Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 by Samuel Johnson

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"He continued," says his biographer, "under these bonds, till the
general deliverance;" it is, therefore, to be supposed, that he did not
go to France, and act again for the king, without the consent of his
bondsman; that he did not show his loyalty at the hazard of his friend,
but by his friend's permission.

Of the verses on Oliver's death, in which Wood's narrative seems to
imply something encomiastick, there has been no appearance. There is a
discourse concerning his government, indeed, with verses intermixed, but
such as certainly gained its author no friends among the abettors of
usurpation.

A doctor of physick, however, he was made at Oxford, in December, 1657;
and, in the commencement of the Royal Society, of which an account
has been given by Dr. Birch, he appears busy among the experimental
philosophers, with the title of Dr. Cowley.

There is no reason for supposing that he ever attempted practice: but
his preparatory studies have contributed something to the honour of his
country. Considering botany as necessary to a physician, he retired into
Kent to gather plants; and as the predominance of a favourite study
affects all subordinate operations of the intellect, botany, in the mind
of Cowley, turned into poetry. He composed, in Latin, several books on
plants, of which the first and second display the qualities of herbs, in
elegiac verse; the third and fourth, the beauties of flowers, in various
measures; and the fifth and sixth, the uses of trees, in heroick
numbers.

At the same time were produced, from the same university, the two great
poets, Cowley and Milton, of dissimilar genius, of opposite principles;
but concurring in the cultivation of Latin poetry, in which the English,
till their works and May's poem appeared[12], seemed unable to contest
the palm with any other of the lettered nations.

If the Latin performances of Cowley and Milton be compared, (for May I
hold to be superiour to both,) the advantage seems to lie on the side
of Cowley. Milton is generally content to express the thoughts of the
ancients in their language; Cowley, without much loss of purity or
elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conceptions.

At the restoration, after all the diligence of his long service, and
with consciousness not only of the merit of fidelity, but of the dignity
of great abilities, he naturally expected ample preferments; and, that
he might not be forgotten by his own fault, wrote a song of triumph. But
this was a time of such general hope, that great numbers were inevitably
disappointed; and Cowley found his reward very tediously delayed. He had
been promised, by both Charles the first and second, the mastership of
the Savoy, "but he lost it," says Wood, "by certain persons, enemies to
the muses."

The neglect of the court was not his only mortification; having by such
alteration, as he thought proper, fitted his old comedy of the Guardian
for the stage, he produced it[13], under the title of the Cutter of
Coleman street[14]. It was treated on the stage with great severity, and
was afterwards censured as a satire on the king's party.

Mr. Dryden, who went with Mr. Sprat to the first exhibition, related
to Mr. Dennis, "that, when they told Cowley how little favour had been
shown him, he received the news of his ill success, not with so much
firmness as might have been expected from so great a man."

What firmness they expected, or what weakness Cowley discovered, cannot
be known. He that misses his end will never be as much pleased as he
that attains it, even when he can impute no part of his failure to
himself; and when the end is to please the multitude, no man, perhaps,
has a right, in things admitting of gradation and comparison, to throw
the whole blame upon his judges, and totally to exclude diffidence and
shame by a haughty consciousness of his own excellence.

For the rejection of this play, it is difficult now to find the reason:
it certainly has, in a very great degree, the power of fixing attention
and exciting merriment. From the charge of disaffection he exculpates
himself, in his preface, by observing, how unlikely it is, that, having
followed the royal family through all their distresses, "he should
choose the time of their restoration to begin a quarrel with them." It
appears, however, from the Theatrical Register of Downes, the prompter,
to have been popularly considered as a satire on the royalists.

That he might shorten this tedious suspense, he published his
pretensions and his discontent, in an ode called the Complaint; in which
he styles himself the _melancholy_ Cowley. This met with the usual
fortune of complaints, and seems to have excited more contempt than
pity.

These unlucky incidents are brought, maliciously enough, together in
some stanzas, written about that time on the choice of a laureate; a
mode of satire, by which, since it was first introduced by Suckling,
perhaps, every generation of poets has been teased.

Savoy-missing Cowley came into the court,
Making apologies for his bad play;
Every one gave him so good a report,
That Apollo gave heed to all he could say:
Nor would he have had, 'tis thought, a rebuke,
Unless he had done some notable folly;
Writ verses unjustly in praise of Sam Tuke,
Or printed his pitiful Melancholy.

His vehement desire of retirement now came again upon him. "Not
finding," says the morose Wood, "that preferment conferred upon him
which he expected, while others for their money carried away most
places, he retired discontented into Surrey."

"He was now," says the courtly Sprat, "weary of the vexations and
formalities of an active condition. He had been perplexed with a long
compliance to foreign manners. He was satiated with the arts of a court;
which sort of life, though his virtue made it innocent to him, yet
nothing could make it quiet. Those were the reasons that moved him to
follow the violent inclination of his own mind, which, in the greatest
throng of his former business, had still called upon him, and
represented to him the true delights of solitary studies, of temperate
pleasures, and a moderate revenue below the malice and flatteries of
fortune."

So differently are things seen! and so differently are they shown!
But actions are visible, though motives are secret. Cowley certainly
retired; first to Barn-elms, and afterwards to Chertsey, in Surrey. He
seems, however, to have lost part of his dread of the "hum of men[15]."
He thought himself now safe enough from intrusion, without the defence of
mountains and oceans; and, instead of seeking shelter in America, wisely
went only so far from the bustle of life as that he might easily find
his way back, when solitude should grow tedious. His retreat was, at
first, but slenderly accommodated; yet he soon obtained, by the interest
of the earl of St. Alban's and the duke of Buckingham, such a lease of
the queen's lands, as afforded him an ample income[16].

By the lovers of virtue and of wit it will be solicitously asked, if
he now was happy. Let them peruse one of his letters, accidentally
preserved by Peck, which I recommend to the consideration of all that
may, hereafter, pant for solitude.

"TO DR. THOMAS SPRAT.

"Chertsey, May 21, 1665.

"The first night that I came hither I caught so great a cold, with a
defluxion of rheum, as made me keep my chamber ten days. And, two after,
had such a bruise on my ribs with a fall, that I am yet unable to move
or turn myself in my bed. This is my personal fortune here to begin
with. And, besides, I can get no money from my tenants, and have my
meadows eaten up every night by cattle put in by my neighbours. What
this signifies, or may come to in time, God knows; if it be ominous, it
can end in nothing less than hanging. Another misfortune has been, and
stranger than all the rest, that you have broke your word with me, and
failed to come, even though you told Mr. Bois that you would. This is
what they call 'Monstri simile.' I do hope to recover my late hurt so
farre within five or six days, (though it be uncertain yet whether I
shall ever recover it,) as to walk about again. And then, methinks, you
and I and 'the dean' might be very merry upon St. Ann's hill. You might
very conveniently come hither the way of Hampton Town, lying there one
night. I write this in pain, and can say no more: 'Verbum sapienti.'"

He did not long enjoy the pleasure, or suffer the uneasiness, of
solitude; for he died at the Porch-house[17] in Chertsey, in 1667, in
the forty-ninth year of his age.

He was buried, with great pomp, near Chaucer and Spenser; and king
Charles pronounced, "that Mr. Cowley had not left behind him a better
man in England." He is represented, by Dr. Sprat, as the most amiable of
mankind; and this posthumous praise may safely be credited, as it has
never been contradicted by envy or by faction.

Such are the remarks and memorials which I have been able to add to the
narrative of Dr. Sprat; who, writing when the feuds of the civil war
were yet recent, and the minds of either party were easily irritated,
was obliged to pass over many transactions in general expressions, and
to leave curiosity often unsatisfied. What he did not tell, cannot,
however, now be known; I must, therefore, recommend the perusal of
his work, to which my narration can be considered only as a slender
supplement.

Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and,
instead of tracing intellectual pleasures in the minds of men, paid
their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too much
praised, and too much neglected at another.

Wit, like all other things, subject by their nature to the choice of
man, has its changes and fashions, and, at different times, takes
different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century,
appeared a race of writers, that may be termed the metaphysical poets;
of whom in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not improper to
give some account.

The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and, to show their learning
was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme,
instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and, very often, such
verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the
modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by
counting the syllables.

If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry, 'technae
mimaetikhae', an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong,
lose their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be said to have
imitated any thing; they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted
the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect.

Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden
confesses of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne
in wit; but maintains, that they surpass him in poetry.

If wit be well described by Pope, as being "that which has been often
thought, but was never before so well expressed," they certainly never
attained, nor ever sought it; for they endeavoured to be singular in
their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account
of wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he depresses it below its natural
dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of
language.

If, by a more noble and more adequate conception, that be considered as
wit which is, at once, natural and new, that which, though not obvious,
is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that,
which he that never found it, wonders how he missed; to wit of this kind
the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new,
but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just;
and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more
frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found.

But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more
rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of "discordia
concors;" a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult
resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they
have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by
violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations,
comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtilty
surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought,
and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

From this account of their compositions it will be readily inferred,
that they were not successful in representing or moving the affections.
As they were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising,
they had no regard to that uniformity of sentiment which enables us to
conceive and to excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds: they
never inquired what, on any occasion, they should have said or done; but
wrote rather as beholders, than partakers of human nature; as beings
looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as epicurean
deities, making remarks on the actions of men, and the vicissitudes of
life, without interest and without emotion. Their courtship was void of
fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish was only to say
what they hoped had never been said before.

Nor was the sublime more within their reach than the pathetick; for they
never attempted that comprehension and expanse of thought which, at
once, fills the whole mind, and of which, the first effect is sudden
astonishment, and the second, rational admiration. Sublimity is produced
by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion. Great thoughts are always
general, and consist in positions not limited by exceptions, and in
descriptions not descending to minuteness. It is with great propriety
that subtilty, which, in its original import, means exility of
particles, is taken, in its metaphorical meaning, for nicety of
distinction. Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty could have
little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former
observation. Their attempts were always analytick; they broke every
image into fragments; and could no more represent, by their slender
conceits, and laboured particularities, the prospects of nature, or the
scenes of life, than he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit
the wide effulgence of a summer noon.

What they wanted, however, of the sublime, they endeavoured to supply by
hyperbole; their amplification had no limits; they left not only
reason but fancy behind them; and produced combinations of confused
magnificence, that not only could not be credited, but could not be
imagined.

Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost;
if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they,
likewise, sometimes struck out unexpected truth; if their conceits were
far-fetched, they were often worth the carriage. To write on their plan
it was, at least, necessary to read and think. No man could be born a
metaphysical poet, nor assume the dignity of a writer, by descriptions
copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by
traditional imagery, and hereditary similes, by readiness of rhyme, and
volubility of syllables[18].

In perusing the works of this race of authors, the mind is exercised
either by recollection or inquiry; either something already learned is
to be retrieved, or something new is to be examined. If their greatness
seldom elevates, their acuteness often surprises; if the imagination is
not always gratified, at least the powers of reflection and comparison
are employed; and, in the mass of materials which ingenious absurdity
has thrown together, genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes
found buried, perhaps, in grossness of expression, but useful to
those who know their value; and such as, when they are expanded to
perspicuity, and polished to elegance, may give lustre to works which
have more propriety, though less copiousness of sentiment.

This kind of writing, which was, I believe, borrowed from Marino and his
followers, had been recommended by the example of Donne, a man of very
extensive and various knowledge; and by Jonson, whose manner resembled
that of Donne more in the ruggedness of his lines than in the cast of
his sentiments.

When their reputation was high, they had, undoubtedly, more imitators
than time has left behind. Their immediate successours, of whom any
remembrance can be said to remain, were Suckling, Waller, Denham,
Cowley, Cleiveland, and Milton. Denham and Waller sought another way
to fame, by improving the harmony of our numbers. Milton tried the
metaphysick style only in his lines upon Hobson, the carrier. Cowley
adopted it, and excelled his predecessors, having as much sentiment, and
more musick. Suckling neither improved versification, nor abounded in
conceits. The fashionable style remained chiefly with Cowley; Suckling
could not reach it, and Milton disdained it.

Critical remarks are not easily understood without examples; and I have,
therefore, collected instances of the modes of writing by which this
species of poets, for poets they were called by themselves and their
admirers, was eminently distinguished.

As the authors of this race were, perhaps, more desirous of being
admired than understood, they sometimes drew their conceits from
recesses of learning, not very much frequented by common readers of
poetry. Thus Cowley, on knowledge:

The sacred tree 'midst the fair orchard grew;
The phoenix, truth, did on it rest,
And built his perfum'd nest:
That right Porphyrian tree which did true logic shew;
Each leaf did learned notions give,
And th' apples were demonstrative;
So clear their colour and divine,
The very shade they cast did other lights outshine.

On Anacreon continuing a lover in his old age:

Love was with thy life entwin'd,
Close as heat with fire is join'd;
A powerful brand prescrib'd the date
Of thine, like Meleager's fate

Th' antiperistasis of age
More enflam'd thy amorous rage.

In the following verses we have an allusion to a rabbinical opinion
concerning manna:

Variety I ask not: give me one
To live perpetually upon.
The person love does to us fit,
Like manna, has the taste of all in it.

Thus Donne shows his medicinal knowledge in some encomiastick verses:

In every thing there naturally grows
A balsamum to keep it fresh and new,
If 'twere not injur'd by extrinsique blows;
Your youth and beauty are this balm in you.
But you, of learning and religion,
And virtue and such ingredients, have made
A mithridate, whose operation
Keeps off, or cures what can be done or said.

Though the following lines of Donne, on the last night of the year, have
something in them too scholastick, they are not inelegant:

This twilight of two years, not past nor next,
Some emblem is of me, or I of this,
Who, meteor-like, of stuff and form perplext,
Whose what and where in disputation is,
If I should call me any thing, should miss.
I sum the years and me, and find me not
Debtor to th' old, nor creditor to th' new.
That cannot say, my thanks I have forgot;
Nor trust I this with hopes; and yet scarce true
This bravery is, since these times shew'd me you.

Yet more abstruse and profound is Donne's reflection upon man as a
microcosm:

If men be worlds, there is in every one
Something to answer in some proportion
All the world's riches: and in good men, this
Virtue, our form's form, and our soul's soul, is.

Of thoughts so far-fetched, as to be not only unexpected, but unnatural,
all their books are full.

To a lady, who wrote poesies for rings:

They, who above do various circles find,
Say, like a ring, th' equator heaven does bind.
When heaven shall be adorn'd by thee,
(Which then more heaven than 'tis will be,)
'Tis thou must write the poesy there,
For it wanteth one as yet,
Then the sun pass through 't twice a year,
The sun, which is esteem'd the god of wit. COWLEY.

The difficulties which have been raised about identity in philosophy,
are, by Cowley, with still more perplexity applied to love:

Five years ago (says story) I lov'd you,
For which you call me most inconstant now;
Pardon me, madam, you mistake the man;
For I am not the same that I was then:
No flesh is now the same 'twas then in me;
And that my mind is chang'd yourself may see.
The same thoughts to retain still, and intents,
Were more inconstant far; for accidents
Must of all things most strangely inconstant prove,
If from one subject they t' another move;
My members, then, the father members were,
From whence these take their birth which now are here.
If then this body love what th' other did,
'Twere incest, which by nature is forbid.

The love of different women is, in geographical poetry, compared to
travels through different countries:

Hast thou not found each woman's breast
(The land where thou hast travelled)
Either by savages possest,
Or wild, and uninhabited?
What joy could'st take, or what repose,
In countries so unciviliz'd as those?

Lust, the scorching dogstar, here
Rages with immoderate heat;
Whilst pride, the rugged northern bear,
In others makes the cold too great.
And where these are temperate known,
The soil's all barren sand, or rocky stone. COWLEY.

A lover, burnt up by his affection, is compared to Egypt:

The fate of Egypt I sustain,
And never feel the dew of rain
From clouds which in the head appear;
But all my too much moisture owe
To overflowings of the heart below. COWLEY.

The lover supposes his lady acquainted with the ancient laws of augury,
and rites of sacrifice:

And yet this death of mine, I fear,
Will ominous to her appear:
When sound in every other part,
Her sacrifice is found without an heart.
For the last tempest of my death
Shall sigh out that too, with my breath.

That the chaos was harmonized, has been recited of old; but whence the
different sounds arose remained for a modern to discover:

Th' ungovern'd parts no correspondence knew;
An artless war from thwarting motions grew;
Till they to number and fixt rules were brought.
Water and air he for the tenor chose;
Earth made the base; the treble,
flame arose. COWLEY.

The tears of lovers are always of great poetical account; but Donne has
extended them into worlds. If the lines are not easily understood, they
may be read again:

On a round ball
A workman, that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.

So doth each tear,
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mixt with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee my heaven dissolved so.

On reading the following lines, the reader may, perhaps, cry out,
"Confusion worse confounded:"

Here lies a she-sun, and a he-moon here,
She gives the best light to his sphere,
Or each is both, and all, and so
They unto one another nothing owe. DONNE.

Who but Donne would have thought that a good man is a telescope?

Though God be our true glass, through which we see
All, since the being of all things is he,
Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive
Things in proportion fit, by perspective
Deeds of good men; for by their living here,
Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.

Who would imagine it possible, that in a very few lines so many remote
ideas could be brought together?

Since 'tis my doom, love's undershrieve,
Why this reprieve?
Why doth my she-advowson fly
Incumbency?
To sell thyself dost thou intend
By candle's end,
And hold the contrast thus in doubt,
Life's taper out?
Think but how soon the market fails,
Your sex lives faster than the males;
And if, to measure age's span,
The sober Julian were th' account of man,
Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian. CLEIVELAND.

Of enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these may be examples:

By every wind that comes this way,
Send me, at least, a sigh or two,
Such and so many I'll repay
As shall themselves make winds to get to you. COWLEY.

In tears I'll waste these eyes,
By love so vainly fed;
So lust of old the deluge punished. COWLEY.

All arm'd in brass, the richest dress of war,
(A dismal glorious sight!) he shone afar.
The sun himself started with sudden fright,
To see his beams return so dismal bright. COWLEY.

An universal consternation:

His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws
Tear up the ground; then runs he wild about,
Lashing his angry tail, and roaring out.
Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there;
Trees, though no wind is stirring, shake with fear;
Silence and horror fill the place around;
Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound. COWLEY.

Their fictions were often violent and unnatural.

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