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 contemplation, they appear great and ravishing.  In order to illustrate this, we shall quote specimens in both kinds of poetry; the first taken from his Mistress called Beauty, the other is a Hymn to Light, both of which, are so excellent in their kind, that whoever reads them without rapture, may be well assured, that he has no poetry in his soul, and is insensible to the flow of numbers, and the charms of sense.

Beauty.

I.

Beauty, thou wild fantastic ape,
Who dost in ev’ry country change thy shape! 
Here black, there brown, here tawny, and there white;
Thou flatt’rer which compli’st with every sight! 
Thou Babel which confound’st the eye
With unintelligible variety! 
Who hast no certain what nor where,
But vary’st still, and dost thy self declare
Inconstant, as thy she-professors are.

II.

Beauty, love’s scene and masquerade,
So gay by well-plac’d lights, and distance made;
False coin, and which th’ impostor cheats us still;
The stamp and colour good, but metal ill! 
Which light, or base, we find when we
Weigh by enjoyment and examine thee! 
For though thy being be but show,
’Tis chiefly night which men to thee allow: 
And chuse t’enjoy thee, when thou least art thou.

III.

Beauty, thou active, passive ill! 
Which dy’st thy self as fast as thou dost kill! 
Thou Tulip, who thy stock in paint dost waste,
Neither for physic good, nor smell, nor taste. 
Beauty, whose flames but meteors are,
Short-liv’d and low, though thou would’st seem a star,
Who dar’st not thine own home descry,
Pretending to dwell richly in the eye,
When thou, alas, dost in the fancy lye.