Cowley. ^87 
delight 5 Tince his fertile imagination has 
adorned his fubjedt with all the beautiful 
allulions that antient poets and mythologifts 
could fupply ; and even the fancies of the 
modern Signatores^ of Baptista Porta, 
Crollius, and their difciples, who faw 
the virtues of plants in the phyiiognomy, 
or agreement in colour or external forms, 
with the parts of the human body, affifted 
to embellifh his verfe. Nor did he fail, by 
thefe elegant produitions, to honour his 
fubjedt, his name, and his country. 
I clofe thefe obfervations by remarking, 
that poetry, as it ever hath, fo it ever mult 
derive froiii nature fome of its moft pleafing 
fcenes of rntertainment. In the vegetable, 
world, the moft expanded imagination of 
poetic genius will, even without the aid of 
iidtion, fo emphatically ftiled the foul of 
poetry, find a field fufficiently ample for the 
difplay of the brighteft talents. Tkom> 
SON v/itnefics this truth, while in him we 
lament the want of that botanical know- 
ledge, without which, the poet muft ever 
be deprived of numberlefs faurces of the^ 
moll 
