Manufcripts falling into unfkilful hands, were printed and published without his knowledge, and ⚫ before he could give them the last finishing ftrokes.' But that was not the cafe with his Tranflation of the Paftor Fido, which was published by himself, and applauded by fome of the best judges, particularly Sir John Denham, who after cenfuring fervile tranflators, thus goes on, A new and nobler way thou doft purfue ******** ABRAHAM COWLEY WAS the fon of a Grocer, and born in Lon don, in Fleet-ftreet, near the end of Chancery Lane, in the year 1618. His mother, by the intereft of her friends, procured him to be admitted a King's fcholar in Westminster school *; his early inclination to poetry was occafioned by reading accidentally Spencer's Fairy Queen, which, as he himself gives an account, ufed to lye in his mother's par lour, he knew not by what accident, for the read no books but thofe of devotion; the knights, giants, and monfters filled his imagination; he • read the whole over before he was 12 years old, and was made a poet, as immediately as a child ⚫ is made an eunuch.' In the 16th year of his age, being still at Weftminfter fchool, he published a collection of poems, Wood's Fatti Oxon, vol. ii. col. 120. under . under the title of Poetical Bloffoms, in which there are many things that befpeak a ripened genius, and a wit, rather manly than puerile. Mr. Cowley himself has given us a fpecimen in the latter end of an ode written when he was but 13 years of age. The beginning of it, fays he, is boyish, but of this part which I here fet down, if a ve< ry little were corrected, I should not be much afhamed of it.' It is indeed fo much fuperior to what might be expected from one of his years, that we shall fatisfy the reader's curiofity by infert. ing it here. IX. This only grant me, that my means may lye, Acquaintance I would have, but when 't depends X. Books should, not bufinefs, entertain the light My garden painted o'er With nature's hand, not art, and pleasures yield, Horace might envy in his Sabine field. XI. Thus would I double my life's fading space, And in this true delight, Thefe These unbought fports, that happy state, But boldly fay, each night, To-morrow let my fun his beams difplay, It is remarkable of Mr. Cowley, as he himself tells us, that he had this defect in his memory, that his teachers could never bring him to retain the ordinary rules of grammar, the want of which, however, he abundantly fupplied by an intimate acquaintance with the books themfelves, from whence those rules had been drawn. In 1636 he was removed to Trinity College in Cambridge, being elected a scholar of that house *. His exercifes of all kinds were highly applauded, with this peculiar praise, that they were fit, not only for the obfcurity of an academical life, but to have made their appearance on the true theatre of the world; and there he laid the designs, and formed the plans of moft of the mafculine, and excellent attempts he afterwards happily finished. In 1638 he published his Love's Riddle, written at the time of his being a scholar in Westminster school, and dedicated by a copy of verfes to Sir Kenelm Digby. He also wrote a Latin Comedy entitled Naufragium Joculare, or the Merry Shipwreck. The firft occafion of his entering into bufinefs, was, an elegy he wrote on the death of Mr. William Harvey, which introduced him to the acquaintance of Mr. John Harvey, the brother of his deceased friend, from whom he received many offices of kindness through the whole courfe of his life ||. In 1643, being then mafter of arts, he was, among many others, ejected his college, and the univerfity; whereupon, retiring to Oxford, he fettled Effay on himself. Sprat's Account of Cowley. in St. John's College, and that fame year, under the name of a scholar of Oxford, published a fatire entitled the Puritan and the Papift. His zeal in the Royal caufe, engaged him in the fervice of the King, and he was prefent in many of his Majefty's journies and expeditions; by this means he gained an acquaintance and familiarity with the perfonages of the court and of the gown, and particularly had the entire friendship of my lord Falkland, one of the principal fecretaries of state, During the heat of the civil war, he was fettled in the family of the earl of St. Alban's, and accompanied the Queen Mother, when she was obliged to retire into France. He was abfent from his native country, fays Wood, about ten years, during which time, he laboured in the affairs of the Royal Family, and bore part of the diftreffes inflicted upon the illuftrious Exiles for this purpofe he took feveral dangerous journies into Jerfey, Scotland, Flanders, Holland, and elsewhere, and was the principal inftrument in maintaining a correfpondence between the King and his Royal Confort, whofe letters he cyphered and decyphered with his own hand. 66 His poem called the Mistress was published at London 1-647, of which he himself says, "That it was compofed when he was very young. Poets (fays he) are fcarce thought free men of their company, without paying fome duties and obliging themselves to be true to love. Sooner or later they must all pass through that trial, "like fome Mahometan monks, who are bound "by their order once at least in their life, to "make a pilgrimage to Mecca. But we must not always make a judgment of their manners froin "their writings of this kind, as the Romanists "uncharitably do of Beza for a few lafcivious 66 "fonnets σε "fonnets compofed by him in his youth. It is not in this fenfe that poetry is faid to be a kind of painting: It is not the picture of the poet but of things, and perfons imagined by "him. He may be in his practice and difpofi"tion a philofopher, and yet sometimes fpeak with the foftnefs of an amorous Sappho. I "would not be mifunderstood, as if I affected fo much gravity as to be ashamed to be thought really in love. On the contrary, I cannot "have a good opinion of any man who is not at leaft capable of being fo. paffage extracIf there need What opinion Dr. Sprat had of Mr. Cowley's Miftrefs, appears by the following ted from his Life of Cowley. "ed any excufe to be made that his love-ver"fes took up fo great a fhare in his works, it "may be alledged that they were compofed when "he was very young; but it is a vain thing to "make any kind of apology for that fort of writing. If devout or virtuous men will fu"percilioufly forbid the minds of the young to "adorn thofe fubjects about which they are most "converfant, they would put them out of all capacity of performing graver matters, when they રર come to them for the exercife of all men's "wit must be always proper for their age, and 66 never too much above it, and by practice and "ufe in lighter arguments, they grow up at last "to excell in the moft weighty. I am not there. "fore afhamed to commend Mr. Cowley's Mif"trefs. I only except one or two expreffions, "which I wish I could have prevailed with those "that had the right of the other edition to have left out; but of all the reft, I dare boldly pronounce, that never yet was written fo much on a fubject fo delicate, that can lefs offend "the fevereft rules of morality. The whole paf"fion of love is intimately defcribed by all its "mighty |