were Denham's leading qualities-not high imagination or a fertile fancy, although in neither of these was he conspicuously deficient, but manly strength of thought and clearness of language. There are in him no quaintnesses, no crotchets, no conceits, and no involutions or affectations-all is transparent, masculine, and energetic. It is in these respects that he became a model to Dryden and Pope, and may even still be read with advantage for at least his style, which IS

"Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.”

His translations we have included, not for their surpassing merit, but because, in the first place, there is little of our author extant, and we are happy to reprint every scrap of him we can find, and because again he, according to Dr Johnson, was "one of the first that understood the necessity of emancipating translation from the drudgery of counting lines and interpreting single words." There has, indeed, been recently a reaction, attended in some cases with brilliant success—as in Bulwer's "Ballads of Schiller"-in favour of the literal and lineal method; but since such popular pieces as Dryden's "Virgil" and Pope's "Homer" have been written on Denham's plan, it is interesting to preserve the model, however rude, which they avowedly had in their eye.

His smaller pieces are not remarkable, unless we except his vigorous lines "On the Earl of Strafford's Trial and Death," containing such noble sentiments as these

"Such was his force of eloquence, to make

The hearers more concern'd than he that spake,
Each seem'd to act that part he came to see,
And none was more a looker-on than he;
So did he move our passions, some were known
To wish for the defence, the crime their own.
Now private pity strove with public hate,
Reason with rage, and eloquence with fate.”

Nor let us forget his verses on "Cowley's Death," which, although unequal, and in their praise exaggerated, yet are in parts exceedingly felicitous, as for instance, in the lines to which Macaulay, in his "Milton," refers:

"To him no author was unknown,
Yet what he wrote was all his own;
He melted not the ancient gold,
Nor with Ben Jonson did make bold
To plunder all the Roman stores
Of poets and of orators;
Horace's wit and Virgil's state

He did not steal, but emulate!

And when he would like them appear,

Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear.”

Such is true criticism, which, in our judgment, means clear, sharp, discriminating judgment expressed in the language and with the feelings of poetry.

DENHAM'S POETICAL WORKS.

POEMS UPON SEVERAL OCCASIONS.

COOPER'S HILL.

SURE there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose
Those made not poets, but the poets those,

And as courts make not kings, but kings the court,
So where the Muses and their train resort,

Parnassus stands; if I can be to thee

A poet, thou Parnassus art to me.
Nor wonder, if (advantaged in my flight,
By taking wing from thy auspicious height)
Through untraced ways and airy paths I fly,
More boundless in my fancy than my eye:
My eye which, swift as thought, contracts the space
That lies between, and first salutes the place
Crown'd with that sacred pile, so vast, so high,
That, whether 'tis a part of earth or sky,
Uncertain seems, and may be thought a proud
Aspiring mountain, or descending cloud.

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Paul's, the late theme of such a Muse,1 whose flight 19
Has bravely reach'd and soar'd above thy height:
Now shalt thou stand, though sword, or time, or fire,
Or zeal more fierce than they, thy fall conspire,
Secure, whilst thee the best of poets sings,
Preserved from ruin by the best of kings.
Under his proud survey the city lies,

And like a mist beneath a hill doth rise;

Whose state and wealth, the business and the crowd,
Seems at this distance but a darker cloud:
And is, to him who rightly things esteems,
No other in effect than what it seems:

Where, with like haste, though sev'ral ways, they

run,

Some to undo, and some to be undone;

While luxury and wealth, like war and peace,
Are each the other's ruin and increase;

As rivers lost in seas some secret vein
Thence reconveys, there to be lost again."
O happiness of sweet retired content!
To be at once secure and innocent.

Windsor the next (where Mars with Venus dwells,
Beauty with strength) above the valley swells.
Into my eye, and doth itself present
With such an easy and unforced ascent,
That no stupendous precipice denies
Access, no horror turns away our eyes:
But such a rise as doth at once invite
A pleasure and a rev'rence from the sight:
Thy mighty master's emblem, in whose face
Sate meekness, heighten'd with majestic grace;
Such seems thy gentle height, made only proud
To be the basis of that pompous load,

1 'Such a Muse': Mr Waller.

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