OF ABRAHAM COWLEY, ESQ. INCLUDING HIS ESSAYS IN PROSE AND VERSE. FORGOT HIS EPIC, NAY PINDARIC ART; BUT STILL WE LOVE THE LANGUAGE OF HIS HEART. POPE. LONDON: WILLIAM PICKERING, CHANCERY LANE. MDCCCXXVI. LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PREFACE. THE reader who can find any thing to please in calm and philosophic thoughts, expressed in easy and simple diction-any thing to admire in didactic compositions without pedantry, and moral reflexions without bitterness-will thank us for rendering more accessible to the world the prose compositions of COWLEY. They were, for the most part, written after his retirement, when he was weary of having "On long hopes, the Court's thin diet, fed;" and when his ambitious appetite was a little tamed down by so spare a regimen: they are, in consequence, embued with a portion of the melancholy which accompanied him in his retreat, and a |