alone, of all our countrymen, had your talent, but was not happy
enough to arrive at your versification; and were he translated into
numbers and English, he would yet be wanting in the dignity of
expression. That which is the prime virtue and chief ornament of
Virgil, which distinguishes him from the rest of writers, is so
conspicuous in your verses that it casts a shadow on all your
contemporaries; we cannot be seen, or but obscurely, while you are
present. You equal Donne in the variety, multiplicity, and choice
of thoughts; you excel him in the manner and the words. I read you
both with the same admiration, but not with the same delight. He
affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous
verses, where Nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of
the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should
engage their hearts and entertain them with the softnesses of love.
In this (if I may be pardoned for so bold a truth) Mr. Cowley has
copied him to a fault: so great a one, in my opinion, that it
throws his "Mistress" infinitely below his "Pindarics" and his later
compositions, which are undoubtedly the best of his poems and the
most correct. For my own part I must avow it freely to the world
that I never attempted anything in satire wherein I have not studied
your writings as the most perfect model. I have continually laid
them before me; and the greatest commendation which my own
partiality can give to my productions is that they are copies, and
no farther to be allowed than as they have something more or less of
the original. Some few touches of your lordship, some secret graces
which I have endeavoured to express after your manner, have made
whole poems of mine to pass with approbation: but take your verses
all together, and they are inimitable. If, therefore, I have not
written better, it is because you have not written more. You have
not set me sufficient copy to transcribe; and I cannot add one