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 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 pathetick, 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: