Lives of the Poets Part 6

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 pa.s.sage 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 courts.h.i.+p most of all unfit, And rough as are the winds that fight with it?

His expressions have, sometimes, a degree of meanness that surpa.s.ses 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, Cas.h.i.+er'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 prost.i.tute 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 inc.u.mbrance 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 Ta.s.so; "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 Ta.s.so.

I know not, indeed, why they should be compared; for the resemblance of Cowley's work to Ta.s.so'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; Ta.s.so represents them as promoting or obstructing events by external agency.

Of particular pa.s.sages 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. Ta.s.so endeavours to represent the splendours and pleasures of the regions of happiness. Ta.s.so affords images, and Cowley sentiments. It happens, however, that Ta.s.so'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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sage 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 sanct.i.ty 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 pa.s.sage 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 s.h.i.+p'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 a.s.sociation, and have the influence, and that only, which custom has given them. Language is the dress of thought: and, as the n.o.blest 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 const.i.tute 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.