hazardous attempts of criticism. I know not whether Scaliger himself has perfuaded 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 kingdom. I will however venture to recommend Cowley's first piece, which ought to be inscribed To my muse, for want of which the fecond couplet is without reference. When the title is added, there will still remain a defect; for every piece ought to contain in itself whatever is neceffary to make it intelligible. Pope has fome epitaphs without names; which are therefore epitaphs to be let, occupied indeed for the prefent, but hardly appropriated.

The ode on Wit is almost without a rival. It was about the time of Cowley that Wit, which had been till then ufed for Intellection, in contradistinction to Will, took the meaning, whatever it be, which it now bears.

Of all the paffages in which poets have exemplified their own precepts, none will cafily be found of greater excellence than that in which Cowley condemns exuberance of Wit:

Yet

Yet 'tis not to adorn and gild each part,
That fhews more coft than art.

Jewels at nofe and lips but ill appear;
Rather than all things wit, let none be there.
Several lights will not be feen,

If there be nothing else between.

Men doubt, because they stand so thick i'th' sky, If those be stars which paint the galaxy.

In his verfes to lord Falkland, whom every man of his time was proud to praise, there are, as there must be in all Cowley's compofitions, fome ftriking thoughts; but they are not well wrought. His elegy on Sir Henry Wotton is vigorous and happy, the series of thoughts is eafy and natural, and the conclufion, though a little weakened by the intrufion of Alexander, is elegant and forcible.

It may be remarked, that in this Elegy, and in moft of his encomiaftic poems, he has forgotten or neglected to name his heroes.

In his poem on the death of Hervey, there is much praise, but little paffion, a very just and ample delineation of fuch virtues as a ftu

dious privacy admits, and fuch intellectual excellence as a mind not yet called forth to action can difplay. He knew how to diftinguish, 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 forrow by imagining 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 crackles remarkably as it burns; as therefore this property was not affigned it by chance, the mind must be thought fufficiently at ease that could attend to fuch minutenefs of phyfiology. But the power of Cowley is not fo much to move the affections, as to exercife the understanding.

The Chronicle is a compofition unrivalled and alone; fuch gaiety of fancy, fuch facility of expreffion, fuch varied fimilitude, fuch a fucceffion of images, and fuch a dance of words, it is vain to expect except from Cowley. His ftrength 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 moralift, the politician, and the critick, mingle their influence even in this airy frolick of genius. To fuch a performance Suckling could have brought the gaiety, but not the knowledge; Dryden could have fupplied the knowledge, but not the gaiety.

The verses to Davenant, which are vigoroufly begun, and happily concluded, contain some hints of criticism very juftly conceived and happily expreffed. Cowley's critical abilities have not been fufficiently obferved the few decifions and remarks which his prefaces and his notes on the Davideis supply, were at that time acceffions to Englith literature, and fhew fuch skill as raifes our wish for more examples.

The lines from Jersey are a very curious and pleasing fpecimen of the familiar defcending to the burlesque.

His two metrical difquifitions for and against Reason, are no mean fpecimens of metaphyfical poetry. The ftanzas against knowledge produce little conviction. In those which are intended to exalt the human fa

culties,

culties, Reafon has its proper talk affigned it; that of judging, not of things revealed, but of the reality of revelation. In the verfes for Reafon is a paffage which Bentley, in the only English verfes which he is known to have written, feems to have copied, though with the inferiority of an imitator.

The holy Book like the eighth sphere does thine
With thousand lights of truth divine,
So numberlefs the stars that to our eye
It makes all but one galaxy :
Yet Reafon must afffst too; for in feas
So vaft and dangerous as thefe,

Our course by ftars above we cannot know
Without the compafs too below,

After this fays Bentley:

Who travels in religious jars,

Truth mix'd with error, clouds with rays,
With Whifton wanting pyx and stars,
In the wide ocean finks or ftrays.

Cowley feems to have had, what Milton is believed to have wanted, the skill to rate his own performances by their juft value, and has therefore clofed his Mifcellanies with the verfes upon Crashaw, which apparently excel

all