learned, either acute or profound.

It is said by Denham in his elegy,


To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he writ was all his own.


This wide position requires less limitation, when it is affirmed of
Cowley, than perhaps of any other poet.--He read much, and yet
borrowed little.

His character of writing was indeed not his own; he unhappily
adopted that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present
praise; and, not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients
have continued to delight through all the changes of human manners,
he contented himself with a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure
in its spring was bright and gay, but which time has been
continually stealing from his brows.

He was in his own time considered as of unrivalled excellence.
Clarendon represents him as having taken a flight beyond all that
went before him; and Milton is said to have declared that the three
greatest English poets were Spenser, Shakespeare, and Cowley.

His manner he had in common with others; but his sentiments were his
own. Upon every subject he thought for himself; and such was his
copiousness of knowledge, that something at once remote and
applicable rushed into his mind; yet it is not likely that he always