His expressions have sometimes a degree of meanness that surpasses expectation:
Nay, gentle guests, he cries, since now you’re in, The story of your gallant friend begin.
As glimmering stars just at th’ approach of day, Cashier’d by troops, at last all drop away.
He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright, That e’er the mid-day sun pierced 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 pleased 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 stored, for that small store was good; Writing, man’s spiritual physic, was not then Itself, as now, grown a disease of men. Learning (young virgin) but few suitors knew; The common prostitute 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 Epic 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 beet models. The past is recalled by narration, and the future anticipated 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 incumbrance 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.