down before, that foolish fort, a heart,'-Lutea Alanson—the set of similes, Hast thou seen the down in the air, when wanton winds have tost it,'-and his 'Dream,' which is of a more tender and romantic cast, are all exquisite in their way. They are the origin of the style of Prior and Gay in their short fugitive verses, and of the songs in the Beggar's Opera. His Ballad on a Wedding is his masterpiece, and is indeed unrivalled in that class of composition, for the voluptuous delicacy of the sentiments, and the luxuriant richness of the images. I wish I could repeat the whole, but that, from the change of manners, is impossible. The description of the bride is (half of it) as follows: the story is supposed to be told by one countryman to another :—

Her cheeks so rare a white was on,
No daisy makes comparison,

(Who sees them is undone)

For streaks of red were mingled there,
Such as are on a Cath'rine pear,

(The side that's next the sun.)

Her lips were red; and one was thin,
Compar'd to that was next her chin;
(Some bee had stung it newly)
But (Dick) her eyes so guard her face,
I durst no more upon them gaze,
Than on the sun in July.

Her mouth so small, when she does speak,
Thoud'st swear her teeth her words did break,
That they might passage get;

But she so handled still the matter,
They came as good as ours, or better,
And are not spent a whit.'

sense.

There is to me in the whole of this delightful performance a freshness and purity like the first breath of morning. Its sportive irony never trespasses on modesty, though it sometimes (laughing) threatens to do so! Suckling's Letters are full of habitual gaiety and good His Discourse on Reason in Religion is well enough meant. Though he excelled in the conversational style of poetry, writing verse with the freedom and readiness, vivacity and unconcern, with which he would have talked on the most familiar and sprightly topics, his peculiar powers deserted him in attempting dramatic dialogue. His comedy of the Goblins is equally defective in plot, wit, and nature; it is a wretched list of exits and entrances, and the whole business of the scene is taken up in the unaccountable seizure, and equally unaccountable escapes, of a number of persons from a band of robbers in the shape of goblins, who turn out to be noblemen and gentlemen in disguise. Suckling was not a Grub-street author; or it might be said, that this play is like what he might have written after dreaming all night of duns and a spunging-house. His tragedies are no better their titles are the most interesting part of them, Aglaura, Brennoralt, and the Sad One.

Cowley had more brilliancy of fancy and ingenuity of thought than Donne, with less pathos and sentiment. His mode of illustrating his ideas differs also from Donne's in this: that whereas Donne is contented to analyse an image into its component elements, and resolve it into its most abstracted species; Cowley first does this, indeed, but does not stop till he has fixed upon some other prominent example of the same general class of ideas, and forced them into a metaphorical union, by the medium of the generic definition. Thus he says—

'The Phoenix Pindar is a vast species alone.'

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He means to say that he stands by himself: he is then a vast species alone: then by applying to this generality the principium individuationis, he becomes a Phoenix, because the Phoenix is the only example of a species contained in an individual. Yet this is only a literal or metaphysical coincidence and literally and metaphysically speaking, Pindar was not a species by himself, but only seemed so by pre-eminence or excellence; that is, from qualities of mind appealing to and absorbing the imagination, and which, therefore, ought to be represented in poetical language, by some other obvious and palpable image exhibiting the same kind or degree of excellence in other things, as when Gray compares him to the Theban eagle,

'Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deep of air.'

Again, he talks in the Motto, or Invocation to his Muse, of 'marching the Muse's Hannibal' into undiscovered regions. That is, he thinks first of being a leader in poetry, and then he immediately, by virtue of this abstraction, becomes a Hannibal; though no two things can really be more unlike in all the associations belonging to them, than a leader of armies and a leader of the tuneful Nine. In like manner, he compares Bacon to Moses; for in his verses extremes are sure to meet. The Hymn to Light, which forms a perfect contrast to Milton's Invocation to Light, in the commencement of the third book of Paradise Lost, begins in the following manner :

'First-born of Chaos, who so fair didst come

From the old negro's darksome womb!
Which, when it saw the lovely child,

The melancholy mass put on kind looks, and smil'd.'

"Tis, I believe, this archery to show

That so much cost in colours thou,

And skill in painting, dost bestow,

*

Upon thy ancient arms, the gaudy heav'nly bow.

Swift as light thoughts their empty career run,
Thy race is finish'd when begun;

Let a post-angel start with thee,

And thou the goal of earth shalt reach as soon as he.'

The conceits here are neither wit nor poetry; but a burlesque upon both, made up of a singular metaphorical jargon, verbal generalities, and physical analogies. Thus his calling Chaos, or Darkness, 'the old negro,' would do for abuse or jest, but is too remote and degrading for serious poetry, and yet it is meant for such. The 'old negro' is at best a nickname, and the smile on its face loses its beauty in such company. The making out the rainbow to be a species of heraldic painting, and converting an angel into a post-boy, shew the same rage for comparison; but such comparisons are as odious as they are unjust. Dr. Johnson has multiplied instances of the same false style, in its various divisions and subdivisions.1 Of Cowley's serious poems, the Complaint is the one I like the best; and some of his translations in the Essays, as those on Liberty and Retirement, are exceedingly good. The Odes to Vandyke, to the Royal Society, to Hobbes, and to the latter Brutus, beginning

1 See his Lives of the British Poets, Vol. 1.

'Excellent Brutus,' are all full of ingenious and high thoughts,
impaired by a load of ornament and quaint disguises. The Chronicle,
or list of his Mistresses, is the best of his original lighter pieces:
but the best of his poems are the translations from Anacreon, which
remain, and are likely to remain unrivalled. The spirit of wine
and joy circulates in them; and though they are lengthened out
beyond the originals, it is by fresh impulses of an eager and inex-
haustible feeling of delight. Here are some of them :-
DRINKING

'The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks, and gapes for drink again.
The plants suck in the earth, and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair.
The sea itself, which one would think
Should have but little need of drink,
Drinks twice ten thousand rivers up,
So fill'd that they o'erflow the cup.
The busy sun (and one would guess
By's drunken fiery face no less)

Drinks up the sea, and, when he 'as done,
The moon and stars drink up the sun.
They drink and dance by their own light,
They drink and revel all the night.
Nothing in nature's sober found,
But an eternal health goes round.
Fill up the bowl then, fill it high,
Fill all the glasses there; for why
Should every creature drink but I;

Why, man of morals, tell me why?'

This is a classical intoxication; and the poet's imagination, giddy with fancied joys, communicates its spirit and its motion to inanimate things, and makes all nature reel round with it. It is not easy to decide between these choice pieces, which may be reckoned among the delights of human kind; but that to the Grasshopper is one of the happiest as well as most serious :

'Happy insect, what can be

In happiness compar'd to thee?
Fed with nourishment divine,
The dewy morning's gentle wine!
Nature waits upon thee still,

And thy verdant cup does fill;
'Tis filled wherever thou dost tread,
Nature's self thy Ganymede.

Thou dost drink, and dance, and sing;
Happier than the happiest king!

All the fields which thou dost see,
All the plants, belong to thee;
All that summer-hours produce,
Fertile made with early juice.
Man for thee does sow and plough,
Farmer he, and landlord thou!
Thou dost innocently joy;
Nor does thy luxury destroy;
The shepherd gladly heareth thee,
More harmonious than he.

Thee country hinds with gladness hear,
Prophet of the ripen'd year!

Thee Phoebus loves, and does inspire;

Phoebus is himself thy sire.

To thee, of all things upon earth,

Life is no longer than thy mirth.

Happy insect, happy thou!

Dost neither age nor winter know;

But, when thou'st drunk, and danc'd, and sung
Thy fill, the flowery leaves among,

(Voluptuous and wise withal,

Epicurean animal !)

Sated with thy summer feast,

Thou retir'st to endless rest.'

Cowley's Essays are among the most agreeable prose-compositions in our language, being equally recommended by sense, wit, learning, and interesting personal history, and written in a style quite free from the faults of his poetry. It is a pity that he did not cultivate his talent for prose more, and write less in verse, for he was clearly a man of more reflection than imagination. The Essays on Agriculture, on Liberty, on Solitude, and on Greatness, are all of them delightful. From the last I may give his account of Senecio as an addition to the instances of the ludicrous, which I have attempted to enumerate in the introductory Lecture; whose ridiculous affectation of grandeur Seneca the elder (he tells us) describes to this effect: Senecio was a man of a turbid and confused wit, who could not endure to speak any but mighty words and sentences, till this humour grew at last into so notorious a habit, or rather disease, as became the sport of the whole town: he would have no servants, but huge, massy fellows; no plate or household stuff, but thrice as big as the fashion: you may believe me, for I speak it without raillery, his extravagancy came at last into such a madness, that he would not put on a pair of shoes, each of which was not big enough for both his feet he would eat nothing but what was great, nor touch any fruit but horse-plums and pound-pears: he kept a mistress that was

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