These lines are from Cowley,--a great name among the poets of those days; but he has sunk into a _name_. We may repeat with Pope, "Who now reads Cowley?" and this, not because he was licentious, but because, with all his elaborate wit, and brilliant and uncommon thoughts, he is as frigid as ice itself. "A little ingenuity and artifice," as Mrs. Malaprop would say, is well enough; but Cowley, in his amatory poetry, is all artifice. He coolly sat down to write a volume of love verses, that he might, to use his own expression, "be free of his craft, as a poet;" and in his preface, he protests "that his testimony should not be taken against himself." Here was a poet, and a lover! who sets out by begging his readers, in the first place, not to believe him. This was like the weaver, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, who was so anxious to assure his audience "that Pyramus was not killed indeed, and that he, Pyramus, was not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver." But Cowley's amatory verse disproves itself, without the help of a prologue. It is, in his own phrase, "all sophisticate." Even his sparkling chronicle of beauties, Margaretta first possest, If I remember well, my breast, &c. is mere fancy, and in truth it is a pity. Cowley was once in love, after his querulous melancholy fashion; but he never had the courage to avow it. The lady alluded to in the last verse of the Chronicle, as Eleonora, first of the name, Whom God grant long to reign, was the object of this luckless attachment. She afterwards married a brother of Dr. Spratt, Bishop of Rochester,[96] who had not probably half the poet's wit or fame, but who could love as well, and speak better; and the gentle, amiable Cowley died an old batchelor. These writers may have merit of a different kind; they may be read by wits for the sake of their wit; but they have failed in the great object of lyric poetry: they neither create sympathy for themselves; nor interest, nor respect for their mistresses: they were not in earnest;--and what woman of sense and feeling was ever touched by a compliment which no woman ever inspired? or pleased, by being addressed with the swaggering licence of a libertine? Who cares to inquire after the originals of their Belindas and Clorindas--their Chloes, Delias, and Phillises, with their pastoral names, and loves--that were any thing but pastoral? There is not one among the flaunting coquettes, or profligate women of fashion, sung by these gay coxcomb poets-- Those goddesses, so blithe, so smooth, so gay, Yet empty of all good wherein consists Woman's domestic honour and chief praise,