Lives of the Poets, vol 1 | Page 8

ample income[16].
By the lovers of virtue and of wit it will be solicitously asked, if he now
was happy. Let them peruse one of his letters, accidentally preserved by
Peck, which I recommend to the consideration of all that may, hereafter,
pant for solitude.
"TO DR. THOMAS SPRAT.
"Chertsey, May 21, 1665.
"The first night that I came hither I caught so great a cold, with a
defluxion of rheum, as made me keep my chamber ten days. And, two
after, had such a bruise on my ribs with a fall, that I am yet unable to
move or turn myself in my bed. This is my personal fortune here to
begin with. And, besides, I can get no money from my tenants, and
have my meadows eaten up every night by cattle put in by my
neighbours. What this signifies, or may come to in time, God knows; if
it be ominous, it can end in nothing less than hanging. Another
misfortune has been, and stranger than all the rest, that you have broke
your word with me, and failed to come, even though you told Mr. Bois
that you would. This is what they call 'Monstri simile.' I do hope to
recover my late hurt so farre within five or six days, (though it be
uncertain yet whether I shall ever recover it,) as to walk about again.
And then, methinks, you and I and 'the dean' might be very merry upon
St. Ann's hill. You might very conveniently come hither the way of
Hampton Town, lying there one night. I write this in pain, and can say
no more: 'Verbum sapienti.'"

He did not long enjoy the pleasure, or suffer the uneasiness, of solitude;
for he died at the Porch-house[17] in Chertsey, in 1667, in the
forty-ninth year of his age.
He was buried, with great pomp, near Chaucer and Spenser; and king
Charles pronounced, "that Mr. Cowley had not left behind him a better
man in England." He is represented, by Dr. Sprat, as the most amiable
of mankind; and this posthumous praise may safely be credited, as it
has never been contradicted by envy or by faction.
Such are the remarks and memorials which I have been able to add to
the narrative of Dr. Sprat; who, writing when the feuds of the civil war
were yet recent, and the minds of either party were easily irritated, was
obliged to pass over many transactions in general expressions, and to
leave curiosity often unsatisfied. What he did not tell, cannot, however,
now be known; I must, therefore, recommend the perusal of his work,
to which my narration can be considered only as a slender supplement.
Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and,
instead of tracing intellectual pleasures in the minds of men, paid their
court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too much praised,
and too much neglected at another.
Wit, like all other things, subject by their nature to the choice of man,
has its changes and fashions, and, at different times, takes different
forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century, appeared a race
of writers, that may be termed the metaphysical poets; of whom in a
criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not improper to give some
account.
The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and, to show their
learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it
in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and, very
often, such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear;
for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be
verses by counting the syllables.
If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry, 'technae

mimaetikhae', an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong,
lose their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be said to have
imitated any thing; they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted
the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect.
Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits.
Dryden confesses of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall
below Donne in wit; but maintains, that they surpass him in poetry.
If wit be well described by Pope, as being "that which has been often
thought, but was never before so well expressed," they certainly never
attained, nor ever sought it; for they endeavoured to be singular in their
thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account of wit
is undoubtedly erroneous: he depresses it below its natural dignity, and
reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of language.
If, by a more noble and more adequate conception, that be considered
as wit which is, at once, natural