n private life, he was
easy of access, gentle, polite, and modest; none but his intimate
friends ever discovered, by his discourse, that he was a great poet;
he was generous in his disposition, temperate in his life, devout and
pious in his religion, a warm friend, and a social companion. Such is
the character of the great Mr. Cowley, who deserves the highest
gratitude from posterity, as well for his public as private conduct.
He never prostituted his muse to the purposes of lewdness and folly,
and it is with pleasure we can except him from the general, and too
just, charge brought against the poets, That they have abilities to do
the greatest service, and by misdirecting them, too frequently fawn
the harlot face of loose indulgence, and by dressing up pleasure in an
elegant attire, procure votaries to her altar, who pay too dear for
gazing at the shewy phantom by loss of their virtue. It is no
compliment to the taste of the present age, that the works of Mr.
Cowley are falling into disesteem; they certainly contain more wit,
and good sense, than the works of many other poets, whom it is now
fashionable to read; that kind of poetry, which is known by the name
of Light, he succeeds beyond any of his cotemporaries, or successors;
no love verses, in our language, have so much true wit, and expressive
tenderness, as Cowley's Mistress, which is indeed perfect in its kind.
What Mr. Addison observes, is certainly true, 'He more had pleased us,
had he pleased us less.' He had a soul too full, an imagination too
fertile to be restrained, and because he has more wit than any other
poet, an ordinary reader is somehow disposed to think he had less. In
the particular of wit, none but Shakespear ever exceeded Cowley, and
he was certainly as cultivated a scholar, as a great natural genius.
In that kind of poetry which is grave, and demands extensive thinking,
no poet has a right to be compared with Cowley: Pope and Dryden, who
are as remarkable for a force of thinking, as elegance of poetry, are
yet inferior to him; there are more ideas in one of Cowley's pindaric
odes, than in any piece of equal length by those two great genius's
(St. Caecilia's ode excepted) and his pindaric odes being now
neglected, can proceed from no other cause, than that they demand too
much attention for a common reader, and contain sentiments so
sublimely noble, as not to be comprehended by a vulgar mind; but to
those who think, and are accustomed to contempla