]
[Footnote 14: Here is an error in the designation of this comedy, which
our author copied from the title page of the latter editions of Cowley's
works: the title of the play itself is without the article, "Cutter of
Coleman street," and that, because a merry sharking fellow about the
town, named Cutter, is a principal character in it.
[Footnote 14: Here is an error in the designation of this comedy, which
our author copied from the title page of the latter editions of Cowley's
works: the title of the play itself is without the article, "Cutter of
Coleman street," and that, because a merry sharking fellow about the
town, named Cutter, is a principal character in it.
Samuel Johnson - Lives of the Poets - 1
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 conceptions the appearance of a fabrick, 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 man but Cowley could have written them.
The Davideis now remains to be considered; 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 Davideis, is, however, not much to be regretted; for
in this undertaking Cowley is, tacitly, at least, confessed to have
miscarried. There are not many 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 been once
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 succession of English
literature.
Of this silence and neglect, if the reason be inquired, it will be found
partly in the choice of the subject, and partly in the performance of
the work.
Sacred history has been always read with submissive reverence, and
an imagination overawed 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 suppresses
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 purposes of religion seems not only
useless, but, in some degree, profane.
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 opportunity of describing hell, and telling the history
of Lucifer, who was, he says,
Once gen'ral 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 inferiour agents of mischief, in which
there is something of heathenism, and, therefore, of impropriety; and,
to give efficacy to his words, concludes by lashing "his breast with
his long tail. " Envy, after a pause, steps out, and, among other
declarations of her zeal, utters these lines:
Do thou but threat, loud storms shall make reply,
And thunder echo to the trembling sky:
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.
The jocund orbs shall break their measur'd pace,
And stubborn poles change their allotted place,
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 uncommunicable; 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 any thing
that befalls them.
To the subject thus originally indisposed to the reception of poetical
embellishments, the writer brought little that could reconcile
impatience, or attract curiosity. Nothing can be more disgusting than a
narrative spangled with conceits; and conceits are all that the Davideis
supplies.
One of the great sources of poetical delight, is description, or the
power of presenting pictures to the mind. Cowley gives inferences
instead of images, and shows not what may be supposed to have been seen,
but what thoughts the sight might have suggested. When Virgil describes
the stone which Turnus lifted against Aeneas, he fixes the attention on
its bulk and weight:
Saxum circumspicit ingens,
Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat,
Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis.
Cowley says of the stone with which Cain slew his brother,
I saw him fling the stone, as if he meant
At once his murther and his monument.
Of the sword taken from Goliah, he says,
A sword so great, that it was only fit,
To cut off his great head that came with it.
Other poets describe death by some of its common appearances. Cowley
says, with a learned allusion to sepulchral lamps, real or fabulous,
'Twixt his right ribs deep pierc'd the furious blade,
And open'd wide those secret vessels where
Life's light goes out, when first they let in air.
But he has allusions vulgar, as well as learned. In a visionary
succession of kings:
Joas at first does bright and glorious shew,
In life's fresh morn his fame does early crow.
Describing an undisciplined army, after having said with elegance,
His forces seem'd no army, but a crowd
Heartless, unarm'd, disorderly, and loud,
he gives them a fit of the ague.
The allusions, however, are not always to vulgar things; he offends by
exaggeration, as much as by diminution:
The king was plac'd alone, and o'er his head
A well-wrought heaven of silk and gold was spread.
Whatever he writes is always polluted with some conceit:
Where the sun's fruitful beams give metals birth,
Where he the growth of fatal gold doth see,
Gold, which alone more influence has than he.
In one passage he starts a sudden question, to the confusion of
philosophy:
Ye learned heads, whom ivy garlands grace,
Why does that twining plant the oak embrace;
The oak, for courtship most of all unfit,
And rough as are the winds that fight with it?
His expressions have, sometimes, a degree of meanness that surpasses
expectation:
Nay, gentle guests, he cries, since now you're in,
The story of your gallant friend begin.
In a simile descriptive of the morning:
As glimm'ring stars just at th' approach of day,
Cashier'd by troops, at last drop all away.
The dress of Gabriel deserves attention:
He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,
That e'er the mid-day sun pierc'd through with light;
Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,
Wash'd from the morning beauties' deepest red;
An harmless flatt'ring meteor shone for hair,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care;
He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies,
Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes;
This he with starry vapours sprinkles all,
Took in their prime ere they grow ripe and fall;
Of a new rainbow, ere it fret or fade,
The choicest piece cut out, a scarf is made.
This is a just specimen of Cowley's imagery: what might, in general
expressions, be great and forcible, he weakens and makes ridiculous
by branching it into small parts. That Gabriel was invested with the
softest or brightest colours of the sky, we might have been told, and
been dismissed to improve the idea in our different proportions of
conception; but Cowley could not let us go, till he had related where
Gabriel got first his skin, and then his mantle, then his lace, and then
his scarf, and related it in the terms of the mercer and tailor.
Sometimes he indulges himself in a digression, always conceived with his
natural exuberance, and commonly, even where it is not long, continued
till it is tedious.
I' th' library a few choice authors stood,
Yet 'twas well stor'd, for that small store was good;
Writing, man's spiritual physick, was not then
Itself, as now, grown a disease of men.
Learning (young virgin) but few suitors knew;
The common prostitute she lately grew,
And with the spurious brood loads now the press;
Laborious effects of idleness.
As the Davideis affords only four books, though intended to consist
of twelve, there is no opportunity for such criticism as epick poems
commonly supply. The plan of the whole work is very imperfectly shown by
the third part. The duration of an unfinished action cannot be known. Of
characters, either not yet introduced, or shown but upon few occasions,
the full extent and the nice discriminations cannot be ascertained. The
fable is plainly implex, formed rather from the Odyssey than the Iliad;
and many artifices of diversification are employed, with the skill of a
man acquainted with the best models. The past is recalled by narration,
and the future anticipated by vision: but he has been so lavish of his
poetical art, that it is difficult to imagine how he could fill eight
books more without practising again the same modes of disposing his
matter; and, perhaps, the perception of this growing incumbrance
inclined him to stop. By this abruption posterity lost more instruction
than delight. If the continuation of the Davideis can be missed, it is
for the learning that had been diffused over it, and the notes in which
it had been explained.
Had not his characters been depraved, like every other part, by improper
decorations, they would have deserved uncommon praise. He gives Saul
both the body and mind of a hero:
His way once chose, he forward thrust outright,
Nor turn'd aside for danger or delight.
And the different beauties of the lofty Merah and the gentle Michol, are
very justly conceived and strongly painted.
Rymer has declared the Davideis superiour to the Jerusalem of Tasso;
"which," says he, "the poet, with all his care, has not totally purged
from pedantry. " If by pedantry is meant that minute knowledge which
is derived from particular sciences and studies, in opposition to the
general notions supplied by a wide survey of life and nature, Cowley
certainly errs, by introducing pedantry far more frequently than Tasso.
I know not, indeed, why they should be compared; for the resemblance of
Cowley's work to Tasso's is only that they both exhibit the agency of
celestial and infernal spirits, in which, however, they differ
widely; for Cowley supposes them commonly to operate upon the mind by
suggestion; Tasso represents them as promoting or obstructing events by
external agency.
Of particular passages that can be properly compared, I remember only
the description of heaven, in which the different manner of the two
writers is sufficiently discernible. Cowley's is scarcely description,
unless it be possible to describe by negatives: for he tells us
only what there is not in heaven. Tasso endeavours to represent the
splendours and pleasures of the regions of happiness. Tasso affords
images, and Cowley sentiments. It happens, however, that Tasso's
description affords some reason for Rymer's censure. He says of the
supreme being,
Ha sotto i piedi e fato e la natura,
Ministri umili, e'l moto, e chi'l misura.
The second line has in it more of pedantry than, perhaps, can be found
in any other stanza of the poem.
In the perusal of the Davideis, as of all Cowley's works, we find wit
and learning unprofitably squandered. Attention has no relief; the
affections are never moved: we are sometimes surprised, but never
delighted; and find much to admire, but little to approve. Still,
however, it is the work of Cowley; of a mind capacious by nature, and
replenished by study.
In the general review of Cowley's poetry it will be found, that he wrote
with abundant fertility, but negligent or unskilful selection; with much
thought, but with little imagery; that he is never pathetick, and
rarely sublime; but always either ingenious or learned, either acute or
profound.
It is said by Denham, in his elegy,
To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he writ was all his own.
This wide position requires less limitation, when it is affirmed of
Cowley, than, perhaps, of any other poet. --He read much, and yet
borrowed little.
His character of writing was, indeed, not his own: he unhappily adopted
that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise; and,
not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued to
delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself
with a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure, in its spring, was bright
and gay, but which time has been continually stealing from his brows.
He was, in his own time, considered as of unrivalled excellence.
Clarendon represents him as having taken a flight beyond all that went
before him; and Milton is said to have declared, that the three greatest
English poets were Spenser, Shakespeare, and Cowley.
His manner he had in common with others; but his sentiments were his
own. Upon every subject he thought for himself; and such was his
copiousness of knowledge, that something at once remote and applicable
rushed into his mind; yet it is not likely that he always rejected a
commodious idea merely because another had used it: his known wealth was
so great, that he might have borrowed without loss of credit.
In his elegy on sir Henry Wotton, the last lines have such resemblance
to the noble epigram of Grotius on the death of Scaliger, that I cannot
but think them copied from it, though they are copied by no servile
hand.
One passage in his Mistress is so apparently borrowed from Donne, that
he probably would not have written it, had it not mingled with his own
thoughts, so as that he did not perceive himself taking it from another:
Although I think thou never found wilt be,
Yet I'm resolv'd to search for thee:
The search itself rewards the pains.
So, though the chymic his great secret miss
(For neither it in art or nature is,)
Yet things well worth his toil he gains;
And does his charge and labour pay
With good unsought experiments by the way. COWLEY.
Some that have deeper digg'd love's mine than I,
Say, where his centric happiness doth lie:
I have lov'd, and got, and told;
But should I love, get, tell, till I were old;
I should not find that hidden mystery;
Oh, 'tis imposture all!
And as no chymic yet th' elixir got,
But glorifies his pregnant pot,
If by the way to him befall
Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,
So lovers dream a rich and long delight,
But get a winter-seeming summer's night. DONNE.
Jonson and Donne, as Dr. Hurd remarks, were then in the highest esteem.
It is related by Clarendon, that Cowley always acknowledges his
obligation to the learning and industry of Jonson; but I have found no
traces of Jonson in his works: to emulate Donne appears to have been
his purpose; and from Donne he may have learned that familiarity with
religious images, and that light allusion to sacred things, by which
readers far short of sanctity are frequently offended; and which would
not be borne, in the present age, when devotion, perhaps, not more
fervent, is more delicate.
Having produced one passage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will
recompense him by another which Milton seems to have borrowed from him.
He says of Goliah:
His spear, the trunk was of a lofty tree,
Which nature meant some tall ship's mast should be.
Milton of Satan:
His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great admiral, were but a wand,
He walked with.
His diction was, in his own time, censured as negligent. He seems not to
have known, or not to have considered, that words, being arbitrary, must
owe their power to association, and have the influence, and that only,
which custom has given them. Language is the dress of thought: and,
as the noblest mien, or most graceful action, would be degraded and
obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or
mechanicks; so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy, and
the most splendid ideas drop their magnificence, if they are conveyed by
words used commonly upon low and trivial occasions, debased by vulgar
mouths, and contaminated by inelegant applications.
Truth, indeed, is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have
an intrinsick and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual
gold which defies destruction; but gold may be so concealed in baser
matter, that only a chymist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in
unrefined and plebeian words, that none but philosophers can distinguish
it; and both may be so buried in impurities, as not to pay the cost of
their extraction.
The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself to
the intellectual eye; and, if the first appearance offends, a further
knowledge is not often sought. Whatever professes to benefit by
pleasing, must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something
sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise. What
is perceived by slow degrees may gratify us with the consciousness of
improvement, but will never strike with the sense of pleasure.
Of all this, Cowley appears to have been without knowledge, or without
care. He makes no selection of words, nor seeks any neatness of phrase:
he has no elegancies, either lucky or elaborate: as his endeavours were
rather to impress sentences upon the understanding than images on
the fancy, he has few epithets, and those scattered without peculiar
propriety or nice adaptation. It seems to follow from the necessity of
the subject, rather than the care of the writer, that the diction of his
heroick poem is less familiar than that of his slightest writings. He
has given not the same numbers, but the same diction, to the gentle
Anacreon and the tempestuous Pindar.
His versification seems to have had very little of his care; and, if
what he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmusical only when they
are ill read, the art of reading them is at present lost; for they are
commonly harsh to modern ears. He has, indeed, many noble lines, such as
the feeble care of Waller never could produce. The bulk of his thoughts
sometimes swelled his verse to unexpected and inevitable grandeur; but
his excellence of this kind is merely fortuitous: he sinks willingly
down to his general carelessness, and avoids, with very little care,
either meanness or asperity.
His contractions are often rugged and harsh:
One flings a mountain, and its rivers too
Torn up with 't.
His rhymes are very often made by pronouns, or particles, or the like
unimportant words, which disappoint the ear, and destroy the energy of
the line.
His combination of different measures is, sometimes, dissonant and
unpleasing; he joins verses together, of which the former does not slide
easily into the latter.
The words _do_ and _did_, which so much degrade, in present estimation,
the line that admits them, were, in the time of Cowley, little censured
or avoided; how often he used them, and with how bad an effect, at least
to our ears, will appear by a passage, in which every reader will lament
to see just and noble thoughts defrauded of their praise by inelegance
of language:
Where honour or where conscience _does_ not bind,
No other law shall shackle me;
Slave to myself I ne'er will be;
Nor shall my future actions be confin'd
By my own present mind.
Who by resolves and vows engag'd _does_ stand
For days, that yet belong to fate,
_Does_, like an unthrift, mortgage his estate,
Before it falls into his hand;
The bondman of the cloister so,
All that he _does_ receive _does_ always owe:
And still, as time comes in, it goes away,
Not to enjoy, but debts to pay!
Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell,
Which his hour's work, as well as hours, _does_ tell!
Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell.
His heroick lines are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they are
sometimes sweet and sonorous.
He says of the Messiah:
Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound,
_And reach to worlds that must not yet be found_.
In another place, of David:
Yet bid him go securely, when he sends;
_'Tis Saul that is his foe, and we his friends.
The man who has his God, no aid can lack;
And we who bid him go, will bring him back. _
Yet, amidst his negligence, he sometimes attempted an improved and
scientifick versification; of which it will be best to give his own
account subjoined to this line:
Nor can the glory contain itself in th' endless space.
"I am sorry that it is necessary to admonish the most part of readers,
that it is not by negligence that this verse is so loose, long, and,
as it were, vast; it is to paint in the number the nature of the thing
which it describes, which I would have observed in divers other places
of this poem, that else will pass for very careless verses: as before,
And overruns the neighb'ring fields with violent course.
"In the second book,
Down a precipice deep, down he casts them all.
"And,
And fell a-down his shoulders with loose care
"In the third,
Brass was his helmet, his boots brass, and o'er
His breast a thick plate of strong brass he wore.
"In the fourth,
Like some fair pine o'erlooking all th' ignobler wood.
"And,
Some from the rocks cast themselves down headlong.
"And many more: but it is enough to instance in a few. The thing is,
that the disposition of words and numbers should be such, as that,
out of the order and sound of them, the things themselves may be
represented. This the Greeks were not so accurate as to bind themselves
to; neither have our English poets observed it, for aught I can find.
The Latins (qui musas colunt severiores) sometimes did it; and their
prince, Virgil, always, in whom the examples are innumerable, and taken
notice of by all judicious men, so that it is superfluous to collect
them. "
I know not whether he has, in many of these instances, attained the
representation or resemblance that he purposes. Verse can imitate only
sound and motion. A _boundless_ verse, a _headlong_ verse, and a verse
of _brass_, or of _strong brass_, seem to comprise very incongruous
and unsociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the sound of the line
expressing _loose care_, I cannot discover; nor why the _pine_ is
_taller_ in an alexandrine than in ten syllables.
But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example of
representative versification, which, perhaps, no other English line can
equal:
Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise:
He, who defers this work from day to day,
Does on a river's bank expecting stay
Till the whole stream that stopp'd him shall be gone,
_Which runs, and, as it runs, for ever shall run on_.
Cowley was, I believe, the first poet that mingled alexandrines, at
pleasure, with the common heroick of ten syllables; and from him Dryden
borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He considered
the verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestick, and has,
therefore, deviated into that measure, when he supposes the voice heard
of the supreme being.
The author of the Davideis is commended by Dryden for having written it
in couplets, because he discovered that any staff was too lyrical for
an heroick poem; but this seems to have been known before by May and
Sandys, the translators of the Pharsalia and the Metamorphoses.
In the Davideis are some hemistichs, or verses left imperfect by the
author, in imitation of Virgil, whom he supposes not to have intended
to complete them: that this opinion is erroneous, may be probably
concluded, because this truncation is imitated by no subsequent Roman
poet; because Virgil himself filled up one broken line in the heat of
recitation; because in one the sense is now unfinished; and because all
that can be done by a broken verse, a line intersected by a _caesura_
and a full stop, will equally effect.
Of triplets, in his Davideis, he makes no use, and, perhaps, did not, at
first, think them allowable; but he appears afterwards to have changed
his mind, for, in the verses on the government of Cromwell, he inserts
them liberally with great happiness.
After so much criticism on his poems, the essays which accompany them
must not be forgotten. What is said by Sprat of his conversation, that
no man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, may
be applied to these compositions. No author ever kept his verse and his
prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural,
and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet
obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought, or hard-laboured;
but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness.
It has been observed by Felton, in his essay on the Classicks, that
Cowley was beloved by every muse that he courted; and that he has
rivalled the ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy.
It may be affirmed, without any encomiastick fervour, that he brought to
his poetick labours a mind replete with learning, and that his pages are
embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply; that he was
the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater
ode, and the gaiety of the less; that he was equally qualified for
sprightly sallies, and for lofty flights; that he was among those who
freed translation from servility, and, instead of following his author
at a distance, walked by his side; and that if he left versification
yet improvable, he left likewise, from time to time, such specimens of
excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it.
* * * * *
The insertion of Cowley's epitaph may be interesting to our readers.
Epitaphium
Autoris
In Ecclesia D. Petri apud Westmonasterienses
Sepulti.
Abrahamus Cowleius,
Anglorum Pindarus, Flaccus, Maro,
Deliciae, Decus, Desiderium, Aevi sui,
Hic juxta situs est.
Aurea dum volitant late tua scripta per orbem,
Et fama aeternum vivis, divine poeta,
Hic placida jaceas requie: custodiat urnam
Cana fides, vigilentque perenni lampade musae
Sit sacer iste locus; nee quis temerarius ausit
Sacrilega turbare manu venerabile bustum.
Intacti maneant; maneant per saecula dulces
Cowleii cineres, serventque immobile saxum.
Sic vovatque
Votumque suum apud posteros sacratum esse voluit
Qui viro incomparabili posult sepulchrale marmor,
Georgius Dux Buckinghamiae.
Excessit e vita Anno Aetatis suae 49? et honorifica pompa elatus
ex Aedibus
Buckinghamianis, viris illustribus omnium ordinum exequias
celebrantibus,
sepultus est die 3? M. Augusti, Anno Domini 1667.
[Footnote 6: This volume was not published before 1633, when Cowley was
fifteeyears old. Dr. Johnson, as well as former biographers, seems to
have been misled by the portrait of Cowley being, by mistake, marked with
the age of thirteen years. R. ]
[Footnote 7: He was a candidate this year at Westminster school for
election to Trinity college, but proved unsuccessful. ]
[Footnote 8: In the first edition of this life, Dr. Johnson wrote, "which
was never inserted in any collection of his works;" but he altered the
expression when the Lives were collected into volumes. The satire was
added to Cowley's works by the particular direction of Dr. Johnson. N. ]
[Footnote 9: Consulting the Virgilian lots, Sortes Virgilianae, is a
method of divination by the opening of Virgil, and applying to the
circumstances of the peruser the first passage in either of the two pages
that he accidentally fixes his eye on. It is said, that king Charles
the first, and lord Falkland, being in the Bodleian library, made this
experiment of their future fortunes, and met with passages equally
ominous to each.
That of the king was the following:
At bello audacis populi vexatus et armis,
Finibus extorris, complexu avulsus luli,
Auxilium imploret, videatque indigna suorum
Funera, nec, cum se sub leges pacis iniquae
Tradiderit, regno aut optata luce fruatur:
Sed cadat ante diem, mediaque inhumatus arena. Aeneid. iv. 615.
Yet let a race untam'd, and haughty foes,
His peaceful entrance with dire arms oppose,
Oppress'd with numbers in th' unequal field,
His men discourag'd and himself expell'd:
Let him for succour sue from place to place,
Torn from his subjects and his son's embrace.
First let him see his friends in battle slain,
And their untimely fate lament in vain:
And when, at length, the cruel war shall cease,
On hard conditions may he buy his peace;
Nor let him then enjoy supreme command.
But fall untimely by some hostile hand,
And lie unburied on the barren sand. DRYDEN.
Lord Falkland's:
Non haec, O Palla, dederas promissa parenti,
Cautius ut saevo velles te credere Marti.
Haud ignarus eram, quantum nova gloria in armis,
Et praedulce decus primo certamine posset.
Primitiae juvenis miserae, bellique propinqui
Dura rudimenta, et nulli exaudita deorum,
Vota precesque meae! Aeneid. xi. 152.
O Pallas, thou hast fail'd thy plighted word,
To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword;
I warn'd thee, but in vain, for well I knew
What perils youthful ardour would pursue,
That boiling blood would carry thee too far,
Young as thou wert to dangers, raw to war.
O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom,
Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come!
Hard elements of unauspicious war,
Vain vows to heaven, and unavailing care! DRYDEN
Hoffman, in his Lexicon, gives a very satisfactory account of this
practice of seeking fates in books: and says, that it was used by the
pagans, the jewish rabbins, and even the early Christians; the latter
taking the New Testament for their oracle. ]
[Footnote 10: Johnson has exhibited here us little feeling for the
neglected servant of the thankless house of Stewart, as he displayed in
the cold contempt of his sixth Rambler. An unmeaning compliment from a
worthless king was Cowley's only recompense for years of faithful and
painful services. A heart loyal and affectionate, like his, may well be
excused the utterance of its pains, when wounded by those for whom it
would so cheerfully have poured forth its blood. We repeat, that Cowley's
misfortune was his devotion to a family, who invariably forgot, in their
prosperity, those who had defended them in the day of adversity. ED. ]
[Footnote 11: See Campbell's Poets, iv. 75. ]
[Footnote 12: By May's poem, we are here to understand a continuation
of Lucan's Pharsalia, to the death of Julius Caesar, by Thomas May, an
eminent poet and historian, who flourished in the reigns of James
and Charles the first, and of whom a life is given in the Biographia
Britannica. The merit of Cowley's Latin poems is well examined in Censura
Literatia, vol. viii. See also Warton's Preface to Milton's Juvenile
Poems. ED. ]
[Footnote 13: 1663.
]
[Footnote 14: Here is an error in the designation of this comedy, which
our author copied from the title page of the latter editions of Cowley's
works: the title of the play itself is without the article, "Cutter of
Coleman street," and that, because a merry sharking fellow about the
town, named Cutter, is a principal character in it. ]
[Footnote 15: L'Allegro of Milton. Dr. J. ]
[Footnote 16: About three hundred pounds per annum. See Campbell's Poets,
iv. ]
[Footnote 17: Now in the possession of Mr. Clark, alderman of London.
Dr. J. --Mr. Clark was, in 1798, elected to the important office of
chamberlain of London; and has every year since been unanimously
reelected. N. ]
[Footnote 18: For metaphysical poets, see Brydges' Restituta, vol. iv. ]
[Footnote 19: It is but justice to the memory of Cowley, to quote here an
exquisite stanza which Johnson has inserted in the Idler, No. 77, where
he says; "Cowley seems to have possessed the power of writing easily
beyond any other of our poets; yet his pursuit of remote thought led him
often into harshness of expression. " The stanza is to a lady elaborately
dressed:
Th' adorning thee with so much art
Is but a barb'rous skill,
'Tis like the pois'ning of a dart
Too apt before to kill. ED. ]
[Footnote 20: Dodsley's Collection of Poems, vol. v. R. ]
[Footnote 21: First published in quarto, 1669, under the title of Carmen
Pindaricum in Theatrum Sheldonianum in solennibus magnifici operis
encaeniis. Recitatum Julii die 9, anno 1669, a Corbetto Owen, A. B. Aed.
Chr. Alumno, authore. R. ]
DENHAM
Of sir John Denham very little is known but what is related of him by
Wood, or by himself.
He was born at Dublin, 1615[22]; the only son of sir John Denham, of
Little Horsley, in Essex, then chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland,
and of Eleanor, daughter of sir Garret More, baron of Mellefont.
Two years afterwards, his father, being made one of the barons of the
exchequer in England, brought him away from his native country, and
educated him in London.
In 1631 he was sent to Oxford, where he was considered "as a dreaming
young man, given more to dice and cards than study:" and, therefore,
gave no prognosticks of his future eminence; nor was suspected to
conceal, under sluggishness and laxity, a genius born to improve the
literature of his country.
When he was, three years afterwards, removed to Lincoln's inn, he
prosecuted the common law with sufficient appearance of application;
yet did not lose his propensity to cards and dice; but was very often
plundered by gamesters.
Being severely reproved for this folly, he professed, and, perhaps,
believed, himself reclaimed; and, to testify the sincerity of his
repentance, wrote and published an Essay upon Gaming.
He seems to have divided his studies between law and poetry; for, in
1636, he translated the second book of the Aeneid. Two years after, his
father died; and then, notwithstanding his resolutions and professions,
he returned again to the vice of gaming, and lost several thousand
pounds that had been left him.
In 1641, he published the Sophy. This seems to have given him his first
hold of the publick attention; for Waller remarked, "that he broke out
like the Irish rebellion, three score thousand strong, when nobody was
aware, or in the least suspected it;" an observation which could have
had no propriety had his poetical abilities been known before.
He was after that pricked for sheriff of Surrey, and made governour
of Farnham castle for the king; but he soon resigned that charge, and
retreated to Oxford, where, in 1643, he published Cooper's Hill.
This poem had such reputation as to excite the common artifice by which
envy degrades excellence. A report was spread, that the performance was
not his own, but that he had bought it of a vicar for forty pounds. The
same attempt was made to rob Addison of his Cato, and Pope of his Essay
on Criticism.
In 1647, the distresses of the royal family required him to engage in
more dangerous employments. He was intrusted, by the queen, with a
message to the king; and, by whatever means, so far softened the
ferocity of Hugh Peters, that, by his intercession, admission was
procured. Of the king's condescension he has given an account in the
dedication of his works.
He was, afterwards, employed in carrying on the king's correspondence;
and, as he says, discharged this office with great safety to the
royalists: and, being accidentally discovered by the adverse party's
knowledge of Mr. Cowley's hand, he escaped happily both for himself and
his friends.
He was yet engaged in a greater undertaking. In April, 1648, he conveyed
James, the duke of York, from London into France, and delivered him
there to the queen and prince of Wales. This year he published his
translation of Cato Major. He now resided in France, as one of the
followers of the exiled king; and, to divert the melancholy of their
condition, was sometimes enjoined by his master to write occasional
verses; one of which amusements was probably his ode, or song, upon the
Embassy to Poland, by which he and lord Crofts procured a contribution
of ten thousand pounds from the Scotch, that wandered over the kingdom.
Poland was, at that time, very much frequented by itinerant traders,
who, in a country of very little commerce and of great extent, where
every man resided on his own estate, contributed very much to the
accommodation of life, by bringing to every man's house those little
necessaries which it was very inconvenient to want, and very troublesome
to fetch. I have formerly read, without much reflection, of the
multitude of Scotchmen that travelled with their wares in Poland; and
that their numbers were not small, the success of this negotiation gives
sufficient evidence.
About this time, what estate the war and the gamesters had left him was
sold, by order of the parliament; and when, in 1652, he returned to
England, he was entertained by the earl of Pembroke.
Of the next years of his life there is no account. At the restoration he
obtained that which many missed, the reward of his loyalty; being made
surveyor of the king's buildings, and dignified with the order of the
Bath. He seems now to have learned some attention to money; for Wood
says, that he got by this place seven thousand pounds.
After the restoration, he wrote the poem on Prudence and Justice, and,
perhaps, some of his other pieces; and as he appears, whenever any
serious question comes before him, to have been a man of piety, he
consecrated his poetical powers to religion, and made a metrical version
of the psalms of David. In this attempt he has failed; but in sacred
poetry who has succeeded?
It might be hoped that the favour of his master, and esteem of the
publick, would now make him happy. But human felicity is short and
uncertain; a second marriage brought upon him so much disquiet, as, for
a time, disordered his understanding; and Butler lampooned him for his
lunacy. I know not whether the malignant lines were then made publick,
nor what provocation incited Butler to do that which no provocation can
excuse.
His phrensy lasted not long[23]; and he seems to have regained his full
force of mind; for he wrote afterwards his excellent poem upon the death
of Cowley, whom he was not long to survive; for, on the 19th of March,
1668, he was buried by his side.
Denham is deservedly considered as one of the fathers of English poetry.
"Denham and Waller," says Prior, "improved our versification, and
Dryden perfected it. " He has given specimens of various compositions,
descriptive, ludicrous, didactick, and sublime.
He appears to have had, in common with almost all mankind, the ambition
of being, upon proper occasions, _a merry fellow_, and, in common with
most of them, to have been by nature, or by early habits, debarred from
it. Nothing is less exhilarating than the ludicrousness of Denham; he
does not fail for want of efforts; he is familiar, he is gross; but he
is never merry, unless the Speech against Peace in the close Committee
be excepted. For grave burlesque, however, his imitation of Davenant
shows him to have been well qualified.
Of his more elevated occasional poems, there is, perhaps, none that does
not deserve commendation. In the verses to Fletcher, we have an image
that has since been often adopted[24]:
But whither am I stray'd? I need not raise
Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise;
Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built,
Nor need thy juster title the foul guilt
Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred, slain.
After Denham, Orrery, in one of his prologues,
Poets are sultans, if they had their will;
For ev'ry author would his brother kill.
And Pope,
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne.
But this is not the best of his little pieces: it is excelled by his
poem to Fanshaw, and his elegy on Cowley.
His praise of Fanshaw's version of Guarini contains a very sprightly and
judicious character of a good translator:
That servile path thou nobly dost decline,
Of tracing word by word and line by line.
Those are the labour'd births of slavish brains,
Not the effect of poetry but pains;
Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords
No flight for thoughts, but poorly stick at words,
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue,
To make translations and translators too,
They but preserve the ashes; thou the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.
The excellence of these lines is greater, as the truth which they
contain was not, at that time, generally known.
His poem on the death of Cowley was his last, and, among his shorter
works, his best performance: the numbers are musical, and the thoughts
are just.
Cooper's Hill is the work that confers upon him the rank and dignity of
an original author. He seems to have been, at least among us, the author
of a species of composition that may be denominated _local poetry_,
of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be
poetically described with the addition of such embellishments as may be
supplied by historical retrospection, or incidental meditation.
To trace a new scheme of poetry, has, in itself, a very high claim to
praise, and its praise is yet more, when it is apparently copied by
Garth and Pope[25]; after whose names little will be gained by an
enumeration of smaller poets, that have left scarcely a corner of the
island not dignified either by rhyme or blank verse.
Cooper's Hill, if it be maliciously inspected, will not be found without
its faults. The digressions are too long, the morality too frequent, and
the sentiments, sometimes, such as will not bear a rigorous inquiry.
The four verses, which, since Dryden has commended them, almost every
writer for a century past has imitated, are generally known:
O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.
The lines, are, in themselves, not perfect; for most of the words,
thus artfully opposed, are to be understood simply on one side of the
comparison, and metaphorically on the other; and, if there be any
language which does not express intellectual operations by material
images, into that language they cannot be translated. But so much
meaning is comprised in so few words; the particulars of resemblance are
so perspicaciously collected, and every mode of excellence separated
from its adjacent fault by so nice a line of limitation; the different
parts of the sentence are so accurately adjusted; and the flow of
the last couplet is so smooth and sweet; that the passage, however
celebrated, has not been praised above its merit. It has beauty peculiar
to itself, and must be numbered among those felicities which cannot be
produced at will by wit and labour, but must rise unexpectedly in some
hour propitious to poetry.
He appears to have been one of the first that understood the necessity
of emancipating translation from the drudgery of counting lines, and
interpreting single words. How much this servile practice obscured the
clearest, and deformed the most beautiful parts of the ancient authors,
may be discovered by a perusal of our earlier versions; some of them
are the works of men well qualified, not only by critical knowledge,
but by poetical genius, who yet, by a mistaken ambition of exactness,
degraded, at once, their originals and themselves.
Denham saw the better way, but has not pursued it with great success.
His versions of Virgil are not pleasing; but they taught Dryden to
please better. His poetical imitation of Tully on Old Age has neither
the clearness of prose, nor the sprightliness of poetry.
The "strength of Denham," which Pope so emphatically mentions, is to
be found in many lines and couplets, which convey much meaning in few
words, and exhibit the sentiment with more weight than bulk.
On the Thames.
Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,
Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold;
His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore.
On Strafford.
His wisdom such, at once, it did appear
Three kingdoms' wonder, and three kingdoms' fear.
While single he stood forth, and seem'd, although
Each had an army, as an equal foe;
Such was his force of eloquence to make
The hearers more concern'd than he that spake:
Each seem'd to act that part he came to see,
And none was more a looker-on than he;
So did he move our passions, some were known
To wish, for the defence, the crime their own.
Now private pity strove with public hate,
Reason with rage, and eloquence with fate.
On Cowley.
To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he wrote was all his own;
Horace's wit, and Virgil's state,
He did not steal, but emulate!
And, when he would like them appear,
Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear.
As one of Denham's principal claims to the regard of posterity arises
from his improvement of our numbers, his versification ought to
be considered. It will afford that pleasure which arises from the
observation of a man of judgment naturally right, forsaking bad copies
by degrees, and advancing towards a better practice, as he gains more
confidence in himself.
In his translation of Virgil, written when he was about twenty-one
years old, may be still found the old manner of continuing the sense
ungracefully from verse to verse:
Then all those
Who in the dark our fury did escape,
Returning, know our borrow'd arms, and shape,
And differing dialect; then their numbers swell
And grow upon us; first Choroebus fell
Before Minerva's altar; next did bleed
Just Ripheus, whom no Trojan did exceed
In virtue, yet the gods his fate decreed.
Then Hypanis and Dymas, wounded by
Their friends; nor thee, Pantheus, thy piety,
Nor consecrated mitre, from the same
Ill fate could save; my country's funeral flame
And Troy's cold ashes I attest, and call
To witness for myself, that in their fall
No foes, no death, nor danger, I declin'd,
Did, and deserv'd no less, my fate to find.
From this kind of concatenated metre he afterwards refrained, and taught
his followers the art of concluding their sense in couplets; which has,
perhaps, been with rather too much constancy pursued.
This passage exhibits one of those triplets which are not unfrequent in
this first essay, but which it is to be supposed his maturer judgment
disapproved, since, in his latter works, he has totally forborne them.
His rhymes are such as seem found without difficulty, by following the
sense; and are, for the most part, as exact, at least, as those of other
poets, though now and then the reader is shifted off with what he can
get:
O how _transform'd! _
How much unlike that Hector, who _return'd_
Clad in Achilles' spoils!
And again:
From thence a thousand lesser poets _sprung_
Like petty princes from the fall of _Rome_.
Sometimes the weight of rhyme is laid upon a word too feeble to sustain
it:
Troy confounded falls
From all her glories: if it might have stood
By any power, by this right hand it _shou'd_.
--And though my outward state misfortune _hath_
Deprest thus low, it cannot reach my faith.
--Thus, by his fraud and our own faith o'ercome,
A feigned tear destroys us, against _whom_
Tydides nor Achilles could prevail,
Nor ten years' conflict, nor a thousand sail.
He is not very careful to vary the ends of his verses; in one passage
the word _die_ rhymes three couplets in six.
Most of these petty faults are in his first productions, when he was
less skilful, or, at least, less dexterous in the use of words; and
though they had been more frequent, they could only have lessened the
grace, not the strength of his composition. He is one of the writers
that improved our taste, and advanced our language, and whom we ought,
therefore, to read with gratitude, though, having done much, he left
much to do.
[Footnote 22: In Hamilton's memoirs of count Grammont, sir John Denham
is said to have been seventy-nine, when he married Miss Brook, about the
year 1664; according to which statement he was born in 1585. But Dr.
Johnson, who has followed Wood, is right. He entered Trinity college,
Oxford, at the age of sixteen, in 1631, as appears by the following
entry, which I copied from the matriculation book.
Trin. Coll.
"1631. Nov. 18. Johannes Denham, Essex. filius J. Denham de Horsley-parva
in com. praedict. militis, annos natus 16. MALONE". ]
[Footnote 23: In the ninth and tenth chapters of the Memoires de
Grammont, in Andrew Marvell's works, and in Aubrey's letters, ii. 319,
many scandalous anecdotes respecting Denham, are reported. ED. ]
[Footnote 24: It is remarkable that Johnson should not have recollected,
that this image is to be found in Bacon. Aristoteles, more otthomannorum,
regnare se haud tuto posse putabat, nisi fratres suos omnes
contrucidasset. De Augment. Scient. lib. 3. ]
[Footnote 25: By Garth, in his poem on Claremont: and by Pope, in his
Windsor Forest. ]
MILTON.
The life of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with
such minute inquiry, that I might, perhaps, more properly have contented
myself with the addition of a few notes on Mr. Fenton's elegant
Abridgment, but that a new narrative was thought necessary to the
uniformity of this edition.
John Milton was, by birth, a gentleman, descended from the proprietors
of Milton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate
in the times of York and Lancaster. Which side he took I know not; his
descendant inherited no veneration for the _white rose. _
His grandfather, John, was keeper of the forest of Shotover, a zealous
papist, who disinherited his son, because he had forsaken the religion
of his ancestors.
His father, John, who was the son disinherited, had recourse, for his
support, to the profession of a scrivener. He was a man eminent for his
skill in musick, many of his compositions being still to be found;
and his reputation in his profession was such, that he grew rich, and
retired to an estate. He had, probably, more than common literature,
as his son addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems. He
married a gentlewoman of the name of Caston, a Welsh family, by whom he
had two sons, John, the poet, and Christopher, who studied the law, and
adhered, as the law taught him, to the king's party, for which he was
awhile persecuted, but having, by his brother's interest, obtained
permission to live in quiet, he supported himself so honourably by
chamber practice, that, soon after the accession of king James, he was
knighted, and made a judge; but, his constitution being too weak
for business, he retired before any disreputable compliances became
necessary.
He had, likewise, a daughter, Anne, whom he married with a considerable
fortune, to Edward Philips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rose in the
crown office to be secondary: by him she had two sons, John and Edward,
who were educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the only
authentick account of his domestick manners.
John, the poet, was born in his father's house, at the Spread-eagle, in
Bread street, Dec. 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning. His
father appears to have been very solicitous about his education; for he
was instructed, at first, by private tuition, under the care of Thomas
Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburgh,
and of whom we have reason to think well, since his scholar considered
him as worthy of an epistolary elegy.
He was then sent to St. Paul's school, under the care of Mr. Gill; and
removed, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ's college in
Cambridge, where he entered a sizar[26], Feb. 12,1624.
He was, at this time, eminently skilled in the Latin tongue; and he
himself, by annexing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of
which the learned Politian had given him an example, seems to commend
the earliness of his own proficiency to the notice of posterity. But
the products of his vernal fertility have been surpassed by many, and
particularly by his contemporary Cowley. Of the powers of the mind it is
difficult to form an estimate: many have excelled Milton in their first
essays, who never rose to works like Paradise Lost.
At fifteen, a date which he uses till he is sixteen, he translated
or versified two psalms, 114 and 136, which he thought worthy of the
publick eye; but they raise no great expectations: they would, in any
numerous school, have obtained praise, but not excited wonder.
Many of his elegies appear to have been written in his eighteenth year,
by which it appears that he had then read the Roman authors with very
nice discernment. I once heard Mr. Hampton, the translator of Polybius,
remark, what I think is true, that Milton was the first Englishman who,
after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classick elegance.
If any exceptions can be made, they are very few: Haddon and Ascham, the
pride of Elizabeth's reign, however they have succeeded in prose, no
sooner attempt verse than they provoke derision. If we produced any
thing worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was, perhaps,
Alabaster's Roxana[27].
Of the exercises which the rules of the university required, some
were published by him in his maturer years. They had been undoubtedly
applauded; for they were such as few can perform; yet there is reason to
suspect that he was regarded in his college with no great fondness. That
he obtained no fellowship is certain; but the unkindness with which he
was treated, was not merely negative. I am ashamed to relate what I fear
is true, that Milton was one of the last students in either university,
that suffered the publick indignity of corporal correction[28].
It was, in the violence of controversial hostility, objected to him,
that he was expelled: this he steadily denies, and it was apparently not
true; but it seems plain, from his own verses to Diodati, that he had
incurred rustication, a temporary dismission into the country, with,
perhaps, the loss of a term:
Me tenet urbs, reflua quam Thamesis alluit unda,
Meque nec invitum patria dulcis habet.
Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum,
Nec dudum _vetiti_ me _laris_ angit amor.
Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri,
Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.
Si sit hoc _exilium_ patrios adiise penates,
Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi,
Non ego vel _profugi_ nomen sortemve recuso,
Laetus et _exilii_ conditione fruor.
I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence
can give to the term "vetiti laris," a habitation from which he is
excluded; or how _exile_ can be otherwise interpreted. He declares yet
more, that he is weary of enduring "the threats of a rigorous master,
and something else, which a temper like his cannot undergo. " What was
more than threat was probably punishment. This poem, which mentions his
exile, proves, likewise, that it was not perpetual; for it concludes
with a resolution of returning some time to Cambridge. And it may be
conjectured, from the willingness with which he has perpetuated the
memory of his exile, that its cause was such as gave him no shame.
He took both the usual degrees; that of Bachelor in 1628, and that of
master in 1632; but he left the university with no kindness for its
institution, alienated either by the injudicious severity of his
governours, or his own captious perverseness. The cause cannot now be
known, but the effect appears in his writings. His scheme of education,
inscribed to Hartlib, supersedes all academical instruction, being
intended to comprise the whole time which men usually spend in
literature, from their entrance upon grammar, "till they proceed, as it
is called, masters of arts. " And in his discourse on the likeliest way
to remove Hirelings out of the Church, he ingeniously proposes, that
"the profits of the lands forfeited by the act for superstitious uses
should be applied to such academies all over the land, where languages
and arts may be taught together; so that youth may be, at once, brought
up to a competency of learning and an honest trade, by which means such
of them as had the gift, being enabled to support themselves, without
tithes, by the latter, may, by the help of the former, become worthy
preachers. "
One of his objections to academical education, as it was then conducted,
is, that men designed for orders in the church were permitted to act
plays, "writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antick and
dishonest gestures of Trincalos[29], buffoons, and bawds, prostituting
the shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the
eyes of courtiers and court ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles. "
This is sufficiently peevish in a man, who, when he mentions his exile
from the college, relates, with great luxuriance, the compensation which
the pleasures of the theatre afford him. Plays were, therefore, only
criminal when they were acted by academicks.
He went to the university with a design of entering into the church,
but in time altered his mind; for he declared, that whoever became a
clergyman must "subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless
he took with a conscience that could retch, he must straight perjure
himself. He thought it better to prefer a blameless silence, before the
office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing. "
These expressions are, I find, applied to the subscription of the
articles; but it seems more probable that they relate to canonical
obedience. I know not any of the articles which seem to thwart his
opinions; but the thoughts of obedience, whether canonical or civil,
raised his indignation.
His unwillingness to engage in the ministry, perhaps not yet advanced to
a settled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his
friends, who had reproved his suspended and dilatory life, which he
seems to have imputed to an insatiable curiosity, and fantastick luxury
of various knowledge. To this he writes a cool and plausible answer, in
which he endeavours to persuade him, that the delay proceeds not from
the delights of desultory study, but from the desire of obtaining more
fitness for his task; and that he goes on, "not taking thought of being
late, so it gives advantage to be more fit. "
When he left the university he returned to his father, then residing at
Horton, in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five years; in which
time he is said to have read all the Greek and Latin writers. With what
limitations this universality is to be understood, who shall inform us?
It might be supposed, that he who read so much should have done nothing
else; but Milton found time to write the Masque of Comus, which was
presented at Ludlow, then the residence of the lord president of Wales,
in 1634; and had the honour of being acted by the earl of Bridgewater's
sons and daughter.
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 conceptions the appearance of a fabrick, 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 man but Cowley could have written them.
The Davideis now remains to be considered; 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 Davideis, is, however, not much to be regretted; for
in this undertaking Cowley is, tacitly, at least, confessed to have
miscarried. There are not many 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 been once
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 succession of English
literature.
Of this silence and neglect, if the reason be inquired, it will be found
partly in the choice of the subject, and partly in the performance of
the work.
Sacred history has been always read with submissive reverence, and
an imagination overawed 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 suppresses
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 purposes of religion seems not only
useless, but, in some degree, profane.
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 opportunity of describing hell, and telling the history
of Lucifer, who was, he says,
Once gen'ral 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 inferiour agents of mischief, in which
there is something of heathenism, and, therefore, of impropriety; and,
to give efficacy to his words, concludes by lashing "his breast with
his long tail. " Envy, after a pause, steps out, and, among other
declarations of her zeal, utters these lines:
Do thou but threat, loud storms shall make reply,
And thunder echo to the trembling sky:
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.
The jocund orbs shall break their measur'd pace,
And stubborn poles change their allotted place,
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 uncommunicable; 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 any thing
that befalls them.
To the subject thus originally indisposed to the reception of poetical
embellishments, the writer brought little that could reconcile
impatience, or attract curiosity. Nothing can be more disgusting than a
narrative spangled with conceits; and conceits are all that the Davideis
supplies.
One of the great sources of poetical delight, is description, or the
power of presenting pictures to the mind. Cowley gives inferences
instead of images, and shows not what may be supposed to have been seen,
but what thoughts the sight might have suggested. When Virgil describes
the stone which Turnus lifted against Aeneas, he fixes the attention on
its bulk and weight:
Saxum circumspicit ingens,
Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat,
Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis.
Cowley says of the stone with which Cain slew his brother,
I saw him fling the stone, as if he meant
At once his murther and his monument.
Of the sword taken from Goliah, he says,
A sword so great, that it was only fit,
To cut off his great head that came with it.
Other poets describe death by some of its common appearances. Cowley
says, with a learned allusion to sepulchral lamps, real or fabulous,
'Twixt his right ribs deep pierc'd the furious blade,
And open'd wide those secret vessels where
Life's light goes out, when first they let in air.
But he has allusions vulgar, as well as learned. In a visionary
succession of kings:
Joas at first does bright and glorious shew,
In life's fresh morn his fame does early crow.
Describing an undisciplined army, after having said with elegance,
His forces seem'd no army, but a crowd
Heartless, unarm'd, disorderly, and loud,
he gives them a fit of the ague.
The allusions, however, are not always to vulgar things; he offends by
exaggeration, as much as by diminution:
The king was plac'd alone, and o'er his head
A well-wrought heaven of silk and gold was spread.
Whatever he writes is always polluted with some conceit:
Where the sun's fruitful beams give metals birth,
Where he the growth of fatal gold doth see,
Gold, which alone more influence has than he.
In one passage he starts a sudden question, to the confusion of
philosophy:
Ye learned heads, whom ivy garlands grace,
Why does that twining plant the oak embrace;
The oak, for courtship most of all unfit,
And rough as are the winds that fight with it?
His expressions have, sometimes, a degree of meanness that surpasses
expectation:
Nay, gentle guests, he cries, since now you're in,
The story of your gallant friend begin.
In a simile descriptive of the morning:
As glimm'ring stars just at th' approach of day,
Cashier'd by troops, at last drop all away.
The dress of Gabriel deserves attention:
He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,
That e'er the mid-day sun pierc'd through with light;
Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,
Wash'd from the morning beauties' deepest red;
An harmless flatt'ring meteor shone for hair,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care;
He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies,
Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes;
This he with starry vapours sprinkles all,
Took in their prime ere they grow ripe and fall;
Of a new rainbow, ere it fret or fade,
The choicest piece cut out, a scarf is made.
This is a just specimen of Cowley's imagery: what might, in general
expressions, be great and forcible, he weakens and makes ridiculous
by branching it into small parts. That Gabriel was invested with the
softest or brightest colours of the sky, we might have been told, and
been dismissed to improve the idea in our different proportions of
conception; but Cowley could not let us go, till he had related where
Gabriel got first his skin, and then his mantle, then his lace, and then
his scarf, and related it in the terms of the mercer and tailor.
Sometimes he indulges himself in a digression, always conceived with his
natural exuberance, and commonly, even where it is not long, continued
till it is tedious.
I' th' library a few choice authors stood,
Yet 'twas well stor'd, for that small store was good;
Writing, man's spiritual physick, was not then
Itself, as now, grown a disease of men.
Learning (young virgin) but few suitors knew;
The common prostitute she lately grew,
And with the spurious brood loads now the press;
Laborious effects of idleness.
As the Davideis affords only four books, though intended to consist
of twelve, there is no opportunity for such criticism as epick poems
commonly supply. The plan of the whole work is very imperfectly shown by
the third part. The duration of an unfinished action cannot be known. Of
characters, either not yet introduced, or shown but upon few occasions,
the full extent and the nice discriminations cannot be ascertained. The
fable is plainly implex, formed rather from the Odyssey than the Iliad;
and many artifices of diversification are employed, with the skill of a
man acquainted with the best models. The past is recalled by narration,
and the future anticipated by vision: but he has been so lavish of his
poetical art, that it is difficult to imagine how he could fill eight
books more without practising again the same modes of disposing his
matter; and, perhaps, the perception of this growing incumbrance
inclined him to stop. By this abruption posterity lost more instruction
than delight. If the continuation of the Davideis can be missed, it is
for the learning that had been diffused over it, and the notes in which
it had been explained.
Had not his characters been depraved, like every other part, by improper
decorations, they would have deserved uncommon praise. He gives Saul
both the body and mind of a hero:
His way once chose, he forward thrust outright,
Nor turn'd aside for danger or delight.
And the different beauties of the lofty Merah and the gentle Michol, are
very justly conceived and strongly painted.
Rymer has declared the Davideis superiour to the Jerusalem of Tasso;
"which," says he, "the poet, with all his care, has not totally purged
from pedantry. " If by pedantry is meant that minute knowledge which
is derived from particular sciences and studies, in opposition to the
general notions supplied by a wide survey of life and nature, Cowley
certainly errs, by introducing pedantry far more frequently than Tasso.
I know not, indeed, why they should be compared; for the resemblance of
Cowley's work to Tasso's is only that they both exhibit the agency of
celestial and infernal spirits, in which, however, they differ
widely; for Cowley supposes them commonly to operate upon the mind by
suggestion; Tasso represents them as promoting or obstructing events by
external agency.
Of particular passages that can be properly compared, I remember only
the description of heaven, in which the different manner of the two
writers is sufficiently discernible. Cowley's is scarcely description,
unless it be possible to describe by negatives: for he tells us
only what there is not in heaven. Tasso endeavours to represent the
splendours and pleasures of the regions of happiness. Tasso affords
images, and Cowley sentiments. It happens, however, that Tasso's
description affords some reason for Rymer's censure. He says of the
supreme being,
Ha sotto i piedi e fato e la natura,
Ministri umili, e'l moto, e chi'l misura.
The second line has in it more of pedantry than, perhaps, can be found
in any other stanza of the poem.
In the perusal of the Davideis, as of all Cowley's works, we find wit
and learning unprofitably squandered. Attention has no relief; the
affections are never moved: we are sometimes surprised, but never
delighted; and find much to admire, but little to approve. Still,
however, it is the work of Cowley; of a mind capacious by nature, and
replenished by study.
In the general review of Cowley's poetry it will be found, that he wrote
with abundant fertility, but negligent or unskilful selection; with much
thought, but with little imagery; that he is never pathetick, and
rarely sublime; but always either ingenious or learned, either acute or
profound.
It is said by Denham, in his elegy,
To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he writ was all his own.
This wide position requires less limitation, when it is affirmed of
Cowley, than, perhaps, of any other poet. --He read much, and yet
borrowed little.
His character of writing was, indeed, not his own: he unhappily adopted
that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise; and,
not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued to
delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself
with a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure, in its spring, was bright
and gay, but which time has been continually stealing from his brows.
He was, in his own time, considered as of unrivalled excellence.
Clarendon represents him as having taken a flight beyond all that went
before him; and Milton is said to have declared, that the three greatest
English poets were Spenser, Shakespeare, and Cowley.
His manner he had in common with others; but his sentiments were his
own. Upon every subject he thought for himself; and such was his
copiousness of knowledge, that something at once remote and applicable
rushed into his mind; yet it is not likely that he always rejected a
commodious idea merely because another had used it: his known wealth was
so great, that he might have borrowed without loss of credit.
In his elegy on sir Henry Wotton, the last lines have such resemblance
to the noble epigram of Grotius on the death of Scaliger, that I cannot
but think them copied from it, though they are copied by no servile
hand.
One passage in his Mistress is so apparently borrowed from Donne, that
he probably would not have written it, had it not mingled with his own
thoughts, so as that he did not perceive himself taking it from another:
Although I think thou never found wilt be,
Yet I'm resolv'd to search for thee:
The search itself rewards the pains.
So, though the chymic his great secret miss
(For neither it in art or nature is,)
Yet things well worth his toil he gains;
And does his charge and labour pay
With good unsought experiments by the way. COWLEY.
Some that have deeper digg'd love's mine than I,
Say, where his centric happiness doth lie:
I have lov'd, and got, and told;
But should I love, get, tell, till I were old;
I should not find that hidden mystery;
Oh, 'tis imposture all!
And as no chymic yet th' elixir got,
But glorifies his pregnant pot,
If by the way to him befall
Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,
So lovers dream a rich and long delight,
But get a winter-seeming summer's night. DONNE.
Jonson and Donne, as Dr. Hurd remarks, were then in the highest esteem.
It is related by Clarendon, that Cowley always acknowledges his
obligation to the learning and industry of Jonson; but I have found no
traces of Jonson in his works: to emulate Donne appears to have been
his purpose; and from Donne he may have learned that familiarity with
religious images, and that light allusion to sacred things, by which
readers far short of sanctity are frequently offended; and which would
not be borne, in the present age, when devotion, perhaps, not more
fervent, is more delicate.
Having produced one passage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will
recompense him by another which Milton seems to have borrowed from him.
He says of Goliah:
His spear, the trunk was of a lofty tree,
Which nature meant some tall ship's mast should be.
Milton of Satan:
His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great admiral, were but a wand,
He walked with.
His diction was, in his own time, censured as negligent. He seems not to
have known, or not to have considered, that words, being arbitrary, must
owe their power to association, and have the influence, and that only,
which custom has given them. Language is the dress of thought: and,
as the noblest mien, or most graceful action, would be degraded and
obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or
mechanicks; so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy, and
the most splendid ideas drop their magnificence, if they are conveyed by
words used commonly upon low and trivial occasions, debased by vulgar
mouths, and contaminated by inelegant applications.
Truth, indeed, is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have
an intrinsick and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual
gold which defies destruction; but gold may be so concealed in baser
matter, that only a chymist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in
unrefined and plebeian words, that none but philosophers can distinguish
it; and both may be so buried in impurities, as not to pay the cost of
their extraction.
The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself to
the intellectual eye; and, if the first appearance offends, a further
knowledge is not often sought. Whatever professes to benefit by
pleasing, must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something
sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise. What
is perceived by slow degrees may gratify us with the consciousness of
improvement, but will never strike with the sense of pleasure.
Of all this, Cowley appears to have been without knowledge, or without
care. He makes no selection of words, nor seeks any neatness of phrase:
he has no elegancies, either lucky or elaborate: as his endeavours were
rather to impress sentences upon the understanding than images on
the fancy, he has few epithets, and those scattered without peculiar
propriety or nice adaptation. It seems to follow from the necessity of
the subject, rather than the care of the writer, that the diction of his
heroick poem is less familiar than that of his slightest writings. He
has given not the same numbers, but the same diction, to the gentle
Anacreon and the tempestuous Pindar.
His versification seems to have had very little of his care; and, if
what he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmusical only when they
are ill read, the art of reading them is at present lost; for they are
commonly harsh to modern ears. He has, indeed, many noble lines, such as
the feeble care of Waller never could produce. The bulk of his thoughts
sometimes swelled his verse to unexpected and inevitable grandeur; but
his excellence of this kind is merely fortuitous: he sinks willingly
down to his general carelessness, and avoids, with very little care,
either meanness or asperity.
His contractions are often rugged and harsh:
One flings a mountain, and its rivers too
Torn up with 't.
His rhymes are very often made by pronouns, or particles, or the like
unimportant words, which disappoint the ear, and destroy the energy of
the line.
His combination of different measures is, sometimes, dissonant and
unpleasing; he joins verses together, of which the former does not slide
easily into the latter.
The words _do_ and _did_, which so much degrade, in present estimation,
the line that admits them, were, in the time of Cowley, little censured
or avoided; how often he used them, and with how bad an effect, at least
to our ears, will appear by a passage, in which every reader will lament
to see just and noble thoughts defrauded of their praise by inelegance
of language:
Where honour or where conscience _does_ not bind,
No other law shall shackle me;
Slave to myself I ne'er will be;
Nor shall my future actions be confin'd
By my own present mind.
Who by resolves and vows engag'd _does_ stand
For days, that yet belong to fate,
_Does_, like an unthrift, mortgage his estate,
Before it falls into his hand;
The bondman of the cloister so,
All that he _does_ receive _does_ always owe:
And still, as time comes in, it goes away,
Not to enjoy, but debts to pay!
Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell,
Which his hour's work, as well as hours, _does_ tell!
Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell.
His heroick lines are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they are
sometimes sweet and sonorous.
He says of the Messiah:
Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound,
_And reach to worlds that must not yet be found_.
In another place, of David:
Yet bid him go securely, when he sends;
_'Tis Saul that is his foe, and we his friends.
The man who has his God, no aid can lack;
And we who bid him go, will bring him back. _
Yet, amidst his negligence, he sometimes attempted an improved and
scientifick versification; of which it will be best to give his own
account subjoined to this line:
Nor can the glory contain itself in th' endless space.
"I am sorry that it is necessary to admonish the most part of readers,
that it is not by negligence that this verse is so loose, long, and,
as it were, vast; it is to paint in the number the nature of the thing
which it describes, which I would have observed in divers other places
of this poem, that else will pass for very careless verses: as before,
And overruns the neighb'ring fields with violent course.
"In the second book,
Down a precipice deep, down he casts them all.
"And,
And fell a-down his shoulders with loose care
"In the third,
Brass was his helmet, his boots brass, and o'er
His breast a thick plate of strong brass he wore.
"In the fourth,
Like some fair pine o'erlooking all th' ignobler wood.
"And,
Some from the rocks cast themselves down headlong.
"And many more: but it is enough to instance in a few. The thing is,
that the disposition of words and numbers should be such, as that,
out of the order and sound of them, the things themselves may be
represented. This the Greeks were not so accurate as to bind themselves
to; neither have our English poets observed it, for aught I can find.
The Latins (qui musas colunt severiores) sometimes did it; and their
prince, Virgil, always, in whom the examples are innumerable, and taken
notice of by all judicious men, so that it is superfluous to collect
them. "
I know not whether he has, in many of these instances, attained the
representation or resemblance that he purposes. Verse can imitate only
sound and motion. A _boundless_ verse, a _headlong_ verse, and a verse
of _brass_, or of _strong brass_, seem to comprise very incongruous
and unsociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the sound of the line
expressing _loose care_, I cannot discover; nor why the _pine_ is
_taller_ in an alexandrine than in ten syllables.
But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example of
representative versification, which, perhaps, no other English line can
equal:
Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise:
He, who defers this work from day to day,
Does on a river's bank expecting stay
Till the whole stream that stopp'd him shall be gone,
_Which runs, and, as it runs, for ever shall run on_.
Cowley was, I believe, the first poet that mingled alexandrines, at
pleasure, with the common heroick of ten syllables; and from him Dryden
borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He considered
the verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestick, and has,
therefore, deviated into that measure, when he supposes the voice heard
of the supreme being.
The author of the Davideis is commended by Dryden for having written it
in couplets, because he discovered that any staff was too lyrical for
an heroick poem; but this seems to have been known before by May and
Sandys, the translators of the Pharsalia and the Metamorphoses.
In the Davideis are some hemistichs, or verses left imperfect by the
author, in imitation of Virgil, whom he supposes not to have intended
to complete them: that this opinion is erroneous, may be probably
concluded, because this truncation is imitated by no subsequent Roman
poet; because Virgil himself filled up one broken line in the heat of
recitation; because in one the sense is now unfinished; and because all
that can be done by a broken verse, a line intersected by a _caesura_
and a full stop, will equally effect.
Of triplets, in his Davideis, he makes no use, and, perhaps, did not, at
first, think them allowable; but he appears afterwards to have changed
his mind, for, in the verses on the government of Cromwell, he inserts
them liberally with great happiness.
After so much criticism on his poems, the essays which accompany them
must not be forgotten. What is said by Sprat of his conversation, that
no man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, may
be applied to these compositions. No author ever kept his verse and his
prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural,
and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet
obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought, or hard-laboured;
but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness.
It has been observed by Felton, in his essay on the Classicks, that
Cowley was beloved by every muse that he courted; and that he has
rivalled the ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy.
It may be affirmed, without any encomiastick fervour, that he brought to
his poetick labours a mind replete with learning, and that his pages are
embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply; that he was
the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater
ode, and the gaiety of the less; that he was equally qualified for
sprightly sallies, and for lofty flights; that he was among those who
freed translation from servility, and, instead of following his author
at a distance, walked by his side; and that if he left versification
yet improvable, he left likewise, from time to time, such specimens of
excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it.
* * * * *
The insertion of Cowley's epitaph may be interesting to our readers.
Epitaphium
Autoris
In Ecclesia D. Petri apud Westmonasterienses
Sepulti.
Abrahamus Cowleius,
Anglorum Pindarus, Flaccus, Maro,
Deliciae, Decus, Desiderium, Aevi sui,
Hic juxta situs est.
Aurea dum volitant late tua scripta per orbem,
Et fama aeternum vivis, divine poeta,
Hic placida jaceas requie: custodiat urnam
Cana fides, vigilentque perenni lampade musae
Sit sacer iste locus; nee quis temerarius ausit
Sacrilega turbare manu venerabile bustum.
Intacti maneant; maneant per saecula dulces
Cowleii cineres, serventque immobile saxum.
Sic vovatque
Votumque suum apud posteros sacratum esse voluit
Qui viro incomparabili posult sepulchrale marmor,
Georgius Dux Buckinghamiae.
Excessit e vita Anno Aetatis suae 49? et honorifica pompa elatus
ex Aedibus
Buckinghamianis, viris illustribus omnium ordinum exequias
celebrantibus,
sepultus est die 3? M. Augusti, Anno Domini 1667.
[Footnote 6: This volume was not published before 1633, when Cowley was
fifteeyears old. Dr. Johnson, as well as former biographers, seems to
have been misled by the portrait of Cowley being, by mistake, marked with
the age of thirteen years. R. ]
[Footnote 7: He was a candidate this year at Westminster school for
election to Trinity college, but proved unsuccessful. ]
[Footnote 8: In the first edition of this life, Dr. Johnson wrote, "which
was never inserted in any collection of his works;" but he altered the
expression when the Lives were collected into volumes. The satire was
added to Cowley's works by the particular direction of Dr. Johnson. N. ]
[Footnote 9: Consulting the Virgilian lots, Sortes Virgilianae, is a
method of divination by the opening of Virgil, and applying to the
circumstances of the peruser the first passage in either of the two pages
that he accidentally fixes his eye on. It is said, that king Charles
the first, and lord Falkland, being in the Bodleian library, made this
experiment of their future fortunes, and met with passages equally
ominous to each.
That of the king was the following:
At bello audacis populi vexatus et armis,
Finibus extorris, complexu avulsus luli,
Auxilium imploret, videatque indigna suorum
Funera, nec, cum se sub leges pacis iniquae
Tradiderit, regno aut optata luce fruatur:
Sed cadat ante diem, mediaque inhumatus arena. Aeneid. iv. 615.
Yet let a race untam'd, and haughty foes,
His peaceful entrance with dire arms oppose,
Oppress'd with numbers in th' unequal field,
His men discourag'd and himself expell'd:
Let him for succour sue from place to place,
Torn from his subjects and his son's embrace.
First let him see his friends in battle slain,
And their untimely fate lament in vain:
And when, at length, the cruel war shall cease,
On hard conditions may he buy his peace;
Nor let him then enjoy supreme command.
But fall untimely by some hostile hand,
And lie unburied on the barren sand. DRYDEN.
Lord Falkland's:
Non haec, O Palla, dederas promissa parenti,
Cautius ut saevo velles te credere Marti.
Haud ignarus eram, quantum nova gloria in armis,
Et praedulce decus primo certamine posset.
Primitiae juvenis miserae, bellique propinqui
Dura rudimenta, et nulli exaudita deorum,
Vota precesque meae! Aeneid. xi. 152.
O Pallas, thou hast fail'd thy plighted word,
To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword;
I warn'd thee, but in vain, for well I knew
What perils youthful ardour would pursue,
That boiling blood would carry thee too far,
Young as thou wert to dangers, raw to war.
O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom,
Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come!
Hard elements of unauspicious war,
Vain vows to heaven, and unavailing care! DRYDEN
Hoffman, in his Lexicon, gives a very satisfactory account of this
practice of seeking fates in books: and says, that it was used by the
pagans, the jewish rabbins, and even the early Christians; the latter
taking the New Testament for their oracle. ]
[Footnote 10: Johnson has exhibited here us little feeling for the
neglected servant of the thankless house of Stewart, as he displayed in
the cold contempt of his sixth Rambler. An unmeaning compliment from a
worthless king was Cowley's only recompense for years of faithful and
painful services. A heart loyal and affectionate, like his, may well be
excused the utterance of its pains, when wounded by those for whom it
would so cheerfully have poured forth its blood. We repeat, that Cowley's
misfortune was his devotion to a family, who invariably forgot, in their
prosperity, those who had defended them in the day of adversity. ED. ]
[Footnote 11: See Campbell's Poets, iv. 75. ]
[Footnote 12: By May's poem, we are here to understand a continuation
of Lucan's Pharsalia, to the death of Julius Caesar, by Thomas May, an
eminent poet and historian, who flourished in the reigns of James
and Charles the first, and of whom a life is given in the Biographia
Britannica. The merit of Cowley's Latin poems is well examined in Censura
Literatia, vol. viii. See also Warton's Preface to Milton's Juvenile
Poems. ED. ]
[Footnote 13: 1663.
]
[Footnote 14: Here is an error in the designation of this comedy, which
our author copied from the title page of the latter editions of Cowley's
works: the title of the play itself is without the article, "Cutter of
Coleman street," and that, because a merry sharking fellow about the
town, named Cutter, is a principal character in it. ]
[Footnote 15: L'Allegro of Milton. Dr. J. ]
[Footnote 16: About three hundred pounds per annum. See Campbell's Poets,
iv. ]
[Footnote 17: Now in the possession of Mr. Clark, alderman of London.
Dr. J. --Mr. Clark was, in 1798, elected to the important office of
chamberlain of London; and has every year since been unanimously
reelected. N. ]
[Footnote 18: For metaphysical poets, see Brydges' Restituta, vol. iv. ]
[Footnote 19: It is but justice to the memory of Cowley, to quote here an
exquisite stanza which Johnson has inserted in the Idler, No. 77, where
he says; "Cowley seems to have possessed the power of writing easily
beyond any other of our poets; yet his pursuit of remote thought led him
often into harshness of expression. " The stanza is to a lady elaborately
dressed:
Th' adorning thee with so much art
Is but a barb'rous skill,
'Tis like the pois'ning of a dart
Too apt before to kill. ED. ]
[Footnote 20: Dodsley's Collection of Poems, vol. v. R. ]
[Footnote 21: First published in quarto, 1669, under the title of Carmen
Pindaricum in Theatrum Sheldonianum in solennibus magnifici operis
encaeniis. Recitatum Julii die 9, anno 1669, a Corbetto Owen, A. B. Aed.
Chr. Alumno, authore. R. ]
DENHAM
Of sir John Denham very little is known but what is related of him by
Wood, or by himself.
He was born at Dublin, 1615[22]; the only son of sir John Denham, of
Little Horsley, in Essex, then chief baron of the exchequer in Ireland,
and of Eleanor, daughter of sir Garret More, baron of Mellefont.
Two years afterwards, his father, being made one of the barons of the
exchequer in England, brought him away from his native country, and
educated him in London.
In 1631 he was sent to Oxford, where he was considered "as a dreaming
young man, given more to dice and cards than study:" and, therefore,
gave no prognosticks of his future eminence; nor was suspected to
conceal, under sluggishness and laxity, a genius born to improve the
literature of his country.
When he was, three years afterwards, removed to Lincoln's inn, he
prosecuted the common law with sufficient appearance of application;
yet did not lose his propensity to cards and dice; but was very often
plundered by gamesters.
Being severely reproved for this folly, he professed, and, perhaps,
believed, himself reclaimed; and, to testify the sincerity of his
repentance, wrote and published an Essay upon Gaming.
He seems to have divided his studies between law and poetry; for, in
1636, he translated the second book of the Aeneid. Two years after, his
father died; and then, notwithstanding his resolutions and professions,
he returned again to the vice of gaming, and lost several thousand
pounds that had been left him.
In 1641, he published the Sophy. This seems to have given him his first
hold of the publick attention; for Waller remarked, "that he broke out
like the Irish rebellion, three score thousand strong, when nobody was
aware, or in the least suspected it;" an observation which could have
had no propriety had his poetical abilities been known before.
He was after that pricked for sheriff of Surrey, and made governour
of Farnham castle for the king; but he soon resigned that charge, and
retreated to Oxford, where, in 1643, he published Cooper's Hill.
This poem had such reputation as to excite the common artifice by which
envy degrades excellence. A report was spread, that the performance was
not his own, but that he had bought it of a vicar for forty pounds. The
same attempt was made to rob Addison of his Cato, and Pope of his Essay
on Criticism.
In 1647, the distresses of the royal family required him to engage in
more dangerous employments. He was intrusted, by the queen, with a
message to the king; and, by whatever means, so far softened the
ferocity of Hugh Peters, that, by his intercession, admission was
procured. Of the king's condescension he has given an account in the
dedication of his works.
He was, afterwards, employed in carrying on the king's correspondence;
and, as he says, discharged this office with great safety to the
royalists: and, being accidentally discovered by the adverse party's
knowledge of Mr. Cowley's hand, he escaped happily both for himself and
his friends.
He was yet engaged in a greater undertaking. In April, 1648, he conveyed
James, the duke of York, from London into France, and delivered him
there to the queen and prince of Wales. This year he published his
translation of Cato Major. He now resided in France, as one of the
followers of the exiled king; and, to divert the melancholy of their
condition, was sometimes enjoined by his master to write occasional
verses; one of which amusements was probably his ode, or song, upon the
Embassy to Poland, by which he and lord Crofts procured a contribution
of ten thousand pounds from the Scotch, that wandered over the kingdom.
Poland was, at that time, very much frequented by itinerant traders,
who, in a country of very little commerce and of great extent, where
every man resided on his own estate, contributed very much to the
accommodation of life, by bringing to every man's house those little
necessaries which it was very inconvenient to want, and very troublesome
to fetch. I have formerly read, without much reflection, of the
multitude of Scotchmen that travelled with their wares in Poland; and
that their numbers were not small, the success of this negotiation gives
sufficient evidence.
About this time, what estate the war and the gamesters had left him was
sold, by order of the parliament; and when, in 1652, he returned to
England, he was entertained by the earl of Pembroke.
Of the next years of his life there is no account. At the restoration he
obtained that which many missed, the reward of his loyalty; being made
surveyor of the king's buildings, and dignified with the order of the
Bath. He seems now to have learned some attention to money; for Wood
says, that he got by this place seven thousand pounds.
After the restoration, he wrote the poem on Prudence and Justice, and,
perhaps, some of his other pieces; and as he appears, whenever any
serious question comes before him, to have been a man of piety, he
consecrated his poetical powers to religion, and made a metrical version
of the psalms of David. In this attempt he has failed; but in sacred
poetry who has succeeded?
It might be hoped that the favour of his master, and esteem of the
publick, would now make him happy. But human felicity is short and
uncertain; a second marriage brought upon him so much disquiet, as, for
a time, disordered his understanding; and Butler lampooned him for his
lunacy. I know not whether the malignant lines were then made publick,
nor what provocation incited Butler to do that which no provocation can
excuse.
His phrensy lasted not long[23]; and he seems to have regained his full
force of mind; for he wrote afterwards his excellent poem upon the death
of Cowley, whom he was not long to survive; for, on the 19th of March,
1668, he was buried by his side.
Denham is deservedly considered as one of the fathers of English poetry.
"Denham and Waller," says Prior, "improved our versification, and
Dryden perfected it. " He has given specimens of various compositions,
descriptive, ludicrous, didactick, and sublime.
He appears to have had, in common with almost all mankind, the ambition
of being, upon proper occasions, _a merry fellow_, and, in common with
most of them, to have been by nature, or by early habits, debarred from
it. Nothing is less exhilarating than the ludicrousness of Denham; he
does not fail for want of efforts; he is familiar, he is gross; but he
is never merry, unless the Speech against Peace in the close Committee
be excepted. For grave burlesque, however, his imitation of Davenant
shows him to have been well qualified.
Of his more elevated occasional poems, there is, perhaps, none that does
not deserve commendation. In the verses to Fletcher, we have an image
that has since been often adopted[24]:
But whither am I stray'd? I need not raise
Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise;
Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built,
Nor need thy juster title the foul guilt
Of eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred, slain.
After Denham, Orrery, in one of his prologues,
Poets are sultans, if they had their will;
For ev'ry author would his brother kill.
And Pope,
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne.
But this is not the best of his little pieces: it is excelled by his
poem to Fanshaw, and his elegy on Cowley.
His praise of Fanshaw's version of Guarini contains a very sprightly and
judicious character of a good translator:
That servile path thou nobly dost decline,
Of tracing word by word and line by line.
Those are the labour'd births of slavish brains,
Not the effect of poetry but pains;
Cheap vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords
No flight for thoughts, but poorly stick at words,
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue,
To make translations and translators too,
They but preserve the ashes; thou the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.
The excellence of these lines is greater, as the truth which they
contain was not, at that time, generally known.
His poem on the death of Cowley was his last, and, among his shorter
works, his best performance: the numbers are musical, and the thoughts
are just.
Cooper's Hill is the work that confers upon him the rank and dignity of
an original author. He seems to have been, at least among us, the author
of a species of composition that may be denominated _local poetry_,
of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be
poetically described with the addition of such embellishments as may be
supplied by historical retrospection, or incidental meditation.
To trace a new scheme of poetry, has, in itself, a very high claim to
praise, and its praise is yet more, when it is apparently copied by
Garth and Pope[25]; after whose names little will be gained by an
enumeration of smaller poets, that have left scarcely a corner of the
island not dignified either by rhyme or blank verse.
Cooper's Hill, if it be maliciously inspected, will not be found without
its faults. The digressions are too long, the morality too frequent, and
the sentiments, sometimes, such as will not bear a rigorous inquiry.
The four verses, which, since Dryden has commended them, almost every
writer for a century past has imitated, are generally known:
O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.
The lines, are, in themselves, not perfect; for most of the words,
thus artfully opposed, are to be understood simply on one side of the
comparison, and metaphorically on the other; and, if there be any
language which does not express intellectual operations by material
images, into that language they cannot be translated. But so much
meaning is comprised in so few words; the particulars of resemblance are
so perspicaciously collected, and every mode of excellence separated
from its adjacent fault by so nice a line of limitation; the different
parts of the sentence are so accurately adjusted; and the flow of
the last couplet is so smooth and sweet; that the passage, however
celebrated, has not been praised above its merit. It has beauty peculiar
to itself, and must be numbered among those felicities which cannot be
produced at will by wit and labour, but must rise unexpectedly in some
hour propitious to poetry.
He appears to have been one of the first that understood the necessity
of emancipating translation from the drudgery of counting lines, and
interpreting single words. How much this servile practice obscured the
clearest, and deformed the most beautiful parts of the ancient authors,
may be discovered by a perusal of our earlier versions; some of them
are the works of men well qualified, not only by critical knowledge,
but by poetical genius, who yet, by a mistaken ambition of exactness,
degraded, at once, their originals and themselves.
Denham saw the better way, but has not pursued it with great success.
His versions of Virgil are not pleasing; but they taught Dryden to
please better. His poetical imitation of Tully on Old Age has neither
the clearness of prose, nor the sprightliness of poetry.
The "strength of Denham," which Pope so emphatically mentions, is to
be found in many lines and couplets, which convey much meaning in few
words, and exhibit the sentiment with more weight than bulk.
On the Thames.
Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,
Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold;
His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore.
On Strafford.
His wisdom such, at once, it did appear
Three kingdoms' wonder, and three kingdoms' fear.
While single he stood forth, and seem'd, although
Each had an army, as an equal foe;
Such was his force of eloquence to make
The hearers more concern'd than he that spake:
Each seem'd to act that part he came to see,
And none was more a looker-on than he;
So did he move our passions, some were known
To wish, for the defence, the crime their own.
Now private pity strove with public hate,
Reason with rage, and eloquence with fate.
On Cowley.
To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he wrote was all his own;
Horace's wit, and Virgil's state,
He did not steal, but emulate!
And, when he would like them appear,
Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear.
As one of Denham's principal claims to the regard of posterity arises
from his improvement of our numbers, his versification ought to
be considered. It will afford that pleasure which arises from the
observation of a man of judgment naturally right, forsaking bad copies
by degrees, and advancing towards a better practice, as he gains more
confidence in himself.
In his translation of Virgil, written when he was about twenty-one
years old, may be still found the old manner of continuing the sense
ungracefully from verse to verse:
Then all those
Who in the dark our fury did escape,
Returning, know our borrow'd arms, and shape,
And differing dialect; then their numbers swell
And grow upon us; first Choroebus fell
Before Minerva's altar; next did bleed
Just Ripheus, whom no Trojan did exceed
In virtue, yet the gods his fate decreed.
Then Hypanis and Dymas, wounded by
Their friends; nor thee, Pantheus, thy piety,
Nor consecrated mitre, from the same
Ill fate could save; my country's funeral flame
And Troy's cold ashes I attest, and call
To witness for myself, that in their fall
No foes, no death, nor danger, I declin'd,
Did, and deserv'd no less, my fate to find.
From this kind of concatenated metre he afterwards refrained, and taught
his followers the art of concluding their sense in couplets; which has,
perhaps, been with rather too much constancy pursued.
This passage exhibits one of those triplets which are not unfrequent in
this first essay, but which it is to be supposed his maturer judgment
disapproved, since, in his latter works, he has totally forborne them.
His rhymes are such as seem found without difficulty, by following the
sense; and are, for the most part, as exact, at least, as those of other
poets, though now and then the reader is shifted off with what he can
get:
O how _transform'd! _
How much unlike that Hector, who _return'd_
Clad in Achilles' spoils!
And again:
From thence a thousand lesser poets _sprung_
Like petty princes from the fall of _Rome_.
Sometimes the weight of rhyme is laid upon a word too feeble to sustain
it:
Troy confounded falls
From all her glories: if it might have stood
By any power, by this right hand it _shou'd_.
--And though my outward state misfortune _hath_
Deprest thus low, it cannot reach my faith.
--Thus, by his fraud and our own faith o'ercome,
A feigned tear destroys us, against _whom_
Tydides nor Achilles could prevail,
Nor ten years' conflict, nor a thousand sail.
He is not very careful to vary the ends of his verses; in one passage
the word _die_ rhymes three couplets in six.
Most of these petty faults are in his first productions, when he was
less skilful, or, at least, less dexterous in the use of words; and
though they had been more frequent, they could only have lessened the
grace, not the strength of his composition. He is one of the writers
that improved our taste, and advanced our language, and whom we ought,
therefore, to read with gratitude, though, having done much, he left
much to do.
[Footnote 22: In Hamilton's memoirs of count Grammont, sir John Denham
is said to have been seventy-nine, when he married Miss Brook, about the
year 1664; according to which statement he was born in 1585. But Dr.
Johnson, who has followed Wood, is right. He entered Trinity college,
Oxford, at the age of sixteen, in 1631, as appears by the following
entry, which I copied from the matriculation book.
Trin. Coll.
"1631. Nov. 18. Johannes Denham, Essex. filius J. Denham de Horsley-parva
in com. praedict. militis, annos natus 16. MALONE". ]
[Footnote 23: In the ninth and tenth chapters of the Memoires de
Grammont, in Andrew Marvell's works, and in Aubrey's letters, ii. 319,
many scandalous anecdotes respecting Denham, are reported. ED. ]
[Footnote 24: It is remarkable that Johnson should not have recollected,
that this image is to be found in Bacon. Aristoteles, more otthomannorum,
regnare se haud tuto posse putabat, nisi fratres suos omnes
contrucidasset. De Augment. Scient. lib. 3. ]
[Footnote 25: By Garth, in his poem on Claremont: and by Pope, in his
Windsor Forest. ]
MILTON.
The life of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with
such minute inquiry, that I might, perhaps, more properly have contented
myself with the addition of a few notes on Mr. Fenton's elegant
Abridgment, but that a new narrative was thought necessary to the
uniformity of this edition.
John Milton was, by birth, a gentleman, descended from the proprietors
of Milton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate
in the times of York and Lancaster. Which side he took I know not; his
descendant inherited no veneration for the _white rose. _
His grandfather, John, was keeper of the forest of Shotover, a zealous
papist, who disinherited his son, because he had forsaken the religion
of his ancestors.
His father, John, who was the son disinherited, had recourse, for his
support, to the profession of a scrivener. He was a man eminent for his
skill in musick, many of his compositions being still to be found;
and his reputation in his profession was such, that he grew rich, and
retired to an estate. He had, probably, more than common literature,
as his son addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems. He
married a gentlewoman of the name of Caston, a Welsh family, by whom he
had two sons, John, the poet, and Christopher, who studied the law, and
adhered, as the law taught him, to the king's party, for which he was
awhile persecuted, but having, by his brother's interest, obtained
permission to live in quiet, he supported himself so honourably by
chamber practice, that, soon after the accession of king James, he was
knighted, and made a judge; but, his constitution being too weak
for business, he retired before any disreputable compliances became
necessary.
He had, likewise, a daughter, Anne, whom he married with a considerable
fortune, to Edward Philips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rose in the
crown office to be secondary: by him she had two sons, John and Edward,
who were educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the only
authentick account of his domestick manners.
John, the poet, was born in his father's house, at the Spread-eagle, in
Bread street, Dec. 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning. His
father appears to have been very solicitous about his education; for he
was instructed, at first, by private tuition, under the care of Thomas
Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburgh,
and of whom we have reason to think well, since his scholar considered
him as worthy of an epistolary elegy.
He was then sent to St. Paul's school, under the care of Mr. Gill; and
removed, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ's college in
Cambridge, where he entered a sizar[26], Feb. 12,1624.
He was, at this time, eminently skilled in the Latin tongue; and he
himself, by annexing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of
which the learned Politian had given him an example, seems to commend
the earliness of his own proficiency to the notice of posterity. But
the products of his vernal fertility have been surpassed by many, and
particularly by his contemporary Cowley. Of the powers of the mind it is
difficult to form an estimate: many have excelled Milton in their first
essays, who never rose to works like Paradise Lost.
At fifteen, a date which he uses till he is sixteen, he translated
or versified two psalms, 114 and 136, which he thought worthy of the
publick eye; but they raise no great expectations: they would, in any
numerous school, have obtained praise, but not excited wonder.
Many of his elegies appear to have been written in his eighteenth year,
by which it appears that he had then read the Roman authors with very
nice discernment. I once heard Mr. Hampton, the translator of Polybius,
remark, what I think is true, that Milton was the first Englishman who,
after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classick elegance.
If any exceptions can be made, they are very few: Haddon and Ascham, the
pride of Elizabeth's reign, however they have succeeded in prose, no
sooner attempt verse than they provoke derision. If we produced any
thing worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was, perhaps,
Alabaster's Roxana[27].
Of the exercises which the rules of the university required, some
were published by him in his maturer years. They had been undoubtedly
applauded; for they were such as few can perform; yet there is reason to
suspect that he was regarded in his college with no great fondness. That
he obtained no fellowship is certain; but the unkindness with which he
was treated, was not merely negative. I am ashamed to relate what I fear
is true, that Milton was one of the last students in either university,
that suffered the publick indignity of corporal correction[28].
It was, in the violence of controversial hostility, objected to him,
that he was expelled: this he steadily denies, and it was apparently not
true; but it seems plain, from his own verses to Diodati, that he had
incurred rustication, a temporary dismission into the country, with,
perhaps, the loss of a term:
Me tenet urbs, reflua quam Thamesis alluit unda,
Meque nec invitum patria dulcis habet.
Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum,
Nec dudum _vetiti_ me _laris_ angit amor.
Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri,
Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.
Si sit hoc _exilium_ patrios adiise penates,
Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi,
Non ego vel _profugi_ nomen sortemve recuso,
Laetus et _exilii_ conditione fruor.
I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence
can give to the term "vetiti laris," a habitation from which he is
excluded; or how _exile_ can be otherwise interpreted. He declares yet
more, that he is weary of enduring "the threats of a rigorous master,
and something else, which a temper like his cannot undergo. " What was
more than threat was probably punishment. This poem, which mentions his
exile, proves, likewise, that it was not perpetual; for it concludes
with a resolution of returning some time to Cambridge. And it may be
conjectured, from the willingness with which he has perpetuated the
memory of his exile, that its cause was such as gave him no shame.
He took both the usual degrees; that of Bachelor in 1628, and that of
master in 1632; but he left the university with no kindness for its
institution, alienated either by the injudicious severity of his
governours, or his own captious perverseness. The cause cannot now be
known, but the effect appears in his writings. His scheme of education,
inscribed to Hartlib, supersedes all academical instruction, being
intended to comprise the whole time which men usually spend in
literature, from their entrance upon grammar, "till they proceed, as it
is called, masters of arts. " And in his discourse on the likeliest way
to remove Hirelings out of the Church, he ingeniously proposes, that
"the profits of the lands forfeited by the act for superstitious uses
should be applied to such academies all over the land, where languages
and arts may be taught together; so that youth may be, at once, brought
up to a competency of learning and an honest trade, by which means such
of them as had the gift, being enabled to support themselves, without
tithes, by the latter, may, by the help of the former, become worthy
preachers. "
One of his objections to academical education, as it was then conducted,
is, that men designed for orders in the church were permitted to act
plays, "writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antick and
dishonest gestures of Trincalos[29], buffoons, and bawds, prostituting
the shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the
eyes of courtiers and court ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles. "
This is sufficiently peevish in a man, who, when he mentions his exile
from the college, relates, with great luxuriance, the compensation which
the pleasures of the theatre afford him. Plays were, therefore, only
criminal when they were acted by academicks.
He went to the university with a design of entering into the church,
but in time altered his mind; for he declared, that whoever became a
clergyman must "subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless
he took with a conscience that could retch, he must straight perjure
himself. He thought it better to prefer a blameless silence, before the
office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing. "
These expressions are, I find, applied to the subscription of the
articles; but it seems more probable that they relate to canonical
obedience. I know not any of the articles which seem to thwart his
opinions; but the thoughts of obedience, whether canonical or civil,
raised his indignation.
His unwillingness to engage in the ministry, perhaps not yet advanced to
a settled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his
friends, who had reproved his suspended and dilatory life, which he
seems to have imputed to an insatiable curiosity, and fantastick luxury
of various knowledge. To this he writes a cool and plausible answer, in
which he endeavours to persuade him, that the delay proceeds not from
the delights of desultory study, but from the desire of obtaining more
fitness for his task; and that he goes on, "not taking thought of being
late, so it gives advantage to be more fit. "
When he left the university he returned to his father, then residing at
Horton, in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five years; in which
time he is said to have read all the Greek and Latin writers. With what
limitations this universality is to be understood, who shall inform us?
It might be supposed, that he who read so much should have done nothing
else; but Milton found time to write the Masque of Comus, which was
presented at Ludlow, then the residence of the lord president of Wales,
in 1634; and had the honour of being acted by the earl of Bridgewater's
sons and daughter.
