We may now regret, both that he did not live better, and that he did not write more.  He had unquestionably in him greater powers than he ever expressed in his works.  These are few, fragmentary, and unequal; but, nevertheless, must be reckoned productions of no ordinary merit.  They discover a great deal of the body, and not a little of the soul, of poetry.  In the passages we cited from “Sophy,” and throughout the whole of that play, there is a vigorous and profound vein of reflection, as well as of imagination.  Like Shakspeare, although on a scale very much inferior, he carries on a constant stream of subtle reflection amidst all the windings of his story; and even the most critical points of the drama are studded with pearls.  Coleridge speaks of himself, or some one else, as wishing to live “collaterally, or aside, to the onward progress of society;” and thus, in the drama, there should ever be, as it were, a projection, or alias, of the author standing collaterally, or aside, to the bustling incidents and whirling passions, and calmly adding the commentary of wisdom, as they rush impetuously on.  Such essentially was the chorus of the ancient Greek play; and a similar end is answered in Shakspeare by the subtle asides, the glancing bye-lights, which his wondrous intellect interposes amidst the rapid play of his fancy, the exuberance of his wit, and the crowded incident and interchange of passion created by his genius.  Some have maintained that the philosophy of a drama should be chiefly confined to the conceptions of the characters, the development of the plot, and the management of the dialogue—­that all the reflection should be molten into the mass of the play, and none of it embossed on the surface; but certainly neither Shakspeare’s, nor Schiller’s, nor Goethe’s dramas answer to this ideal—­ all of them, besides the philosophy, so to speak, afoot in the progress of the story, contain a great deal standing still, quietly lurking in nooks and corners, and yet exerting a powerful influence on the ultimate effect and explanation of the whole.  And so, according to its own proportions, it is with Denham’s “Sophy.”  Indeed, as we have above hinted, its power lies more in these interesting individual beauties than in its general structure.

“Cooper’s Hill,” next to “Sophy,” is undoubtedly his best production.  Dr. Johnson calls it the first English specimen of local poetry—­i.e., of poetry in which a special scene is, through the embellishments of traditionary recollection, moral reflections, and the power of association generally, uplifted into a poetical light.  This has been done afterwards by Garth, in his “Claremont;” Pope, in his “Windsor Forest;” Dyer, in his “Gronger-hill,” and a hundred other instances.  The great danger in this class of poems, is lest imported sentiment and historical reminiscence should overpower the living lineaments, and all but blot out the memory of the actual landscape.  And so it is to some extent in “Cooper’s Hill,” the scene beheld from which is speedily lost in a torrent of political reflection and moralising.  The well-known lines on the Thames are rhetorical and forcible, but not, we think, highly poetical:—­