The fault of Cowley and perhaps of all the writers of the metaphysical race is that of pursuing his thoughts to their ramifications, by which he loses the grandeur of generality; for of the greatest things the parts are little; what is little can be but pretty, and by claiming dignity becomes ridiculous. Thus all the power of description is destroyed by a scrupulous enumeration; and the force of metaphors is lost, when the mind by the mention of particulars is turned more upon the original than the secondary sense, more upon that from which the illustration is drawn than that to which it is applied.
(Life of Cowley, 1779)
What Dr. Johnson actually faults here is:
1
The force of metaphors that blunts description.
2
The mind that goes astray toward the original.
3
The metaphysical poets' tendency to saunter away.
4
The metaphysical insistence on the particular than the general.