samuel johnson
Every mind is now disgusted with this cum-ber of magnificence; yet I cannot refuse myself the four next lines:
Mount, glorious queen, thy travelling throne, And bid it to put on; For long though cheerful is the way, And life, alas! allows but one ill winter’s day.
1500
In the same ode, celebrating the power of the Muse, he gives her prescience, or, in poetical lan-guage, the foresight of events hatching in futu-rity; but having once an egg in his mind, he can-not forbear to shew us that he knows what an egg contains:
Thou into the close nests of Time dost peep, And there with piercing eye Through the firm shell and the thick white dost spy
Years to come a-forming lie, Close in their sacred fecundine asleep.
The same thought is more generally, and therefore more poetically, expressed by Casimir, a writer who has many of the beauties and faults of Cowley:
Omnibus mundi Dominator horis Aptat urgendas per inane pennas, Pars adhuc nido latet, futuros
Crescit in annos87.
1520
Cowley, whatever was his subject, seems to have been carried, by a kind of destiny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which re-quire still more ignoble epithets. A slaughter in the Red Sea, new dies the waters name; and Eng-land, during the Civil War, was Albion no more, nor to be named from white. It is surely by some fascination not easily surmounted, that a writer professing to revive the noblest and highest writ-ing in verse, makes this address to the new year:
1530
Nay, if thou lov’st me, gentle year,
Let not so much as love be there,
Vain fruitless love I mean; for, gentle year,
There’s of this caution little need,
Yet, gentle year, take heed
Although I fear, How thou dost make Such a mistake; As by thy cruel predecessors has been shewn; For, though I have too much cause to doubt it, I fain would try, for once, if life can live with-out it.
Such love I mean alone
1540
The reader of this will be inclined to cry out with Prior
– Ye Criticks, say
How poor to this was Pindar’s style!
Even those who cannot perhaps find in the Isthmian or Nemeaean songs what Antiquity has
90 the noblest and highest… verse Preface to ‘Pindarique
THE LIFE OF COWLEY
1550
disposed them to expect, will at least see that they are ill represented by such puny poetry; and all will determine that if this be the old Theban strain, it is not worthy of revival.
To the disproportion and incongruity of Cowley’s sentiments must be added the uncer-tainty and looseness of his measures. He takes the liberty of using in any place a verse of any length, from two syllables to twelve. The verses of Pindar have, as he observes, very little har-mony to a modern ear; yet by examining the syl-lables we perceive them to be regular, and have reason enough for supposing that the ancient audiences were delighted with the sound. The imitator ought therefore to have adopted what he found, and to have added what was wanting: to have preserved a constant return of the same numbers, and to have supplied smoothness of transition and continuity of thought.
1560
It is urged by Dr. Sprat, that the irregularity of numbers is the very thing which makes that kind of poesy fit for all manner of subjects. But he should have remembered, that what is fit for everything can fit nothing well. The great pleasure of verse arises from the known measure of the lines, and uniform structure of the stanzas, by which the voice is regulated, and the memory relieved.
If the Pindarick style be what Cowley thinks it, the highest and noblest kind of writing in verse”, it can be adapted only to high and noble subjects; and it will not be easy to reconcile the poet with the critick, or to conceive how that can be the highest kind of writing in verse, which, according to Sprat, is chiefly to be preferred for its near affinity to prose.
1580
This lax and lawless versification so much concealed the deficiencies of the barren, and flat-tered the laziness of the idle, that it immediately overspread our books of poetry; all the boys and girls caught the pleasing fashion, and they that could do nothing else could write like Pindar. The rights of antiquity were invaded, and disor-der tried to break into the Latin: a poem on the Sheldonian Theatre”, in which all kinds of verse are shaken together, is unhappily inserted in the Musæ Anglicanæ. Pindarism prevailed above half a century; but at last died gradually away, and other imitations supply its place.
1590
The Pindarique Odes have so long enjoyed the highest degree of poetical reputation, that I
1600
am not willing to dismiss them with unabated censure; and surely though the mode of their composition be erroneous, yet many parts de-serve at least that admiration which is due to great comprehension of knowledge, and great fertility of fancy. The thoughts are often new, and often striking; but the greatness of one part is disgraced by the littleness of another; and total negligence of language gives the noblest concep-tions the appearance of a fabric august in the plan, but mean in the materials. Yet surely those verses are not without a just claim to praise; of which it may be said with truth, that no but Cowley could have written them.
1610
The ‘Davideis’ now remains to be consid-ered; a poem which the author designed to have extended to twelve books, merely, as he makes no scruple of declaring, because the Aeneid had that number; but he had leisure or perseverance only to write the third part”. Epick poems have been left unfinished by Virgil, Statius, Spenser, and Cowley. That we have not the whole ‘Da-videis’ is, however, not much to be regretted; for in this undertaking Cowley is, tacitly at least, confessed to have miscarried. There are not many
SAMUEL JOHNSON
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examples of so great a work, produced by an author generally read, and generally praised, that has crept through a century with so little regard. Whatever is said of Cowley, is meant of his other works. Of the ‘Davideis’ no mention is made; it never appears in books, nor emerges in, conversation. By the Spectator it has once been quoted, by Rymer’ it has once been praised, and by Dryden, in Mac Flecknoe, it has once been imitated; nor do I recollect much other. notice from its publication till now, in the whole suc-cession of English literature.
1630
Of this silence and neglect, if the reason be in-quired, it will be found partly in the choice of the subject, and partly in the performance of the work.
1640
Sacred History has been always read with submissive reverence, and an imagination over-awed and controlled. We have been accustomed to acquiesce in the nakedness and simplicity of the authentick narrative, and to repose on its veracity with such humble confidence, as sup-presses curiosity. We go with the historian as he goes, and stop with him when he stops. All amplification is frivolous and vain; all addition to that which is already sufficient for the pur-poses of religion, seems not only useless, but in some degree profane.
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THE LIFE OF COWLEY
Such events as were produced by the visible interposition of Divine Power are above the power of human genius to dignify. The miracle of Creation, however it may teem with images, is best described with little diffusion of language: He spake the word, and they were made”.
We are told that Saul was troubled with an evil spirit”; from this Cowley takes an opportu-nity of describing hell, and telling the history of Lucifer, who was, he says,
1660
Once general of a gilded host of sprites, Like Hesper leading forth the spangled nights; But down like lightning, which him struck, he came,
And roar’d at his first plunge into the flame.
Lucifer makes a speech to the inferior agents of mischief, in which there is something of heathenism, and therefore of impropriety; and, to give efficacy to his words, concludes by lash-ing his breast with his long tail. Envy, after a pause, steps out, and among other declarations of her zeal utters these lines:
1670
Do thou but threat, loud storms shall make reply,
And thunder echo to the trembling sky.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Whilst raging seas swell to so bold an height, As shall the fire’s proud element affright.
Th’ old drudging Sun, from his long-beaten
way,
Shall at thy voice start, and misguide the day.
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The jocund orbs shall break their measur’d pace, And stubborn Poles change their allotted place.
1680
Heaven’s gilded troops shall flutter here and there,
Leaving their boasting songs tun’d to a sphere.
Every reader feels himself weary with this useless talk of an allegorical Being.
It is not only when the events are confessedly miraculous, that fancy and fiction lose their effect: the whole system of life, while the Theocracy was yet visible, has an appearance so different from all other scenes of human action, that the reader of the Sacred Volume habitually considers it as the peculiar mode of existence of a distinct species of mankind, that lived and acted with manners un-communicable; so that it is difficult even for imagination to place us in the state of them whose story is related, and by consequence their joys and griefs are not easily adopted, nor can the attention be often interested in anything that befals them.