On reading the following lines, the reader may perhaps cry out-Confusion worse confounded.

Here lies a she Sun, and a he Moon here,

She gives the best light to his sphere,

Or each is both, and all, and so

They unto one another nothing owe.

DONNE.

Who but Donne would have thought, that a good man is a telescope ?

Though God be our true glass, through which we see

All, since the being of all things is he;

Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive

Things in proportion, fit by perspective,

Deeds of good men ; for by their living here,

Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.

Who would imagine it possible, that in a very few lines so many remote ideas could be brought together?

Since 'tis my doom, Love's undershrieve,

Why this reprieve?

Why doth my she Advowson fly

Incumbency?

To sell thyself dost thou intend
By candle's end,

And hold the contrast thus in doubt,
Life's taper out?

Think but how soon the market fails,

Your sex lives faster than the males;

And if to measure age's span,

The sober Julian were th' account of man,

Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian.

CLEIVELAND.

Of enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these may be examples :

18

Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon, and read by the fire:

Nothing yet in thee is seen,

But when a genial heat warms thee within,

A new-born wood of various lines there grows;
Here buds an L, and there a B,

Here spouts a V, and there a T,

And all the flourishing letters stand in rows.

COWLEY.

As they sought only for novelty, they did not much inquire whether their allosions were to things high or low, elegant or gross: whether they compared the little to the great, or the great to the little.

A coal-pit has not often found its poet: but, that it may not want its due honour, Cleiveland has paralleled it with the Sun:

The moderate value of our guiltless ore
Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore;
Yet why should hallow'd vestal's sacred shrine
Deserve more honour than a flaming mine?
These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be,
Than a few embers, for a deity.

Had he our pits, the Persian would admire
No sun, but warm's devotion at our fire:

He'd leave the trotting whipster, and prefer
Our profound Vulcan 'bove that waggoner.
For wants he heat, or light? or would have store,
Or both? 'tis here: and what can suns give more?
Nay, what's the Sun, but, in a different name,
A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame!

Then let this truth reciprocally run,

The Sun's Heaven's coalery, and coals our sun.
Death, a Voyage:

Their thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such as no figure or licence can reconcile to the understanding.

A Lover neither dead nor alive:

Then down I laid my head

Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,

And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled;

Ah, sottish soul, said I,

When back to its cage again I saw it fly;

Fool to resume her broken chain,

And row her galley here again!

Fool, to that body to return

Where it condemn'd and de tin'd is to burn!

They were in very little care to clothe their notions with elegance of dress, and therefore miss the notice and the praise which are often gained by those who think less, but are more diligent to adorn their thoughts.

That a Mistress beloved is fairer in idea than in reality, is by Cowley thus expressed:

Thou in my fancy dost much higher stand,
Than woman can be plac'd by Nature's hand;
And I must needs, I'm sure, a loser be,

To change thee as thou'rt there, for very thee.

That prayer and labour should co-operate, are thus taught by Donne:

In none but us are such mix'd engines found,

As hands of double office; for the ground

We till with them; and them to Heaven we raise;

Who prayerless labours, or, without this, prays,

Doth but one half, that's none.

By the same author, a common topic, the danger of procrastination, is thus

illustrated:

-That which I should have begun

In my youth's morning, now late must be done;

And I, as giddy travellers must do,

Which stray or seep all day, and having lost

Light and strength, dark and tir'd, must then ride post.

All that man has to do is to live and die; the sum of humanity is comprehended by Donne in the following lines:

Think in how poor a prison thou didst lie;

After, enabled but to suck and cry.

Think, when 'twas grown to most, 'twas a poor inn,

A province pack'd up in two yards of skin,
And that usurp'd, or threaten'd with a rage
Of sicknesses, or their true mother, age.

But think that death hath now enfranchis'd thee;
Thou hast thy expansion now, and liberty;
Think, that a rusty piece discharg'd is flown
In pieces, and the bullet is his own,

And freely flies: this to thy soul allow,

Think thy shell broke, think thy soul hatch'd but now.

They were sometimes indelicate and disgusting.

beauty:

Thou tyrant, which leav'st no man free!

Thou subtle thief, from whom nought safe can be!

Cowley thus apostrophises

Thou murtherer, which hast kill'd; and devil, which would'st damn me !

Thus he addresses his Mistress:

Thou who, in many a propriety,

So truly art the Sun to me,

Add one more likeness, which I am sure you can,

And let me and my Sun beget a man.

Thus he represents the meditations of a Lover:

Though in thy thoughts scarce any tracts have been
So much as of original sin,

Such charms thy beauty wears, as might

Desires in dying confest saints excite.

Thou with strange adultery

Dost in each breast a brothel keep;
Awake, all men do lust for thee,
And some enjoy thee when they sleep.

The true taste of Tears.

Hither with crystal vials, lovers, come,

And take my tears, which are Love's wine,

And try your mistress' tears at home;

For all are false, that taste not just like mine.

This is yet more indelicate :

As the sweet sweat of roses in a still,

As that which from chaf'd musk-cat's pores doth trill,

As the almighty balm of th' early East;

Such are the sweet drops of my mistress' breast.
And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,
They seem no sweet drops, but pearl coronets:
Rank, sweaty froth thy mistress' brow defiles.

DONNE.

DONNE.