Page:The Works of Abraham Cowley - volume 1 (ed. Aikin) (1806).djvu/34

xviii herbs, in elegiac verse; the third and fourth, the beauties of flowers, in various measures; and in the fifth and sixth, the uses of trees, in heroick numbers.

At the same time were produced from the same university the two great poets Cowley and Milton, of dissimilar genius, of opposite principles; but concurring in the cultivation of Latin poetry, in which the English, till their works and May's poem appeared, seemed unable to contest the palm with any other of the lettered nations.

If the Latin performances of Cowley and Milton be compared (for May I hold to be superior to both), the advantage seems to lie on the side of Cowley. Milton is generally content to express the thoughts of the ancients in their language; Cowley, without much loss of purity or elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conceptions.