Coleridge quotes Cowley

 

Coleridge copied-out this passage into his notebook, late 1808 or perhaps early 1809. It (entry 3196, as you can see) is one of several that respond to Cowley's neo-Latin epic, Davideidos (entry 3198 copies-out a line from Herodotus that Cowley quotes in a note to his own poem, and entry 3199 speculates on the physical dimensions of Hell, again following up one of Cowley's own footnotes). But for now I want to concentrate on this quotation.

Abraham Cowley was a late 17th-century Royalist poet who wrote with equal fluency in English and Latin. In general terms Coleridge was not exactly a fan: in the Biographia he speaks of the ‘seductive faults, the dulcia vitia, of Cowley’ as a poet. George Whalley quotes the following assessment: ‘for competitors in barbarism with Cowley's Latin Poem de Plantis, or even his not quite so bad Davideid, we must go I fear to the Deliciae Poetarum Germanorum, or other Warehouses of Seal-fat, Whale Blubber and the like Boreal Confectionaries selected by the delicate Gruter.’ He had a higher opinion of some of Cowleys shorter English poems, praising his ‘discursive intellect’ and calling him ‘a legitimate child of Donne’ and ‘probably the best model of style for modern imitation in general.’ 

There are a couple of reasons why Coleridge might have written out this particular passage. Maybe it just struck him and he made a memorandum of it. Maybe he was thinking ahead to one of the various projects he was planning—a lecture series on literature (which he did eventually deliver), his translations of a selection of the best modern Latin poems (which he never did)—and had picked this passage out as an example to use later.

Cowley's first plan for an epic poem was called The Civil War, which he hoped would commemorate and heroize King Charles' martial struggles and victory. After the king's cause went pear-shaped Cowley abandoned this plan (the unfinished portion was re-discovered in manuscript in the 1960s, and finally published in 1971). Instead he reworked some sections into a new epic, based on the life of the Biblical David. Cowley started this in Latin. Ambitiously enough, his plan was for twelve books, like the Aeneid. In the event he finished only the one book in Latin (it was published as Davideidos Liber Primus in Cowley's 1656 Poems) before changing tack, and starting over in English. He completed four books of Davideis, a Sacred Poem of the Troubles of David, but got no further (these four were also published in the 1656 collection). It's worth noting that the first book of the English Davideis is close to, but not an exact transation of, the Davideidos.   

Let's look at the passage that caught Coleridge's eye:

Dic mihi, Musa, sacri quæ tanta potentia Versus
(Nam tibi scire datum, & versu memorare potenti,
Cuncta vides, nec te poterit res tanta latere
In regno, Regina, tuo) vim Diva reclusam
Carminis, & late penetralia ditia pande,
Thesaurósque & opes, & inenarrabile Sceptrum:
Quæ sprevere homines, tandem ut mirentur amento;
Divisque accedat reverentia justa Poetis. [Davideidos, 1:499-506]

Kathleen Coburn's note on the entry, understandably but a little misleadingly, translates by quoting the equivalent passage in Cowley's Davideis (it's 1:441-56):

Tell me, oh Muse (for Thou, or none canst tell
The mystick pow'ers that in blest Numbers dwell,
Thou their great Nature know'st, nor is it fit
This noblest Gem of thine own Crown t' omit)
Tell me from whence these heav'nly charms arise;
Teach the dull world t'admire what they despise,
As first a various unform'd Hint we find
Rise in some god-like Poets fertile Mind,
Till all the parts and words their places take,
And with just marches verse and musick make;
Such was Gods Poem, this Worlds new Essay;
So wild and rude in its first draught it lay;
Th' ungovern'd parts no Correspondence knew,
An artless war from thwarting Motions grew;
Till they to Number and fixt Rules were brought
By the eternal Minds Poetique Thought.

This striking notion of the world as ‘God's poem’ (prescient of what was, really, a core Romantic idea, and an especially core Coleridgean idea, as per his ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ imagination) is indeed in Cowley's English epic. But it's not in the Latin Coleridge actually quotes, which stops before it gets to that bit. Line-by-line, that passage means:

Tell me, O Muse, of the holy power of such Poetry
(since you know such things and are mindful of poetry's power,
having seen it all; nor should we fail to acknowledge
your kingdom, O Queen), the revealed power, Goddess,
of Song: open wide its rich inner sanctum,
its treasures, its wealth, its inexpressible sceptre:
though men scorn you, amaze them at last with love;
may you teach them to reverence divine poets.

With inexpressible sceptre, your guess is as good as mine. The ‘God's poem’ stuff is a bit later on (‘Sic magnum Mundi divino ex ore Poema/Prodiit’; lines 513-14) and Coleridge didn't choose to write it out into his notebook. Instead he selected one further line, from the next page: ‘hinc in nos nata est Numerorem sancta potestas’ [line 541]. This means ‘thus it is that the holy power of Numbers is born’ (‘numbers’ in the sense of metrical lines, poems), a meaning not quite reproduced by the line from the Davideis Coburn quotes: ‘from thence blest Musick's heav'nly charms arise.’ The thing from which poetry's holy power springs is ‘Harmonia’, harmony, personified as a goddess. ‘There is so much to be said of this Subject,’ Cowley says in a footnote to this latter passage, ‘that the best way is to say nothing of it. See at large Kercherus in his tenth book de Arte Consoni & Dissoni.’  Mum's the word!

If you're curious how this whole passage fits into the larger context of Book 1 of Cowley's poem, here's his summary of the action (click to embiggen): 

 

It's from a digression, in other words. My sense is that Coleridge wrote the Latin down because he liked what it said about poetry as a sacred art, not because it's especially notable or euphonious verse as such.