When their reputation was high, they had undoubtedly more imitators than time has left behind. Their immediate successors, of whom any remembrance can be said to remain, were Suckling, Waller, Denham, Cowley, Cleiveland, and Milton. Denham and Waller sought another way to fame, by improving the harmony of our numbers. Milton tried the metaphysic style only in his lines upon Hobson the carrier. Cowley adopted it, and excelled his predecessors, having as much sentiment and more music. Suckling neither improved versification, nor abounded in conceits. The fashionable style remained chiefly with Cowley; Suckling could not reach it, and Milton disdained it. CRITICAL remarks are not easily understood without examples; and I have therefore collected instances of the modes of writing by which this species of poets (for poets they were called by themselves and their admirers) was eminently distinguished. As the authors of this race were perhaps more desirous of being admired than uns derstood, they sometimes drew their conceits from recesses of learning not very much frequented by common readers of poetry. Thus Cowley on Knowledge. The sacred tree 'midst the fair orchard grew, The phoenix Truth did on it rest, And built his perfum'd nest: That right Porphyrian tree, which did true logic shew. Each leaf did learned notions give, And th' apples were demonstrative: So clear their colour and divine, The very shade they cast did other lights outshine. On Anacreon continuing a lover in his old age. Love was with thy life entwin'd, Close as heat with fire is join'd; A pow'rful brand prescrib'd the date Of thine, like Meleager's fate. Th' antiperistasis of age More enflam'd thy amorous rage. In the following verses we have an allusion to a rabbinical opinion concerning manna. Variety I ask not: give me one To live perpetually upon. The person, Love does to us fit, Like manna, has the taste of all in it. Thus Donne shows his medicinal knowledge in some encomiastic verses. In every thing there naturally grows A balsamum, to keep it fresh and new, And virtue and such engredients, have made Keeps off, or cures what can be done or said, Though the following lines of Donne, on the last night of the year, have something in them too scholastic, they are not inelegant. This twilight of two years, not past nor next, Debtor to th' old, nor creditor to th' new. That cannot say, my thanks I have forgot, Nor trust I this with hopes; and yet scarce true Yet more abstruse and profound is Donne's reflection upon man as a microcosm. If men be worlds, there is in every one All the world's riches: and in good men, this Of thoughts so far-fetched, as to be not only unexpected, but unnatural, all their books are full. To a Lady who made Posies for Rings. They, who above do various circles find, Say, like a ring, th' equator Heaven does bind. When Heaven shall be adorn'd by thee, (Which then more Heaven than 'tis will be) Though the Sun pass through't twice a year, The Sun which is esteem'd the god of wit. COWLEY. The difficulties, which have been raised about identity in philosophy, are by Cowley with still more perplexity applied to love. Five years ago (says Story) I lov'd you, Were more inconstant far: for accidents Must of all things most strangely inconstant prove, If from one subject they t'another move; My members then the father members were, From whence these take their birth which now are here. If then this body love what th' other did, "Twere incest, which by Nature is forbid. The love of different women is, in geographical poetry, compared to travels through different countries. Hast thou not found each woman's breast Or wild, and uninhabited? What joy could'st take, or what repose, The soil's all barren sand, or rocky stone. COWLEY. A lover, burnt up by his affection, is compared to Egypt. The fate of Egypt I sustain, And never feel the dew of rain From clouds which in the head appear; But all my too much moisture owe To overflowings of the heart below. COWLEY. The lover supposes his lady acquainted with the ancient laws of augury and rites of sacrifice. And yet this death of mine, I fear, Will ominous to her appear: When, sound in every other part, Her sacrifice is found without an heart. For the last tempest of my death Shall sigh out that too, with my breath. That the chaos was harmonised, has been recited of old; but whence the different sounds arose remained for a modern to discover. Th' ungovern'd parts no correspondence knew, Earth made the base, the treble flame arose. COWLEY. The tears of lovers are always of great poetical account; but Donne has extended them into worlds. again. If the lines are not easily understood, they may be read On reading the following lines, the reader may perhaps cry out-Confusion worse confounded. Here lies a she Sun, and a he Moon here, She gives the best light to his sphere, Or each is both, and all, and so They unto one another nothing owe. DONNE. Who but Donne would have thought, that a good man is a telescope? Though God be our true glass, through which we see All, since the being of all things is he; Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive Things in proportion, fit by perspective, Deeds of good men ; for by their living here, Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near. Who would imagine it possible, that in a very few lines so many remote ideas could be brought together? Since 'tis my doom, Love's undershrieve, Why this reprieve? Why doth my she Advowson fly Incumbency? To sell thyself dost thou intend And hold the contrast thus in doubt, Think but how soon the market fails, Your sex lives faster than the males; And if to measure age's span, The sober Julian were th' account of man, Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian. CLEIVELAND. Of enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these may be examples : Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon, and read by the fire: Nothing yet in thee is seen, But when a genial heat warms thee within, A new-born wood of various lines there grows; Here spouts a V, and there a T, And all the flourishing letters stand in rows. COWLEY. As they sought only for novelty, they did not much inquire whether their allusions were to things high or low, elegant or gross: whether they compared the little to the great, or the great to the little. |