and Mr. Cowley speaks the fashionable, rather than his own sense of him; as appears from the exaggerated strain of his panegyric. However, he does but justice to the vigour of his sense, and the manly elegance of his style: for the latter of which qualities, chiefly, his philosophic writings are now valuable. This I dare boldly tell, 'Tis so like truth, 'twill serve our turn as well. The writer, indeed, is a poet; but this was rather too boldly said. Long did the mighty Stagirite retain. Aristotle; so called from the town of Stagira, where he was born, situated near the bay of Strymon in Macedonia. COWLEY. Saw his own country's short-liv'd leopard slain. Outlasted the Grecian empire, which in the visions of Daniel, is represented, by a leopard, with four wings upon the back, and four heads. Chap. vii. 6. COWLEY. The stronger Roman-eagle did out-fly. Was received even beyond the bounds of the Roman empire, and out-lived it. COWLEY. Meccha itself, in spite of Mahomet, possess'd. For Aristotle's philosophy was in great esteem among the Arabians or Saracens; witness those many excellent books upon him, or according to his principles, written by Averroes, Avicenna, Avempace, and divers others. In spight of Mahomet: because his law, being adapted to the barbarous humour of those people he had first to deal withal, and aiming only at greatness of empire by the sword, forbids all the studies of learning; which (nevertheless) flourished admirably under the Saracen monarchy, and continued so, till it was extinguished with that empire, by the inundation of the Turks, and other nations. Meccha is the town in Arabia where Mahomet was born. COWLEY. L PAGE 146. And with fond divining wands We search among the dead. Virgula divina, or a divining wand, is a two-forked branch of an hazel-tree, which is used for the finding out either of veins, or hidden treasures, of gold or silver; and being carried about, bends downwards (or rather is said to do so) when it comes to the place where they lie. COWLEY. The Baltic, Euxine, and the Caspian, And slender-limb'd Mediterranean. All the navigation of the ancients was in these seas; they seldom ventured into the ocean; and when they did, did only littus legere, coast about near the shore. COWLEY. PAGE 147. To clothe the mighty limbs of thy gigantick sense. The meaning is, that his notions are so new, and so great, that I did not think it had been possible to have found out words to express them clearly; as no wardrobe can furnish cloaths to fit a body taller and bigger than ever any was before: for the cloaths were made according to some measure that then was. COWLEY. To the Trojan hero given. See the excellent description of this shield, made by Vulcan, at the request of Venus, for her son Æneas, at the end of the eighth book of the Æneid, et clypei non enarrabile textum." whereon was graven all the Roman history. COWLEY. Then, when they're sure to lose the combat by't. As not a few did, who presumed, with very unequal arms, to try the temper of that magic shield; which time and common sense, however, have at length disenchanted. PAGE 148.. So contraries on Etna's top conspire. By making the frosts on Ætna's top a comparison only, and not enlarging directly on the contrary qualities of cold and heat, taken sometimes in the literal sense, and sometimes in the metaphorical, the poet has kept clear, in a good degree, of that mixt wit (as Mr. Addison calls it,) in which he so much excelled and delighted. The fire of Hobbes' genius, breaking out under the snow of his gray hairs, might have been set in so many dif ferent lights by our ingenious author, and have been worked up by him into such a variety of amusing contrasts, that the temperate use of his darling faculty, in this instance, deserves our commendation. Here hoary frosts, and by them breaks out fire. The description of the neighbourhood of fire and snow, upon Ætna (but not the application of it) is imitated out of Claud. I. i. de Raptu Pros. "Sed quamvis nimio fervens exuberet æstu, "Lambit contiguas innoxia flamma pruinas." Where, methinks, is somewhat of that which Seneca objects to Ovid. Nescivit quod benè cessit relinquere. When he met with a fancy that pleased him, he could not find in his heart to quit, or ever to have done with it. Tacitus has the like expression of Mount Libanus, Præcipuum montium Libanum, mirum dictu, tantos inter ardores opacum fidumque nivibus; shady among such great heats, and faithful to the snow; which is too poetical for the prose even of a romance, much more of an historian. Sil. Ital. of Ætna, l. xiv. "Summo cana jugo cohibet (mirabile dictu) "Vicinam flammis glaciem, æternoque rigore "Ardentes horrent scopuli, stat vertice celsi "Collis hyems, calidaque nivem tegit atra favillâ.” See likewise Seneca, Epist. 79. COWLEY. BRUTUS.-PAGE 151. The subject of this ode seems to have been chosen by the poet, for the sake of venting his indignation against Cromwell. It has been generally supposed, that Mr. Cowley had no ear for harmony, and even no taste of elegant expression. And one should be apt to think so, from his untuned verse and rugged style: but the case was only this: Donne and Jonson were the favourite poets of the time, and therefore the models, on which our poet was ambitious to form himself. But unhappily these poets affected harsh numbers and uncouth expression; and what they affected, easily came to be looked upon as beauties. Even Milton himself, in his younger days, fell into this delusion. [See his poem on Shakspeare.] But the vigour of his genius, or, perhaps, his course of life, which led him out of the high road of fashion, enabled him, in good time, to break through the snare of—exemplar vitiis imitabile. The court, which had worse things to answer for, kept poor Cowley eternally in it. He forsook the conversation (says Dr. Sprat, who de signed him a compliment in the observation,) but never THE LANGUAGE OF THE COURT. PAGE 152. Pleas'd with the strength and beauty of the ravisher. This is well put. But piety to the mother must not extinguish all regard for the mother's sons. Nothing contributed so much, as the assassination of the first Cæsar, to bring on all those tragedies, with which the gloomy and unappeasable jealousy of his successors, afterwards, filled the Roman annals. The question is not, what Cæsar deserved, but what the true interest of the Roman people required. For in these cases, as Macbeth well observes, 66 we but teach "Bloody instructions, which being taught, return "To plague th' inventor”— Act I. Sc. viii. PAGE 153. Come marching up the eastern hill afar. "Till down the eastern cliffs afar, “Hyperion's march they spy, and glitt’ring shafts of 66 war." LIFE AND FAME.-PAGE 158. Gray. Oh life, thou nothing's younger brother. Because nothing preceded it, as privation does all being; which, perhaps, is the sense of the distinction of days in the story of the creation: night signifying the privation, and day, the subsequent being, from whence the evening is placed first. Gen. i. 5. “And the evening and the morning were the first day.” COWLEY. Oh life, thou nothing's younger brother! So like, that one might take one for the other! i. e. life is less than nothing, but, as being come of nothing, is very like it. Mr. Cowley's poetry (as here) is often much disfigured by the double affectation of wit and familiarity. He would say an out-of-the way thing, in a trivial manner. -But such was the court-idea, in his time, of writing, like a gentleman. What's somebody, or nobody. Τί δὲ τίς, τί δ ̓ ἔτις; Σκιᾶς ὄναρ vwn. Pindar. What is somebody, or what is nobody! Man is the dream of a shadow. COWLEY. In all the cobwebs of the schoolmen's trade. The distinctions of the schoolmen may be likened to cobwebs (I mean many of them, for some are better woven ;) either because of the too much fineness of the work, which makes it slight, and able to catch only little creatures; or, because they take not the materials from nature, but spin it out of themselves. CoWLEY. Dream of a shadow! a reflection, made. Justly admired |
