There is reason to think that Cowley promised little. It does not appear that his compliance gained him confidence enough to be trusted without security, for the bond of his bail was never cancelled; nor that it made him think himself secure, for, at that dissolution of government which followed the death of Oliver, he returned into France, where he resumed his former station, and staid till the Restoration.

"He continued," says his biographer, "under "these bonds till the general deliverance;" it is therefore to be supposed, that he did not go to France, and act again for the King, without the consent of his bondsman; that he did not shew his loyalty at the hazard of his friend, but by his friend's permission.

Of the verses on Oliver's death, in which Wood's narrative seems to imply something encomiastick, there has been no appearance. There is a discourse concerning his government, indeed, with verses intermixed, but such as certainly gained its author no friends among the abettors of usurpation.

A doctor of physick however he was made at Oxford in December 1657; and in the commencement of the Royal Society, of which an account has been given by Dr. Birch, he appears busy among the experimental philosophers with the title of Dr. Cowley.

There is no reason for supposing that he ever attempted practice: but his preparatory studies have contributed something to the honour of his country. Considering Botany as necessary to a physician, he retired into Kent to gather plants; and as the predo

minance of a favourite study affects all subordinate operations of the intellect, Botany in the mind of Cowley turned into Poetry. He composed in Latin several books on Plants, of which the first and second display the qualities of Herbs, in elegiac verse; the third and fourth, the beauties of Flowers in various measures; and the fifth and sixth, the uses of Trees, in heroic numbers.

At the same time were produced, from the same University, the two great poets, Cowley and Milton, of dissimilar genius, of opposite principles; but concurring in the cultivation of Latin Poetry, in which the English, till their Works and May's Poem appeared, seemed unable to contest the palm with other of the lettered nations.

any

If the Latin performances of Cowley and Milton be compared (for May I hold to be superior to both), the advantage seems to lie on the side of Cowley. Milton is generally content to express the thoughts of the ancients in their language; Cowley, without much loss of purity or elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conceptions.

At the Restoration, after all the diligence of his long service, and with consciousness not only of the merit of fidelity, but of the dignity of great abilities, he naturally expected ample preferments; and, that he might not be forgotten by his own fault, wrote a Song of Triumph. But this was a time of such

*By May's Poem we are here to understand a continuation of Lucan's Pharsalia to the death of Julius Cæsar, by Thomas May, an eminent poet and historian, who flourished in the reigns of James and Charles I. and of whom a life is given in the Biographia Britannica. H.

general hope, that great numbers were inevitably disappointed and Cowley found his reward very tediously delayed. He had been promised by both Charles the First and Second, the Mastership of the Savoy ; "but he lost it," says Wood, " by certain persons, enemies to the Muses."

The neglect of the Court was not his only mortification; having by such alteration as he thought proper, fitted his old Comedy of "The Guardian” for the stage, he produced it* under the title of "The Cutter of Coleman-streett." It was treated on the stage with great severity, and was afterwards censured as a satire on the King's party.

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Mr. Dryden, who went with Mr. Sprat to the first exhibition, related to Mr. Dennis, "that, when they told Cowley how little favour had been shewn him, he received the news of his ill success, not "with so much firmness as might have been ex"pected from so great a man."

What firmness they expected, or what weakness Cowley discovered, cannot be known. He that misses his end will never be as much pleased as he that attains it, even when he can impute no part of his failure to himself; and when the end is to please the multitude, no man perhaps has a right, in things admitting of gradation and comparison, to throw the whole blame upon his judges, and to-.

* 1663.

+ Here is an error in the designation of this comedy, which our author copied from the title-page of the latter editions of Cowley's Works: the title of the play itself is without the article," Cutter of Coleman-street," and that because a merry sharking fellow about the town, named Cutter, is a principal character in it. H.

tally to exclude diffidence and shame by a haughty consciousness of his own excellence.

For the rejection of this play it is difficult now to find the reason: it certainly has, in a very great degree, the power of fixing attention and exciting merriment. From the charge of disaffection he exculpates himself in his preface, by observing how unlikely it is that, having followed the royal family through all their distresses," he should chuse the "time of their restoration to begin a quarrel with "them." It appears, however, from the Theatrical Register of Downes, the Prompter, to have been popularly considered as a satire on the Royalists.

That he might shorten this tedious suspense, he published his pretensions and his discontent, in an ode called "The Complaint;" in which he styles himself the melancholy Cowley. This met with the usual fortune of complaints, and seems to have excited more contempt than pity.

These unlucky incidents are brought, maliciously enough, together in some stanzas, written about that time on the choice of a Laureat; a mode of satire, by which, since it was first introduced by Suckling, perhaps every generation of poets has been teazed.

Savoy-missing Cowley came into the court,
Making apologies for his bad play;、

Every one gave him so good a report,

That Apollo gave heed to all he could say:
Nor would he have had, 'tis thought, a rebuke,
Unless he had done some notable folly :

Writ verses unjustly in praise of Sam Tuke,
Or printed his pitiful Melancholy.

His vehement desire of retirement now came

again upon him. "Not finding," says the morose Wood, "that preferment conferred upon him which "he expected, while others for their money carried away most places, he retired discontented into Surrey."

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"He was now," says the courtly Sprat, 66 weary "of the vexations and formalities of an active con"dition. He had been perplexed with a long com"pliance to foreign manners. He was satiated "with the arts of a court; which sort of life, though "his virtue made it innocent to him, yet nothing "could make it quiet. Those were the reasons that "moved him to follow the violent inclination of his "own mind, which, in the greatest throng of his "former business, had still called upon him, and "represented to him the true delights of solitary "studies, of temperate pleasures, and a moderate "revenue below the malice and flatteries of for"tune."

So differently are things seen! and so differently are they shewn! But actions are visible, though motives are secret. Cowley certainly retired; first to Barn-elms, and afterwards to Chertsey, in Surrey. He seems, however, to have lost part of his dread of the hum of men*. He thought himself now safe enough from intrusion, without the defence of mountains and oceans; and, instead of seeking shelter in America, wisely went only so far from the bustle of life as that he might easily find his way back, when solitude should grow tedious. His retreat was

* L'Allegro of Milton. Dr. J.