Page:The Works of Abraham Cowley - volume 1 (ed. Aikin) (1806).djvu/103

Rh his known wealth was so great, that he might have borrowed without loss of credit.

In his elegy on sir Henry Wotton, the last lines have such resemblance to the noble epigram of Grotius upon the death of Scaliger, that I cannot but think them copied from it, though they are copied by no servile hand.

One passage in his Mistress is so apparently borrowed from Donne, that he probably would not have written it, had it not mingled with his own thoughts, so as that he did not perceive himself taking it from another:

Although I think thou never found wilt be, Yet I'm resolv'd to search for thee; The search itself rewards the pains. So, though the chymic his great secret miss, (For neither it in Art nor Nature is) Yet things well worth his toil he gains; And does his charge and labour pay With good unsought experiments by the way. . Some that have deeper digg'd Love's mine than I, Say, where his centric happiness doth lie: I have lov'd, and got, and told;