samuel johnson
the same time their power of producing love in him, he considers them as burning-glasses made of ice. Finding himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love, he concludes the torrid zone to be habitable. Upon the dying of a tree, on which he had cut his loves, he observes, that his flames had burnt up and withered the tree.’
1340
These conceits Addison calls mixed wit; that is, wit which consists of thoughts true in one sense of the expression, and false in the other. Addison’s representation is sufficiently indulgent. that confusion of images may entertain for a mo-ment; but being unnatural, it soon grows weari-some. Cowley delighted in it, as much as if he had invented it; but, not to mention the ancients, he might have found it full-blown in modern Italy.
1350
Aspice quam variis distringar Lesbia curis, Uror, et heu! nostro manat ab igne liquor; Sum Nilus, sumque Aetna simul; restringite flammas
O lacrimae, aut lacrimas ebibe flamma meas.
One of the severe theologians of that time censured him as having published a book of pro-fane and lascivious Verses. From the charge of pro-faneness, the constant tenour of his life, which seems to have been eminently virtuous, and the general tendency of his opinions, which discover no irreverence of religion, must defend him; but 60
THE LIFE OF COWLEY
that the accusation of lasciviousness is unjust, the perusal of his works will sufficiently evince.
Cowley’s Mistress has no power of seduction; ‘she plays round the head, but comes not at the heart.’ Her beauty and absence, her kindness and cruelty, her disdain and inconstancy, produce no correspondence of emotion. His poetical account of the virtues of plants, and colours of flowers, is not perused with more sluggish frigidity. The compositions are such as might have been writ-ten for penance by a hermit, or for hire by a phi-losophical rhymer who had only heard of an-other sex; for they turn the mind only on the writer, whom, without thinking on a woman but as the subject for his talk, we sometimes es-teem as learned, and sometimes despise as tri-fling, always admire as ingenious, and always condemn as unnatural.
The Pindarique Odes are now to be consid-ered; a species of composition which Cowley thinks Pancirolus might have counted in his list of the lost inventions of antiquity, and which he has made a bold and vigorous attempt to recover.The purpose with which he has paraphrased an Olympick and Nemeaean Ode is by himself sufficiently explained. His endeavour was, not to shew precisely what Pindar spoke, but his manner of speaking. He was therefore not at all restrained to his expressions, nor much to his sentiments; nothing was required of him, but not to write as Pindar would not have written.
Of the Olympick Ode the beginning is, I think, above the original in elegance, and the conclusion below it in strength. The connection is supplied with great perspicuity, and the thoughts, which to a reader of less skill seem thrown together by chance, are concatenated without any abruption. Though the English ode cannot be called a translation, it may be very properly consulted as a commentary.
The spirit of Pindar is indeed not everywhere equally preserved. The following pretty lines are not such as his deep mouth was used to pour:
Great Rhea’s son,
If in Olympus’ top where thou
Sitt’st to behold thy sacred show,
If in Alpheus’ silver flight,
If in my verse thou take delight
THE LIFE OF COWLEY
My verse, great Rhea’s son, which is Lofty as that, and smooth as this.
In the Nemeaean ode the reader must, in mere justice to Pindar, observe that whatever is said of the original new moon, her tender forehead and her horns, is superadded by his paraphrast, who has many other plays of words and fancy unsuitable to the original, as,
The table, free for every guest, No doubt will thee admit, And feast more upon thee, than thou on it.
He sometimes extends his author’s thoughts without improving them. In the Olympionick84 an oath is mentioned in a single word, and Cow-ley spends three lines in swearing by the Castal ian Stream. We are told of Theron’s bounty, with a hint that he had enemies, which Cowley thus enlarges in rhyming prose
But in this thankless world the giver Is envied even by the receiver; ‘Tis now the cheap and frugal fashion Rather to hide than own the obligation: Nay, ’tis much worse than so; It now an artifice does grow Wrongs and injuries to do, Lest men should think we owe.
It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and wit, when he was dealing out such minute morality in such feeble diction, could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar.
1440
In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own subjects, he sometimes rises to dignity truly Pindarick, and, if some deficiencies of lan-guage be forgiven, his strains are such as those of the Theban bard were to his contemporaries:
Begin the song, and strike the living lyre: Lo how the years to come, a numerous and
well-fitted quire,
All hand in hand do decently advance,
1450
And to my song with smooth and equal measure dance;
While the dance lasts, how long soe’er it be, My musick’s voice shall bear it company;
Till all gentle notes be drown’d In the last trumpet’s dreadful sounds.
After such enthusiasm, who will not lament to find the poet conclude with lines like these!
But stop, my Muse-Hold thy Pindarick Pegasus closely in. Which does to rage begin-
COWLEY
-‘Tis an unruly and a hard-mouth’d horse-‘Twill no unskilful touch endure, But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure.
The fault of Cowley, and perhaps of all the writers of the metaphysical race, is that of pursu-ing his thoughts to their last ramifications, by which he loses the grandeur of generality; for of the greatest things the parts are little; what is lit-tle can be but pretty, and by claiming dignity becomes ridiculous. Thus all the power of de-scription is destroyed by a scrupulous enumera-tion; and the force of metaphors is lost, when the mind by the mention of particulars is turned more upon the original than the secondary sense, more upon that from which the illustration is drawn than that to which it is applied.
1470
Of this we have a very eminent example in the ode intituled The Muse, who goes to take the air in an intellectual chariot, to which he har-nesses Fancy and Judgement, Wit and Elo-quence, Memory and Invention: how he distin-guished Wit from Fancy, or how Memory could properly contribute to Motion, he has not ex-plained; we are however content to suppose that he could have justified his own fiction, and wish to see the Muse begin her career; but there is yet more to be done.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Let the postilion Nature mount, and let The coachman Art be set; And let the airy footmen, running all beside, Make a long row of goodly pride; Figures, conceits, raptures, and sentences, In a well-worded dress, And innocent loves, and pleasant truths, and useful lies, In all their gaudy liveries.