SOURCE: "The Theoretical Bases of Cowley's Later Poetry," in Studies in Philology, Vol. LXVI, No. 5, October, 1969, pp. 756-76.

In the essay reprinted below, Korshin examines Cowley's aesthetic theories, emphasizing his role as a transitional figure between the metaphysical poets and those of the Restoration and neoclassical period. Korshin focuses on several poems—including the odes "Of Wit," "To Mr. Hobbes," and "To the Royal Society"—as well as the preface to the Pindariques, where he perceives a trend away from the excesses of the metaphysical style toward the notion that the imagination must be tempered by judgment and intellect.

The position of Cowley as a poetic theorist in the middle and later seventeenth century is far more imposing than that of any other poet of the metaphysical school. This is true not only because of his popularity, which lasted, with occasional critical modifications, until past the middle of...