disappoint the ear, and destroy the energy of the line.

His combination of different measures is sometimes dissonant and unpleasing; he joins verses together, of which the former does not slide easily into the latter.

The words do and did, which so much degrade in present estimation the line that admits them, were in the time of Cowley little censured or avoided; how often he used them, and with how bad an effect, at least to our ears, will appear by a passage, in which every reader will lament to see just and noble thoughts defrauded of their praise by inelegance of language:

Where honour or where conscience does not bind,
No other law shall shackle me;

Slave to myself I ne'er will be ;
Nor shall my future actions be confin'd

By my own present mind.

Who by resolves and vows engag'd does stand

For days, that yet belong to fate,

Does like an unthrift mortgage his estate,
Before it falls into his hand;

'The bondman of the cloister so,

All that he does receive does always owe.

And still as Time comes in, it goes away,
Not to enjoy, but debts to pay!
Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell!

Which his hour's work as well as hours does tell :
Unhappy till the last, the kind realeasing knell.

His heroic lines are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they are sometimes sweet and

Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound,
And reach to worlds that must not yet be found.

In another place of David,

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

Yet amidst this negligence he sometimes attempted an improved and scientifick versification; of which it will be best to give his own account subjoined to this line:

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

"I am sorry that it is necessary to admonish "the most part of readers, that it is not by negli86 gence that this verse is so loose, long, and, as it

were, vast; it is to paint in the number the na"ture of the thing which it describes, which I "would have observed in divers other places of "this poem, that else will pass for very careless "verses as before,

And over-runs the neighb’ring fields with violent course.

"In the second book;

Down a precipice, deep, down he casts them all.-
a

“ And,

And fell a-dorun lis shoulders with loose care.

"In the third,

Brass was his helmet, his loots brass, and o'er
His breast a thick plate of strong brass he zores

for in the verses on the government of Cromwell he inserts them liberally with great happiness.

After so much criticism on his Poems, the Essays which accompany them must not be forgotten. What is said by Sprat of his conversation, that no man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, may be applied to these compositions. No author ever kept his verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought, or hardlaboured; but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness.

It has been observed by Felton, in his Essay on the Classicks, that Cowley was beloved by every Muse that he courted; and that he has rivalled the Ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy.

It may be affirmed, without any encomiastick fervour, that he brought to his poetick labours a mind replete with learning, and that his pages are embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply; that he was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode, and the gaiety of the less; that he was equally qualified for spritely sallies, and for lofty flights; that he was among those who freed translation from servility, and, instead of following his author at a distance, walked by his side; and that, if he left versification yet improveable, he left likewise from time to time such specimens of excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it.

DENHAM.

OF Sir JOHN DENHAM very little is known but what is related of him by Wood, or by himself.

He was born at Dublin in 1615: the only son of Sir John Denham, of Little Horsely in Essex, then chief baron of the Exchequer in Ireland, and of Eleanor, daughter of Sir Garret More, baron of Mellefont.

Two years afterwards, his father, being made one of the barons of the Exchequer in England, brought him away from his native country, and educated him in London.

In 1631 he was sent to Oxford, where he was considered " as a dreaming young man, given more "to dice and cards than study :" and therefore gave no prognosticks of his future eminence; nor was suspected to conceal, under sluggishness and levity, a genius born to improve the literature of his country.

When he was three years afterwards removed to Lincoln's Inn, he prosecuted the common law with sufficient appearance of application; yet did not

lose his propensity to cards and dice; but was very often plundered by gamesters.

Being severely reproved for this folly, he professed, and perhaps believed, himself reclaimed ; and, to testify the sincerity of his repentance, wrote and published "An Essay upon Gaming."

He scems to have divided his studies between law and poetry; for, in 1636, he translated the second book of the Æneid.

Two years after, his father died; and then, notwithstanding his resolutions and professions, he returned again to the vice of gaming, and lost several thousand pounds that had been left him.

In 1642, he published "The Sophy." This seems to have given him his first hold of the publick attention; for Waller remarked," that he "broke out like the Iri.h rebellion, threescore "thousand strong, when nobody was aware, or "in the least suspected it ;" an cbservation which could have had no propriety, had his poetical abilities been known before.

He was after that pricked for sheriff of Surrey, and made governor of Farnham Castle for the king; but he soon resigned that charge, and retreated to Oxford, where, in 1643, he published "Cooper's Hill."

This poem had such reputation as to excite the common artifice by which envy degrades excellence.

A report was spread, that the performance was not his own, but that he had bought it of a vicar for forty pounds. The same attempt was made to rob Addison of Cato, and Pope of his Essay on Criticism.