en,[31] would
have been enough to assure us, even without his own testimony, that
Cowley was the darling of his youth; and that he imitated his points of
wit, and quirks of epigram, with a similar contempt for the propriety of
their application. From these poems, we learn enough to be grateful,
that Dryden was born at a later period in his century; for had not the
road to fame been altered in consequence of the Restoration, his
extensive information and acute ingenuity would probably have betrayed
the author of the "Ode to St. Cecilia," and the father of English
poetical harmony, into rivalling the metaphysical pindarics of Donne and
Cowley.

The verses, to which we allude, display their sublety [Transcriber's
note: sic] of thought, their puerile extravagance of conceit, and that
structure of verse, which, as the poet himself says of Holyday's
translations, has nothing of verse in it except the worst part of it--
the rhyme, and that far from being unexceptionable The following lines,
in which the poet describes the death of Lord Hastings by the small-pox,
will be probably admitted as a justification of this censure:

"Was there no milder way but the small-pox;
The very filthiness of Pandora's box?
So many spots, like naeves, our Venus soil?
One jewel set off with so many a foil?
Blisters with pride swelled, which through 's flesh did sprout,
Like rose-buds, stuck i'the lily-skin about.
Each little pimple had a tear in it,
To wail the fault its rising did commit,
Which, rebel-like, with its own lord at strife,
Thus made an insurrection 'gainst his life.
Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin,
The cabinet of a richer soul within?
No comet need foretel his change drew on,
Whose corpse might seem a constellation."

This is exactly in the tone of Bishop Corbet's invective against the
same disease:

"Oh thou deformed unwoman-like disease,
Thou plough'st up flesh and blood, and there sow'st pease;
And leav'st such prints on beauty that dost come,
As clouted shoon do on a floor of loam.
Thou that of faces honey-combs dost make,
And of two breasts two cullenders, forsake
Thy deadly trade; now thou art rich, give o'er,
And let our curses call thee forth no more."[32]

After leaving the university, our author entered the world, supported by
friends, from whose character, principles, and situation, it might have
been prophesied, with probability, that his success in life, a