You equal Donne in the variety, multiplicity, and choice
of thoughts; you excel him in the manner and the words. I read you
both with the same admiration, but not with the same delight. He
affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous
verses, where Nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of
the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should
engage their hearts and entertain them with the softnesses of love.
In this (if I may be pardoned for so bold a truth) Mr. Cowley has
copied him to a fault: so great a one, in my opinion, that it
throws his "Mistress" infinitely below his "Pindarics" and his later
compositions, which are undoubtedly the best of his poems and the
most correct. For my own part I must avow it freely to the world
that I never attempted anything in satire wherein I have not studied
your writings as the most perfect model. I have continually laid
them before me; and the greatest commendation which my own
partiality can give to my productions is that they are copies, and
no farther to be allowed than as they have something more or less of
the original.
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