319 ABRAHAM COWLEY. THE monument erected to the fame of Cowley, though by no means among the most able or pleasing in the Poets' Corner, is yet somewhat coldly appropriate. It consists of an urn, begirt with laurel, and emitting fire; and is intended to indicate the celebrity with which the author's writings were crowned during his life-time, and the perpetuity anticipated for his reputation. As he was the poet of similies, conceits and emblems, so this study of signs and typified expressions are not altogether out of character. His remains were interred immediately before the tomb, and the spot may be still recognized by a blue stone, on which are inscribed the words, Abrahamus Couleius, by which latter perversion the Latin scholar meant to translate the plain word Cowley. The following version of the inscriptions on the upper stone is preferred from an old life of the poet : ABRAHAM COWLEY, The Pindar, Horace and Virgil, of England, While, sacred bard, far worlds thy works proclaim, Here may you bless'd in holy quiet lie! * ABRAHAMUS COULEIUS, Aurea dum volitant latè tua scripta per orbem Et famâ æternùm vivis, Divine, Poeta, And all thy favourite tuneful Nine repair So wishes And desires that wish may be sacred with posterity Who erected this sepulchral marble to that incomparable man.. He departed this life in the 49th year of his age, and was carried. from Buckingham House, with honourable pomp. His obsequies were attended by the illustrious of all ranks, and he was interred on the 3d of August, 1667. Cowley is one of those writers who have been so incomparably eulogized by his contemporaries that many of the readers who came after them, unable to sympathize with the warmth of their admiration, have suffered the subject of it to sink, as it were out of spite, almost into the opposite extreme of neglect and disrepute. Charles II., a man of no mean reading or ordinary taste, is recorded to have observed, when told of Cowley's death, that he did not leave a better writer behind him. Rymer, the learned Hic placida jaceas requie. Custodiat urnam Sic vovet Votumque suum apud Posteros sacratum esse voluit, Excessit è vita Anno Ætis suæ 49° et honorificâ pompâ elatus est Ædibus Buckinghamianis, Viris Illustribus Omnium Ordinum exequias celebrantibus. Sepultus est Die 30, M. Augusti, Anno Dui, 1667. author of the Fœdera, prefers him to Tasso, and Dryden, and even Milton himself is commemorated for having given him unqualified praise. Cowley is also ranked by many critics as the first of our modern poets. By this preference, however, nothing more perhaps was meant, or at least deserves to be understood, than that he was one of the first authors, in the order of time, who composed English poetry with those accents which now characterize the approved pronunciation of our verse, and without many of those coarse words and familiar phrases which, by common consent, have been long adjudged foreign to the elegance of Poetry. As for the higher attributes of poetical excellence,-true feeling and natural expression, he was anticipated by several. Abraham Cowley was born in the year 1618, in the parish of St. Dunstan, London, where his father, who died before his birth, kept a grocer's shop. At the solicitation of an exemplary mother, he was admitted into Westminster School, and grew soon distinguished for ability. Removing to Cambridge in 1636, he published, after the lapse of two years, one comedy in English, entitled 'Love's Riddle,' which was inscribed in verse to Sir Kenelm Digby; and another in Latin, called 'Naufragium Joculare.' But it were ungenerous not to give him his proper share of merit by adding that, though only ushered before the public at this period, 'Love's Riddle' was written when he was at Westminster: thus Cowley, as well as Milton and Pope, may be correctly said to have lisped in numbers. He not only wrote, but printed a volume of poetry in his thirteenth year, which contained, amongst other learned puerilities, as Dr. Johnson calls them, the tragical story of Pyramus and Thisbe, and Constantia and Philetus, of which the first was written in his tenth year. At the very beginning of the civil war he distinguished himself by the ardour of his loyalty, and when Prince Charles passed through Cambridge upon the occasion of his journey to the North, Cowley came forward with another comedy, entitled 'The Guardian,' afterwards altered into the 'Cutter of Coleman Street,' which was acted by the Students of the University, for royal entertainment. This production the author modestly entitled a Sketch, but it was afterwards printed, though against his will, and repeatedly acted with considerable approbation. These and other marks of his zeal for the King's service, occasioned his ejection from Cambridge, through the prevalence of the opposite party, in 1643, with the attainment of an A.M. degree. For some time he found shelter in St. John's College, Oxford, where he published his Satire of the Puritan and Papist,' and recommended himself, by the spirit of his principles, and the talents of his conversation, to all the friends of the persecuted King, and above all, won the kindness of Lord Falkland, a man whose notice was in itself a passport to general distinction. In time, however, Oxford was ceded to the Republicans, and Cowley followed in the Queen's train to France, where he settled in the family of the Earl of St. Alban's, and managed the royal correspondence-a province of confidence and honour, which occupied his time day and night for several successive years. In 1647, he printed his 'Mistress,' which, as he simply confesses in his preface, he was induced to write, because poets are scarce thought freemen of their company, without paying some duties, or obliging themselves to be true to love. This Mistress' is a varied series of poems upon the subject of that passion which such an acquaintance is usually supposed to excite, and may be read with satisfaction, as containing specimens of most of the beauties and all the faults for which the style of the author and his age are notorious. Beyond this character no praise is merited, and altogether but little interest can be roused by it; for if there is any one description of writing upon which the moderns have decidedly improved, it is the poetry. of Love. What with Cowley and the ancients was all darts, flames, wounds, and violent death, we have softened into courtly sympathy and fond gentleness. What they exaggerated, we have refined; and whereas they wrote all they thought, however crude and extravagant, we only express what we feel, and for the purpose of making that appear sincere, keep it always subdued. Take the following specimens, strongly infected with rude conceits and offensive eulogies :-first, to his Mistress bathing:The fish around her crowded, as they do To the false light that treach'rous fishers show, For ne'er did light so clear Amongst the waves appear, Though every night the sun himself set there. Then, on his Mistress's inconstancy : He enjoys thy calmy sunshine now, He sees thee gentle, fair and gay, And trusts the faithless April of thy May. * Gently, ah! gently, Madam, touch The wound, which you yourself have made; Which makes me of your hand afraid. Cordials of pity give me now, For I too weak for purgings grow. Lastly, the following illustration of the common saying, neither dead nor alive, though highly confused, is not quite so repug nant. Then down I laid my head ; Down on cold earth; and for awhile was dead, Ah! sottish fool, said I, When back to its cage again I saw it fly; Fool to resume her broken chain ! And row her galley here again! Fool, to that body to return Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn! Once dead, how can it be, Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee, That thou shouldst come to live it o'er again in me? How Cowley came to lose his appointment at the exiled court we know not; all his early biographers state is, that, in the course of time the business passed into other hands, and that he consequently returned to London in 1656, where he was seized, imprisoned, and only liberated upon an excessive bail in the sum of a 1000l. He then collected his poems together in one publication, and turned his mind to the study of physic, in which science, though he never practised, he obtained, first a license to practise, and afterwards the degree of Doctor, from the University of Oxford. The assumption of this character, and the poem |