samuel johnson
They were not always strictly curious, whether the opinions from which they drew their illustrations were true; it was enough that they were popular. Bacon remarks that some falsehoods are continued by tradition, because they supply commodious allusions.It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke; In vain it something would have spoke: The love within too strong for ‘t was, Like poison put into a Venice-glass
COWLEY
In forming descriptions, they looked out not for images, but for conceits. Night has been a common subject, which poets have contended to 1070 adorn. Dryden’s Night” is well known; Donne’s is as follows:
Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest: Time’s dead low-water; when all minds divest To-morrow’s business, when the labourers have Such rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave, Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this, Now when the client, whose last hearing is To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man, Who, when he opes his eyes, must shut them then Again by death, although sad watch he keep, Doth practise dying by a little sleep, Thou at this midnight seest me³.SAMUEL JOHNSON
It must be however confessed of these writ-subjects often ers, that if they are upon common unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle; yet where scholastick speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon Hope shews an unequalled fertility of invention:
Hope, whose weak being ruin’d is, Alike if it succeed, and if it miss; Whom good or ill does equally confound, And both the horns of Fate’s dilemma wound.
Vain shadow, which dost vanish quite, Both at full noon and perfect night! The stars have not a possibility Of blessing thee;
If things then from their end we happy call, ‘Tis Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.
Hope, thou bold taster of delight, Who, whilst thou should’st but taste, devour’st it quite!
Thou bring’st us an estate, yet leav’st us poor, By clogging it with legacies before! The joys which we entire should wed,
Come deflower’d virgins to our bed; Good fortunes without gain imported be, Such mighty custom’s paid to thee:
For joy, like wine, kept close, does better taste;If it take air before, its spirits waste”.
To the following comparison of a man that travels, and his wife that stays at home, with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted whether absurdity or ingenuity has the better claim:
Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin-compasses are two; Thy soul the fixt foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if th’ other do.
And though it in the centre sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must Like th’ other foot, obliquely run. Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end, where I begun.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
In all these examples it is apparent, that whatever is improper or vicious, is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature in pursuit of something new and strange; and that the writers fail to give delight, by their desire of exciting admiration.
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Having thus endeavoured to exhibit a general rep-resentation of the style and sentiments of the metaphysical poets, it is now proper to examine particularly the works of Cowley, who was almost the last of that race, and undoubtedly the best.
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His Miscellanies contain a collection of short compositions, written some as they were dic-tated by a mind at leisure, and some as they were called forth by different occasions; with great variety of style and sentiment, from burlesque levity to awful grandeur. Such an assemblage of diversified excellence no other poet has hitherto afforded. To choose the best, among many good, is one of the most hazardous attempts of criti-cism. I know not whether Scaliger himself has persuaded many readers to join with him in his preference of the two favourite odes, which he estimates in his raptures at the value of a king-dom. I will, however, venture to recommend Cowley’s first piece, which ought to be inscribed To my muse, for want of which the second cou-LIFE OF COWLEY
plet is without reference. When the title is added, there will still remain a defect; for every piece ought to contain in itself whatever is necessary to make it intelligible. Pope has some epitaphs without names; which are therefore epitaphs to be let, occupied indeed for the present, but hardly appropriated.
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The ode on Wit is almost without a rival. It was about the time of Cowley that Wit, which had been till then used for Intellection, in contra-distinction to Will, took the meaning, whatever it be, which it now bears.
Of all the passages in which poets have ex- 1170 emplified their own precepts, none will easily be found of greater excellence than that in which Cowley condemns exuberance of Wit:
Yet ’tis not to adorn and gild each part, That shews more cost than art.
Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear; Rather than all things wit, let none be there.
Several lights will not be seen, If there be nothing else between.
Men doubt, because they stand so thick i’th’sky, 1180 If those be stars which paint the galaxy”.In his verses to lord Falkland, whom every man of his time was proud to praise, there are, as t there must be in all Cowley’s compositions, some striking thoughts; but they are not well wrought. His elegy on Sir Henry Wotton” is vigorous and happy, the series of thoughts is easy and natural, and the conclusion, though a little weakened by the intrusion of Alexander, is elegant and forcible.
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It may be remarked, that in this Elegy, and in most of his encomiastick poems, he has for-noi gotten or neglected to name his heroes.
In his poem on the death of Hervey, there is much praise, but little passion, a very just and ample delineation of such virtues as a studious privacy admits, and such intellectual excellence as a mind not yet called forth to action can dis-play. He knew how to distinguish, and how to commend the qualities of his companion; but when he wishes to make us weep, he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his sorrow by imagin-ing how his crown of bays, if he had it, would crackle in the fire. It is the odd fate of this thought to be worse for being true. The bay-leaf 54
THE LIFE OF COWLEY
crackles remarkably as it burns; as therefore this property was not assigned it by chance, the mind must be thought sufficiently at ease that could attend to such minuteness of physiology. But the power of Cowley is not so much to move the affections, as to exercise the understanding.
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The Chronicle is a composition unrivalled and alone: such gaiety of fancy, such facility of expression, such varied similitude, such a succes-sion of images, and such a dance of words, it is in vain to expect except from Cowley. His strength always appears in his agility; his volatility is not the flutter of a light, but the bound of an elastick mind. His levity never leaves his learning behind it; the moralist, the politician, and the critick, mingle their influence even in this airy frolick of genius. To such a performance Suckling could -have brought the gaiety, but not the knowledge; Dryden could have supplied the knowledge, but not the gaiety.
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The verses to Davenant, which are vigor-ously begun, and happily concluded, contain some hints of criticism very justly conceived and happily expressed. Cowley’s critical abilities have not been sufficiently observed: the few de-cisions and remarks which his prefaces and his notes on the ‘Davideis’ supply, were at that time accessions to English literature, and shew such skill as raises our wish for more examples.The lines from Jersey are a very curious and pleasing specimen of the familiar descending to the burlesque.
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His two metrical disquisitions” for and against Reason, are no mean specimens of metaphysical poetry. The stanzas against knowledge produce little conviction. In those which are intended to exalt the human faculties, Reason has its proper task assigned it; that of judging, not of things revealed, but of the reality of revelation. In the verses for Reason is a passage which Bentley80, in the only English verses which he is known to have written, seems to have copied, though with the inferiority of an imitator.
The holy Book like the eighth sphere does shine With thousand lights of truth divine, So numberless the stars that to our eye It makes all but one galaxy:
Yet Reason must assist too; for in seas So vast and dangerous as these, Our course by stars above we cannot know Without the compass too below.
58 The next class of his poems is called The Mistress, of which it is not necessary to select any particu-lar pieces for praise or censure. They have all the same beauties and faults, and nearly in the same proportion. They are written with exuberance of wit, and with copiousness of learning; and it is truly asserted by Sprat, that the plenitude of the writer’s knowledge flows in upon his page, so that the reader is commonly surprised into some improvement. But, considered as the verses of a lover, no man that has ever loved will much commend them. They are neither courtly nor pathetick, have neither gallantry nor fondness.