COWLEY, ABRAHAM, the son of n grocer resident in Fleet-street, London, was born in 1618, and educated at Westminster School, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was an early poet, and attributes the direction of Ills genius to the perusal of Spenser, whose work; he says, "were wont to lye in his mother's parlour;" and with which he made himself familiar before he was twelve years old. At the age of fifteen (not thirteen) he published a volume called ' Poetic Blossoms,' con taining, among other things, The Tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe,' written when he was ten years old. At college ho Increased his reputation by the elegance of hie exercises; and, not to mention minor works, composed the greater part of his 'Davideis,' an unfinished epic, in four books, on the troubles of David. Being attached to the court party, he was ejected in 1643, after he had taken his degree of M.A.; and he then settled in St. John's College, Oxford, where he became known and esteemed by aome leading men ; and being appointed secretary to Lord Jeranyn, afterwards Earl of St. Alban's, was employed in the honourable and confidential office of cyphering and deeyphering the correspondence of the king and queen. He fol lowed the queen to Paris in 1646, and remained abroad ten years. Returning in 1656, as a sort of spy, "to take occasion of giving notice of the posture of affairs in this nation," he was seized, and obliged to give heavy security for his future behaviour. In the same year he published an edition of his poem; with a preface, in which ho inserted some things suppressed in subsequent editioua, which were interpreted to denote some relaxation of his loyalty. He also obtained, Wood says, through the influence of the men thou iu power, the degree of M.D. at Oxford in 1657—having professed the study of physic in order, it is said, to cloak the real motive of his visit to England. He does not appear ever to have practised, and the only fruit of his studies was a Latin poem upon plants in six hooka. Upon Cromwell's death he returned to France, and resumed his office. At the Restoration he expected to obtain the mastership of the Savoy, which had been pro mised to him both by Charles I. and Charles II. In this, to his great iner.tification, he was disappointed ; but some amends were male him by a beoeficial lease of the queen's lands at Chertsey in Surrey, whither he retired iu 1665, and died in July 1667 in his forty-ninth year. He
was buried near Chaucer and Spenser in Westminster Abbey, where in 1675 the Duke of Buckingham erected a monument to his memory.
Cowley is characterised byDr.Johnson as " the last and undoubtedly the best" of the metaphysical authors, a curious class, of whom the biographer, in his life of Cowley, has given a critical account :—" In his own time he was considered of unrivalled excellence. Clarendon represents him as having taken a flight beyond all that went before him ; and Milton is said to have declared that the three greatest English poets were Spenser, Shakspeare, and Cowley." For a long time he was an object of supreme admiration, and his Pindaric Odes were imitated to weariness by those who could emulate his extrava gance, but not his learning, wit, and fertility. This fashion has long been at an end; and while the simpler of our older poets have of late years been increasing in popularity, Cowley, we conceive, is scarcely known to a majority even of the poetical readers of this country. His merits are summed up by Johnson in the following passage, which, making allowance for its Johnsouiasm of thought and expression, very fairly characterises the poetry of Cowley :—" He brought to his poetic labours a mind replete with learniug, and his pages are embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply : he was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode and the gaiety of the less; he was qualified for sprightly sallies and for lofty flights; he was among those who freed translation from servility, and instead of following his author at a distance, walked by his aide; and if ho left versification yet improvable, he left likewise from time to time such specimens of excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it." His faults are—negligent and sometimes vulgar diction, rugged and prosaic versification, pedantry, hyperbolical exag geration, and an abundance, unchecked by judgment, of that particular sort of wit which Johnson defines to be the discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. His poetry proceeds from the head more than the heart, and dazzles oftener than it touches. The poetry of Cowley, in a word, is forced, affected, and unnatural, yet it is not undeserving of the careful examination of the student. His prose, on the other hand, is simple, manly, and rythmical ; easy without vulgarity, and strong without coarseness.