published "Love's Riddle, " with a poetical dedication to Sir Kenelm Digby, and also a Latin comedy, entitled "Naufragium Joculare. " This was printed with a dedication in verse to Dr. Comber, master of the college; but it did not add much to his reputation.

At the beginning of the civil war, as the Prince passed through Cambridge in his way to York, he was entertained with the representation of the "Guardian," a comedy, which Cowley says was neither written nor acted, but rough drawn by him, and repeated by the scholars. He had no opinion of it himself, although, during the suppression of the theatres, it was sometimes privately acted with sufficient approbation.

In 1643, being then Master of Arts, he was, by the prevalence of the parliament, ejected from Cambridge. He then entered himself at St. John's College, Oxford, where, it is said, he published a satire called "the Puritan and Papist," and distinguished himself equally by the warmth of his loyalty and the elegance of his conversation.

When Oxford was surrendered to the Parliament, he followed the Queen to Paris, where he became secretary to the Lord Jermin, afterwards Earl of St. Alban's, and where he was employed in cyphering and decyphering the letters that passed between the King and Queen, a situation certainly of the highest confidence and honour,

"

In the year 1647 his "Mistress was pub

lished.

We do not find any thing worth relating during

his stay in Paris, from which place he was sent back into England in 1656, that (according to Sprat) under pretence of privacy and retirement he might take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this country.

Soon after his return to London he was seized by some messengers of the usurping powers, who had been sent out in quest of another man; and being examined he was put into confinement, from which he was not dismissed without the security of a thousand pounds, which was given by Dr. Scarborow.

This year he published his poems, and afterwards took upon himself the character of a physician, though with no intention, as is supposed, of ever attempting to practise. He now began to study botany, and retired into Kent to gather plants; but his inclination for poetry soon absorbed all other considerations, and he composed several Latin verses on the qualities of herbs and the beauties of flowers.

At the Restoration, after all his diligence and long service, he naturally expected ample preferments; but found his reward very tediously delayed, owing, as it was supposed, to a suspicion that his loyalty at one time experienced some relaxation. The neglect of the Court, however, was not his only mortification. Having newly fitted his old comedy of " the Guardian" for the stage, he brought it forward under the title of " the Cutter of Coleman street," and it was badly received which ill success he did not bear, as Dryden says,

C

;

"with so much firmness as might have been expected from so great a man.

In consequence of the rejection of his play, and his not enjoying much of the confidence of the royal party, his vehement desire of retirement once more came upon him, and he settled at Chertsey in Surrey. His retreat was at first but slenderly accommodated, yet he soon obtained by the Earl of St. Alban's and the Duke of Buckingham such a lease of the Queen's lands as afforded him an ample income. He did not, however, long enjoy the pleasure of solitude, for he died at the Porchhouse in Chertsey, in 1667, in the 49th year of his age, and was buried with great pomp near Chaucer and Spenser. King Charles is said to have pronounced, " that Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind him in England."

"In the general review of Cowley's poetry, says Dr. Johnson, "it will be found that he wrote with abundant fertility, but negligent or unskilful selection; with much thought, but with little imagery; that he is never pathetic, and rarely sublime; but always either ingenious or learned, either acute or profound.

"It is said by Denham in his elegy,

"To him no author was unknown;
"Yet what he writ was all his own.

"This wide position requires less limitation when it is affirmed of Cowley than perhaps of any other poet. He read much, and yet borrowed little.

"His character of writing was indeed not his own he unhappily adopted that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise, and, not sufficiently inquiring by what means the ancients have continued to delight in all the changes of human manners, he contented himself with à deciduous laurel, of which the verdure in its spring was bright and gay, but which time has been continually stealing from his brows.

"He was in his own time considered as 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 greatest English poets were " Spenser, Shakespeare and Cowley.

"His manner he had in common with others, but his sentiments were his own. Upon every subject he thought for himself; and such was his copiousness of knowledge that something at once remote and applicable rushed into his mind; yet it is not likely that he always rejected a commodious idea merely because another had used it his known wealth was so great that he might have borrowed without loss of credit.

:

Dr. Johnson gives it as his opinion that the last lines of Cowley's elegy on Sir Henry Wotton were copied from the noble epigram of Grotius upon the death of Scaliger, and that a particular passage from the poem of the " Mistress" is borrowed from Donne. He then proceeds thus :

"It is related by Clarendon that Cowley always acknowledged his obligation to the learning and industry of Jonson, but I have found no traces of Jonson in his works; to emulate Donne appears to have been his purpose, and from Donne he may have learned that familiarity with religious images, and that light allusion to sacred things, by which readers far short of sanctity are frequently offended, and which would not be borne in the present age, when devotion, perhaps not more fervent, is more delicate.

"His diction was, in his own time, censured as negligent. He seems not to have known, or not to have considered, that words being arbitrary must owe their power to association, and have the influence, and that only, which custom has given them. Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien, or most graceful action, would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rustics or mechanics, so the most heroic sentiments will lose their efficacy, and the most splendid ideas drop their magnificence, if they are conveyed by words used commonly upon low and trivial occasions, by vulgar mouths, and contaminated by vulgar applications.

"He makes no selection of words, nor seeks any neatness of phrase. He has no elegancies either lucky or elaborate; as his endeavours were rather to impress sentences upon the understanding than images on the fancy, he has few epithets, and those scattered without peculiar propriety or nice adapta tion. It seems to follow from the necessity of the