those wild and wonderful strains of which not a line has reached us. The metre of Pindar is regular, that of Cowley is utterly lawless; and his perpetual straining after points of wit seems to shew that he had formed no correcter notion of his manner than of his style. It is far worse when he leaves his author, and sets up for a Pindaric writer on his own account. But I am not about to criticise Cowley. In Jonson's Ode we have the very soul of Pindar. His artful but unlaboured plan, his regular returns of metre, his interesting pathos, his lofty morality, his sacred tone of feeling, occasionally enlivened by apt digression or splendid illustration. To be short, there have been Odes more sublime, Odes far more poetical than this before us, but none that, in Cowley's words, so successfully " copy the style and manner of the Odes of Pindar." As Jonson was his first, so is he his best, imitator. LXXXVIII. A PINDARIC ODE ON THE DEATH OF SIR H. MORISON. I. THE STROPHE, OR TURN. urn. How summed a circle didst thou leave mankind Of deepest lore, could we the centre find! THE ANTISTROPHE, OR COUNTER-TURN. Lay trampled on? the deeds of death and Urged, hurried forth, and hurled Brave infant of Saguntum, clear Thy coming forth, &c.] Saguntum was a city of Spain, memorable for its fidelity to the Romans, and the miseries it underwent when besieged by Hannibal. It was at last taken by storm; but the inhabitants, who before had suffered all extremities, committed themselves and their effects to the flames, rather than fall into the hands of their enemy. The story to which Jonson here refers, is thus told by Pliny: Est inter exempla, in uterum protinus reversus infans Sagunti, quo anno ab Annibale deleta est, 1. 7, c. 3.--WHAL. It ought to be observed that the word Pindaric was not prefixed by Jonson: in the Museum MS. the poem is simply called "An Ode on the 2 Here's one outlived his peers, And told forth fourscore years.] Perhaps this, and what follows in the next stanza, was intended as a character of Carr, who, taken into favour by James I., was at length advanced to the Earldom of Somerset. The particulars of his history are well known.-WHAL. This does not apply to Carr, who could not have told forth much above forty years when the Ode was written. It seems to refer rather to the old Earl of Northampton; but, perhaps, no particular person was meant, though the poetical character might be strengthened and illustrated by traits incidentally drawn from real life. To sordid flatteries, acts of strife, And sunk in that dead sea of life, So deep, as he did then death's waters sup, But that the cork of title buoyed him up. THE ANTISTROPHE, OR COUNTER-TURN. Alas! but MORISON fell young:1 He never fell,-thou fall'st, my tongue. He stood a soldier to the last right end, A perfect patriot, and a noble friend; But most a virtuous son. All offices were done By him, so ample, full, and round, In weight, in measure, number, sound, As, though his age imperfect might appear, His life was of humanity the sphere. THE EPODE, OR STAND. Although it fall and die that night; THE ANTISTROPHE, OR COUNTER-TURN. He leaped the present age, To see that bright eternal day; Such truths as we expect for happy men: THE EPODE, OR STAND. Go now, and tell our days summed up with JONSON, who sung this of him, ere he went, fears, And make them years; Produce thy mass of miseries on the stage, To swell thine age: Repeat of things a throng, Not lived; for life doth her great actions spell, By what was done and wrought To light her measures are, how well Each syllabe answered, and was formed, how fair; These make the lines of life, and that's her air! Himself, to rest, Or taste a part of that full joy he meant In this bright asterism! Where it were friendship's schism, Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry, To separate these twi Lights, the Dioscuri; And keep the one half from his Harry. But fate doth so alternate the design, Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth must shine, IV. THE STROPHE, OR TURN. And shine as you exalted are; Two names of friendship, but one star: Of hearts the union, and those not by chance Made, or indenture, or leased out t' ad 1 Alas! but Morison fell young.] There was then another conformity between the destinies of the noble pair, which, however, Jonson did not live to witness; for Lucius himself had scarcely attained his thirty-third year, when he also fell," gloriously fell, in the field of honour, and in the cause of his sovereign and his country at the battle of Newbury. It is not growing like a tree, &c.] "The qualities of vivid perception and happy expression" (it is said in the Life of John Dryden) "unite in many passages of Shakspeare; but such Jonson"-poor Ben's unarmed head is made a quintain upon all occasions-"but such Jon vance The profits for a time. No pleasures vain did chime, "In son was unequal to produce, and he substituted strange, forced, and most unnatural analogies." p. xi. For the proof of this we are referred to the present Ode, which, with the rest of Jonson's Pindarics' (where are they to be found?) is treated with the most sovereign contempt. reading Jonson (it is added) we have often to marvel how his conceptions could have occurred to any human being. Shakspeare is like an is the representation of a monster, which is at ancient statue, the beauty of which, &c. Jonson first only surprising, and ludicrous and disgusting ever after."-p. xii. Scott, but never mentions his name.-F. C.] [Gifford often sneers in this way at Sir Walter Of rhymes, or riots, at your feasts, Orgies of drink, or feigned protests: But simple love of greatness and of good, That knits brave minds and manners more than blood. THE ANTISTROPHE, OR COUNTER-TURN. This made you first to know the why Till either grew a portion of the other: You lived to be the great sir-names, THE EPODE, OR STAND. And such a force the fair example had, The good, and durst not practise it were glad That such a law Was left yet to mankind; Where they might read and find To hit in angles, and to clash with time: That trembles in the blaze, but then mounts higher! A quick and dazzling motion; when a pair Of bodies meet like rarified air! As they out-did the lightning in the course; Of human life; as all the frosts and sweats Of fortune, when or death appeared, or bands; And valiant were, with or without their hands. XC. Friendship, indeed, was written not in TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD words; 1 Jonson's connexion with the family of this distinguished nobleman was close and of long continuance. He has monumental verses on several of its members. [Here Gifford inserted, in a note extending over ten pages, a variety of compositions by Jonson, which it has been thought better to remove to the end of the volume.-F. C.] 2 All this, my lord, is valour; this is yours.] This was written many years before the Earl of Newcastle (or as the MS. terms him, of Mans HIGH TREASURER OF ENGLAND, AN EPISTLE MENDICANT, MDCXXXI. MY LORD, Poor wretched states, prest by extremities, Are fain to seek for succours and supplies Of princes aids, or good men's charities. Disease the enemy, and his ingineers, Want, with the rest of his concealed compeers, Have cast a trench about me, now five years, And made those strong approaches by faussebrayes, Redouts, half-moons, horn-works, and such close ways, The Muse not peeps out, one of hundred days; field) took up arms in the defence of his king and country. Jonson knew his patrons; and it may be added, to the credit of his discernment, that few of them belied his praises. 3 Richard, Lord Weston. He was appointed to this office in 1628, and was succeeded at his death, in 1634, by a commission, at the head of which was Laud. This Epistle enables us to ascertain the commencement of that illness which, after a tedious and painful conflict of eleven years, terminated the poet's life in 1637. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HIEROME, LORD WESTON, AN ODE GRATU LATORY FOR HIS RETURN FROM HIS EMBASSY, MDCXXXII. Such pleasure as the teeming earth The rivers in their shores do run, fickle and irresolute. He died, Lord Clarendon says, without being lamented, "bitterly mentioned by those who never pretended to love him, and severely censured by those who ex pected most from him and deserved best of him." 2 The eldest son of the Earl of Portland; a young man of amiable manners, and of talents and worth. The very verdure of her nest, Wherein she sits so richly drest, As all the wealth of season there was spread, Doth shew the Graces and the Hours1 Have multiplied their arts and powers, in making soft her aromatic bed. Such joys, such sweets, doth your return Bring all your friends, fair lord, that burn, With love, to hear your modesty relate, 1 Doth shew the Graces and the Hours.] The Hours are the poetical goddesses, which in common language mean only the seasons; but our poet has the uthority of his Greek and Roman predecessors.—WHAL. The business of your blooming wit, With all the fruit shall follow it, Both to the honour of the king and state. O how will then our court be pleased, To see great Charles of travail eased, When he beholds a graft of his own hand, Shoot up an olive, fruitful, fair, To be a shadow to his heir, And both a strength and beauty to his land! I do not quite understand what was meant to be said in this note; but I will venture to add to it, that there is a great deal of grace and beauty in this little compliment, |