ficiently rich in ludicrous
incidents and characters; but they seem rather to have irritated his
spleen, than to have drawn forth his powers of picturesque imitation.
Certainly if we compare Hudibras with Don Quixote in this respect, it
seems rather a meagre and unsatisfactory performance.

Rochester's poetry is the poetry of wit combined with the love of
pleasure, of thought with licentiousness. His extravagant heedless
levity has a sort of passionate enthusiasm in it; his contempt for every
thing that others respect, almost amounts to sublimity. His poem upon
Nothing is itself no trifling work. His epigrams were the bitterest, the
least laboured, and the truest, that ever were written.

Sir John Suckling was of the same mercurial stamp, but with a greater
fund of animal spirits; as witty, but less malicious. His Ballad on a
Wedding is perfect in its kind, and has a spirit of high enjoyment in
it, of sportive fancy, a liveliness of description, and a truth of
nature, that never were surpassed. It is superior to either Gay or
Prior; for with all their _naivete_ and terseness, it has a Shakspearian
grace and luxuriance about it, which they could not have reached.

Denham and Cowley belong to the same period, but were quite distinct
from each other: the one was grave and prosing, the other melancholy and
fantastical. There are a number of good lines and good thoughts in the
Cooper's Hill. And in Cowley there is an inexhaustible fund of sense and
ingenuity, buried in inextricable conceits, and entangled in the cobwebs
of the schools. He was a great man, not a great poet. But I shall say no
more on this subject. I never wish to meddle with names that are sacred,
unless when they stand in the way of things that are more sacred.

Withers is a name now almost forgotten, and his works seldom read;
but his poetry is not unfrequently distinguished by a tender and
pastoral turn of thought; and there is one passage of exquisite feeling,
describing the consolations of poetry in the following terms:

"She doth tell me where to borrow
Comfort in the midst of sorrow;
Makes the desolatest place [6]
To her presence be a grace;
And the blackest discontents
Be her fairest ornaments.
In my former days of bliss
Her divine skill taught me this,
That from every thing I saw,
I could some invention draw;
And raise pleasure to her height,
Through the mean