On Cowley.
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o 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 arisesfrom his improvement of our numbers, his versification ought tobe considered. It will afford that pleasure which arises from theobservation of a man of judgment naturally right, forsaking bad copiesby degrees, and advancing towards a better practice, as he gains moreconfidence in himself. In his translation of Virgil, written when he was about twenty-oneyears old, may be still found the old manner of continuing the senseungracefully from verse to verse: Then all thoseWho in the dark our fury did escape,Returning, know our borrow'd arms, and shape,And differing dialect; then their numbers swellAnd grow upon us; first Choroebus fellBefore Minerva's altar; next did bleedJust Ripheus, whom no Trojan did exceedIn virtue, yet the gods his fate decreed.Then Hypanis and Dymas, wounded byTheir friends; nor thee, Pantheus, thy piety,Nor consecrated mitre, from the sameIll fate could save; my country's funeral flameAnd Troy's cold ashes I attest, and callTo witness for myself, that in their fallNo 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 taughthis 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 inthis first essay, but which it is to be supposed his maturer judgmentdisapproved, since, in his latter works, he has totally forborne them. His rhymes are such as seem found without difficulty, by following thesense; and are, for the most part, as exact, at least, as those of otherpoets, though now and then the reader is shifted off with what he canget: O how _transform'd!_How much unlike that Hector, who _return'd_Clad in Achilles' spoils!
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