Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 1.djvu/29

 without much loss of purity or elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conceptions.

At the Restoration, after all the diligence of his long service, and with consciousness not only of the merit of fidelity, but of the dignity of great abilities, he naturally expected ample preferments: and, that he might not be forgotten by his own fault, wrote a Song of Triumph.

But this was a time of such general hope, that great numbers were inevitably disappointed; and Cowley found his reward very tediously delayed. He had been promised, by both Charles the First and Second, the Mastership of the Savoy; "but he lost it," says Wood, "by certain persons, enemies to the Muses."

The neglect of the court was not his only mortification; having, by such alteration as he thought proper, fitted his old Comedy of the "Guardian" for the stage, he produced it under the title of "The Cutter of Coleman-street ." It