THE CUTTER OF COLEMAN STREET 1641-63 We are therefore wonderful wise men, and have a fine business of it; we, who spend our time in poetry. I do sometimes laugh, and am often angry with myself, when I think on it; and if I had a son inclined by nature to the same folly, I believe I should bind him from it by the strictest conjurations of a paternal blessing. For what can be more ridiculous than to labour to give men delight, whilst they labour, on their part, most earnestly to take offence?-COWLEY, ABRAHAM, 1663, Cutter of Coleman Street, Preface. The comedy, as acted in 1661, seems to have subjected Cowley to censure as having been intended for abuse and satire of the Royalists, besides being guilty of profaneness. In his Preface, which is well worth reading, he accordingly defends himself with effective indignation against both charges and this he could upon the whole well afford to do. What enraged these injudicious assailants, proves to us the moral courage of the poet. As a tried friend of the monarchy he rendered a real service to its cause, and to that of social order at large, by thus boldly and bravely satirising the scum of the loyal party at the very time when its ignobler elements were actively striving to remain at the top; and for the sake of the spirit of manliness which pervades this comedy we may readily pardon its occasional coarseness and the farcical improbabilities of its plot.WARD, ADOLPHUS WILLIAM, 1875-99, A History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. III, p. 327. THE MISTRESS 1647 Considered as the verses of a lover, no man that has ever loved will much commend them. They are neither courtly nor pathetic, have neither gallantry nor fondness. His praises are too far sought, and too hyperbolical, either to express love, or to excite it; every stanza is crowded with darts and flames, with wounds and death, with mingled souls, and with broken hearts.-JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1779, Abraham Cowley, Lives of the English Poets. In the next year, 1647, Cowley's "Mistress" appeared; the most celebrated performance of the miscalled metaphysical poets. It is a series of short amatory poems, in the Italian style of the age, full of analogies that have no semblance of truth, except from the double sense of words and thoughts that unite the coldness of subtility with the hyperbolical extravagance of counterfeited passion.-HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. iii, ch. v, par. 41. It is as though in the course of a hundred years the worst fancies which Wyatt had borrowed from Petrarch had become fossilized, and were yet brought out by Cowley to do duty for living thoughts. What is love? he seems to ask: it is an interchange of hearts, a flame, a worship, a river to be frozen by disdain he has a hundred such physical and psychological images of it; and the poetry consists in taking the images one by one and developing them in merciless disregard of taste and truth of feeling.-WARD, THOMAS HUMPHRY, 1880, English Poets, vol. II, p. 237. DAVIDEIS His "Davideis" was wholly written in so young an Age; that if we shall reflect on the vastness of the Argument, and his manner of handling it, he may seem like one of the Miracles, that he there adorns, like a Boy attempting Goliah.-SPRAT, THOMAS, 1668, An Account of the Life of Mr. Abraham Cowley. The "Davideis" is much more disfigured by far-fetched conceits than even his Odes; and they offend still more against good Taste, when we find them mixed up with the sobriety of narration, than when they mingle in his Pindaric ecstacies. The narrative itself is also heavy and uninteresting; there are no strongly drawn or predominating characters; and the Allegorical personages, who are the chief actors, do not, of course, excite any strong interest, or greatly arrest the attention. Still there are many scattered beauties throughout the Poem; many original ideas, and much brilliant versification. NEELE, HENRY, 1827-29, Lectures on English Poetry, Lecture ii. His epic attempt, "Davideis," was not successful.-SCHERR, J., 1874-82, A History of English Literature, p. 115. The "Davideis" is a school exercise, no more. WARD, THOMAS HUMPHRY, 1880, English Poets, vol. II, p. 241. ESSAYS In all our comparisons of taste, I do not know whether I have ever heard your opinion of a poet, very dear to me,—the now-out-of-fashion Cowley. Favour me with your judgment of him, and tell me if his prose essays, in particular, as well as no inconsiderable part of his verse, be not delicious. I prefer the graceful rambling of his essays, even to the courtly elegance and ease of Addison; abstracting from this the latter's exquisite humour.-LAMB, CHARLES, 1797, Letter to Coleridge, Letters, ed. Ainger, vol. 1, p. 64. Spent the two hours that remained before dinner, in skimming the "Prose Essays" of Cowley, which I had often heard very highly commended for the style; in this respect I was so much gratified, by the genuine vein of English idiom, as well as by what appeared to my ear, in many passages, a sweet and flowing melody of composition, that I have resolved to read the volume over again three or four times, till I fix some of those beauties in my memory, and accustom my ear to the tune. -HORNER, FRANCIS, 1802, Memoirs and Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 204. They are eminently distinguished for the grace, the finish, and the clearness which his verse too often wants. That there is one cry which pervades themvanity of vanities! all is vanity!—that there is an almost ostentatious longing for obscurity and retirement, may be accounted for by the fact that at an early age Cowley was thrown among the cavaliers of the civil wars, sharing the exile and the return of the Stuarts, and doubtless disgusted, as so pure a writer was pretty sure to be, by a dissolute Court, with whom he would find it easier to sympathize in its misery than in its triumph. —Mitford, MaRY RUSSELL, 1851, Recollections of A Literary Life, p. 36. His prose is as easy and sensible as his poetry is contorted and unreasonable. A polished man, writing for polished men, pretty much as he would speak to them in a drawing-room, this I take to be the idea which they had of a good author in the seventeenth century. It is the idea which Cowley's "Essays" leave of his character; it is the kind of talent which the writers of the coming age take for their model; and he is the first of that grave and amiable group which, continued in Temple, reaches so far as to include Addison. TAINE, H. A., 1871, History of English Literature, tr. Van Laun, vol. I, bk. ii, ch. i, p. 205. Cowley holds perhaps a higher rank among prose writers than among poets. His "Essays," written for the most part after the Restoration, mark an advance in the art of prose composition. The construction of the sentences is often stumbling and awkward, but the diction shows an increasing command over the language. No previous writer, not even Fuller, is so felicitous as Cowley in the combination of words. His prose has none of the extravagance of his poetry.-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1872-80, Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 286. Cowley's prose essays, it must be acknowledged, have held their ground in our literature, but as a poet he is a dead name, or living only in depreciation and ridicule. We hope to show that, however great his faults, this depreciation is unjust and this ridicule absurd, and in doing so it will be necessary to solve two questions why Cowley ever attained so immense a poetic reputation, and why, having once gained it, he has so completely lost it. GOSSE, EDMUND, 1883, Seventeenth-Century Studies, p. 172. The familiar ease, never descending into what would misbecome either the man of breeding or the man of letters, is the true cause of the pleasure which cultivated readers have never ceased to derive from these "Essays;" and to enjoy this pleasure to the full, we should pace with their author the whole length of his modest garden walks; for his estate was not on the scale of his friend John Evelyn's. -WARD, ADOLPHUS WILLIAM, 1893, English Prose, ed. Craik, vol. II, p. 575. This test of re-reading is, of course, only an approximate one. So great an authority as Hume said it was sufficient to read Cowley over, but that Parnell after the fiftieth reading was as fresh as at the first. Now, for my part, I have to go to the encyclopedia to find out who Parnell was, but of Cowley even desultory readers like myself know something. essays one can not only read, but re-read. They make one of the unpretentious minor books that one can put in his pocket and take with him on a walk to the woods, and nibble at under a tree or by a waterfall. His Solitude seems to bring out its quality, as it does that of some people.-BURROUGHS, JOHN, 1897, On the Re-reading of Books, The Century, vol. 55, p. 147. LOVE'S CHRONICLE "The Chronicle" was written two hundred years ago. Ladies, dear ladies, if one could be sure that no man would open this book, if we were altogether in (female) parliament assembled, without a single male creature within hearing, might we not acknowledge that the sex, especially that part of it formerly called coquette, and now known by the name of flirt, is very little altered since the days of the Merry Monarch? and that a similar list compiled by some gay bachelor of Belgravia might, allowing for differences of custom and of costume, serve very well as a companion to Master Cowley's catalogue? I would not have a man read this admission for the world.-MITFORD, MARY RUSSELL, 1851, Recollections of A Literary Life, p. 46. GENERAL To him no author was unknown, Of poets and of orators. Horace's wit and Virgil's state, And when he would like them appear, These times have produced many excellent poets, among whom, for strength of wit, Dr. Abraham Cowley justly bears the bell.-BAXTER, RICHARD, 1681, Poetical Fragments, Prefatory Address. The darling of my youth.-DRYDEN, JOHN, 1692, Essay on Satire, Works, ed. Scott and Saintsbury, vol. XIII, p. 116. Great Cowley then, a mighty genius, wrote, O'er run with wit, and lavish of his thought: His turns too closely on the reader press: He more had pleased us, had he pleased us less. One glittering thought no sooner strikes our eyes With silent wonder, but new wonders rise; As in the milky-way a shining white O'erflows the heavens with one continued light, That not a single star can show his rays, Thy fault is only wit in its excess. -ADDISON, JOSEPH, 1694, An Account of the Greatest English Poets. One of our late great poets is sunk in his reputation, because he could never forgive any conceit which came in his way; but swept, like a drag-net, great and small. There was plenty enough--but the dishes were ill sorted; whole pyramids of sweetmeats for boys and women, but little of solid meat for men. All this proceeded not from any want of knowledge, but of judgment. Neither did he want that in discerning the beauties and faults. of other poets, but only indulged himself in the luxury of writing; and perhaps knew it was a fault, and hoped to find it. For this reason, though he must always be thought a great poet, he is no longer esteemed a good writer; and for ten impressions which his works have had in so many successive years, yet at present a hundred books are scarcely purchased once a twelvemonth; for, as my last Lord Rochester said, though somewhat profanely, "Not being of God, he could not stand."-DRYDEN, JOHN, 1700, Preface to The Fables. Never any poet left a greater reputation behind him than Mr. Cowley, while Milton remained obscure, and known but to few. DENNIS, JOHN, 1721, Letters. Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet, His moral pleases, not his pointed wit: Forgot his Epic, nay Pindaric art But still I love the language of his heart -POPE, ALEXANDER, 1733, First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace. Cowley is a fine poet, in spite of all his faults.-He, as well as Davenant, borrowed his metaphysical style from Donne. -POPE, ALEXANDER, 1734-36, Spence's Anecdotes, ed. Singer, p. 130. The time seems to be at hand when justice will be done to Mr. Cowley's prose, as well as poetical writings; and though his friend Doctor Sprat, bishop of Rochester, in his diction falls far short of the abilities for which he has been celebrated; yet there is some times a happy flow in his periods, something that looks like eloquence. GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, 1759, The Bee No. 8, Nov. 24. Cowley is an author extremely corrupted by the bad taste of his age; but had he lived even in the purest times of Greece or Rome, he must always have been a very indifferent poet. He had no ear for harmony; and his verses are only known to be such by the rhyme which terminates them. In his rugged untunable numbers are conveyed sentiments the most strained and distorted, long-spun allegories, distant allusions, and forced conceits. Great ingenuity, however, and vigour of thought, sometimes break out midst those unnatural conceptions; a few anacreontics surprise us by their ease and gaiety: his prose writings please, by the honesty and goodness which they express, and even by their spleen and melancholy. This author was much more praised and admired during his lifetime, and celebrated after his death, than the great Milton.-HUME, DAVID, 1762, The History of England, The Commonwealth, vol. v. and replenished by study. In the general review of Cowley's poetry 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. 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. He makes no selection of words, nor seeks any neatness of phrase: he has no elegance, 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 of nice adaptation. -JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1779, Abraham Cowley, Lives of the English Poets. Cowley, at all times harsh, is doubly so in his Pindaric compositions. In his Anacreontic odes, he is much happier. They are smooth and elegant; and indeed the most agreeable and the most perfect in their kind, of all Mr. Cowley's Poems.BLAIR, HUGH, 1783, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Letters, ed. Mills, p. 446. Ingenious Cowley! and though now, reclaim'd By modern lights from an erroneous taste, I cannot but lament thy splendid wit Entangled in the cobwebs of the schools. I still revere thee, courtly though retired; Though stretch'd at ease in Chertsey's silent bowers Not unemploy'd, and finding rich amends For a lost world in solitude and verse. -COWPER, WILLIAM, 1784, The Task, The Winter Evening. Cowley, I think, would have had grace (for his mind was graceful) if he had had any ear, or if his taste had not been vitiated by the pursuit of wit; which, when it does not offer itself naturally, degenerates into tinsel or pertness.—WALPOLE, HORACE, 1785, Letters, ed. Cunningham, vol. VIII, p. 564. To speak of this neglected writer, as a poet. He had a quick and ready conception; the true enthusiasm of genius, and vast materials, with which learning as well as fancy had supplied him for it to work upon. He had besides a prodigious command of expression, and a natural and copious flow of eloquence on every occasion, and understood our language in all its force and energy. Yet betwixt the native exuberance of his wit, which hurried him frequently on conceits, and the epidemical contagion of that time, which possessed all writers with the love of points, of affected turns, and hard unnatural allusion, there are few of his poems which a man of just taste will read with admiration, or even with pleasure. Some few there are and enough to save his name from oblivion, or rather to consecrate it, with those of the master spirits of our country, to immortality.-HURD, RICHARD, 1808? Commonplace Book, ed. Kilvert, p. 240. The mind of Cowley was beautiful, but a querulous tenderness in his nature. breathes not only through his works, but influenced his habits and his views of human affairs.-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 181213, Quarrels of Authors. The metre of Pindar is regular, that of Cowley is utterly lawless; and his perpetual straining after points of wit, seems to show that he had formed no correcter notion of his manner than of his style.GIFFORD, WILLIAM, 1816, ed., The Works of Ben Jonson, vol. IX, p. 8. For mere ease and grace, is Cowley inferior to Addison, being as he is so much more thoughtful and full of fancy? Cowley, with the omission of a quaintness here and there, is probably the best model of style for modern imitation in general.COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1818, Style; Miscellanies, Esthetic and Literary, ed. Ashe, p. 181. He wrote verses while yet a child; and amidst his best poetry as well as his worst, in his touching and tender as well as extravagant passages, there is always something that reminds us of childhood in Cowley. . Misanthropy, as far as so gentle a nature could cherish it, naturally strengthened his love of retirement, and increased that passion for a country life. which breathes in the fancy of his poetry, and in the eloquence of his prose.-CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets. Cowley, with all his admirable wit and ingenuity, had little imagination; nor indeed do we think his classical diction comparable to that of Milton. -MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, 1825, Milton, Edinburgh Review, Essays. The Pindaric odes of Cowley were not published within this period. But it is not worth while to defer mention of them. They contain, like all his poetry, from time to time, very beautiful lines; but the faults are still of the same kind: his sensibility and good sense, nor has any poet more, are choked by false taste; and it would be difficult to fix on any one poem in which the beauties are more frequent than the blemishes. Johnson has selected the elegy on Crashaw as the finest of Cowley's works. It begins with a very beautiful couplet, but I confess that little else seems, to my taste, of much value. "The Complaint," probably better known than any other poem, appears to me the best in itself. His disappointed hopes give a not unpleasing melancholy to several passages. But his Latin ode in a similar strain is much more perfect. Cowley, perhaps, upon the whole, has had a reputation more above his deserts than any English poet; yet it is very easy to perceive that some, who wrote better than he, did not possess so fine a genius.—HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. iii, ch. v, par. 41. Cowley was coarsely curious: he went to the shamoles for his chambers of imagery, and very often through the mud. All which faults appear to us attributable to his coldness of temperament, and his defectiveness in the instinct towards Beauty; to having the intellect only of a great poet, not the sensibility. Yet his influence was for good rather than for evil, by inciting to a struggle backward, a delay in the revolutionary movement: and this, although a wide gulf yawned between him and the former age, and his heart's impulse was not strong enough to cast him across it. For his actual influence, he lifts us up and casts us downcharms, and goes nigh to disgust us-does all but make us love and weep.--BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT, 1842-63, The Book of the Poets. On the other side of the corner of Chancery Lane was born a man of genius and benevolence, who would not have hurt a fly-Abraham Cowley. His father was a grocer; himself, one of the kindest, wisest, and truest gentlemen that ever graced humanity. He has been pronounced by one, competent to judge, to have been "if not a great poet, a great man." But his poetry is what every other man's poetry is, the flower of what was in him; and it is at least so far good poetry, as it is the quintessence of amiable and deep reflection, not without a more festive strain, the result of his sociality. Pope says of him— "Forgot his epic, nay pindaric art; Yet still we love the language of his heart.' His prose is admirable, and his character of Cromwell a masterpiece of honest enmity, more creditable to both parties than the zealous royalist was aware. Cowley, notwithstanding the active part he took in politics, never ceased to be a child at heart. His mind lived in books and bowers-in the sequestered "places of thought;" and he wondered and lamented to the last, that he had not realised the people he found there. His consolation should have been, that what he found in himself was an evidence that the |