admiration. The panegyric, however, on Cromwell, contains more force
than we should expect, from the other compositions of this poet.

Waller was born to an ample fortune, was early introduced to the court,
and lived in the best company. He possessed talents for eloquence as
well as poetry; and till his death, which happened in a good old age,
he was the delight of the house of commons. The errors of his life
proceeded more from want of courage, than of honor or integrity. He died
in 1687, aged eighty-two.

Cowley is an author extremely corrupted by the bad taste of his age; but
had he lived even in the purest times of Greece nor Rome, he must always
have been a very indifferent poet. He had no ear for harmony; and his
verses are only known to be such by the rhyme which terminates them. In
his rugged untenable numbers are conveyed sentiments the most strained
and distorted; long-spun allegories, distant allusions, and forced
conceits. Great ingenuity, however, and vigor of thought, sometimes
break out amidst those unnatural conceptions: a few anacreontics
surprise us by their ease and gayety: his prose writings please by the
honesty and goodness which they express, and even by their spleen and
melancholy. This author was much more praised and admired during his
lifetime, and celebrated after his death, than the great Milton. He died
in 1667, aged forty-nine.

Sir John Denham, in his Cooper's Hill, (for none of his other poems
merit attention,) has a loftiness and vigor which had not before him
been attained by any English poet who wrote in rhyme. The mechanical
difficulties of that measure retarded its improvement. Shakspeare, whose
tragic scenes are sometimes so wonderfully forcible and expressive, is a
very indifferent poet when he attempts to rhyme. Precision and neatness
are chiefly wanting in Denham. He died in 1688, aged seventy-three.

No English author in that age was more celebrated, both abroad and at
home, than Hobbes: in our time, he is much neglected; a lively instance
how precarious all reputations founded on reasoning and philosophy.
A pleasant comedy, which paints the manners of the age, and exposes a
faithful picture of nature, is a durable work, and is transmitted to
the latest posterity. But a system, whether physical or metaphysical,
commonly owes its success to its novelty; and is no sooner canvassed
with impartiality than its weakness is discovered. Hobbes's politics
are fitted only to promote