Th' adorning thee with so much art Is but a barbarous skill; 'Tis like the poisoning of a dart Too apt before to kill.10 Often, I regret to say, he condescended to the fashionable licence of seventeenth-century speech and sentiment. In the extravagant, but more innocent, boisterousness of The Chronicle he pretends to a primacy for himself in its practical indulgence: Margarita first possest, If I remember well, my breast, But when awhile the wanton maid Martha soon did it resign To the beauteous Catharine. Eliza to this hour might reign, Mary then, and gentle Anne, And sometimes Mary was the fair, And sometimes both I obey'd. Another Mary then arose, And did rigorous laws impose; Had not Rebecca set me free. When fair Rebecca set me free, One month, three days, and half an hour, And so Susanna took her place. But when Isabella came, Arm'd with a resistless flame, And th' artillery of her eye; Whilst she proudly march'd about, Greater conquests to find out, She beat out Susan by the bye. But in her place I then obey'd Gentle Henrietta then, And a third Mary next began ; And then a pretty Thomasine. And then a long et cetera. But I will briefer with them be, Whom God grant long to reign! 11 The insolence, no less than the gaiety, of the confession is irresistible. But it need not overmuch shock serious readers who would like to respect the man as well as admire the poet. Both here and elsewhere in Cowley's amatory effusions, I find abundance of wit; I fail to discern passion. Disappointing as to some may be the theory, I am fully persuaded of the decorum of his life, loose as may be some of his verse. The freedom of his talk about women probably was little more than a flourish of intellectual audacity. By choice he pursued his amours in the free and safe communion of his own imagination, where he could careless and unthoughtful, lying, Hear the soft winds, above me flying, For society he needed only that A silver stream shall roll his waters near, If he permitted any material passion to divert his thoughts from life's incurable disease', it was gardening: God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.13 When he meditates on womanly companionship; on A mistress moderately fair, And good as guardian-angels are, the wish, carefully toned down as it is, comes distinctly second to his primary longing: Ah, yet, ere I descend to th' grave, May I a small house and large garden have! 14 In praising a wife, he can devise no higher compliment than to discover The fairest garden in her looks, 15 I can read more satisfaction with the floral charms which are left to him, than despair at the departure of a beloved female guest, in the polite endeavour, in The Spring, to account for his garden's stolid complacency at its and his bereavement : Though you be absent here, I needs must say Nay, the birds' rural musick too As if they sung to pleasure you; I saw a rose-bud ope this morn-I'll swear The blushing morning open'd not more fair.16 Gardening itself he loved chiefly because it excused his retirement from affairs to hold converse with books and his own thoughts. His translations from the Classics demonstrate him an accomplished scholar, if not with Dryden's imperious strength of adaptation, richer in occasional felicities of diction; if without Milton's profound learning, more on a level than he with contemporary and applied science. For catching the spirit of Anacreon in particular, he has never had a superior; for instance: The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, Why, man of morals, tell me why? 17 He was a master of prose, as of verse, and its reformer; at once metaphysician and orator. His essays, jewelled with rhyme, especially on gardens, charm still. History contains no written character more grandly outlined, and more deeply graven, than his of Protector Oliver. Ponderous he can be, both in Pindarics, and in Heroics; witness, his failures-On the late Civil war, as recognized by himself; the Resurrection; the noisy Plagues of Egypt; the Ecstasy; and the ambitious, and tiresomely respectable, Davideis. Often even in his finest efforts inspiration appears to be lagging. But we always may hope for a break. The Muse, after dozing in a dull grey twilight, suddenly awakes. The mist parts. Ears, eyes, and soul open in response to a burst of sunshine, and grave, rich harmony, as in the monody on Richard Crashaw. At any rate, his own period, |