Pindar,
the Horace and Virgil of his country, the delight and the glory of
his age, which by his death was left a perpetual mourner."--Yet--so
capricious is fame--a century has nearly elapsed, since Pope said,

Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;
Forgot his epic, nay, Pindaric art,
But still I love the language of his heart.

As Cowley was the great royalist poet after the Restoration, Cleveland
stood in the same rank during the civil war. In the publication of his
works one edition succeeded to another, yearly or oftener, for more than
twenty years. His satire is eminently poignant; he is of a strength and
energy of thinking uncommonly masculine; and he compresses his meaning
so as to give it every advantage. His imagination is full of coruscation
and brilliancy. His petition to Cromwel, lord protector of England, when
the poet was under confinement for his loyal principles, is a singular
example of manly firmness, great independence of mind, and a happy
choice of topics to awaken feelings of forbearance and clemency. It is
unnecessary to say that Cleveland is now unknown, except to such as feel
themselves impelled to search into things forgotten.

It would be endless to adduce all the examples that might be found of
the caprices of fame. It has been one of the arts of the envious to set
up a contemptible rival to eclipse the splendour of sterling merit. Thus
Crowne and Settle for a time disturbed the serenity of Dryden. Voltaire
says, the Phaedra of Pradon has not less passion than that of Racine,
but expressed in rugged verse and barbarous language. Pradon is now
forgotten: and the whole French poetry of the Augustan age of Louis the
Fourteenth is threatened with the same fate. Hayley for a few years was
applauded as the genuine successor of Pope; and the poem of Sympathy
by Pratt went through twelve editions. For a brief period almost each
successive age appears fraught with resplendent genius; but they go out
one after another; they set, "like stars that fall, to rise no more."
Few indeed are endowed with that strength of construction, that should
enable them to ride triumphant on the tide of ages.

It is the same with conquerors. What tremendous battles have been
fought, what oceans of blood have been spilled, by men who were resolved
that their achievements should be remembered for ever! And now even
their names are scarcely preserved; and the