Lives of the English Poets : Waller, Milton, Cowley Part 19

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 pa.s.sage 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 courts.h.i.+p most of all unfit, And rough as are the winds that fight with it?

His expressions have sometimes a degree of meanness that surpa.s.ses 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, Cas.h.i.+er'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 prost.i.tute 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 inc.u.mbrance 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 Ta.s.so, "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 Ta.s.so. I know not, indeed, why they should be compared; for the resemblance of Cowley's work to Ta.s.so'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; Ta.s.so represents them as promoting or obstructing events by external agency.

Of particular pa.s.sages 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. Ta.s.so endeavours to represent the splendours and pleasures of the regions of happiness.

Ta.s.so affords images, and Cowley sentiments. It happens, however, that Ta.s.so'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.