Books: Lives of the Poets: Waller, Milton, Cowley
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Samuel Johnson >> Lives of the Poets: Waller, Milton, Cowley
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Cowley, whatever was his subject, seems to have been carried, by a
kind of destiny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which
require still more ignoble epithets. A slaughter in the Red Sea
"new dyes the water's name;" and England, during the Civil War, was
"Albion no more, nor to be named from white." It is surely by some
fascination not easily surmounted, that a writer, professing to
revive "the noblest and highest writing in verse," makes this
address to the new year:
Nay, if thou lov'st me, gentle year,
Let not so much as love be there,
Vain, fruitless love I mean; for, gentle year,
Although I fear
There's of this caution little need,
Yet, gentle year, take heed
How thou dost make
Such a mistake;
Such love I mean alone
As by thy cruel predecessors has been shown:
For, though I have too much cause to doubt it,
I fain would try, for once, if life can live without it.
The reader of this will be inclined to cry out with Prior -
Ye critics, say,
How poor to this was Pindar's style!
Even those who cannot perhaps find in the Isthmian or Nemaean songs
what Antiquity what disposed them to expect, will at least see that
they are ill represented by such puny poetry; and all will determine
that, if this be the old Theban strain, it is not worthy of revival.
To the disproportion and incongruity of Cowley's sentiments must be
added the uncertainty and looseness of his measures. He takes the
liberty of using in any place a verse of any length, from two
syllables to twelve. The verses of Pindar have, as he observes,
very little harmony to a modern ear; yet by examining the syllables
we perceive them to be regular, and have reason enough for supposing
that the ancient audiences were delighted with the sound. The
imitator ought therefore to have adopted what he found, and to have
added what was wanting; to have preserved a constant return of the
same numbers, and to have supplied smoothness of transition and
continuity of thought.
It is urged by Dr. Sprat, that the "irregularity of numbers is the
very thing" which makes "that kind of poesy fit for all manner of
subjects." But he should have remembered, that what is fit for
everything can fit nothing well. The great pleasure of verse arises
from the known measure of the lines, and uniform structure of the
stanzas, by which the voice is regulated, and the memory relieved.
If the Pindaric style be, what Cowley thinks it, "the highest and
noblest kind of writing in verse," it can be adapted only to high
and noble subjects; and it will not be easy to reconcile the poet
with the critic, or to conceive how that can be the highest kind of
writing in verse which, according to Sprat, "is chiefly to be
preferred for its near affinity to prose."
This lax and lawless versification so much concealed the
deficiencies of the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle,
that it immediately overspread our books of poetry; all the boys and
girls caught the pleasing fashion, and they that could do nothing
else could write like Pindar. The rights of antiquity were invaded,
and disorder tried to break into the Latin: a poem on the
Sheldonian Theatre, in which all kinds of verse are shaken together,
is unhappily inserted in the "Musae Anglicanae." Pindarism
prevailed about half a century; but at last died gradually away, and
other imitations supply its place.
The Pindaric Odes have so long enjoyed the highest degree of
poetical reputation, that I am not willing to dismiss them with
unabated censure; and surely though the mode of their composition be
erroneous, yet many parts deserve at least that admiration which is
due to great comprehension of knowledge, and great fertility of
fancy. The thoughts are often new, and often striking; but the
greatness of one part is disgraced by the littleness of another; and
total negligence of language gives the noblest conceptions the
appearance of a fabric august in the plan, but mean in the
materials. Yet surely those verses are not without a just claim to
praise; of which it may be said with truth, that no man but Cowley
could have written them.
The "Davideis" now remains to be considered; a poem which the author
designed to have extended to twelve books, merely, as he makes no
scruple of declaring, because the "AEneid" had that number; but he
had leisure or perseverance only to write the third part. Epic
poems have been left unfinished by Virgil, Statius, Spenser, and
Cowley. That we have not the whole "Davideis" is, however, not much
to be regretted; for in this undertaking Cowley is, tacitly at
least, confessed to have miscarried. There are not many examples of
so great a work produced by an author generally read, and generally
praised, that has crept through a century with so little regard.
Whatever is said of Cowley, is meant of his other works. Of the
"Davideis" no mention is made; it never appears in books, nor
emerges in conversation. By the "Spectator" it has been once
quoted; by Rymer it has once been praised; and by Dryden, in "Mac
Flecknoe," it has once been imitated; nor do I recollect much other
notice from its publication till now in the whole succession of
English literature.
Of this silence and neglect, if the reason be inquired, it will be
found partly in the choice of the subject, and partly in the
performance of the work.
Sacred history has been always read with submissive reverence, and
an imagination overawed and controlled. We have been accustomed to
acquiesce in the nakedness and simplicity of the authentic
narrative, and to repose on its veracity with such humble confidence
as suppresses curiosity. We go with the historian as he goes, and
stop with him when he stops. All amplification is frivolous and
vain; all addition to that which is already sufficient for the
purposes of religion seems not only useless, but in some degree
profane.
Such events as were produced by the visible interposition of Divine
Power are above the power of human genius to dignify. The miracle
of creation, however it may teem with images, is best described with
little diffusion of language: "He spake the word, and they were
made."
We are told that Saul "was troubled with an evil spirit;" from this
Cowley takes an opportunity of describing hell, and telling the
history of Lucifer, who was, he says,
Once general of a gilded host of sprites,
Like Hesper leading forth the spangled nights;
But down like lightning, which him struck, he came
And roar'd at his first plunge into the flame.
Lucifer makes a speech to the inferior agents of mischief, in which
there is something of heathenism, and therefore of impropriety; and,
to give efficacy to his words, concludes by lashing his breast with
his long tail: Envy, after a pause, steps out, and among other
declarations of her zeal utters these lines:
Do thou but threat, loud storms shall make reply,
And thunder echo to the trembling sky;
Whilst raging seas swell to so bold an height,
As shall the fire's proud element affright,
Th' old drudging sun, from his long-beaten way,
Shall at thy voice start, and misguide the day.
The jocund orbs shall break their measured pace,
And stubborn poles change their allotted place.
Heaven's gilded troops shall flutter here and there,
Leaving their boasting songs tuned to a sphere.
Every reader feels himself weary with this useless talk of an
allegorical being.
It is not only when the events are confessedly miraculous, that
fancy and fiction lose their effect; the whole system of life, while
the theocracy was yet visible, has an appearance so different from
all other scenes of human action, that the reader of the sacred
volume habitually considers it as the peculiar mode of existence of
a distinct species of mankind, that lived and acted with manners
uncommunicable; so that it is difficult even for imagination to
place us in the state of them whose story is related, and by
consequence their joys and griefs are not easily adopted, nor can
the attention be often interested in anything that befalls them.
To the subject thus originally indisposed to the reception of
poetical embellishments, the writer brought little that could
reconcile impatience, or attract curiosity. Nothing can be more
disgusting than a narrative spangled with conceits; and conceits are
all that the "Davideis" supplies.
One of the great sources of poetical delight is description, or the
power of presenting pictures to the mind. Cowley gives inferences
instead of images, and shows not what may be supposed to have been
seen, but what thoughts the sight might have suggested. When Virgil
describes the stone which Turnus lifted against AEneas, he fixes the
attention on its bulk and weight:
Saxum circumspicit ingens,
Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat
Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis.
Cowley says of the stone with which Cain slew his brother,
I saw him fling the stone, as if he meant
At once his murther and his monument.
Of the sword taken from Goliath, he says,
A sword so great, that it was only fit
To cut off his great head that came with it.
Other poets describe Death by some of its common appearances.
Cowley says, with a learned allusion to sepulchral lamps real or
fabulous,
'Twixt his right ribs deep pierced the furious blade,
And open'd wide those secret vessels where
Life's light goes out, when first they let in air.
But he has allusions vulgar as well as learned in a visionary
succession of kings:
Joas at first does bright and glorious show,
In life's fresh morn his fame does early crow.
Describing an undisciplined army, after having said with elegance,
His forces seem'd no army, but a crowd
Heartless, unarm'd, disorderly, and loud,
he gives them a fit of the ague.
The allusions, however, are not always to vulgar things; he offends
by exaggeration as much as by diminution:
The king was placed alone, and o'er his head
A well-wrought heaven of silk and gold was spread.
Whatever he writes is always polluted with some conceit:
Where the sun's fruitful beams give metals birth,
Where he the growth of fatal gold does see,
Gold, which alone more influence has than he.
In one passage he starts a sudden question to the confusion of
philosophy:
Ye learned heads, whom ivy garlands grace,
Why does that twining plant the oak embrace;
The oak for courtship most of all unfit,
And rough as are the winds that fight with it?
His expressions have sometimes a degree of meanness that surpasses
expectation;
Nay, gentle guests, he cries, since now you're in,
The story of your gallant friend begin.
In a simile descriptive of the morning:
As glimmering stars just at th' approach of day,
Cashier'd by troops, at last all drop away.
The dress of Gabriel deserves attention:
He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright,
That e'er the mid-day sun pierced through with light;
Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,
Wash'd from the morning beauties' deepest red:
An harmless flatt'ring meteor shone for hair,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care;
He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies,
Where the most sprightly azure pleased the eyes;
This he with starry vapours sprinkles all,
Took in their prime ere they grow ripe and fall;
Of a new rainbow ere it fret or fade,
The choicest piece cut out, a scarf is made.
This is a just specimen of Cowley's imagery; what might in general
expressions be great and forcible, he weakens and makes ridiculous
by branching it into small parts. That Gabriel was invested with
the softest or brightest colours of the sky, we might have been
told, and been dismissed to improve the idea in our different
proportions of conception; but Cowley could not let us go till he
had related where Gabriel got first his skin, and then his mantle,
then his lace, and then his scarf, and related it in the terms of
the mercer and tailor.
Sometimes he indulges himself in a digression, always conceived with
his natural exuberance, and commonly, even where it is not long,
continued till it is tedious:
I' th' library a few choice authors stood,
Yet 'twas well stored, for that small store was good;
Writing, man's spiritual physic, was not then
Itself, as now, grown a disease of men.
Learning (young virgin) but few suitors knew;
The common prostitute she lately grew,
And with the spurious brood loads now the press;
Laborious effects of idleness.
As the "Davideis" affords only four books, though intended to
consist of twelve, there is no opportunity for such criticism as
Epic poems commonly supply. The plan of the whole work is very
imperfectly shown by the third part. The duration of an unfinished
action cannot be known. Of characters either not yet introduced, or
shown but upon few occasions, the full extent and the nice
discriminations cannot be ascertained. The fable is plainly implex,
formed rather from the "Odyssey" than the "Iliad;" and many
artifices of diversification are employed, with the skill of a man
acquainted with the beet models. The past is recalled by narration,
and the future anticipated by vision: but he has been so lavish of
his poetical art, that it is difficult to imagine how he could fill
eight books more without practising again the same modes of
disposing his matter; and perhaps the perception of this growing
incumbrance inclined him to stop. By this abruption, posterity lost
more instruction than delight. If the continuation of the
"Davideis" can be missed, it is for the learning that had been
diffused over it, and the notes in which it had been explained.
Had not his characters been depraved like every other part by
improper decorations, they would have deserved uncommon praise. He
gives Saul both the body and mind of a hero:
His way once chose, he forward threat outright.
Nor turned aside for danger or delight.
And the different beauties of the lofty Merah and the gentle Michal
are very justly conceived and strongly painted.
Rymer has declared the "Davideis" superior to the "Jerusalem" of
Tasso, "which," says he, "the poet, with all his care, has not
totally purged from pedantry." If by pedantry is meant that minute
knowledge which is derived from particular sciences and studies, in
opposition to the general notions supplied by a wide survey of life
and nature, Cowley certainly errs, by introducing pedantry, far more
frequently than Tasso. I know not, indeed, why they should be
compared; for the resemblance of Cowley's work to Tasso's is only
that they both exhibit the agency of celestial and infernal spirits,
in which, however, they differ widely; for Cowley supposes them
commonly to operate upon the mind by suggestion; Tasso represents
them as promoting or obstructing events by external agency.
Of particular passages that can be properly compared, I remember
only the description of Heaven, in which the different manner of the
two writers is sufficiently discernible. Cowley's is scarcely
description, unless it be possible to describe by negatives; for he
tells us only what there is not in heaven. Tasso endeavours to
represent the splendours and pleasures of the regions of happiness.
Tasso affords images, and Cowley sentiments. It happens, however,
that Tasso's description affords some reason for Rymer's censure.
He says of the Supreme Being:
Ha sotto i piedi e fato e la natura
Ministri humili, e'l moto, e ch'il misura.
The second line has in it more of pedantry than perhaps can be found
in any other stanza of the poem.
In the perusal of the "Davideis," as of all Cowley's works, we find
wit and learning unprofitably squandered. Attention has no relief;
the affections are never moved; we are sometimes surprised, but
never delighted; and find much to admire, but little to approve.
Still, however, it is the work of Cowley, of a mind capacious by
nature, and replenished by study.
In the general review of Cowley's poetry it will be found that he
wrote with abundant fertility, but negligent or unskilful selection;
with much thought, but with little imagery; that he is never
pathetic, and rarely sublime; but always either ingenious or
learned, either acute or profound.
It is said by Denham in his elegy,
To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he writ was all his own.
This wide position requires less limitation, when it is affirmed of
Cowley, than perhaps of any other poet.--He read much, and yet
borrowed little.
His character of writing was indeed not his own; he unhappily
adopted that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present
praise; and, not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients
have continued to delight through all the changes of human manners,
he contented himself with a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure
in its spring was bright and gay, but which time has been
continually stealing from his brows.
He was in his own time considered as of unrivalled excellence.
Clarendon represents him as having taken a flight beyond all that
went before him; and Milton is said to have declared that the three
greatest English poets were Spenser, Shakespeare, and Cowley.
His manner he had in common with others; but his sentiments were his
own. Upon every subject he thought for himself; and such was his
copiousness of knowledge, that something at once remote and
applicable rushed into his mind; yet it is not likely that he always
rejected a commodious idea merely because another had used it: his
known wealth was so great that be might have borrowed without loss
of credit, in his elegy on Sir Henry Wotton, the last lines have
such resemblance to the noble epigram of Grotius on the death of
Scaliger, that I cannot but think them copied from it, though they
are copied by no servile hand.
One passage in his "Mistress" is so apparently borrowed from Donne,
that he probably would not have written it had it not mingled with
his own thoughts, so as that he did not perceive himself taking it
from another:
Although I think thou never found wilt be,
Yet I'm resolved to search for thee;
The search itself rewards the pains.
So, though the chymic his great secret miss
(For neither it in Art or Nature is),
Yet things well worth his toil he gains:
And does his charge and labour pay
With good unsought experiments by the way.--COWLEY.
Some that have deeper digg'd Love's mine than I,
Say, where his centric happiness doth lie:
I have loved, and got, and told;
But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,
I should not find that hidden mystery;
Oh, 'tis imposture all!
And as no chymic yet th' elixir got,
But glorifies his pregnant pot,
If by the way to him befal
Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,
So lovers dream a rich and long delight,
But get a winter-seeming summer's night.
Jonson and Donne, as Dr. Hurd remarks, were then in the highest
esteem.
It is related by Clarendon, that Cowley always acknowledged his
obligation to the learning and industry of Jonson: but I have found
no traces of Jonson in his works: to emulate Donne appears to have
been his purpose.; and from Donne ~he may have learnt that
familiarity with religious images, and that light allusion to sacred
things, by which readers far short of sanctity are frequently
offended; and which would not be borne in the present age, when
devotion, perhaps not more fervent, is more delicate.
Having produced one passage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will
recompense him by another which Milton seems to have borrowed from
him. He says of Goliath:
His spear, the trunk was of a lofty tree,
Which Nature meant some tall ship's mast should be.
Milton of Satan:
His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great ammiral, were but a wand,
He walked with.
His diction was in his own time censured as negligent. He seems not
to have known, or not to have considered, that words being arbitrary
must owe their power to association, and have the influence, and
that only, which custom has given them. Language is the dress of
thought; and as the noblest mien, or most graceful action, would be
degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross
employments of rustics or mechanics; so the most heroic sentiments
will lose their efficacy, and the most splendid ideas drop their
magnificence, if they are conveyed by words used commonly upon low
and trivial occasions, debased by vulgar mouths, and contaminated by
inelegant applications.
Truth indeed is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have
an intrinsic and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual
gold which defies destruction; but gold may be so concealed in baser
matter, that only a chemist can recover it; sense may be so hidden
in unrefined and plebeian words, that none but philosophers can
distinguish it; and both may be so buried in impurities, as not to
pay the cost of their extraction.
The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents
itself to the intellectual eye; and if the first appearance offends,
a further knowledge is not often sought. Whatever professes to
benefit by pleasing, must please at once. The pleasures of the mind
imply something sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must
always surprise. What is perceived by slow degrees may gratify us
with the consciousness of improvement, but will never strike with
the sense of pleasure.
Of all this, Cowley appears to have been without knowledge, or
without care. He makes no selection of words, nor seeks any
neatness of phrase: he has no elegance either lucky or elaborate;
as his endeavours were rather to impress sentences upon the
understanding, than images on the fancy: he has few epithets, and
those scattered without peculiar propriety of nice adaptation.
It seems to follow from the necessity of the subject, rather than
the care of the writer, that the diction of his heroic poem is less
familiar than that of his slightest writings. He has given not the
same numbers, but the same diction, to the gentle Anacreon and the
tempestuous Pindar.
His versification seems to have had very little of his care; and if
what he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmusical only when
they are ill-read, the art of reading them is at present lost; for
they are commonly harsh to modern ears. He has indeed many noble
lines, such as the feeble care of Waller never could produce. The
bulk of his thoughts sometimes swelled his verse to unexpected and
inevitable grandeur; but his excellence of this kind is merely
fortuitous: he sinks willingly down to his general carelessness,
and avoids with very little care either meanness or asperity.
His contractions are often rugged and harsh:
One flings a mountain, and its rivers too
Torn up with 't.
His rhymes are very often made by pronouns, or particles, or the
like unimportant words, which disappoint the ear, and destroy the
energy of the line.
His combination of different measures is sometimes dissonant and
unpleasing; he joins verses together, of which the former does not
slide easily into the latter.
The words "do" and "did," which so much degrade in present
estimation the line that admits them, were in the time of Cowley
little censured or avoided; how often he used them, and with how bad
an effect, at least to our ears, will appear by a passage, in which
every reader will lament to see just and noble thoughts defrauded of
their praise by inelegance of language:
Where honour or where conscience DOES not bind
No other law shall shackle me;
Slave to myself I ne'er will be;
Nor shall my future actions be confined
By my own present mind.
Who by resolves and vows engaged DOES stand
For 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 are
sometimes 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 and
scientific versification; of which it will be best to give his own
account 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 of
readers, 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 nature
of the thing which it describes, which I would have observed in
divers other places of this poem, that else will pass as very
careless verses: as before,
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