Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/386

 and Queries, 4th ser. xi. 340, 371, 389, 429, 450, 530), who left 1,000l. to be divided among his children. His mother obtained his admission as a king's scholar at Westminster. He had already been drawn to poetry by reading a copy of the ‘Faërie Queen,’ which lay in his mother's parlour (Essay XI., ‘On Myself’). A collection of five poems called ‘Poetical Blossoms’ was published in 1633. A second edition, with the addition of ‘Sylva, or dyvers copies of verses,’ appeared in 1636, and a third in 1637. It is probable that no poet has given more remarkable proofs of precocity. He says in his preface that he wrote one of the pieces, the ‘Pyramus and Thisbe,’ at the age of ten, and the ‘Constantius and Philetus’ two years later. Cowley's masters could never force him to undertake the drudgery of learning his grammar, and excused him on the ground that his natural quickness made it needless. Perhaps his scholarship suffered, for he is said to have been an unsuccessful candidate for election to Cambridge in 1636. On 14 June 1637, however, he became a scholar of Trinity College (see extracts from College Register in J. R. Lumby's preface to Cowley's Prose Works, 1887). At the university he continued his poetical activity. In 1638 he published a pastoral drama called ‘Love's Riddle,’ written about the age of sixteen. On 2 Feb. 1638 his Latin comedy called ‘Naufragium Joculare’ was played before the university by members of Trinity College, and was published soon afterwards. An elegy on the death of an intimate friend, William Harvey, introduced him to Harvey's brother John, who rendered him many services, and through whom, or through Stephen Goffe, he became known to Lord St. Albans. He was B.A., 1639; ‘minor fellow,’ 30 Oct. 1640; and M.A., 1642. He appears never to have become a ‘major fellow’. When Prince Charles was passing through Cambridge in 1641, he was entertained (12 March) by a comedy, ‘The Guardian,’ hastily put together for the purpose by Cowley. It was not printed till 1650, when Cowley was out of England. Cowley (preface to ‘Cutter of Coleman Street’) says that it was several times acted privately during the suppression of the theatres. In 1658 he rewrote it, and it was performed as ‘The Cutter of Coleman Street’ on 16 Dec. 1661 at Lincoln's Inn Fields, when Pepys was present. Cowley published it in 1663. It was first taken (as he tells us) for an attack upon the ‘king's party,’ and, as Dryden told Dennis (dedication to ‘Comical Gallant’), was ‘barbarously treated,’ but afterwards succeeded tolerably. According to Downes it ran for ‘a whole week’ with a full house.

Cowley meanwhile continued to write poetry, composing many occasional pieces and great part of his ‘Davideis’ at the university. In 1643–4 he was ejected from Cambridge and retired to Oxford, whither his friend Crashaw had preceded him. A satire called ‘The Puritan and the Papist,’ published in the same year, and republished in a collection called ‘Wit and Loyalty revived’ (1682), is attributed to him by Wood, and was first added to his works by Johnson (it is also in ‘Somers Tracts,’ v. 480–7). At Oxford he settled in St. John's College, and here became intimate with Lord Falkland and other royalist leaders. He became a member of the family of Jermyn, afterwards earl of St. Albans, and in 1646 followed the queen to France. Here he found Crashaw in distress, and introduced him to the queen. Cowley was employed in various diplomatic services by the exiled court. He was sent on missions to Jersey, Holland, and elsewhere, and was afterwards employed in conducting a correspondence in cipher between Charles I and his wife. His work, we are told, occupied all his days and two or three nights a week. The collection of his poems called ‘The Mistress’ appeared in London in 1647. They became the favourite love poems of the age. Barnes (Anacreon, 1705, xxxii.) states that whatever Cowley may say in his poetry, he was never in love but once, and then had not the courage to avow his passion. Pope says that Cowley's only love was the Leonora of his ‘Chronicle’ who married Sprat's brother (, p. 286). In 1648 two satires, ‘The Four Ages of England, or the Iron Age,’ and ‘A Satyre against Separatists,’ were published in one volume under his name, but were disavowed by him in the preface to his ‘Poems’ (1656). Though he only mentions the ‘Iron Age,’ he doubtless refers to the whole volume.

In 1656 Cowley was sent to England, in order (as Sprat says) that he might obtain information while affecting compliance and wish for retirement. He was arrested by mistake for another person, but was only released upon bail for 1,000l., for which Dr. (afterwards Sir) [q. v.], to whom one of his odes is addressed, became security. He remained under bail until the Restoration. In the preface to his next book (1656) he declares his intention of abandoning poetry and ‘burying himself in some obscure retreat in America.’ A passage in which he intimates a disposition to acquiesce in the new order was omitted by Sprat from the preface when republished, and provoked, as Sprat admits, some disapproval from his own party This book is his most important