85 (return)
[ Classically too, as far
as consists with the allegorizing fancy of the modern, that still striving
to project the inward, contradistinguishes itself from the seeming ease
with which the poetry of the ancients reflects the world without. Casimir
affords, perhaps, the most striking instance of this characteristic
difference.—For his style and diction are really classical: while
Cowley, who resembles Casimir in many respects, completely barbarizes his
Latinity, and even his metre, by the heterogeneous nature of his thoughts.
That Dr. Johnson should have passed a contrary judgment, and have even
preferred Cowley’s Latin Poems to Milton’s, is a caprice that has, if I
mistake not, excited the surprise of all scholars. I was much amused last
summer with the laughable affright, with which an Italian poet perused a
page of Cowley’s Davideis, contrasted with the enthusiasm with which he
first ran through, and then read aloud, Milton’s Mansus and Ad Patrem.]
86 (return)
[ Flectit, or if the metre
had allowed, premit would have supported the metaphor better.]
87 (return)
[ Poor unlucky
Metaphysicks! and what are they? A single sentence expresses the object
and thereby the contents of this science. Gnothi seauton:
Nosce te ipsum,
Tuque Deum, quantum licet, inque Deo omnia noscas.]
Know thyself: and so shalt thou know God, as far as is permitted to a creature, and in God all things.—Surely, there is a strange—nay, rather too natural—aversion to many to know themselves.]