Our course by stars above we cannot know
Without the compass too below.


After this says Bentley:


Who travels in religious jars,
Truth mix'd with error, shade with rays
Like Whiston wanting pyx or stars,
In ocean wide or sinks or strays.


Cowley seems to have had what Milton is believed to have wanted, the
skill to rate his own performances by their just value, and has
therefore closed his Miscellanies with the verses upon Crashaw,
which apparently excel all that have gone before them, and in which
there are beauties which common authors may justly think not only
above their attainment, but above their ambition.

To the Miscellanies succeed the Anacreontics, or paraphrastical
translations of some little poems, which pass, however justly, under
the name of Anacreon. Of those songs dedicated to festivity and
gaiety, in which even the morality is voluptuous, and which teach
nothing but the enjoyment of the present day, he has given rather a
pleasing than a faithful representation, having retained their
sprightliness, but lost their simplicity. The Anacreon of Cowley,
like the Homer of Pope, has admitted the decoration of some modern
graces, by which he is undoubtedly made more amiable to common
readers, and perhaps, if they would honestly declare their own