It is not only when the events are confeffedly miraculous, that fancy and fiction lofe their effect: the whole fyftem of life, while the Theocracy was yet vifible, has an appearance fo different from all other scenes of human action, that the reader of the Sacred Volume habitually confiders it as the peculiar mode of existence of a diftinct fpecies of mankind, that lived and acted with manners uncommunicable; fo that it is difficult even for imagination to place us in the state of them whose story is related, and by confequence their joys and griefs are not eafily adopted, nor can the attention be often interested in any thing that befalls them.

To the fubject thus originally indifpofed to the reception of poetical embellishments, the writer brought little that could reconcile impatience, or attract curiofity. Nothing can be more disgusting than a narrative spangled with conceits; and conceits are all that the Davideis fupplies.

One of the great fources of poetical delight is defcription, or the power of prefentG

VOL. I.

ing

ing pictures to the mind. Cowley gives inferences inftead of images, and shews not what may be fuppofed to have been feen, but what thoughts the fight might have suggested. When Virgil defcribes the ftone which Turnus lifted against Æneas, he fixes the attention on its bulk and weight:

Saxum circumfpicit ingens,

Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat

Limes agro pofitus, litem ut difcerneret arvis.

Cowley fays of the ftone with which Cain flew his brother,

I faw him fling the stone, as if he meant
At once his murther and his monument.

Of the fword taken from Goliah, he fays,

A fword fo great, that it was only fit
To cut off his great head that came with it.

Other

poets describe death by fome of its common appearances. Cowley fays, with a

learned

learned allufion to fepulchral lamps real or fabulous,

'Twixt his right ribs deep piere'd the furious
blade,

And open'd wide those fecret veffels where
Life's light goes out, when first they let-in air.

But he has allufions vulgar as well as learned. In a vifionary fucceffion of kings:

Joas at firft does bright and glorious show,
In life's fresh morn his fame does early crow.

Defcribing an undifciplined army, after having faid with elegance,

His forces feem'd no army, but a crowd
Heartless, unarm'd, diforderly, and loud,

he gives them a fit of the

ague.

The allufions, however, are not always to vulgar things: he offends by exaggeration as much as by diminution :

The king was plac'd alone, and o'er his head
A well-wrought heaven of filk and gold was

fpread.

G 2

What

Whatever he writes is always polluted with fome conceit :

Where the fun's fruitful beams give metals birth, Where he the growth of fatal gold does fee, Gold, which alone more influence has than he.

In one paffage he starts a fudden question, to the confufion of philofophy:

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 expreffions have fometimes a degree of meannefs that furpaffes expectation:

Nay, gentle guefts, he cries, fince now you're in,

The story of your gallant friend begin.

In a fimile descriptive of the Morning:

As glimmering ftars juft at th' approach of day, Cashier'd by troops, at laft drop all away.

The

The drefs of Gabriel deferves attention:

He took for skin a cloud moft foft and bright,
That e'er the mid day fun pierc'd through
with light;

Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread,
Wash'd from the morning beauties' deepest rèd;
An harmless flattering meteor fhone for hair,
And fell adown his fhoulders with loofe care;
He cuts out a filk mantle from the skies,
Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes;
This he with flarry vapours fprinkles all,
Took in their prime ere they grow ripe and fall;
Of a new rainbow ere it fret or fade,

The choiceft piece cut out, a scarfe is made,

This is a just specimen of Cowley's imagery: what might in general expreffions be great and forcible, he weakens and makes ridiculous by branching it into small parts. That Gabriel was invefted with the fofteft or brightest colours of the fky, we might have been told, and been difmiffed 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 fkin, and then his mantle, then his lace, and then G 3

his