Part 7 (1/2)
The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself to the intellectual eye; and, if the first appearance offends, a further knowledge is not often sought. Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing, must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise. What is perceived by slow degrees may gratify us with the consciousness of improvement, but will never strike with the sense of pleasure.
Of all this, Cowley appears to have been without knowledge, or without care. He makes no selection of words, nor seeks any neatness of phrase: he has no elegancies, either lucky or elaborate: as his endeavours were rather to impress sentences upon the understanding than images on the fancy, he has few epithets, and those scattered without peculiar propriety or nice adaptation. It seems to follow from the necessity of the subject, rather than the care of the writer, that the diction of his heroick poem is less familiar than that of his slightest writings. He has given not the same numbers, but the same diction, to the gentle Anacreon and the tempestuous Pindar.
His versification seems to have had very little of his care; and, if what he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmusical only when they are ill read, the art of reading them is at present lost; for they are commonly harsh to modern ears. He has, indeed, many n.o.ble lines, such as the feeble care of Waller never could produce. The bulk of his thoughts sometimes swelled his verse to unexpected and inevitable grandeur; but his excellence of this kind is merely fortuitous: he sinks willingly down to his general carelessness, and avoids, with very little care, either meanness or asperity.
His contractions are often rugged and harsh:
One flings a mountain, and its rivers too Torn up with 't.
His rhymes are very often made by p.r.o.nouns, or particles, or the like unimportant words, which disappoint the ear, and destroy the energy of the line.
His combination of different measures is, sometimes, dissonant and unpleasing; he joins verses together, of which the former does not slide easily into the latter.
The words _do_ and _did_, which so much degrade, in present estimation, the line that admits them, were, in the time of Cowley, little censured or avoided; how often he used them, and with how bad an effect, at least to our ears, will appear by a pa.s.sage, in which every reader will lament to see just and n.o.ble thoughts defrauded of their praise by inelegance of language:
Where honour or where conscience _does_ not bind, No other law shall shackle me; Slave to myself I ne'er will be; Nor shall my future actions be confin'd By my own present mind.
Who by resolves and vows engag'd _does_ stand For days, that yet belong to fate, _Does_, like an unthrift, mortgage his estate, Before it falls into his hand; The bondman of the cloister so, All that he _does_ receive _does_ always owe: And still, as time comes in, it goes away, Not to enjoy, but debts to pay!
Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell, Which his hour's work, as well as hours, _does_ tell!
Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell.
His heroick lines are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they are sometimes sweet and sonorous.
He says of the Messiah:
Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound, _And reach to worlds that must not yet be found_.
In another place, of David:
Yet bid him go securely, when he sends; _'Tis Saul that is his foe, and we his friends.
The man who has his G.o.d, no aid can lack; And we who bid him go, will bring him back._
Yet, amidst his negligence, he sometimes attempted an improved and scientifick versification; of which it will be best to give his own account subjoined to this line:
Nor can the glory contain itself in th' endless s.p.a.ce.
”I am sorry that it is necessary to admonish the most part of readers, that it is not by negligence that this verse is so loose, long, and, as it were, vast; it is to paint in the number the nature of the thing which it describes, which I would have observed in divers other places of this poem, that else will pa.s.s for very careless verses: as before,
And overruns the neighb'ring fields with violent course.
”In the second book,
Down a precipice deep, down he casts them all.
”And,
And fell a-down his shoulders with loose care
”In the third,