fatal gold does -fee,

Gold, which alone more influence has than he.

In one paffage he starts a fudden queftion, to the confufion of philofo

phy:

Ye learned heads, whom ivy garlands

grace,

Why does that twining plant the oak embrace?

The oak, for courtship most of all unfit, And rough as are the winds that fight with it.

His expreffions have fometimes a degree of meanness that furpaffes expectation:

Nay, gentle guefts, he cries, fince now you're in,

The story of your gallant friend begin.

In a fimile defcriptive of the morning : As glimm❜ring stars juft at th' approach of day,

Cafhier'd by troops, at laft drop all away.

The drefs of Gabriel deferves atten

tion:

He took for fkin a cloud moft foft and

bright,

That e'er the midday fun pierc'd thro' with light,

Upon his cheeks a lively blufh he fpread, Wash'd from the morning beauties deepeft red,

An harmless flatt'ring meteor fhone for

hair,

And fell adown his fhoulders with loofe

care;

He cuts out a filk mantle from the skies, Where the moft fpritely azure pleas'd

the eyes;

This he with starry vapours fprinkles all, Took in their prime ere they grow ripe

and fall;

Of a new rainbow, ere it fret or fade,

The choiceft piece cut out, a fcarfe is made.

This is a juft fpecimen of Cowley's imagery: what might in general expreffions be great and forcible, he weakens and makes ridiculous by branching it into small parts. That Gabriel was invefted with the fofteft or brightest colours of the sky, we might have been told, and difmiffed to improve the idea in our different proportions of conception; but Cowley could not let us go till he had related where Gabriel got firft his skin, and then his mantle, then his lace, and then his scarfe, and related it in the terms of the mercer and the taylor.

Some

Sometimes he indulges himself in a digreffion, always conceived with his natural exuberance, and commonly, even where it is not long, continued till it is tedious:

I' th' library a few choice authors ftood, Yet 'twas well ftor'd; for that small ftore was good;

Writing, man's fpiritual phyfic, was not then

Itself, as now, grown a difeafe of men. Learning (young virgin) but few.fuitors

knew

The common prostitute the lately grew, And with the fpurious brood loads now