ll. 9, 10. Cedars ...  Hyssop.  I Kings, iv. 33.

l. 12. one of the best Persons, Henry Jermyn, created Baron Jermyn, 1643, and Earl of St. Albans, 1660, chief officer of Henrietta Maria’s household in Paris:  see Clarendon, vol. iv, p. 312.  As secretary to Jermyn, Cowley ’cyphcr’d and decypher’d with his own hand, the greatest part of all the Letters that passed between their Majesties, and managed a vast Intelligence in many other parts:  which for some years together took up all his days, and two or three nights every week’ (Sprat).  He told Sprat that he intended to dedicate all his Essays to St. Albans ‘as a testimony of his entire respects to him’.

Page 201, l. 10. Well then.  The opening lines of ‘The Wish’, included in The Mistress, 1647 (ed. 1668, pp. 22-3).

ll. 14 ff.  At the instance of Jermyn, Cowley had been promised by both Charles I and Charles II the mastership of the Savoy Hospital, but the post was given in 1660 to Sheldon, and in 1663, on Sheldon’s promotion to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, to Henry Killigrew:  see W.J.  Loftie, Memorials of the Savoy, 1878, pp. 145 ff., and Wood, Fasti Oxonienses, ed.  Bliss, part I, col. 494.  In the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1661-2, p. 210, there is the statement of the case of Abraham Cowley, ’showing that the place may be held by a person not a divine, and that Cowley ... having seen all preferments given away, and his old University companions advanced before him, is put to great shame by missing this place’.  He is called ’Savoy missing Cowley’ in the Restoration Session of the Poets, printed in Poems on State Affairs.

l. 21. Thou, neither.  In the ode entitled ‘Destinie’, Pindarique Odes, 1656 (ed. 1668, p. 31, ’That neglected’).

l. 28. A Corps perdu, misprinted A Corps perdi, edd. 1668, 1669, A Corpus perdi, 1672, 1674, &c.; Perdue, Errata, 1668.

Page 202, l. 1.  St. Luke, xii. 16-21.

ll. 3-5.  ’Out of hast to be gone away from the Tumult and Noyse of the City, he had not prepar’d so healthful a situation in the Country, as he might have done, if he had made a more leasurable choice.  Of this he soon began to find the inconvenience at Barn Elms, where he was afflicted with a dangerous and lingring Fever....  Shortly after his removal to Chertsea [April 1665], he fell into another consuming Disease.  Having languish’d under this for some months, he seem’d to be pretty well cur’d of its ill Symptomes.  But in the heat of the last Summer [1667], by staying too long amongst his Laborers in the Medows, he was taken with a violent Defluxion, and Stoppage in his Breast, and Throat.  This he at first neglected as an ordinary Cold, and refus’d to send for his usual Physicians, till it was past all remedies; and so in the end after a fortnight sickness, it prov’d mortal to him’ (Sprat).  In the Latin life prefixed to Cowley’s Poemata Latina, 1668, Sprat is more specific:  ’Initio superioris Anni, inciderat in Morbum, quem Medici Diabeten appellant.’