perceptions, to far the greater part of those whom courtesy and
ignorance are content to style the learned.

These little pieces will be found more finished in their kind than
any other of Cowley's works. The diction shows nothing of the mould
of time, and the sentiments are at no great distance from our
present habitudes of thought. Real mirth must always be natural,
and nature is uniform. Men have been wise in very different modes;
but they have always laughed the same way.

Levity of thought naturally produces familiarity of language, and
the familiar part of language continues long the same; the dialogue
of comedy when it is transcribed from popular manners and real life,
is read from age to age with equal pleasure. The artifices of
inversion by which the established order of words is changed, or of
innovation, by which new words, or new meanings of words, are
introduced, is practised, not by those who talk to be understood,
but by those who write to be admired.

The Anacreontics, therefore, of Cowley, give now all the pleasure
which they ever gave. If he was formed by nature for one kind of
writing more than for another, his power seems to have been greatest
in the familiar and the festive.

The next class of his poems is called "The Mistress," of which it is
not necessary to select any particular pieces for praise or censure.
They have all the same beauties and faults, and nearly in the same
proportion. They are written with exuberance of wit, and with
copiousness of learning; and it is truly asserted by Sprat, that the
plenitude of the writer's knowledge flows in upon his page, so that