Their expressions sometimes raise horror, when they intend perhaps to be pathetic: As men in hell are from diseases free, So from all other ills am I. Free from their known formality: But all pains eminently lie in thee. --_Cowley_. They were not always strictly curious, whether the opinions from which they drew their illustrations were true; it was enough that they were popular. Bacon remarks that some falsehoods are continued by tradition, because they supply commodious allusions. It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke; In vain it something would have spoke: The love within too strong for't was, Like poison put into a Venice-glass. --_Cowley_. In forming descriptions, they looked out, not for images, but for conceits. Night has been a common subject, which poets have contended to adorn. Dryden's Night is well known; Donne's is as follows: Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest: Time's dead low-water; when all minds divest To-morrow's business, when the labourers have Such rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave, Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this; Now when the client, whose last hearing is To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man, Who when he opens his eyes, must shut them then Again by death, although sad watch he keep, Doth practise dying by a little sleep, Thou at this midnight seest me. It must be, however, confessed of these writers that if they are upon common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle, yet where scholastic speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon Hope shows an unequalled fertility of invention: Hope, whose weak being ruin'd is, Alike if it succeed, and if it miss; Whom good or ill does equally confound, And both the horns of Fate's dilemma wound. Vain shadow, which dost vanish quite, Both at full noon and perfect night! The stars have not a possibility Of blessing thee; If things then from their end we happy call, 'T is hope is the most hopeless thing of all. Hope, thou bold taster of delight, Who, whilst thou shouldst but taste, devour'st it quite! Thou bring'st us an estate, yet leav'st us poor, By clogging it with legacies before! The joys, which we entire should wed, Come deflower'd virgins to our bed; Good fortune without gain imported be, Such mighty customs paid to thee: For joy, like wine, kept close does better taste; If it take air before, its spirits waste. To the following comparison of a man that travels and his wife that stays at home, with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted whether absurdity or ingenuity has the better claim: Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat.