of Trinity College, Cambridge. Cowley lisped in numbers; and in 1633, before he had attained the sixteenth year of his age, and while yet at Westminster, he published a volume of poems under the appropriate title of Poetical Blossoms. According to his own statement, a copy of Spenser's poems used to lie in his mother's parlor, with the reading of which he was so much delighted, that to its influence he attributes his first poetical impulses. The intensity of his youthful ambition may be seen from the two first lines in his miscellanies

What shall I do to be forever known,
And make the age to come mine own?

In 1643, Cowley, having previously taken his master's degree, was ejected from Cambridge for being a royalist; upon which he entered St. John's College, Oxford, and there prosecuted his studies, until his affection for the royal family induced him to enter into the service of the king. Here he became intimately acquainted with Lord Falkland and many other eminent men, whom the fortune of the war had drawn together. During the heat of the civil strife, he was settled in the family of the Earl of St. Albans; and when the queen mother was forced to retire, for safety, into France, he attended her thither, and remained in that country twelve years, the whole of which were passed, either in bearing a share in the distresses of the royal family, or in exertions to promote their interest. He was sent on various embassies, and deciphered the correspondence of Charles and his queen, which, for years, occupied his exclusive time.

At length, the Restoration came, with all its hopes and fears. England anticipated happy days, and loyalty ample reward for its devotion to the royal cause; but both were sadly disappointed. Cowley expected to be made master of the Savoy, or to receive some other appointment equally advantageous; but his claims were entirely disregarded. In his youth he had written an Ode to Brutus, which was now remembered to his disadvantage; and a dramatic production, The Cutter of Coleman Street, which he brought out soon after the Restoration, and in which the jollity and debauchery of the cavaliers are painted in strong colors, was misrepresented, or misconstrued, at court. This disappointment Cowley felt so keenly, that he at once resolved to retire into the country. He had only just passed his fortieth year, but the most important part of his life had been spent in incessant labor, amid dangers and suspense. 'He always professed,' says his biographer Sprat, 'that he went off the world as it was man's, into the same world as it was nature's, and as it was God's. The whole compass of the creation, and all the wonderful effects of the divine wisdom, were the constant prospect of his senses and his thoughts. And, indeed, he entered with great advantage on the studies of nature, even as the first great men of antiquity did, who were generally both poets and philosophers.'

Though disappointed, Cowley was not, however, altogether neglected; for he obtained, through the influence of Lord St. Albans, and the Duke of

Buckingham, the lease of some lands belonging to the queen, worth about three hundred pounds per annum-a decent pension, at least, for his retirement. He finally settled at Chertsey, on the banks of the Thames, where his house may still be seen. Here he cultivated his fields, his garden, and his plants; he wrote of solitude and obscurity, of the perils of greatness, and the happiness of liberty. He renewed his acquaintance with the beloved poets of antiquity, whom, in ease and elegance, and in commemorating the charms of a country life, he sometimes rivalled; and here also he composed his fine prose discourses, so full of gentle thoughts, and well-digested knowledge, heightened by a delightful bonhommie and communicativeness worthy of even a Horace or a Montaigne. Cowley was not, however, happy in his retirement. Solitude, that had so long wooed him to her arms, was a phantom that vanished in his embrace. He had, it is true, attained the long-wished-for object of his studious youth and busy manhood-the woods and the fields at length inclosed the 'melancholy Cowley' in their shades; but happiness was still distant. He had quitted the 'monster London; he had gone out from Sodom, but had not found the little Zoar of his dreams. The place of his retreat was ill selected, and the change of situation materially affected his health. The people of the country, he soon found, were no better, or more innocent, than those of the town. He could not collect his rents, and the grass of his meadows was nightly eaten up by cattle let into them by his neighbors. From this harassing situation this amiable and accomplished man of genius was at length released by his death, which occurred on the twenty-eighth of July, 1667. His remains were interred, with great pomp, in the poet's corner in Westminster Abbey, and the king, when he received intelligence of the bereavement which the nation had sustained, graciously remarked that, 'Cowley had not left a better man behind him.'

The poems of Cowley are Miscellanies, The Mistress, or Love Verses, Pindaric Odes, and the Davideis, a heroic poem of the Troubles of David. The peculiar character of his genius is happily expressed by Pope in the following lines:

Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet,
His moral pleases, not his pointed wit:

Forget his epic, nay Pindaric art,

But still I love the language of his heart.

Cowley's 'Love Poems' are generally fantastic and sickly, and it is evident that heart had no share in them; but his 'Anacreontics' are easy, lively, and full of spirit. They are redolent of joy and youth, and of images of natural and poetic beauty, that touch the feeling as well as the fancy. His 'Pindaric Odes,' though deformed by metaphysical conceits, though they do not roll the full flood of Pindar's unnavigable song, though we admit that even the art of Gray was higher, yet contain some noble lines and illustrations. The 'Davideis' is, as a whole, a tedious and unfinished poem, but

the extract which follows, containing an account of the Creation, is full of eloquence and poetry, and shows how well Cowley was capable of writing in the heroic couplet:

THE CREATION.

They sung how God spoke-out the World's vast ball,
From nothing; and from nowhere call'd forth all.

No Nature yet, or place for 't to possess,

But an unbottom'd gulf of emptiness;

Full of himself, th' Almighty sate, his own
Palace, and without solitude alone.

But he was goodness whole, and all things will'd;
Which ere they were, his active word fulfill'd:
And their astonished heads o' th' sudden rear'd;
An unshaped kind of something first appear'd,
Confessing its new being, and undrest,

As if it stepp'd in haste before the rest;
Yet, buried in this matter's darksome womb,
Lay the rich seeds of every thing to come;
From hence the cheerful flame leap'd up so high,

Close at its heels the nimble air did fly;

Dull Earth with his own weight did downwards pierce
To the fix'd navel of the Universe,

And was quite lost in waters; till God said

To the proud Sea, Shrink in your insolent head;
See how the gaping Earth has made you place!'
That durst not murmur, but shrunk in apace:
Since when, his bounds are set; at which in vain
He foams and rages, and turns back again.
With richer stuff he bade Heaven's fabric shine,
And from him a quick spring of light divine
Swell'd up the Sun, from whence his cherishing flame
Fills the whole world, like him from whom it came.
He smooth'd the rough-cast Moon's imperfect mould,
And comb'd her beamy locks with sacred gold:
'Be thou,' said he, 'Queen of the mournful night!'
And as he spake, she rose, clad o'er in light,
With thousand Stars attending in her train,
With her they rise, with her they set again.

Then Herbs peep'd forth, now Trees admiring stood,
And smelling flowers painted the infant wood;
Then flocks of Birds through the glad air did flee,
Joyful, and safe before Man's luxury,
Singing their Maker in their untaught lays:

Nay the mute Fish witness no less his praise;

For those he made, and clothed with silver scales,

From Minnows to those living islands, Whales,
Beasts, too, were his command; what could he more?

Yes, Man he could, the bond of all before;

In him he all things with strange order hurl'd,

In him that full abridgment of the World!

The following lyric, also from the same poem, in which David speaks of his love for Saul's daughter, is a perfect gem:—

Awake, awake my Lyre!

And tell thy silent master's humble tale,

In sounds that may prevail;

Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire:

Though so exalted she,

And I so lowly be,

Tell her, such different notes make all thy harmony!

Hark! how the strings awake!

And though the moving hand approach not near,
Themselves with awful fear

A kind of numerous trembling make:

Now all thy forces try,

Now all thy charms apply,

Revenge upon her ear the conquests of her eye.

Weak Lyre! thy virtue sure

Is useless here, since thou art only found

To cure, but not to wound;

And she to wound but not to cure:

Too weak too wilt thou prove

My passion to remove

Physic to other ills, thou 'rt nourishment to Love.

Sleep, sleep again my Lyre!

For thou canst never tell my humble tale

sounds that will prevail;

Nor gentle thoughts in her inspire;

All thy vain mirth lay by,

Bid thy strings silent lie;

Sleep, sleep again, my Lyre! and let thy master die!

The following ode on the death of Cowley's college companion, Harvey, is highly imaginative, and abounds in tenderness:

It was a dismal and a fearful night,

Scarce could the morn drive on th' unwilling light,
When sleep, death's image, left my troubled breast,
By something liker death possest.

My eyes with tears did uncommanded flow,

And on my soul hung the dull weight
Of some intolerable fate.

What bell was that? Ah me! too much I know.

My sweet companion, and my gentle peer,
Why hast thou left me thus unkindly here,
Thy end forever, and my life to moan?

O thou hast left me all alone!
Thy soul and body when death's agony
Besieged around thy noble heart,
Did not with more reluctance part
Than I, my dearest friend, do part from thee.

My dearest friend, would I had died for thee!
Life and this world henceforth will tedious be.
Nor shall I know hereafter what to do,

If once my griefs prove tedious too.
Silent and sad I walk about all day,

As sullen ghosts stalk speechless by
Where their hid treasures lie;

Alas, my treasure's gone! why do I stay?

He was my friend, the truest friend on earth;
A strong and mighty influence join'd our birth.
Nor did we envy the most sounding name.
By friendship given of old to fame,
None but his brethren he, and sisters, knew,
Whom the kind youth preferred to me;
And ev'n in that we did agree,

For much above myself I loved them too.

Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights,
How oft unwearied have we spent the nights?
Till the Ledæan stars, so fam'd for love,
Wonder'd at us from above.

We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine,
But search of deep philosophy,

Wit, eloquence, and poetry;

Arts which I lov'd, for they, my friend, were thine.

Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say,
Have ye not seen us walking every day?
Was there a tree about, which did not know
The love betwixt us two?

Henceforth, ye gentle trees, forever fade;
Or your sad branches thicker join
And into darksome shades combine;
Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid.