THE LIFE OF COWLEY.

ABRAHAM COWLEY was born in London in the year 1618. His father, a reputable citizen, dying before his birth, left him to the care of his mother, but, in circumstances so straitened, that with difficulty could the procure for him a literary education, which, from marking the early bloom of his infant understanding, was an object she had much at heart: She lived however to enjoy the reward of her folicitude, by seeing her fon eminent and profperous, and by receiving in her turn from him, the just tribute of filial gratitude.

Cowley, at a very early age, by an accidental perufal of Spencer's " Fairy Queen," difcovered his own propensity for the mufes. Such trivial occurrences not unfrequently indicate to a man the peculiar bent of his genius, and determine his future destination in life.

He was first sent to Westminster school, where it is recorded of him, that, unable to endure the drudgery of acquiring the rules of grammar in the usual manner, he obtained a perfect knowledge of the learned languages without them.

While at school, he displayed a vernal maturity of intellectual powers, unequalled, perhaps, by any author at the fame period of life. Milton and Pope indeed gave early proofs of extraordinary mental vigour; but their juvenile pieces, it is almost certain, received the correction of their riper judgments, as they were not published till fome years after they were compofed. The fpecimens which Cowley gave of the maturity of his genius, are unequivocal; for, befides writing a comedy, called " Love's Riddle," published afterwards when he was at college, he actually gave to the world, in the thir- 、 teenth year of his age, a volume of poems, cortaining, among other pieces, his tragical history of "Pyramus and Thisbe," written in his tenth year, and his "Conftantia and Philetus,' written two years after.

In 1636 he was removed to Cambridge, where, notwithstanding the intenseness of his studies, he is faid to have composed the greater part of his "Davideis;" a work, the very collecting of materials for which, at so early an age, evinced a mind of uncommon ardour and application; but which, from a fubject ill chofen, and worse conducted, was never in any esteem, and is now utterly neglected. The Prince of Wales paffing through Cambridge at the breaking out of the civil war, was entertained by the scholars of the university, with a play called the "Guardian," sketched out for the occafion by Cowley. This play, fome time after the restoration, the author brought on the ftage, under the title of "the Cutter of Coleman-ftreet" it was however, to his no fmall disappointment, damned, and, ftrange to add, for being a fuppofed fatire on the royalifts! The piece itself, though printed among his works, is now scarcely known; it is very entertaining, and has fomething of the rough vigorous wit, and ftrong-marked character of the comedies of Ben Johnson.

From Cambridge, he was neceffitated, by the prevalence of the parliament there, in 1643, to remove to Oxford, which was the head quarters of the royalifts, whofe good graces he obtained, by the fuavity of his manners, and the unreferved warmth of his loyalty: The virtuous and accomplished Lord Falkland, in particular, honoured him with his entire friendship.

From Oxford he followed the Queen to Paris, as fecretary to the Earl of St. Albans, where he was engaged in the highly confidential and honourable employment of cyphering and decyphering the letters that paffed between the king and queen. He was absent from his native country about twelve years; during which time be had his share of the diftreffes of the royal party, and performed several`) journies to Holland, Flanders, Scotland, Jersey, and elsewhere, as the caufe he was engaged in required,

In 1647, he published his " Mistress," an amorous effufion to an ideal Fair-one, where metaphyfical fubtlety and far-fetched conceit, ufurp the fentiments of paffion and of nature; how different from the elegant and pathetic fonnets of Petrarch, inspired by a real object!

About the year 1656, he returned to his native country, his prefence being judged more neceffary in England, to give occafional notice of the posture of affairs in the kingdom. Here, notwithstanding his caution to remain concealed, he was arrested, having been mistaken for another, and after an examination, was put into confinement, from which however he was liberated, on finding fecurity for a thousand pounds, given by Doctor Scarborough,

About this time he collected and published his poems, in the preface to which, he declares his refolution" to retire himself to fome of the American plantations, and to forfake this world for ever." In the viciffitudes of human events, poets were never remarkable for conftancy or fortitude; and Cowley found it expedient to temporize with the ruling powers, to be permitted to live in peace. In the following year, the better to fcreen himself from notice, he took out a Degree of Doctor of Phyfic at Oxford, in which profeffion it does not appear that he ever practised. He retired however to Kent, where he studied botany, and afterwards published in Latin verse, six books on Plants. Doctor Johnfon prefers Cowley's Latin performances to Milton's, because the latter was contented to think as the ancients might have done, and to exprefs himself in their language; whereas Cowley, in language equally claffical, thinks for himself; but his conceptions are just the same in Latin as in English; and if thefe fcem exotic and uncouth in their native foil, how muft they appear in a foreign one? On the death of the protector, he went again to France, where he remained in the king's fuite till the restoration, reinftated in his former employment.

At the restoration, after his long and faithful services, he found himself, like many others with equal pretenfions to favour, negle&ted; upon which he retired, querulous and disappointed, not indeed to America, but to Chertsey in Surrey, where, however, by the exertions of his friends--the Earl of St. Albans and the Duke of Buckingham-he foon obtained a plentiful income; but he did not long experience the tranquillity or irkfomeness of folitude; his conftitution, previously weakened by a flow fever, taken on his first removal to the country, was unable to refift a fevere defluxion on his lungs, occafioned by a neglected cold, which hurried him off, after a fortnight's confinement at the Porch House in Chertsey, in the year 1667, and the 49th of his age. His funeral was fumptuoufly attended to Weftminster Abbey, where his remains were depofited between thofe of Chaucer and Spencer.

The countenance and deportment of Abraham Cowley were fwect and amiable, a real index of his mind; in his manners and perfon, there was nothing fingular or affected: He had the modesty of a man of genius, and the humility of a chriftian: His wit, however great, never gave pain to another, and his learning, though profound and extenfive, was ornamental not cumbersome to his mind. In fine, his eulogy pronounced by Charles II, has never been contradicted by envy or faction, viz. "That Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind him in England."

The poctry of Cowley has had its full fhare of Praife during the life of its author. And the rambJing measure of his odes, which was called Pindaric, inundated the regions of poetry for half a century after his death, in violation of tafte, correctness, and nature. Though unable to recognize wit by any of its definitions, every one readily perceives where it is not; no one therefore can ever mistake the conceits of the metaphyfical poets (as Doctor Johnson terms them) for wit; of thefe, Cowley was the chief; he found their poetry the fashion of his day; and he preferred it to the pure models of antiquity, which he was fo well acquainted with. It is to be lamented, that fo much learning and genius has been lavished, now, to fo little purpofe; for, thofe who read Cowley, must be contented to admire rather than to be pleased. From this however, in his voluminous works, there are many exceptions, His anacreontics in particular, are peculiarly delightful, perhaps equal to their ancient models; and their diction is fo finely polished, that the ruft of time has not as yet been able to tarnish their luftrç.

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

wife, and efpecially poets, whofe works (commonly printed after their deaths) we find staffed out citer with counterfeit pieces, like falfe money put in fill up the bag, though it add nothing to the fum, or with fuch, which, though of their own coin, they would have called in themfelves for the bafenefs of the alloy. Whether this proceed from the indifcretion of their friends, who think a vaft heap of tones or rubbish a better monument than a little tomb of marble, or by the unworthy avarice of fome ftationers, who are content to diminith the value of the author, fo they may increase the price of the book, and, like vintners with fophifticate mixtures, fpoil the whole veffels of wine to make it yield more profit. This hath been the cafe with Shakespeare, Fletcher, Johnson, and many others, part of whofe poems I fhould take the boldness to prune and lop away, if the care of replanting them in print did belong to me; neither would I make any fcruple to cut off from fome the unneceffary young fuckers, and from others the old withered branches; for a great wit is no more tied to live in a vaft volume than in a gigantic body; on the contrary, it is commonly more vigorous the lefs fpace it animates, and, as Statius fays of little Tydeus,

Ar my return lately into England, I met, by great gan to look it over, and changed it very much, accident, (for fuch I account it to be, that any copy ftriking out fome whole parts, as that of the Poet of it fhould be extant any where fo long, unless at and the Soldier; but I have loft the copy, and his houfe who printed it) a book intitled, The dare not think it deferves the pains to write it Iron Age, and publifhed under my name during the again, which makes me omit it in this publication, time of my abfence. I wondered very much how though there be fome things in it which I am not one who could be fo foolish to write fo ill verfes, afhamed of, taking the excufe of my age and small fhould yet be fo wife to fet them forth as another experience in human converfation when I made it. man's rather than his own; though perhaps he But as it is, it is only the hafty first fitting of a might have made a better choice, and not father-picture, and therefore like to refemble me accorded the baftard upon fuch a perfon, whofe ftock of ingly. From this which has happened to myself, reputation is, I fear, little enough for maintenancegan to reflect on the fortune of almost all of his own numerous legitimate offspring of that kind. It would have been much lefs injurious, if it had pleafed the author to put forth fome of my writings under his own name, rather than his own under mine: he had been in that a more pardonable plagiary, and had done lefs wrong by robbery, than he does by fuch a bounty; for nobody can be justified by the imputation even of another's merit; and our own coarfe clothes are like to become us better than thofe of another man's, though never fo rich: but thefe, to fay the truth were fo beggarly, that I myself was afhamed to wear them. It was in vain for me that I avoided cenfure by the concealment of my own writings, if my reputation could be thus executed in eñgy; and impoffible it is for any good name to be in fafety, if the malice of witches have the power to confume and deftroy it in an image of their own making. This indeed was fo ill made, and fo unlike, that I hope the charm took no effect; fo that I eiteem myfelf icfs prejudiced by it than by that which has been done to me fince, almost in the fame kind, which is the publication of fome things of mine without my confent or knowledge; and thofe fo mangled and imperfect, that I could neither with honour acknowledge, nor with honefty quite difavow them: of which fort was a comedy called the Guardian, printed in the year 1655, but made and acted before the Prince, in his paffage through Cambridge towards York, at the beginning of the late unhappy war; or rather neither made nor acted, but rough drawn only, and repeated; for the hafte was fo great, that it could neither be revised nor perfected by the Author, nor learned without book by the actors, nor fet forth in any measure tolerably by the officers of the College. After the reprefentation (which I confefs was fomewhat of the lateft) I be

1

Toto infufi per artus

Major in exiguo regnabat corpore virtus. Stat. 1. 1. Theb. I am not ignorant, that by saying this of others, I expofe myself to fome raillery, for not ufing the fame fevere difcretion in my own cafe, where it concerns me nearer; but though I publish here more than in ftrict wifdom I ought to have done, yet I have fuppreffed and caft away more than I publish; and for the ease of myself and others, have loft, I believe too, more than both. And upon these confiderations I have been perfuaded to overcome all the juft repugnances of my own modefty, and to

produce thefe Poems to the light and view of the world, not as a thing that I approved of in itfelf, but as a lefs evil, which I chofe, rather than to ftay till it were done for me by fomebody else, either furreptitiously before, or avowedly after my death; and this will be the more excufable, when the reader fhall know in what refpects he may look upon me as a dead, or at least, a dying perfon, and upon my Mufe, in this action, as appearing like the Emperor Charles V. and affifting at her own funeral.

For, to make myself abfolutely dead in a poetial capacity, my refolution at prefent is, never to exercise any more that faculty. It is, I confefs, but feldom feen that the poet dies before the man; for when we once fall in love with that bewitching

Ovid.de Trif. the humbled and dejected condition of fpirit with which he wrote it; there fcarce remains any footsteps of that genius.

Quem nec Jovis ira, nec ignes, &c.

The cold of the country had ftrucken through all
his faculties, and benumbed the very feet of his
verfes. He is himself, methinks, like one of the
ftories of his own Metomorphofes; and though
there remains fome weak refemblances of Ovid at
Rome, it is but, as he says of Niobe,

In vultu color eft fine fanguine, lamint mætis
Stant inmuta genis; nihil ell in imagine vivum,
Flet tamen. ------
Ovid. Metam. 1. vi

The truth is, for a man to write well, it is neceffary
to be in good humour. Neither is wit lefs eclipfed
the indifpofition of body; fo that it is almost as
with the unquietnefs of mind, than beauty with
hard a thing to be a poet in defpight of Fortune,
as it is in defpight of Nature. For my own part,
neither my obligations to the Mufes, nor expe&ta-
tions from them, are fo great, as that I fhould
fuffer myself on no confiderations to be divorced,
or that I should fay, like Horace,

Quifquis crit vitæ, fcribam, color

Vixicamænis nuper idoneus,
Et militavi nor fine gloria,
Nunc arma d umq; bello
Barbition hic paris habebit.

Hor. Sat. 1. 1. fi. Ser

art, we do not use to court it as a mistress, but
marry it as a wife, and take it for better or worse,
as an infeparable companion of our whole life:
but as the marriages of infants do but rarely prof-
fper, fo no man ought to wonder at the diminu-
tion or decay of my affection to poefy, to which i
had contracted myself so much under age, and fo
much to my own prejudice, in regard of those
more profitable matches which I might have made 1 fhall rather use his words in another place,
among the richer fciences. As for the portion
which this brings of fame, it is an estate (if it be
any, for men are not oftener deceived in their
hopes of widows than in their opinion of exegi
monumentum are perennius) that hardly ever comes
in whilft we are living to enjoy it, but is a fantasti-
cal kind of reverfion to our own felves; neither
ought any man to envy poets, this pofthumous and
imaginary happiness, fince they find commonly
fo little in prefent, that it may be truly applied to
them which St. Paul speaks of the first Christians,
"If their reward be in this life, they are of all
"men the most miferable."

And if in quiet and flourishing times they meet with fo fmall encouragement, what are they to expect in rough and troubled ones? If wit be fuch a plant that it scarce receives heat enough to preferve it alive even in the fummer of our cold climate, how can it choose, but wither in a long and fharp winter? A warlike, various, and a tragical age, is best to write of, but worst to write in and I may, though in a very unequal proportion, affume that to myfelf which was fpoken by Tully to a much better perfon, upon occafion of the civil wars and revolutions in his time, Sed in te intuens, Brute, doleo, cujus in adolefcentiam per medias laudes quafi quadrigis vehentem tranfverfa incurrit mifera fertuna Reipublica. Cic. de Clar. Orator.

Neither is the prefent conftitution of my mind more proper than that of the times for this exercife, or rather divertisement; there is nothing that requires fo much ferenity and cheerfulness of fpirit; it must not be either overwhelmed with the cares of life, or overcaft with the clouds of melancholy and forrow, or fhaken and difturbed with the ftorms of injurious fortune: it must, like the halcyon, have fair weatherto breed in. The foul must be filled with bright and delightful deas, when it undertakes to communicate delight to others, which is the main end of poefy. One may fee through the style of

1. Car. Ode 26. Vixit puellis, &c.

And this refolution of mine does the more befit
me, because my defire has been for fome years
past, (though the execution has been accidentally
diverted) and does still vehemently continue, to
retire myself to fome of our American planta-
tions, not to feek for gold, or enrich myself with
the traffic of those parts, (which is the end of moft
men that travel thither) fo that of these Indies it
is truer than it was of the former,

Improbus extremos currit mercator ad Indos
Pauperiem fugiens,

but to forfake this world for ever, with all the va
nities and vexations of it, and to bury myfelf
there, in fome obfcure retreat, (but not without
the confolation of letters and philofophy)

Obliufq; meorum, ob ivifcendus et iilis.

as my former author fpeaks too, who has enticed me here, I know not how, into the pedantry of this heap of Latin fentences. And I think Dr. Donne's Sun-dial in a Greve is not more ufelefs and ridiculous than poetry would be in that retirement. As this, therefore, is in a true fenfe a kind of death to the Mules, and a real literal quitting of this world, fo, methinks, I may make a just claim to the undoubted privilege of decafed poets, which is to be read with more favour than the living.

Tani eft ut placran tibi, perue.

Mart.

Having been forced, for my own neceffary juftification, to trouble the reader with this long Difcourfe of the reafons why I trouble him alfo with all the reft of the book, I shall only add fomewhat concerning the feveral parts of it, and fome other pieces which I have thought fit to reject in this publication: As, first, all those which I wrote at school, from the age of ten years till after fifteen; for even so far backward there remain y