in youth, but they were printed at a very mature age, and with his full consent.*

[Mr. Palgrave's exquisite selection from the poems of this fine "pagan poet" (Macmillan and Co.) contains all that is most worthy in the " Hesperides," and the young student of our poetry need perhaps look no further. If, however, the subject attracts him, he will do well to read an essay on the poet by Mr. Gosse, in the Cornhill Magazine for August, 1875.]

*No poet was ever more careful of his fame than Herrick, and it is impossible to agree with Mr. Grosart, that in the publication of so much that had been better omitted he was "over-persuaded" by his publisher. The man who could say

"Better 'twere my book were dead

Than to live not perfected"—

was not likely to leave to indifferent hands the arrangement of its

contents.

R

CHAPTER VI.

POETS OF THE COMMONWEALTH.

ABRAHAM COWLEY-JOHN MILTON-ANDREW MARVELL.

DR. JOHNSON begins his famous work, "The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets," with the life of Abraham Cowley. The meagre facts he has to tell of that poet are gleaned from a biography, or, as Johnson appropriately styles it, a funeral oration, written by

Abraham

Cowley, 1618-1667.

Bishop Sprat, a small versifier, who is himself honoured with a place in Johnson's gallery of poets. Cowley, the son of a London tradesman, was born in 1618, ten years after the birth of Milton. His mother, carly left a widow, is said to have struggled hard to give her son a literary education, and it is pleasant to know that she lived to see him fortunate and famous. "In the window of his mother's apartment lay Spenser's 'Faerie Queene,' in which he very early took delight to read, till, by feeling the charms of verse, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet." His

rhyming faculty was developed when a mere boy, and he published a volume of poems in the sixteenth year of his age. While at Westminster School he is also said to have written a pastoral comedy. The amazing precocity of the boy may be estimated from the following stanzas, which were written, he states, at thirteen :

"A WISH.

"This only grant me, that my means may lie
Too low for envy, for contempt too high.
Some honour I would have,

Not from great deeds, but good alone;
The unknown are better than ill known-

Rumour can ope the grave.

Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends.
Not on the number but the choice of friends.

"Books should, not business, entertain the light,
And sleep as undisturbed as death, the night.
My house a cottage, more

Than palace, and should fitting be,
For all my use, not luxury.

My garden painted o'er

With nature's hand, not art's; and pleasures yield,
Horace might envy in his Sabine field.

"Thus would I double my life's fading space,
For he that runs it well, twice runs his race.
And in this true delight

These unbought sports, this happy state,
I would not fear nor wish my fate,

But boldly say each night

To-morrow let my sun his beams display,

Or in clouds hide them; I have lived to-day."

In 1636 he left school for Cambridge, and there,

too, he continued to show great poetical precociousness. It was an age in which every Englishman had to take a side in politics, and Cowley being a loyalist, was forced to leave the University. He found a home at Oxford, where he is said to have attracted the notice of Lord Falkland. When Oxford surrendered to the Parliament, Cowley followed his royal mistress to Paris, and "was employed in such correspondence as the royal cause required, and particularly in ciphering and deciphering the letters that passed between the king and queen -an employment of the highest confidence and honour." It would seem, from one of his charming essays, which should be better known than they are, that this insight into court life did not increase his liking for it. "I saw plainly," he writes, "all the paint of that kind of life the nearer I came to it; and that beauty, which I did not fall in love with, when for ought I knew it was real, was not likely to bewitch or entice me when I saw that it was adulterate."

In 1656 he returned to England, and appears to have been imprisoned for a brief period. That year he published his poems, and in the year following obtained a medical degree at Oxford. "Considering botany as necessary to a physician -we quote once more from Johnson-" he retired into Kent to gather plants; and as the predominance of a favourite study affects all subordinate operations of the intellect, botany in the mind of Cowley turned into poetry." His poems

upon plants are written in Latin, and his Latinity, wasted, according to modern judgment, in such an effort, has been highly praised. Neither Cowley's loyalty nor his verses on the Restoration obtained for him any consideration from Charles II. He complained of his treatment in some dismal lines, and got laughed at for his pains. He calls himself in these verses "the melancholy Cowley," and exclaims

"Kings have long hands, they say, and though I be
So distant, they may reach at length to me."

But as the hands of Charles did not immediately reach so far, the poet retired into the country to cultivate virtue and poetry. After a time he obtained an ample income, but was not destined to enjoy it long, for he died at the Porch House, Chertsey, in 1667, in the forty-ninth year of his age. The almost unparalleled reputation Cowley had gained while living did not desert him at his death, for he was buried with great pomp near Chaucer and Spenser in Westminster Abbey. Year by year, however, his fame declined, and seventy years later Pope exclaimed

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

We may safely say that few readers in our day gain pleasure either from his wit or his moral. This descent from brilliant fame to neglect demands the student's attention.