scarcely thought freemen of their company, without paying some
duties, or obliging themselves to be true to love."

This obligation to amorous ditties owes, I believe, its original to
the fame of Petrarch, who, in an age rude and uncultivated, by his
tuneful homage to his Laura refined the manners of the lettered
world, and filled Europe with love and poetry. But the basis of all
excellence is truth: he that professes love ought to feel its
power. Petrarch was a real lover, and Laura doubtless deserved his
tenderness. Of Cowley, we are told by Barnes, who had means enough
of information, that, whatever he may talk of his own
inflammability, and the variety of characters by which his heart was
divided, he in reality was in love but once, and then never had
resolution to tell his passion.

This consideration cannot but abate in some measure the reader's
esteem for the works and the author. To love excellence is natural;
it is natural likewise for the lover to solicit reciprocal regard by
an elaborate display of his own qualifications. The desire of
pleasing has in different men produced actions of heroism, and
effusions of wit; but it seems as reasonable to appear the champion
as the poet of an airy "nothing," and to quarrel as to write for
what Cowley might have learned from his master Pindar to call "the
dream of a shadow."

It is surely not difficult, in the solitude of a college, or in the
bustle of the world, to find useful studies and serious employment.
No man needs to be so burdened with life as to squander it in
voluntary dreams of fictitious occurrences. The man that sits down
to suppose himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his