P. 120, No. cvi.--Hallam has said that ‘Cowley upon the whole has had a reputation more above his deserts than any English poet,’ adding, however, that ‘some who wrote better had not so fine a genius.’ This may have been so, but a man’s contemporaries have some opportunities of judging which subsequent generations are without. They judge him not only by what he _does_, but by what he _is_; and oftentimes a man _is_ more than he _does_; leaves an impression of greatness on those who come in actual contact with him which is only inadequately justified by aught which he leaves behind him, while yet in one sense it is most true. Many a man’s embodiment of himself in his writings is below himself; some men’s, strange to say, is above them, or at all events represents most transient moments of their lives. But I should be disposed to question Mr. Hallam’s assertion, judging Cowley merely by what he has left behind him. With a poem like this before us, so full of thought, so full of imagination, containing so accurate and so masterly a sketch of the past history of natural philosophy, we may well hesitate about jumping to the conclusion that his contemporaries were altogether wrong, rating him so highly as they did. How they did esteem him lines like these of Denham, the fragment of a larger poem, not without a worth of their own, will show: ‘Old mother Wit and Nature gave Shakespeare and Fletcher all they have; In Spenser and in Jonson Art Of slower Nature got the start; But both in him so equal are, None knows which bears the happiest share. To him no author was unknown, Yet what he wrote was all his own, He melted not the ancient gold, Nor with Ben Jonson did make bold To plunder all the Roman stores Of poets and of orators. Horace’s wit and Virgil’s state He did not steal but emulate! And when he would like them appear, Their garb, but not their clothes did wear.’ l. 19-40: Compare with these the lines, inferior indeed, but themselves remarkable, and showing how strongly Cowley felt on this matter, which occur in his _Ode to Dr. Harvey_, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood: ‘Thus Harvey sought for truth in Truth’s own book, The creatures; which by God Himself was writ, And wisely thought ’twas fit Not to read comments only upon it, But on the original itself to look. Methinks in art’s great circle others stand, Locked up together, hand in hand, Every one leads as he is led, The same bare path they tread, And dance like fairies a fantastic round, But neither change their motion nor their ground.’ The same thought reappears, and again remarkably expressed, although under quite different images, in his _Ode to Mr. Hobbs_. These are a few lines: