COWLEY, kou'li. ABRAHAM ( 1618-67). An English poet and essayist. He was horn iu Lon don. and was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. According to his own statement, he received his poetical in spiration from Spenser's Pacrie Queene, a copy of which lay in his mother's parlor. A volume of poems, entitled Poetical Blossoms, was published by him at the age of fifteen, and one of the pieces contained therein was written when he was only ten years old. At Cambridge he obtained dis tinction for the elegance of his translations: and while there he composed the greater part of the Daridris, an epic in four books on the life of David—a work which he never completed. He was attached to the Court party, and, in con sequence. was ejected from his college in 1643, after he had taken his degree of M.A. In 1646 he followed the Queen to Paris, where he re mained ten years; and on his return to England.
being under suspicion, he was seized and bound in heavy securities for his future behavior. In
the same year (1656) he published an important collection of his poems, including his elegies on Harvey and Crashaw. Pindaric odes, Ur. Mis tress, and the Darideis. He now studied medi cine, receiving his degree the following year. After the Restoration he obtained a lease of the Queen's lands at Chertsey, in Surrey, whither he retired in 1665. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. near Chaucer and Spenser. Cowley be longs to what Dr. Johnson called the `metaphysi cal' school of poets. He abounds in subtleties of thought and expression. enjoyed in his own day, but long since out of fashion. To us his fanciful love poems, displaying no emotion, seem very strange. Of his longer poems, the elegies cited above are the best. His most natural verse is scattered through his essays, which are graceful and beautiful. Consult: Johnson's gssay in Lives of the Poets; and Complete Works, ed. Grosart (Blackburn, 1880-81).