elieving themselves the wonder of their
own, and the pattern of succeeding ages; and however much they
[Transcriber's note: fragment of word only in original, presume "might"]
differ from each other in parts and genius, they sought the same road to
poetical fame, by starting the most unnatural images which their
imaginations could conceive, or by hunting more common allusions through
the most minute and circumstantial particulars and ramifications.

Yet, though during the age of Charles I. the metaphysical poets enjoyed
the larger proportion of public applause, authors were not wanting who
sought other modes of distinguishing themselves. Milton, who must not be
named in the same paragraph with others, although he had not yet
meditated the sublime work which was to carry his name to immortality,
disdained, even in his lesser compositions, the preposterous conceits
and learned absurdities, by which his contemporaries acquired
distinction. Some of his slighter academic prolusions are, indeed,
tinged with the prevailing taste of his age, or, perhaps, were written
in ridicule of it; but no circumstance in his life is more remarkable,
than that "Comus," the "Monody on Lycidas," the "Allegro and Penseroso,"
and the "Hymn on the Nativity," are unpolluted by the metaphysical
jargon and affected language which the age esteemed indispensable to
poetry. This refusal to bend to an evil so prevailing, and which held
out so many temptations to a youth of learning and genius, can only be
ascribed to the natural chastity of Milton's taste, improved by an
earnest and eager study of the purest models of antiquity.

But besides Milton, who stood aloof and alone, there was a race of
lesser poets, who endeavoured to glean the refuse of the applause reaped
by Donne, Cowley, and their followers, by adopting ornaments which the
latter had neglected, perhaps because they could be attained without
much labour or abstruse learning. The metaphysical poets, in their
slip-shod pindarics, had totally despised, not only smoothness and
elegance but the common rhythm of versification. Many and long passages
may be read without perceiving the least difference between them and
barbarous jingling, ill-regulated prose; and in appearance, though the
lines be divided into unequal lengths, the eye and ear acknowledge
little difference between them and the inscription on a tomb-stone. In a
word, not only harmony of numbers, but numbers themselves, were
altogeth