Part 6 (1/2)
Describing an undisciplined army, after having said with elegance,
His forces seem'd no army, but a crowd Heartless, unarm'd, disorderly, and loud,
he gives them a fit of the ague.
The allusions, however, are not always to vulgar things; he offends by exaggeration, as much as by diminution:
The king was plac'd alone, and o'er his head A well-wrought heaven of silk and gold was spread.
Whatever he writes is always polluted with some conceit:
Where the sun's fruitful beams give metals birth, Where he the growth of fatal gold doth see, Gold, which alone more influence has than he.
In one pa.s.sage he starts a sudden question, to the confusion of philosophy:
Ye learned heads, whom ivy garlands grace, Why does that twining plant the oak embrace; The oak, for courts.h.i.+p most of all unfit, And rough as are the winds that fight with it?
His expressions have, sometimes, a degree of meanness that surpa.s.ses expectation:
Nay, gentle guests, he cries, since now you're in, The story of your gallant friend begin.
In a simile descriptive of the morning:
As glimm'ring stars just at th' approach of day, Cas.h.i.+er'd by troops, at last drop all away.
The dress of Gabriel deserves attention:
He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright, That e'er the mid-day sun pierc'd through with light; Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread, Wash'd from the morning beauties' deepest red; An harmless flatt'ring meteor shone for hair, And fell adown his shoulders with loose care; He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies, Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes; This he with starry vapours sprinkles all, Took in their prime ere they grow ripe and fall; Of a new rainbow, ere it fret or fade, The choicest piece cut out, a scarf is made.
This is a just specimen of Cowley's imagery: what might, in general expressions, be great and forcible, he weakens and makes ridiculous by branching it into small parts. That Gabriel was invested with the softest or brightest colours of the sky, we might have been told, and been dismissed to improve the idea in our different proportions of conception; but Cowley could not let us go, till he had related where Gabriel got first his skin, and then his mantle, then his lace, and then his scarf, and related it in the terms of the mercer and tailor.
Sometimes he indulges himself in a digression, always conceived with his natural exuberance, and commonly, even where it is not long, continued till it is tedious.
I' th' library a few choice authors stood, Yet 'twas well stor'd, for that small store was good; Writing, man's spiritual physick, was not then Itself, as now, grown a disease of men.
Learning (young virgin) but few suitors knew; The common prost.i.tute she lately grew, And with the spurious brood loads now the press; Laborious effects of idleness.
As the Davideis affords only four books, though intended to consist of twelve, there is no opportunity for such criticism as epick poems commonly supply. The plan of the whole work is very imperfectly shown by the third part. The duration of an unfinished action cannot be known. Of characters, either not yet introduced, or shown but upon few occasions, the full extent and the nice discriminations cannot be ascertained. The fable is plainly implex, formed rather from the Odyssey than the Iliad; and many artifices of diversification are employed, with the skill of a man acquainted with the best models. The past is recalled by narration, and the future antic.i.p.ated by vision: but he has been so lavish of his poetical art, that it is difficult to imagine how he could fill eight books more without practising again the same modes of disposing his matter; and, perhaps, the perception of this growing inc.u.mbrance inclined him to stop. By this abruption posterity lost more instruction than delight. If the continuation of the Davideis can be missed, it is for the learning that had been diffused over it, and the notes in which it had been explained.
Had not his characters been depraved, like every other part, by improper decorations, they would have deserved uncommon praise. He gives Saul both the body and mind of a hero:
His way once chose, he forward thrust outright, Nor turn'd aside for danger or delight.
And the different beauties of the lofty Merah and the gentle Michol, are very justly conceived and strongly painted.
Rymer has declared the Davideis superiour to the Jerusalem of Ta.s.so; ”which,” says he, ”the poet, with all his care, has not totally purged from pedantry.” If by pedantry is meant that minute knowledge which is derived from particular sciences and studies, in opposition to the general notions supplied by a wide survey of life and nature, Cowley certainly errs, by introducing pedantry far more frequently than Ta.s.so.
I know not, indeed, why they should be compared; for the resemblance of Cowley's work to Ta.s.so's is only that they both exhibit the agency of celestial and infernal spirits, in which, however, they differ widely; for Cowley supposes them commonly to operate upon the mind by suggestion; Ta.s.so represents them as promoting or obstructing events by external agency.
Of particular pa.s.sages that can be properly compared, I remember only the description of heaven, in which the different manner of the two writers is sufficiently discernible. Cowley's is scarcely description, unless it be possible to describe by negatives: for he tells us only what there is not in heaven. Ta.s.so endeavours to represent the splendours and pleasures of the regions of happiness. Ta.s.so affords images, and Cowley sentiments. It happens, however, that Ta.s.so's description affords some reason for Rymer's censure. He says of the supreme being,
Ha sotto i piedi e fato e la natura, Ministri umili, e'l moto, e chi'l misura.