Page:Essays - Abraham Cowley (1886).djvu/14

12 Coleman Street." It was played for a week to a full audience, though some condemned it on the supposition it was a satire upon the king's party. Cowley certainly was too pure and thoughtful to be a fit associate for Charles II. and many of his friends. The help that came from the Earl of St. Albans and the Duke of Buckingham, was in the form of such a lease of the Queen's lands as gave the poet a sufficient income. Others who had served little were enriched; but he was set at ease, and sought no more. He then made his home by the Thames, first at Barn Elms, and afterwards at Chertsey, at which latter place he lived for about a year in the Porch House, that yet stands. Cowley was living at Chertsey when a July evening in damp meadows gave him a cold, of which he died within a fortnight. That was in the year 1667, year also of the death of Jeremy Taylor, and of the birth of Jonathan Swift.

Abraham Cowley is at his truest in these, written during the last seven years of his life. Their style is simple, and their thoughts are pure. They have, for their keynote, the happiness of one who loves true liberty in quiet possession of himself. When he turns to the Latins, his translations are all from those lines which would have dwelt most pleasantly upon a mind that to the last held by the devout wish expressed by himself in a poem of his early youth—(A Vote, in "Sylva"): Books should, not business, entertain the light, And sleep, as undisturbed as death, the night.
 * My house a cottage more

Than palace, and should fitting be For all my use, no luxury.
 * My garden, painted o'er

With Nature's hand, not Art's, should pleasures yield, Horace might envy in his Sabine field." H. M.