Page:The Works of Abraham Cowley - volume 1 (ed. Aikin) (1806).djvu/133

Rh the execution has been accidentally diverted) and does still vehemently continue, to retire myself to some of our American plantations, not to seek for gold, or enrich myself with the traffic of those parts (which is the end of most men that travel thither; so that of these Indies it is truer than it was of the former,

but to forsake this world for ever, with all the vanities and vexations of it, and to bury myself there in some obscure retreat (but not without the consolation of letters and philosophy)

as my former author speaks too, who has enticed me here, I know not how, into the pedantry of this heap of Latin sentences. And I think Dr. Donne's Sundyal in a grave is not more useless and ridiculous, than poetry would be in that retirement. As this therefore is in a true sense a kind of death to the Muses, and a real literal quitting of this world; so, methinks, I may make a just claim to the undoubted privilege of deceased poets, which is, to be read with more favour than the living;