makes no selection of words, nor feeks any neatness of phrase: he has no elegance either lucky or elaborate; as his endeavours were rather to impress fentences upon the understanding than images on the fancy, he has few epithets, and those scattered without peculiar propriety of nice adaptation. It seems to follow from the neceffity of the subject, rather than the care of the writer, that the diction of his heroic poem is lefs familiar than that of his flightest writings. He has given not the fame numbers, but the fame diction, to the gentle Anacreon and the tempeftuous Pindar. His verfification feems to have had very little of his care; and if what he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmufical only when they are ill read, the art of reading them is at present loft; for they are commonly harsh to modern ears. He has indeed many noble lines, fuch as the Waller never could produce. The bulk of his thoughts sometimes fwelled his verse to unexpected and inevitable grandeur; but his excellence of this kind is merely fortuitous: he finks willingly down to his general care feeble care of leffnefs, deffnefs, and avoids with very little care either meanness or afperity. His contractions are often rugged and harsh; His rhymes are very often made by pronouns, or particles, or the like unimportant words, which difappoint the ear, and destroy the energy of the line. His combinations of different measures is fometimes diffonant and unpleafing; he joins verfes together, of which the former does not flide easily into the latter. The words do and did, which fo much degrade in present estimation the line that admits them, were in the time of Cowley little cenfured or avoided; how often, he used them and with how bad an effect, at least to our ears, will appear by a paffage, in which every reader will lament to fee, juft, and noble thoughts defrauded of their praise by inelegance of language: ངའི VOL. I. H Where Where honour or where confcience does not blind, Who by refolves and vows engag'd does stand The bondman of the cloister fo, All that he does receive does always owe. Which his hour's work as well as hours does tell: His heroick lines are often formed of monofyllables; but yet they are fometimes sweet and fonorous. He fays of the Meffiah, Round the whole earth his dreaded name fhall found, And reach to worlds that must not yet be found. In another place, of David, Yet bid him go fecurely, when he fends; 'Tis Saul that is his foe, and we his friends. The The man who has his God, no aid can lack ; Yet amidst his negligence he fometimes attempted an improved and fcientific verfification; of which it will be best to give his own account fubjoined to this line: Nor can the glory contain itself in th' endless space. "I am forry that it is neceffary to admo "nish the most part of readers, that it is not 66 by negligence that this verfe is fo loofe, long, and, as it were, vaft; it is to paint "in the number the nature of the thing "which it defcribes, which I would have "obferved in divers other places of this poem, "that elfe will pafs for very careless verses: "as before, And over rns the neighb'ring fields with violent course.. "In the fecond book; Down a precipice deep, down be cafts them all. - And, And fell a-down his fhoulders with loofe care. "In the third, ACAT na Brass was his helmet, his boots brass, and o'er His breaft a thick plate of strong brass he wore. "In the fourth, Like fome fair pine o'er-looking all th' ignobler wood. "And, Some from the rocks caft themselves down headlong. "And many more: but it is enough to in"stance in a few. The thing is, that the "difpofition of words, and numbers fhould "be fuch, as that, out of the order and found “of them, the things themselves may be re prefented. This the greeks were not fo "accurate as to bind themfelves to; neither "have our English poets obferved it, for aught I can find. The Latins (qui`mufas "colunt feveriores) fometimes did it; and "their prince, Virgil, always: in whom the "examples are innumerable, and taken no"tice of by all judicious men, fo that it is fuperfluous to collect them." I know not whether he has, in many of thefe inftances, attained the representation or refem |