Lives Of The Poets, Vol. 1 (fiscle part-III), Samuel Johnson [good summer reads .TXT] 📗
- Author: Samuel Johnson
Book online «Lives Of The Poets, Vol. 1 (fiscle part-III), Samuel Johnson [good summer reads .TXT] 📗». Author Samuel Johnson
In Contradistinction To _Will_, Took The Meaning, Whatever It Be, Which
It Now Bears.
Of All The Passages In which Poets Have Exemplified their Own Precepts,
None Will Easily Be Found Of Greater Excellence Than That In which
Cowley Condemns Exuberance Of Wit:
Yet 'Tis Not To Adorn And Gild Each Part,
That Shews More Cost Than Art.
Jewels At Nose And Lips But Ill Appear;
Rather Than All Things Wit, Let None Be There.
Several Lights Will Not Be Seen,
If There Be Nothing else Between.
Men Doubt, Because They Stand So Thick I'Th' Sky,
If Those Be Stars Which Paint The Galaxy.
In His Verses To Lord Falkland, Whom Every Man Of His Time Was Proud To
Praise, There Are, As There Must Be In all Cowley'S Compositions, Some
Striking thoughts, But They Are Not Well Wrought. His Elegy On Sir
Henry Wotton Is Vigorous And Happy; The Series Of Thoughts Is Easy And
Natural; And The Conclusion, Though A Little Weakened by The Intrusion
Of Alexander, Is Elegant And Forcible.
It May Be Remarked, That In this Elegy, And In most Of His
Encomiastick Poems, He Has Forgotten Or Neglected to Name His Heroes.
In His Poem On The Death Of Hervey, There Is Much Praise, But Little
Passion; A Very Just And Ample Delineation Of Such Virtues As A Studious
Privacy Admits, And Such Intellectual Excellence As A Mind Not Yet
Called forth To Action Can Display. He Knew How To Distinguish, And How
To Commend, The Qualities Of His Companion; But, When He Wishes To Make
Us Weep, He Forgets To Weep Himself, And Diverts His Sorrow By Imagining
How His Crown Of Bays, If He Had It, Would Crackle In the Fire. It
Is The Odd Fate Of This Thought To Be The Worse For Being true. The
Bay-Leaf Crackles Remarkably As It Burns; As, Therefore, This Property
Was Not Assigned it By Chance, The Mind Must Be Thought Sufficiently At
Ease That Could Attend To Such Minuteness Of Physiology. But The Power
Of Cowley Is Not So Much To Move The Affections, As To Exercise The
Understanding.
The Chronicle Is A Composition Unrivalled and Alone: Such Gaiety Of
Fancy, Such Facility Of Expression, Such Varied similitude, Such A
Succession Of Images, And Such A Dance Of Words, It Is In vain To
Expect, Except From Cowley. His Strength Always Appears In his Agility;
His Volatility Is Not The Flutter Of A Light, But The Bound Of An
Elastick Mind. His Levity Never Leaves His Learning behind It; The
Moralist, The Politician, And The Critick, Mingle Their Influence Even
In This Airy Frolick Of Genius. To Such A Performance Suckling could
Have Brought The Gaiety, But Not The Knowledge; Dryden Could Have
Supplied the Knowledge, But Not The Gaiety.
The Verses To Davenant, Which Are Vigorously Begun And Happily
Concluded, Contain Some Hints Of Criticism Very Justly Conceived
And Happily Expressed. Cowley'S Critical Abilities Have Not Been
Sufficiently Observed: The Few Decisions And Remarks, Which His Prefaces
And His Notes On The Davideis Supply, Were, At That Time, Accessions
To English Literature, And Show Such Skill As Raises Our Wish For More
Examples.
The Lines From Jersey Are A Very Curious And Pleasing specimen Of The
Familiar Descending to The Burlesque.
His Two Metrical Disquisitions _For_ And _Against_ Reason Are No Mean
Specimens Of Metaphysical Poetry. The Stanzas Against Knowledge Produce
Little Conviction. In those Which Are Intended to Exalt The Human
Faculties, Reason Has Its Proper Task Assigned it; That Of Judging, Not
Of Things Revealed, But Of The Reality Of Revelation. In the Verses For
Reason, Is A Passage Which Bentley, In the Only English Verses Which
He Is Known To Have Written, Seems To Have Copied, Though With The
Inferiority Of An Imitator.
The Holy Book Like The Eighth Sphere Doth Shine
With Thousand Lights Of Truth Divine,
So Numberless The Stars, That To Our Eye
It Makes All But One Galaxy.
Yet Reason Must Assist Too; For, In seas
So Vast And Dangerous As These,
Our Course By Stars Above We Cannot Know
Without The Compass Too Below.
After This, Says Bentley[20]:
Who Travels In religious Jars,
Truth Mix'D With Error, Shade With Rays,
Like Whiston Wanting pyx Or Stars,
In ocean Wide Or Sinks Or Strays.
Cowley Seems To Have Had What Milton Is Believed to Have Wanted, The
Skill To Rate His Own Performances By Their Just Value, And Has,
Therefore, Closed his Miscellanies With The Verses Upon Crashaw, Which
Apparently Excel All That Have Gone Before Them, And In which There Are
Beauties Which Common Authors May Justly Think Not Only Above Their
Attainment, But Above Their Ambition.
To The Miscellanies Succeed the Anacreontiques, Or Paraphrastical
Translations Of Some Little Poems, Which Pass, However Justly, Under
The Name Of Anacreon. Of These Songs Dedicated to Festivity And Gaiety,
In Which Even The Morality Is Voluptuous, And Which Teach Nothing but
The Enjoyment Of The Present Day, He Has Given Rather A Pleasing, Than
A Faithful Representation, Having retained their Sprightliness, But
Lost Their Simplicity. The Anacreon Of Cowley, Like The Homer Of Pope,
Has Admitted the Decoration Of Some Modern Graces, By Which He Is
Undoubtedly More Amiable To Common Readers, And, Perhaps, If They Would
Honestly Declare Their Own Perceptions, To Far The Greater Part Of Those
Whom Courtesy And Ignorance Are Content To Style The Learned.
These Little Pieces Will Be Found More Finished in their Kind Than Any
Other Of Cowley'S Works. The Diction Shows Nothing of The Mould Of Time,
And The Sentiments Are At No Great Distance From Our Present Habitudes
Of Thought. Real Mirth Must Be Always Natural, And Nature Is Uniform.
Men Have Been Wise In very Different Modes; But They Have Always Laughed
The Same Way.
Levity Of Thought Naturally Produced familiarity Of Language, And The
Familiar Part Of Language Continues Long The Same; The Dialogue Of
Comedy, When It Is Transcribed from Popular Manners, And Real Life, Is
Read, From Age To Age, With Equal Pleasure. The Artifices Of Inversion,
By Which The Established order Of Words Is Changed, Or Of Innovation, By
Which New Words, Or Meanings Of Words, Are Introduced, Is Practised,
Not By Those Who Talk To Be Understood, But By Those Who Write To Be
Admired.
The Anacreontiques, Therefore, Of Cowley, Give Now All The Pleasure
Which They Ever Gave. If He Was Formed by Nature For One Kind Of Writing
More Than For Another, His Power Seems To Have Been Greatest In the
Familiar And The Festive.
The Next Class Of His Poems Is Called the Mistress, Of Which It Is Not
Necessary To Select Any Particular Pieces For Praise Or Censure.
They Have All The Same Beauties And Faults, And Nearly In the Same
Proportion. They Are Written With Exuberance Of Wit, And With
Copiousness Of Learning; And It Is Truly Asserted by Sprat, That The
Plenitude Of The Writer'S Knowledge Flows In upon His Page, So That The
Reader Is Commonly Surprised into Some Improvement. But, Considered as
The Verses Of A Lover, No Man That Has Ever Loved will Much Commend
Them. They Are Neither Courtly Nor Pathetick, Have Neither Gallantry Nor
Fondness. His Praises Are Too Far-Sought, And Too Hyperbolical, Either
To Express Love, Or To Excite It; Every Stanza Is Crowded with Darts
And Flames, With Wounds And Death, With Mingled souls, And With Broken
Hearts.
The Principal Artifice By Which The Mistress Is Filled with Conceits,
Is Very Copiously Displayed by Addison. Love Is By Cowley, As By Other
Poets, Expressed metaphorically By Flame And Fire; And That Which Is
True Of Real Fire Is Said Of Love, Or Figurative Fire, The Same Word In
The Same Sentence Retaining both Significations. Thus, "Observing the
Cold Regard Of His Mistress'S Eyes, And, At The Same Time, Their Power
Of Producing love In him, He Considers Them As Burning-Glasses Made Of
Ice. Finding himself Able To Live In the Greatest Extremities Of Love,
He Concludes The Torrid Zone To Be Habitable. Upon The Dying of A Tree
On Which He Had Cut His Loves, He Observes That His Flames Had Burnt Up
And Withered the Tree."
These Conceits Addison Calls Mixed wit; That Is, Wit Which Consists Of
Thoughts True In one Sense Of The Expression, And False In the Other.
Addison'S Representation Is Sufficiently Indulgent: That Confusion Of
Images May Entertain For A Moment; But, Being unnatural, It Soon Grows
Wearisome. Cowley Delighted in it, As Much As If He Had Invented it;
But, Not To Mention The Ancients, He Might Have Found It Full-Blown In
Modern Italy. Thus Sannazaro:
Aspice Quam Variis Distringar, Lesbia, Curis!
Uror, Et Heu! Nostro Manat Ab Igne Liquor:
Sum Nilus, Sumque Aetna Simul; Restringite Flammas
O Lacrimae, Aut Lacrimas Ebibe, Flamma, Meas.
One Of The Severe Theologians Of That Time Censured him, As Having
Published "A Book Of Profane And Lascivious Verses." From The Charge Of
Profaneness, The Constant Tenour Of His Life, Which Seems To Have Been
Eminently Virtuous, And The General Tendency Of His Opinions, Which
Discover No Irreverence Of Religion, Must Defend Him; But That The
Accusation Of Lasciviousness Is Unjust, The Perusal Of His Work Will
Sufficiently Evince.
Cowley'S Mistress Has No Power Of Seduction: She "Plays Round The Head,
But Reaches Not The Heart." Her Beauty And Absence, Her Kindness And
Cruelty, Her Disdain And Inconstancy, Produce No Correspondence Of
Emotion. His Poetical Account Of The Virtues Of Plants, And Colours Of
Flowers, Is Not Perused with More Sluggish Frigidity. The Compositions
Are Such As Might Have Been Written For Penance By A Hermit, Or For Hire
By A Philosophical Rhymer, Who Had Only Heard Of Another Sex; For They
Turn The Mind Only On The Writer, Whom, Without Thinking on A Woman
But As The Subject For His Task, We Sometimes Esteem As Learned, And
Sometimes Despise As Trifling, Always Admire As Ingenious, And Always
Condemn As Unnatural.
The Pindarique Odes Are Now To Be Considered; A Species Of Composition,
Which Cowley Thinks Pancirolus Might Have Counted in "His List Of The
Lost Inventions Of Antiquity," And Which He Has Made A Bold And Vigorous
Attempt To Recover.
The Purpose With Which He Has Paraphrased an Olympick And Nemaean Ode,
Is, By Himself, Sufficiently Explained. His Endeavour Was, Not To Show
"Precisely What Pindar Spoke, But His Manner Of Speaking." He Was,
Therefore, Not At All Restrained to His Expressions, Nor Much To His
Sentiments; Nothing was Required of Him, But Not To Write As Pindar
Would Not Have Written.
Of The Olympick Ode, The Beginning is, I Think, Above The Original In
Elegance, And The Conclusion Below It In strength. The Connexion Is
Supplied with Great Perspicuity; And The Thoughts, Which, To A Reader Of
Less Skill, Seem Thrown Together By Chance, Are Concatenated without Any
Abruption. Though The English Ode Cannot Be Called a Translation, It May
Be Very Properly Consulted as A Commentary.
The Spirit Of Pindar Is, Indeed, Not Every Where Equally Preserved. The
Following pretty Lines Are Not Such As His _Deep Mouth_ Was Used to
Pour:
Great Rhea'S Son,
If In olympus' Top, Where Thou
Sitt'St To Behold Thy Sacred show,
If In alpheus' Silver Flight,
If In my Verse Thou Take Delight,
My Verse, Great Rhea'S Son, Which Is
Lofty As That, And Smooth As This.
In The Nemaean Ode The Reader Must, In mere Justice To Pindar, Observe,
That Whatever Is Said Of "The Original New Moon, Her Tender Forehead,
And Her Horns," Is Super-Added by His Paraphrast, Who Has Many Other
Plays Of Words And Fancy Unsuitable To The Original, As
The Table, Free For Ev'Ry Guest,
No Doubt Will Thee Admit,
And Feast More Upon Thee, Than Thou On It.
He Sometimes Extends His Author'S Thoughts Without Improving them. In
The Olympionick An Oath Is Mentioned in a Single Word, And Cowley Spends
Three Lines In swearing by The Castalian Stream. We Are Told Of Theron'S
Bounty, With A Hint That He Had Enemies, Which Cowley Thus Enlarges In
Rhyming prose:
But In this Thankless World The Giver
Is Envied even By The Receiver;
'Tis Now The Cheap And Frugal Fashion
Rather To Hide Than Own The Obligation:
Nay, 'Tis Much Worse Than So;
It Now An Artifice Does Grow
Wrongs And Injuries To Do,
Lest Men Should Think We Owe.
It Is Hard To Conceive That A Man Of The First Rank In learning and Wit,
When He Was Dealing out Such Minute Morality In such Feeble Diction,
Could Imagine, Either Waking or Dreaming, That He Imitated pindar.
In The Following odes, Where Cowley Chooses His Own Subjects, He
Sometimes Rises To Dignity Truly Pindarick; And, If Some Deficiencies Of
Language Be Forgiven, His Strains Are Such As Those Of The Theban Bard
Were To His Contemporaries:
Begin The Song, And Strike The Living lyre:
Lo, How The Years To Come, A Numerous And Well-Fitted quire,
All Hand In hand Do Decently Advance.
And
Comments (0)