COWLEY’S LIFE AND WORKS.—­Abraham Cowley, the posthumous son of a grocer, was born in London, in the year 1618.  He is said to have been so precocious that he read Spenser with pleasure when he was twelve years old; and he published a volume of poems, entitled “Poetical Blossoms,” before he was fifteen.  After a preliminary education at Westminster school, he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1636, and while there he published, in 1638, two comedies, one in English, entitled Love’s Riddle, and one in Latin, Naufragium Joculare, or, The Merry Shipwreck.

When the troubles which culminated in the civil war began to convulse England, Cowley, who was a strong adherent of the king, was compelled to leave Cambridge; and we find him, when the war had fairly opened, at Oxford, where he was well received by the Royal party, in 1643.  He vindicated the justice of this reception by publishing in that year a satire called Puritan and Papist.  Upon the retirement of the queen to Paris, he was one of her suite, and as secretary to Viscount St. Albans he conducted the correspondence in cipher between the queen and her unfortunate husband.

He remained abroad during the civil war and the protectorate, returning with Charles II. in 1660.  “The Blessed Restoration” he celebrated in an ode with that title, and would seem to have thus established a claim to the king’s gratitude and bounty.  But he was mistaken.  Perhaps this led him to write a comedy, entitled The Cutter of Coleman Street, in which he severely censured the license and debaucheries of the court:  this made the arch-debauchee, the king himself, cold toward the poet, who at once issued A Complaint; but neither satire nor complaint helped him to the desired preferment.  He quitted London a disappointed man, and retired to the country, where he died on the 28th of July, 1667.

His poems bear the impress of the age in a remarkable degree.  His Mistress, or, Love Verses, and his other Anacreontics or paraphrases of Anacreon’s odes, were eminently to the taste of the luxurious and immoral court of Charles II.  His Davideis is an heroic poem on the troubles of King David.

His Poem on the Late Civil War, which was not published until 1679, twelve years after his death, is written in the interests of the monarchy.

His varied learning gave a wide range to his pen.  In 1661 appeared his Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy, which was followed in the next year by Two Books of Plants, which he increased to six books afterward—­devoting two to herbs, two to flowers, and two to trees.  If he does not appear in them to be profound in botanical researches, it was justly said by Dr. Johnson that in his mind “botany turned into poetry.”

His prose pen was as ready, versatile, and charming as his poetic pencil.  He produced discourses or essays on commonplace topics of general interest, such as myself; the shortness of life; the uncertainty of riches; the danger of procrastination, etc.  These are well written, in easy-flowing language, evincing his poetic nature, and many of them are more truly poetic than his metrical pieces.