the reader is commonly surprised into some improvement. But,
considered as the verses of a lover, no man that has ever loved will
much commend them. They are neither courtly nor pathetic, have
neither gallantry nor fondness. His praises are too far sought, and
too hyperbolical, either to express love, or to excite it; every
stanza is crowded with darts and flames, with wounds and death, with
mingled souls and with broken hearts.

The principal artifice by which "The Mistress" is filled with
conceits is very copiously displayed by Addison. Love is by Cowley,
as by other poets, expressed metaphorically by flame and fire; and
that which is true of real fire is said of love, or figurative fire,
the same word in the same sentence retaining both significations.
Thus "observing the cold regard of his mistress's eyes, and at the
same time their power of producing love in him, he considers them as
burning-glasses made of ice. Finding himself able to live in the
greatest extremities of love, he concludes the torrid zone to be
habitable. Upon the dying of a tree, on which he had cut his loves,
he observes that his flames had burnt up and withered the tree."

These conceits Addison calls mixed wit; that is, wit which consists
of thoughts true in one sense of the expression, and false in the
other. Addison's representation is sufficiently indulgent: that
confusion of images may entertain for a moment; but being unnatural
it soon grows wearisome. Cowley delighted in it, as much as if he
had invented it; but, not to mention the ancients, he might have
found it full-blown in modern Italy. Thus Sannazaro:


Aspice quam variis distringar Lesbia curis!