THE Life of Cowley, notwithstanding the | His father was a grocer, whose condition penury of English biography, has been written by Dr. Sprat, an author whose pregnancy of imagination and elegance of language have deservedly set him high in the ranks of literature; but his zeal of friendship, or ambition of eloquence, has produced a funeral oration rather than a history: he has given the character, not the life, of Cowley; for he writes with so little detail, that scarcely any thing is distinctly known, but all is shown confused and enlarged through the mist of panegyric.

ABRAHAM COWLEY was born in the year one thousand six hundred and eighteen.

Dr. Sprat conceals under the general appellation of a citizen; and, what would probably not have been less carefully suppressed, the omission of his name in the register of St. Dunstan's parish, gives reason to suspect that his father was a sectary. Whoever he was, he died before the birth of his son, and consequently left him to the care of his mother; whom Wood represents as struggling earnestly to procure him a literary education, and who, as she lived to the age of eighty, had her solicitude rewarded by seeing her son eminent, and, I hope, by seeing him fortunate, and partaking his prosperity. We know at least, from Sprat's account,

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that he always acknowledged her care, and justly paid the dues of filial gratitude.

cal History of Pyramus and Thisbe,' written when he was ten years old; and 'Constantia and Philetus,' written two years after.

While he was yet at school, he produced a comedy, called Love's Riddle,' though it was not published till he had been some time at Cambridge. This comedy is of the pastoral kind, which requires no acquaintance with the living world, and therefore the time at which it was composed adds little to the wonders of Cowley's minority.

In the window of his mother's apartment lay Spenser's Fairy Queen; in which he very early took delight to read, till, by feeling the charms of verse, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are the accidents which, sometimes remembered, and perhaps sometimes forgotten, produce that particular designation of mind, and propensity for some certain science or employment, which is commonly called Genius. The In 1636, he was removed to Camtrue Genius is a mind of large general bridge+, where he continued his studies powers, accidentally determined to some with great intenseness; for he is said to particular direction. Sir Joshua Rey-have written, while he was yet a young nolds, the great Painter of the present age, had the first fondness for his art excited by the perusal of Richardson's treatise.

By his mother's solicitation he was admitted into Westminster school, where he was soon distinguished. He was wont, says Sprat, to relate, That he had this defect in his memory at that time, that his teachers never could bring it to retain the ordinary rules of grammar.'

student, the greater part of his Davideis;' a work of which the materials could not have been collected without the study of many years, but by a mind of the greatest vigour and activity..

Two years after his settlement at Cambridge, he published Love's Riddle,' with a poetical dedication to Sir Kenelm Digby; of whose acquaintance all his contemporaries seem to have been ambitious; and Naufragium Joculare,' a comedy written in Latin, but without due attention to the ancient models; for it is not loose verse, but mere prose. It was printed, with a dedication in verse to Dr. Comber, master of the college; but, having neither the facility of a popular nor the accuracy of a learned work, it seems to be now universally neglected.

This is an instance of the natural desire of man to propagate a wonder. It is surely very difficult to tell any thing as it was heard, when Sprat could not refrain from amplifying a commodious incident, though the book to which he prefixed his narrative contained its confutation. A memory admitting some things, and rejecting others, an intellec- At the beginning of the civil war, as tual digestion that concocted the pulp of the Prince passed through Cambridge in learning, but refused the husks, had the his way to York, he was entertained with appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a representation of the Guardian,' a a particular provision made by Nature comedy, which Cowley says was neither for literary politeness. But in the au- written nor acted, but rough-drawn by thor's own honest relation, the marvel him, and repeated by the scholars. That vanishes he was, he says, such an this comedy was printed during his abenemy to all constraint, that his master sence from his country, he appears to never could prevail on him to learn the have considered as injurious to his repurules without book.' He does not tell tation; though, during the suppression of that he could not learn the rules, but the theatres, it was sometimes privately that, being able to perform his exercises acted with sufficient approbation. without them, and being an enemy to constraint,' he spared himself the labour.

Among the English poets, Cowley, Milton, and Pope, might be said to lisp in numbers;' and have given such early proofs, not only of powers of language, but of comprehension of things, as to more tardy minds seem scarcely credible. But of the learned puerilities of Cowley there is no doubt, since a volume of his poems was not only written, but printed in his thirteenth year*; containing, with other poetical compositions, The tragi

*This was not published before 1633, when Cowley was fifteen years old.

In 1643, being now master of arts, he was, by the prevalence of the parliament, ejected from Cambridge, and sheltered himself at St. John's College, in Oxford; where, as is said by Wood, he published a

satire, called 'The Puritan and Papist,' which was only inserted in the last collection of his works; and so distinguished himself by the warmth of his loyalty, and the elegance of his conversation, that he gained the kindness and confidence of those who attended the King, and amongst others of Lord Falkland, whose notice

+ He was a candidate at Westminster School for election to Trinity College, but proved unsuccessful.