He then took upon himself the character of physician, still, according to Sprat, with intention, "to "dissemble the main design of his coming over;" and, as Mr. Wood relates, "complying with the men "then in power (which was much taken notice of by "the royal party) he obtained an order to be created "doctor of physick: which being done to his mind "(whereby he gained the ill-will of some of his "friends) he went into France again, having made a copy of verses on Oliver's death."

This is no favourable representation, yet even in this not much wrong can be discovered. How far he complied with the men in power, is to be enquired before he can be blamed. It is not said that he told them any secrets, or assisted them by intelligence or any other act. If he only promised to be quiet, that they in whose hands he was might free him from confinement, he did what no law of society prohibits.

The man whose miscarriage in a just cause has put him in the power of his enemy may, without any violation of his integrity, regain his liberty, or preserve his life, by a promise of neutrality: for, the stipulation gives the enemy nothing which he had not before; the neutrality of a captive may be always secured by his imprisonment or death. He that is at the disposal of another may not promise to aid him in any injurious act, because no power can compel active obedience. He may engage to do nothing, but not to do ill.

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 Ox. ford 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 experimen tal 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 predominance 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 heroick 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 appear

ed,* seemed unable to contest the palm with any other of the lettered nations.

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 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, ene"mies to the muses."

The neglect of the court was not his only mortifi-. cation; 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-street." It was treated on the stage

* 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.

†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,

with great severity, and was afterwards censured as a satire on the king's party.

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 expected 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 totally 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 choose the time of their re"storation 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 suspence, he published his pretensions and his discontent, in an ode called "The Compaint;" in which he styles himseif the melancholy Cowley. This met with the usual torture 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 ex"pected, while others for their money carried away "most places, he retired discontented into Surrey."

"He was now," says the courtly Sprat, "weary of "the vexations and formalities of an active condition. "He had been perplexed with a long compliance 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 made 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 flatte"ries of fortune."

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