conceits. Night has been a common subject, which poets have
contended to adorn. Dryden's Night is well known; Donne's is as
follows:


Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest:
Time's dead low-water; when all minds divest
To-morrow's business; when the labourers have
Such rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave,
Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this;
Now when the client, whose last hearing is
To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,
Who, when he opes his eyes, must shut them the
Again by death, although sad watch he keep;
Doth practise dying by a little sleep:
Thou at this midnight seest me.


It must be, however, confessed of these writers, that if they are
upon common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle;
yet, where scholastic speculation can be properly admitted, their
copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has
written upon Hope shows an unequalled fertility of invention:


Hops, whose weak being mind is,
Alike if it succeed and if it miss;
Whom good or ill does equally confound,
And both the horns of fate's dilemma wound;
Vain shadow! which dust vanish quite,