more at home.  One of his first acts after his return was to publish his Collected Poems in a volume of four parts.  They appeared, on or about April 1656, from the shop of Humphrey Moseley, the publisher of Milton’s Poems ten years before, and still always dealing, as then, in the finer literature.  In a preface to the book Cowley distinctly avowed his intention to accept the inevitable, treat the controversy as at length determined against the Stuarts by the unaccountable will of God, and no longer persist in the ridiculous business of weaving laurels for the conquered.  He announced at the same time that he had not only excluded from the volume all his pieces of this last kind, but had even burnt the manuscripts.  In a copy of the book presented by him to the Bodleian Library at Oxford there is a “Pindarique Ode” in his own hand, dated June 26, 1656, breathing the same sentiment.  The book is supposed to be addressing the great Library; and, after congratulating itself on being admitted into such a glorious company without deserts of its own, but by mere predestination, it is made to say:—­

[Footnote 1:  Wood’s Ath.  III. 1207-1212, and 972.]

[Footnote 2:  Wood’s Ath.  III. 805-806.  In Davenant’s works (pp. 341-359 of folio edition of 1673) will be found, by those who are curious, a copy of "The First Day’s Entertainment at Rutland House by Declamations and Musick:  after the manner of the Ancients." It strikes one as very proper and very heavy, but it may have been a godsend to the Londoners after their long deprivation of theatrical entertainments.  The music was partly by Henry Lawes.]

[Footnote 3:  Cromwelliana, 154; Wood’s Fasti, I. 499; Godwin, IV. 240-241.  There is a MS. copy of Cleveland’s letter among the Thomason large quartos.  It is dated “Oct. 1657;” but that, I imagine, is an error.]

  “Ah! that my author had been tied, like me,
  To such a place and such a company,
  Instead of several countries, several men,
    And business which the Muses hate!"[1]

[Footnote 1:  Wood’s Fasti, II. 209-213; Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, with Cunningham’s Notes (1854), I. 7-12.  Cowley did receive the M.D. degree at Oxford, Dec. 2, 1657, and did remain in England through the rest of Cromwell’s Protectorate; and, though the Royalists welcomed him back after Cromwell’s death, his compliance was to be remembered against him.]

As the Muses were returning to England in full number, and ceasing to be so Stuartist as they had been, it was natural that there should be express celebrations of the Protectorate in their name.  There had been dedications of books to Cromwell, and applauses of him in prose and verse, from the time of his first great successes as a Parliamentary General; and such things had been increasing since, till they defied enumeration.  In the Protectorate they swarmed.  Matchless still among the tributes in verse was Milton’s single Sonnet of May 1652, “Cromwell, our