is regulated, and the memory relieved.

If the Pindarick style be, what Cowley thinks it, "the highest and
noblest kind of writing in verse," it can be adapted only to high and
noble subjects; and it will not be easy to reconcile the poet with the
critick, or to conceive how that can be the highest kind of writing in
verse, which, according to Sprat, is "chiefly to be preferred for its
near affinity to prose."

This lax and lawless versification so much concealed the deficiencies of
the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle, that it immediately
overspread our books of poetry; all the boys and girls caught the
pleasing fashion, and they that could do nothing else could write like
Pindar. The rights of antiquity were invaded, and disorder tried to
break into the Latin: a poem[21] on the Sheldonian theatre, in which all
kinds of verse are shaken together, is unhappily inserted in the Musae
Anglicanae. Pindarism prevailed about half a century; but, at last, died
gradually away, and other imitations supply its place.

The Pindarick odes have so long enjoyed the highest degree of poetical
reputation, that I am not willing to dismiss them with unabated censure;
and, surely, though the mode of their composition be erroneous, yet many
parts deserve, at least, that admiration which is due to great
comprehension of knowledge, and great fertility of fancy. The thoughts
are often new, and often striking; but the greatness of one part is
disgraced by the littleness of another; and total negligence of language
gives the noblest conceptions the appearance of a fabrick, august in
the plan, but mean in the materials. Yet, surely, those verses are not
without a just claim to praise; of which it may be said with truth, that
no man but Cowley could have written them.