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Rh Osborne House (see ), built in 1845 after the property had been purchased by Queen Victoria, the church of St Mildred, Whippingham, lying a mile to the south.

COWL (through Fr. coule, from Lat. cucullus or cuculla, a covering; the word is found in various forms in most European languages, cf. Ger. Kugel or Kigel, Dutch kovel, Irish cochal or cochull; the ultimate origin may be the root kal, found in Lat. clam, secretly, and Gr., to hide, cover up), an outer garment worn by both sexes in the middle ages; a part of the monastic dress, hence the phrase “to take the cowl,” signifying entry upon the religious life. The cucullus worn by the early Egyptian anchorites was a hood covering the head and neck. Later generations lengthened the garment until it reached to the heels, and St Benedict issued a rule restricting its length to two cubits. Chapter 55 of his Institute prescribes the following dress in temperate climates: a cowl and tunic, thick in winter and thin in summer, with a scapular for working hours and shoes and stockings, all of simple material and make. In the 14th century the cowl and the frock were frequently confounded, but the council of Vienne defined the former as “a habit long and full without sleeves,” and the latter as “a long habit with long and wide sleeves.” While the term thus seems strictly to imply a hooded gown it is often applied to the hood alone. It is also used to describe a loose vestment worn over the frock in the winter season and during the night office.

The word “cowl” is also applied to a hood-shaped covering to a chimney or ventilating shaft, to help down-draught, and to clear the up-current of foul air (see ).

 COWLEY, ABRAHAM (1618–1667), English poet, was born in the city of London late in 1618. His father, a wealthy citizen, who died shortly before his birth, was a stationer. His mother was wholly given to works of devotion, but it happened that there lay in her parlour a copy of The Faery Queen. This became the favourite reading of her son, and he had twice devoured it all before he was sent to school. As early as 1628, that is, in his tenth year, he composed his Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe, an epical romance written in a six-line stanza, of his own invention. It is not too much to say that this work is the most astonishing feat of imaginative precocity on record; it is marked by no great faults of immaturity, and possesses constructive merits of a very high order. Two years later the child wrote another and still more ambitious poem, Constantia and Philetus, being sent about the same time to Westminster school. Here he displayed the most extraordinary mental precocity and versatility, and wrote in his thirteenth year yet another poem, the Elegy on the Death of Dudley, Lord Carlton. These three poems of considerable size, and some smaller ones, were collected in 1633, and published in a volume entitled Poetical Blossoms, dedicated to the head master of the school, and prefaced by many laudatory verses by schoolfellows. The author at once became famous, although he had not, even yet, completed his fifteenth year. His next composition was a pastoral comedy, entitled Love’s Riddle, a marvellous production for a boy of sixteen, airy, correct and harmonious in language, and rapid in movement. The style is not without resemblance to that of Randolph, whose earliest works, however, were at that time only just printed. In 1637 Cowley was elected into Trinity College, Cambridge, where he betook himself with enthusiasm to the study of all kinds of learning, and early distinguished himself as a ripe scholar. It was about this time that he composed his scriptural epic on the history of King David, one book of which still exists in the Latin original, the rest being superseded in favour of an English version in four books, called the Davideis, which he published a long time after. This his most grave and important work is remarkable as having suggested to Milton several points which he afterwards made use of. The epic, written in a very dreary and turgid manner, but in good rhymed heroic verse, deals with the adventures of King David from his boyhood to the smiting of Amalek by Saul, where it abruptly closes. In 1638 Love’s Riddle and a Latin comedy, the Naufragium Joculare, were printed, and in 1641 the passage of Prince Charles through Cambridge gave occasion to the production of another dramatic work, The Guardian, which was acted before the royal visitor with much success. During the civil war this play was privately performed at Dublin, but it was not printed till 1650. It is bright and amusing, in the style common to the “sons” of Ben Jonson, the university wits who wrote more for the closet than the public stage.

The learned quiet of the young poet’s life was broken up by the Civil War; he warmly espoused the royalist side. He became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, but was ejected by the Parliamentarians in 1643. He made his way to Oxford, where he enjoyed the friendship of Lord Falkland, and was tossed, in the tumult of affairs, into the personal confidence of the royal family itself. After the battle of Marston Moor he followed the queen to Paris, and the exile so commenced lasted twelve years. This period was spent almost entirely in the royal service, “bearing a share in the distresses of the royal family, or labouring in their affairs. To this purpose he performed several dangerous journeys into Jersey, Scotland, Flanders, Holland, or wherever else the king’s troubles required his attendance. But the chief testimony of his fidelity was the laborious service he underwent in maintaining the constant correspondence between the late king and the queen his wife. In that weighty trust he behaved himself with indefatigable integrity and unsuspected secrecy; for he ciphered and deciphered 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.” In spite of these labours he did not refrain from literary industry. During his exile he met with the works of Pindar, and determined to reproduce their lofty lyric passion in English. At the same time he occupied himself in writing a history of the Civil War, which he completed as far as the battle of Newbury, but unfortunately afterwards destroyed. In 1647 a collection of his love verses, entitled The Mistress, was published, and in the next year a volume of wretched satires, The Four Ages of England, was brought out under his name, with the composition of which he had nothing to do. In spite of the troubles of the times, so fatal to poetic fame, his reputation steadily increased, and when, on his return to England in 1656, he published a volume of his collected poetical works, he found himself without a rival in public esteem. This volume included the later works already mentioned, the Pindarique Odes, the Davideis, the Mistress and some Miscellanies. Among the latter are to be found Cowley’s most vital pieces. This section of his works opens with the famous aspiration— It contains elegies on Wotton, Vandyck, Falkland, William Hervey and Crashaw, the last two being among Cowley’s finest poems, brilliant, sonorous and original; the amusing ballad of The Chronicle, giving a fictitious catalogue of his supposed amours; various gnomic pieces; and some charming paraphrases from Anacreon. The Pindarique Odes contain weighty lines and passages, buried in irregular and inharmonious masses of moral verbiage. Not more than one or two are good throughout, but a full posy of beauties may easily be culled from them. The long cadences of the Alexandrines with which most of the strophes close, continued to echo in English poetry from Dryden down to Gray, but the Odes themselves, which were found to be obscure by the poet’s contemporaries, immediately fell into disesteem. The Mistress was the most popular poetic reading of the age, and is now the least read of all Cowley’s works. It was the last and most violent expression of the amatory affectation of the 17th century, an affectation which had been endurable in Donne and other early writers because it had been the vehicle of sincere emotion, but was unendurable in Cowley because in him it represented nothing but a perfunctory exercise, a mere exhibition of literary calisthenics. He appears to have been of a cold, or at least of a timid, disposition; in the face of these elaborately erotic volumes, we are told that to the end of his days he never summoned up courage to speak of love to a single woman in real life. The “Leonora” of The Chronicle is said to have been the