Page:The Works of Abraham Cowley - volume 1 (ed. Aikin) (1806).djvu/37

Rh prompter, to have been popularly considered as a satire on the royalists.

That he might shorten this tedious suspense, he published his pretensions and his discontent, in an ode called "The Complaint;" in which he styles himself the melancholy Cowley. This met with the usual fortune of complaints, and seems to have excited more contempt than pity.

These unlucky incidents are brought, maliciously enough, together in some stanzas, written about that time, on the choice of a laureat; a mode of satire, by which, since it was first introduced by Suckling, perhaps every generation of poets has been teased:

Savoy-missing Cowley came into the court,
 * Making apologies for his bad play;

Every one gave him so good a report,
 * That Apollo gave heed to all he could say:

Nor would he have had, 'tis thought, a rebuke,
 * Unless he had done some notable folly;

Writ verses unjustly in praise of Sam Tuke,
 * Or printed his pitiful Melancholy.

His vehement desire of retirement now came