Page:Essays - Abraham Cowley (1886).djvu/11

Rh king's forces were defeated at Marston Moor. On the 14th of July the queen escaped from Falmouth to Brest. After some rest at the baths of Bourbon, she went on to Paris, where she was lodged in the Louvre, and well cared for. Jermyn was still her treasurer, her minister, and the friend for whose counsel she cared most.

It was into the service of this Lord Jermyn that Cowley had been introduced through his friendship with the Herveys. He went to Paris as Lord Jermyn's secretary, had charge of the queen's political correspondence, ciphered and deciphered letters between Queen Henrietta and King Charles, and was thus employed so actively under Lord Jermyn that his work filled all his days, and many of his nights. He was sent also on journeys to Jersey, Scotland, Flanders, Holland, or wherever else the king's troubles required his attendance. In 1647 Cowley published his volume of forty-four love poems, called "The Mistress." He was himself no gallant, neither paid court to ladies, nor married. His love poetry was hypothetical; and of his life at this time he says: "Though I was in a crowd of as good company as could be found anywhere; though I was in business of great and honourable trust; though I ate at the best table, and enjoyed the best convenience for present subsistence that ought to be desired by a man of my condition in banishment and public distresses, yet I could not abstain from renewing my old schoolboy's wish in a copy of verses to the same effect:- 'Well, then, I now do plainly see This busy world and I shall ne'er agree,' &c., and I never then proposed to myself any other advantage from his Majesty's happy restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the country, which I thought, in that case, I might easily have compassed, as well as some others who, with no