(says he) are scarce thought free men of their company, without paying
some duties and obliging themselves to be true to love. Sooner or
later they must all pass through that trial, like some Mahometan
monks, who are bound by their order once at least in their life, to
make a pilgrimage to Mecca. But we must not always make a judgment of
their manners from their writings of this kind, as the Romanists
uncharitably do of Beza for a few lascivious sonnets composed by him
in his youth. It is not in this sense that poetry is said to be a kind
of painting: It is not the picture of the poet, but of things, and
persons imagined by him. He may be in his practice and disposition a
philosopher, and yet sometimes speak with the softness of an amorous
Sappho. I would not be misunderstood, as if I affected so much gravity
as to be ashamed to be thought really in love. On the contrary, I
cannot have a good opinion of any man who is not at least capable of
being so."

What opinion Dr. Sprat had of Mr. Cowley's Mistress, appears by the
following passage extracted from his Life of Cowley. "If there needed
any excuse to be made that his love-verses took up so great a share in
his works, it may be alledged that they were composed when he was very
young; but it is a vain thing to make any kind of apology for that
sort of writing. If devout or virtuous men will superciliously forbid
the minds of the young to adorn those subjects about which they are
most conversant, they would put them out of all capacity of performing
graver matters, when they come to them: for the exercise of all men's
wit must be always proper for their age, and never too much above it,
and by practice and use in lighter arguments, they grow up at last to
excell in the most weighty. I am not therefore ashamed to commend Mr.
Cowley's Mistress. I only except one or two expressions, which I wish
I could have prevailed with those that had the right of the other