Page:The Works of Abraham Cowley - volume 1 (ed. Aikin) (1806).djvu/82

lxvi hint that he had enemies, which Cowley thus enlarges in rhyming prose:

It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and wit, when he was dealing out such minute morality in such feeble diction, could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar.

In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own subjects, he sometimes rises to dignity truly Pindarick; and, if some deficiencies of language be forgiven, his strains are such as those of the Theban bard were to his contemporaries: