76 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 correspondent knew,
An artless war from thwarting motions grew;
Till they to number and fixt rules were brought
[By the Eternal Mind's poetick thought].
Water and air he for the tenor chose,

Earth made the base, the treble flame arose.'

COWLEY 2.

77 The tears of lovers are always of great poetical account, but Donne has extended them into worlds. If the lines are not easily understood they may be read again.

78

'On a round ball

A workman, that hath copies by, can lay

An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,

And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.
So doth each tear,

Which thee doth wear,

A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,

Till thy tears mixt with mine do overflow

This world, by waters sent from thee my [by] heaven dissolved so3.'

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?

I

'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,

By Plato in Politicus, 273 c, d, and in Timaeus, 69c; by Ovid in Metamor. bk. 1.

'From harmony, from heavenly har-
mony

This universal frame began.'
DRYDEN, St. Cecilia, l. 1.

2

Eng. Poets, viii. 194. 'Cowley appears by these lines to have been but little skilled in music.' HAWKINS, Johnson's Works, 1787, ii. 30. 3 Grosart's Donne, ii. 198. 4 Paradise Lost, ii. 996. 5 Grosart's Donne, i. 258.

Deeds of good men; for by their living [being] here,
Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near '?

Who would imagine it possible that in a very few lines so many 79 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
By candle's end,

And hold the contrast [contract] thus in doubt,
Life's taper out?

Think but how soon the market fails,

Your sex lives faster than the males;

As if to measure age's span,

The sober Julian were th' acount of man,
Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian.'

CLEIVELAND 3.

Of enormous and disgusting hyberboles these may be ex- 80

amples:

'By every wind, that comes this way,
Send me at least a sigh or two,

Such and so many I'll repay

As shall themselves make winds to get to you.'

'In tears I'll waste these eyes,

By Love so vainly fed;

COWLEY *.

So lust of old the Deluge punished.'-COWLEY 5.

-'All arm'd in brass the richest dress of war
(A dismal glorious sight) he shone afar.
The sun himself started with sudden fright,
To see his beams return so dismal bright.'

' Grosart's Donne, ii. 115.

2 Here follow five lines omitted by Johnson.

3 Works, ed. 1687, p. 6. On the titlepage the name is printed Cleveland, but underneath his portrait which faces it-Cleaveland. Johnson gives a third spelling. Another variety is Clevland. Cleveland's executors in their Epistle Dedicatory aim at rivalling his wit. 'Whilst Randolph and Cowley,' they write, 'lie embalmed in their own

COWLEY6

native wax, how is the name and
memory of Cleveland equally pro-
phaned by those that usurp and
those that blaspheme it! By those
that are ambitious to lay their
Cuckow's Eggs in his Nest; and
those that think to raise up Phenixes
of Wit by firing his spicy Bed about
him!'

4 Eng. Poets, vii. 123.
5 lb. viii. 28.
6 lb. viii. 258.

Unnatural pictions 81

82

An universal consternation:

'His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws
Tear up the ground; then runs he wild about,
Lashing his angry tail and roaring out.

Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there;
Trees, though no wind is stirring, shake with fear;
Silence and horror fill the place around:

Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound.'-Cowley 1.

Their fictions were often violent and unnatural.

Of his Mistress bathing:

'The fish around her crouded, as they do

To the false light that treacherous fishers shew,
And all with as much ease might taken be,

As she at first took me :

For ne'er did light so clear
Among the waves appear,

Though every night the sun himself set there.'

COWLEY 2.

The poetical effect of a Lover's name upon glass:
'My name engrav'd herein

Doth contribute my firmness to this glass;
Which, ever since that charm, hath been

As hard as that which grav'd it was.'-DONNE 3.

83√ Their conceits were sometimes slight and trifling.

84

On an inconstant woman:

'He enjoys thy calmy sunshine now,

And no breath stirring hears;
In the clear heaven of thy brow,
No smallest cloud appears.

He sees thee gentle, fair and gay,

And trusts the faithless April of thy May.'

COWLEY.

Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon, and read by

the fire:

'Nothing [So nothing] yet in thee is seen;
But when a genial heat warms thee within,
A new-born wood of various lines there grows;
Here buds an L [A], and there a B,

Here sprouts 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 enquire 85 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.

Physick and Chirurgery for a Lover:

'Gently, ah gently, madam, touch

The wound, which you yourself have made;
That pain must needs be very much,

Which makes me of your hand afraid.

Cordials of pity give me now,

For I too weak for purgings grow.'-COWLEY 2.

The World and a Clock:

'Mahol th' inferior world's fantastic face

Through all the turns of matter's maze did trace;
Great Nature's well-set clock in pieces took;
On all the springs and smallest wheels did look

Of life and motion; and with equal art

Made up again the whole of every part.'-Cowley 3.

up the high+ the greatt

A coal-pit has not often found its poet; but, that it may 86 not want its due honour Cleiveland has paralleled it with the Sun:

'The moderate value of our guiltless ore

Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore;
Yet why should hallow'd vestal's sacred shrine
Deserve more honour than a flaming mine?
These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be
Than a few embers, for a deity.

Had he our pits, the Persian would admire
No sun, but warm's devotion at our fire:
He'd leave the trotting whipster, and prefer
Our profound Vulcan 'bove that waggoner.
For wants he heat, or light? or would have store
Of both? 'tis here: and what can suns give more?
Nay, what's the sun but, in a different name,
A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame!
Then let this truth reciprocally run,

The sun's heaven's coalery, and coals our sun".'

رسمو

the little

Death, a Voyage:

'No family

Ere rigg'd a soul for heaven's discovery,
With whom more venturers might boldly dare
Venture their stakes, with him in joy to share.'

DONNE'.

87 Their thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly were absurd, and such as no figures or licence can reconcile to the

O Teis Gought cofread sortu understanding.

A Lover neither dead nor alive:

'Then down I laid my head,

Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,
And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled :

Ah, sottish soul, said I,

When back to its cage again I saw it fly:
Fool to resume her broken chain,

And row her galley here again!

Fool, to that body to return

Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn!

Once dead, how can it be,

Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,

That thou should'st come to live it o'er again in me?'

A Lover's heart, a hand grenado :

'Wo to her stubborn heart, if once mine come

Into the self-same room,

"Twill tear and blow up all within,

Like a grenado shot into a magazin.

Then shall Love keep the ashes and torn parts

Of both our broken hearts:

Shall out of both one new one make;

COWLEY 2.

From her's th' allay, from mine the metal, take.'

The poetical Propagation of Light:

'The Prince's favour is diffus'd o'er all,

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COWLEY 3.

From which all fortunes, names, and natures fall;

Then from those wombs of stars, the Bride's bright eyes,

At every glance a constellation flies,

And sows the court with stars, and doth prevent,

In light and power, the all-ey'd firmament:

' Grosart's Donne, ii. 143.

2

Eng. Poets, viii. 28.

The third line runs :-'With whom adven-
3 Ib. viii. 44.

turers more boldly dare.'