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striking difference in the compo * sit ions of the same man , whose genius and learning are unquestionable / ' to his having " generally
followed the taste of his time , which was the wo ^ st imaginable ; and rarely his own , which was naturally excellent . " From this selection are excluded , the
Davickis , the Pindaric Odes and the Mistress , The Prose Essays , which are written itt a style for the age of Cowley , remarkably easy and unaffected , cc are given entire , " and are justly declared by the editor to " have no com * mon merit . "
This selection has been censured without sufficient reason . Cowley himself justifies it as his editor remarks , by what he proposed respecting the poems of Shakespeare ^ Fletcher and Jonson * . That a scholar such
as Dr . Hurd , should distinguish the works of a poet according to his own taste and judgment , was quite in character . But when he observes that 4 < it is enough if this small collection go down to
ppsterityf * as if Gowley would no longer be read except in the edition of Hurd , this wsls truly ivarburtanian . The readers of the Poet , while they wished to possess the selection which came to a third or fourth
edition , were not contented with it . A third volume was soon published , containing all the pie-
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ces omitted , that Hurd's Cowley might be complete . Qt the qpu nions on the propriety of this se « - lection , Dr . Kippis has given a large account in his additions to the life of Cowley J .
The publications of our author were hitherto all literary , except the a&size sermon ih If 52 . He was now to appear in his character of a divine . Dr . Hurd had been
appointed in 17 O 8 > the preacher of a lecture , founded that year by Bishop War bur ton " to prove the truth of revealed religion in general , and of the Christian in
particular , from the completion of the prophecies in the Old and New Testament , which relate to the Christian church , especially to the apostacy of Papal Rome /* The twelve sermons which com - *
posed this lecture were published in 1772 , according to the appointment of the founder . They are entitled ' an introduction to the study of the prophecies concerning the Christian church and in particular concerning the church of Papal Rome . "
The authpr distinguishes between extraordinary coincident cies or fortunate conjectures , and the cc vast variety x ) i predictions which are to be found in the
scriptures of the Old and New Testament a great part of them delivered with the utmost degree of minuteness and particularity !!* "
* « Author ' s Preface . "—Hurt's Cowley , 3 d , ed . i . 67 . f Id . Prcf . p . viii . J Biog . Prit . and . ecL iv . 378—3 80 . || " Introducti 6 n , " Sec . pp . 98—106 . The preacher here notices •« the sU > r ? of Romulus and his twelve Cultures , ** and the verses of Seneca , which might be supposed to predict " the discoveries of Columbus . •* The reader may find the last noticed byj the learned Spencer , in his discourse of the vanity of vulgar prophecies , " p & 8 . where he says that " hath been concluded tb * vAce of G * d , a prophetic instinct refering to the discovery of America in these latter ages , whioh was indeed but the voice of a wany a rational conjecture proceeding upon a probable persuasion , that so great a part of the globe of the earth was not all sea , and $ 9 would in time be found . "— S $ c also Bacon ' s Essay a , xx * v > Of Prophecies , ad fin >
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5 * 6 Memoir oftlie late Rich . Jfutd V . D * Bp . of Worcester .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1808, page 526, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2397/page/2/
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