COWLEY, Abraham, an eminent poet, was born at London in 1618. His father, who was a grocer, having died before he was born, his mother procured him admission as a king’s scholar at Westminster. His first inclination to poetry arose on his lighting on Spenser’s Fairy Queen, when he was but just able to read; and this inclination so far improved on him, that at thirteen he began to write several poems; a collection of which was published in 1613, when he was only fifteen. He has been represented as possessed of so bad a memory that his teachers could never bring him to retain the ordinary rules of grammar. But the fact was, as Dr Johnson notices, not that he could not learn or retain the rules, but that being able to perform his exercises without them, he spared himself the trouble. In 1636 he was elected a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, and removed to that university. Here he went through all his exercises with a remarkable degree of reputation; and at the same time indulged his poetical turn with great eagerness, as it appears that the greater part of his poems were written before he left that university. He had taken his degree of master of arts before 1643, when, in consequence of the turbulence of the times, he, among others, was ejected from the college; upon which, retiring to Oxford, he entered himself of St John’s College, and that very year, under the denomination of a Scholar of Oxford, published a satire called the Puritan and the Papist. It is apparent, however, that he did not remain very long at Oxford; lor his zeal in the royal cause having engaged him in the service of the king, who was very sensible of his abilities, and by whom he was frequently employed, he attended his majesty in many of his journeys and expeditions, and gained not only the esteem of his sovereign, but that of many other great personages, and in particular of Lord Falkland, one of the principal secretaries of state.

During the heat of the civil war he was settled in the Earl of St Albans’ family; and when the queen-mother was obliged to retire into France, he accompanied her thither, laboured strenuously in the affairs of the royal family, undertook several very dangerous journeys on their account, and was the principal instrument in maintaining an epistolary correspondence between the king and queen, whose letters he ciphered and deciphered with his own hand. His poems were published at London in 1647; and his comedy called The Guardian, afterwards altered and published under the title of Cutter of Coleman Street, in 1650. In 1656 it was thought proper by those on whom Mr Cowley depended, that he should come over into England, and, under pretence of privacy and retirement, should give notice of the posture of affairs in this nation. Upon his return he published a new edition of all his poems, consisting of four parts, viz. 1. Miscellanies; 2. The Mistress, or several copies of Love-verses; 3. Pindaric Odes, written in imitation of the style and manner of Pindar; 4. Davideis, a sacred poem of the troubles of David, in four books.

Soon after his arrival, however, he was seized by officers in quest of another gentleman of considerable note in the king’s party; but although he was taken through mistake, yet when the republicans found that all their attempts to bring him over to their party proved ineffectual, he was committed to a severe confinement, and it was with considerable difficulty that he obtained his liberty; when, having ventured back to France, he remained there, in his former situation, till near the time of the king’s return. During his stay in England he wrote his Two Boohs of Plants, published first in 1662; to which he afterwards added four books more; and the whole six, together with his other Latin poems, were printed at London in 1678. It appears by Mr Wood’s Pasti Oxonienses, that our poet was created doctor of physic at Oxford w on the 2d December 1657.

Soon after the restoration he became possessed of a competent estate, through the favour of his principal friends the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of St Albans; and being now upwards of forty years of age, he formed a resolution to pass the remainder of a life which had been a scene of tempest and tumult, in studious retirement. His eagerness to escape from the bustle of a court and city made him less careful than he might have been in the choice of a healthful habitation in the country; for which reason he found his solitude, from the beginning, suit less with the constitution of his body than with that of his mind. His first rural residence was at Barn Elms; a place which, lying low, and being near a large river, was subject to a variety of breezes from land and water, and liable in the winter to great inconvenience from the dampness of the soil. The consequence of this Mr Cowley too soon experienced, by being seized with a dangerous and lingering fever. On his recovery he removed to Chertsey, a situation not much more healthy, where he had not been long when he was seized with another consuming disease. Having languished under this for several months, he at length became convalescent, and seemed pretty well recovered from the bad symptoms, when one day in the heat of summer 1667, having staid too long in the fields to give some directions to his labourers, [7:7:436]he caught a severe cold, which was attended with a defluxion and stoppage in his breast; and for want of timely care, and by refusing advice till it was past remedy, he departed this life on the 28th of July 1667, being in the forty-ninth year of his age. On the 3d of August following he was interred in Westminster Abbey, near the ashes of Chaucer and his beloved Spenser. He was a man of a very amiable character, as well as of striking but very peculiar genius. King Charles II. on the news of his death, declared, that Mr Cowley had not left a better man behind him in England. A monument was erected to his memory by George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, in 1675.

Besides the works already mentioned, Mr Cowley wrote, A Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy; A Discourse by way of Vision, concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell; and several discourses by way of Essays, in Prose and Verse. Mr Cowley had designed also a discourse concerning Style, and a review of the Principles of the Primitive Christian Church, but he was prevented by death from carrying his intentions into effect. A spurious piece, entitled The Iron Age, was published‘under Mr Cowley’s name during his absence; and, in Mr Dryden’s Miscellaneous Poems, we find a poem on the Civil War, said to be written by our author, but not extant in any edition of his works. An edition of his works in three vols. 8vo was published by Dr Spratt, afterwards bishop of Rochester, who also prefixed to it an account of the author’s life.

The moral character of Mr Cowley appears, from every account of it, to have been excellent. “He is represented by Dr Spratt,” says Dr Johnson, “as the most amiable of mankind; and this posthumous praise may be safely credited, as it has never been contradicted by envy or by faction.” Speaking of him as a writer of prose, Dr Johnson observes, that “his style has a smooth and placid equality, which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far sought or hard laboured; but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness.” With regard to his poetry, Dr Johnson concludes his criticism by observing, “that he brought to his poetic labours a mind replete with learning, and that his passages are embellished with all the ornaments which .books could supply; that he was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode and the gaiety of the less; and he was qualified for sprightly sallies and for lofty flights; that he was among those who freed translation from servility, and, instead of following his author at a distance, walked by his side; and that though lie had left versification yet improveable, he left likewise from time to time such specimens of excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it.”