His contractions are often rugged and harsh:
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ne flings a mountain, and its rivers tooTorn up with ’t. His rhymes are very often made by pronouns, or particles, or the likeunimportant words, which disappoint the ear, and destroy the energy ofthe line. His combination of different measures is sometimes dissonant andunpleasing; he joins verses together, of which the former does not slideeasily into the latter. The words “do” and “did,” which so much degrade in present estimation theline that admits them, were in the time of Cowley little censured oravoided; how often he used them, and with how bad an effect, at least toour ears, will appear by a passage, in which every reader will lament tosee just and noble thoughts defrauded of their praise by inelegance oflanguage: Where honour or where conscience _does_ not bindNo other law shall shackle me;Slave to myself I ne’er will be;Nor shall my future actions be confinedBy my own present mind.Who by resolves and vows engaged _does_ standFor 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 heroic lines are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they aresometimes 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 andscientific versification; of which it will be best to give his ownaccount 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 ofreaders, 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 natureof the thing which it describes, which I would have observed indivers other places of this poem, that else will pass as verycareless verses: as before, _And over-runs the neighb’ring fields with violent course_. “In the second book: _Down a precipice deep_, _dowse 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 strong brass he wore_. “In the fourth, _Like some fair pine o’er-looking all the 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 berepresented. This the Greeks were not so accurate as to bindthemselves to; neither have our English poets observed it, for aughtI can find. The Latins (_qui musas colunt severiores_) sometimes didit; and their prince, Virgil, always: in whom the examples areinnumerable, and taken notice of by all judicious men, so that it issuperfluous to collect them.” I know not whether he has, in many of these instances, attained therepresentation or resemblance that he purposes. Verse can imitate onlysound and motion. A “boundless” verse, a “headlong” verse, and a verseof “brass” or of “strong brass,” seem to comprise very incongruous andunsociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the sound of the lineexpressing “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 ofrepresentative versification, which perhaps no other English line canequal: Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise:He, who defers this work from day to day,Does on a river’s bank expecting stayTill 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 atpleasure with the common heroic of ten syllables, and from him Drydenborrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He consideredthe verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestic, and has thereforedeviated into that measure when he supposes the voice heard of theSupreme Being. The author of the “Davideis” is commended by Dryden for having written itin couplets, because he discovered that any staff was too lyrical for anheroic 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 theauthor, in imitation of Virgil, whom he supposes not to have intended tocomplete them; that this opinion is erroneous, may be probably concluded,because this truncation is imitated by no subsequent Roman poet; becauseVirgil himself filled up one broken line in the heat of recitation;because in one the sense is now unfinished; and because all that can bedone by a broken verse, a line intersected by a _cœsura_, and a fullstop, will equally effect. Of triplets in his “Davideis” he makes no use, and perhaps did not atfirst think them allowable; but he appears afterwards to have changed hismind, for in the verses on the government of Cromwell he inserts themliberally with great happiness. After so much criticism on his poems, the essays which accompany themmust not be forgotten. What is said by Sprat of his conversation, thatno man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, maybe applied to these compositions. No author ever kept his verse and hisprose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural,and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yetobtained 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 Classics, that Cowleywas beloved by every Muse that he courted; and that he has rivalled theancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy. It may be affirmed, without any encomiastic fervour, that he brought tohis poetic labours a mind replete with learning, and that his pages areembellished with all the ornaments which books could supply; that he wasthe first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greaterode, and the gaiety of the less; that he was equally qualified forsprightly sallies, and for lofty flights; that he was among those whofreed translation from servility, and, instead of following his author ata distance, walked by his side; and that, if he left versification yetimprovable, he left likewise from time to time such specimens ofexcellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it.
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