THE LIFE OF COWLEY: 05
samuel johnson Town, lying there one night. I write this in pain, and can say no more: Verbum sapienti. 22, He did not long enjoy the pleasure or suffer the uneasiness of solitude; for he died at the Porch-house in Chester in 1667, in the 49th year of his age. He was buried with great pomp near Chaucer and Spenser; and king Charles pronounced, ‘that Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind him in England.’ He is represented by Dr. Sprat as the most amiable of mankind; and this posthumous praise may be safely credited, as it has never been contradicted by envy or by faction. Such are the remarks and memorials which I have been able to add to the narrative of Dr. Sprat; who, writing when the feuds of the civil war were yet recent, and the minds of either party easily irritated, was obliged to pass over many transactions in general expressions, and to leave curiosity often unsatisfied. What he did not tell cannot, however, now be known. I must therefore recommend the perusal of his work, to which my narration can be considered only as a slender supplement.Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and, instead of tracing intellectual pleasure to its natural sources in the mind of man, paid their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too much praised, and too much neglected at another. Wit, like all other things subject by their na-ture to the choice of man, has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets; of whom, in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not im-proper to give some account. 520Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and, instead of tracing intellectual pleasure to its natural sources in the mind of man, paid their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too much praised, and too much neglected at another. Wit, like all other things subject by their na-ture to the choice of man, has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets; of whom, in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not im-proper to give some account. The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to shew their learning was their whole en-deavour; but, unluckily resolving to shew it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables. If the father of criticism has rightly denomi-nated poetry τέχνη μιμετκη, an imitative art, 23Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and, instead of tracing intellectual pleasure to its natural sources in the mind of man, paid their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too much praised, and too much neglected at another. Wit, like all other things subject by their na-ture to the choice of man, has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets; of whom, in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not im-proper to give some account. The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to shew their learning was their whole en-deavour; but, unluckily resolving to shew it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables. If the father of criticism has rightly denomi-nated poetry τέχνη μιμετκη, an imitative art, The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to shew their learning was their whole en-deavour; but, unluckily resolving to shew it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables If the father of criticism has rightly denomi-nated poetry τέχνη μιμετκη, an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong, lose their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be said to have imitated anything; they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted the forms of mat-ter, nor represented the operations of intellect. Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden confesses24 of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne in wit, but maintains that they surpass him in poetry. If Wit be well described by Pope, as being ‘that which has been often thought, but was never before so well expressed25,’ they certainly never attained, nor ever sought it; for they en-deavoured to be singular in their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope’s account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he depresses it below its natural dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of language. If by a more noble and more adequate conception that be considered as Wit, which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowl-560 edged to be just; if it be that, which he that never found it, wonders how he missed; to wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natu-ral; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by