Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/564

532 picturesquely on gentle wooded slopes, and numerous villas adorn the vicinity. The towns owe their origin to two forts or castles, built on each side of the mouth of the Medina by Henry VIII. in 1540, for the defence of the coast ; the eastern one has disappeared, but the west castle still stands and is used as the club-house of the Yacht Squadron. The marine parade of West Cowes, and the public promenade called the Green, are close to the castle. Within the town the streets are narrow; there are no buildings of architectural pretensions ; and the place is quiet excepting in the yachting and bathing season from May to November. The resident population is chiefly employed in the ship-building yards, where yachts of the finest models and smaller naval vessels are built, and in ship provisioning. West Cowes is in railway communica tion with Newport and Ryde. Population (1871), 5730. On the opposite side of the Medina a broad carriage way leads to East Cowes Castle, a handsome edifice built by Nash, the favourite architect of George IV., in 1798, and immediately beyond it are the grounds surrounding Osborne House, the residence of the queen, completed in 1845. Norris Castle, on the rising ground above the shores of the Solent, built in 1799, and Whippingham Church on the right bank of the Medina, are other build ings of interest in the neighbourhood of East Cowes, the population of which in 1871 was 2058.  COWLEY, (1618-1667), the most popular English poet during the lifetime of Milton, was born in the city of London late in 1618. His father, a wealthy citizen, who died shortly before his birth, is believed to have been a grocer. 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 by con structive merits of a very high order. Two years later the child wrote another and still more ambitious poem, Con- stantia and Philetiis, being sent about the same time to Westminster School. Here he displayed the most extra ordinary mental precocity and versatility, and wrote in his thirteenth year yet another poem, the Elegy on the Death of Dudley f Lord Carlton. These three poems of consider able size, aiid 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, com pleted his fifteenth year. His next composition was a pastoral comedy, entitled Love s Riddle, a marvellous pro duction 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 1636 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 super seded in favour of an English version in four books, called the Davideis, which he published a long time after. This liis most grave and important work is remarkable as having suggested to Milton several points which he afterwards made use of. This 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 Loves Riddle and a Latin comedy, the Naufragium Jocidare, 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 tho style common to the &quot;sons &quot; of Ben Jonson, the university wits tvho 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. Cambridge became in 1643 too hot to hold him, and 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, &quot; 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 con stant 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.&quot; 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 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, 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—

What shall I do to be for ever known, And make the coming age my own?

It contains elegies on Wotton, Vandyck, Harvey, 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