When their reputation was high, they had, undoubtedly, more imitators than time has left behind. Their immediate successours, of whom any remembrance can be said to remain, were Suckling, Waller, Denham, Cowley, Cleiveland, and Milton. Denham and Waller sought another way to fame, by improving the harmony of our numbers. Milton tried the metaphysick style only in his lines upon Hobson, the carrier. Cowley adopted it, and excelled his predecessors, having as much sentiment, and more musick. Suckling neither improved versification, nor abounded in conceits. The fashionable style remained chiefly with Cowley; Suckling could not reach it, and Milton disdained it.
Critical remarks are not easily understood without examples; and I have, therefore, collected instances of the modes of writing by which this species of poets, for poets they were called by themselves and their admirers, was eminently distinguished.
As the authors of this race were, perhaps, more desirous of being admired than understood, they sometimes drew their conceits from recesses of learning, not very much frequented by common readers of poetry. Thus Cowley, on knowledge:
The sacred tree 'midst the fair orchard grew;
The phoenix, truth, did on it rest,
And built his perfum'd nest:
That right Porphyrian tree which did true logic shew;
Each leaf did learned notions give,
And th' apples were demonstrative;
So clear their colour and divine,
The very shade they cast did other lights outshine.
On Anacreon continuing a lover in his old age:
Love was with thy life entwin'd,
Close as heat with fire is join'd;
A powerful brand prescrib'd the date
Of thine, like Meleager's fate
Th' antiperistasis of age
More enflam'd thy amorous rage.
In the following verses we have an allusion to a rabbinical opinion concerning manna:
Variety I ask not: give me one
To live perpetually upon.
The person love does to us fit,
Like manna, has the taste of all in it.
Thus Donne shows his medicinal knowledge in some encomiastick verses: