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enemy to all constraint, that his master never "could prevail on him to learn the rules without "book." He does not tell that he could not learn the rules, but that, being able to perform his exercises without them, and being an "enemy "to constraint," he spared himself the labour.

Among the English poets, Cowley, Milton, and Pope, might be said " to lisp in numbers ;" and have given such early proofs, not only of powers of language, but of comprehension of things, as to more tardy minds seems scarcely credible. But of the learned puerilities of Cowley there is no doubt, since a volume of his poems was not only written but printed in his thirteenth year*; containing, with other poetical compositions, "The tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe," written when he was ten years old; and “ Con· stantia and Philetus," written two years after.

While he was yet at school he produced a comedy called "Love's Riddle," though it was

*This is a mistake, as Cowley was at that time (1633) fifteen years of age.

not published till he had been some time at Cambridge. This comedy is of the pastoral kind, which requires no acquaintance with the living world, and therefore the time at which it was composed adds little to the wonders of Cowley's minority.

In 1636 he was removed to Cambridge, where he continued his studies with great intenseness; for he is said to have written, while he was yet a young student, the greater part of his "Davideis ;" a work of which the materials could not have been collected without the study of many years, but by a mind of the greatest vigour and activity.

Two years after his settlement at Cambridge he published "Love's Riddle," with a poetical dedication to sir Kenelm Digby; of whose acquaintance all his contemporaries seem to have been ambitious; and "Naufragium Joculare," a comedy written in Latin, but without due attention to the ancient models; for it is not loose verse, but mere prose. It was printed with a dedication in verse to Dr. Comber, master of the college; but having neither the facility of a popular nor the accuracy

of a learned work, it seems to be now universally neglected.

At the beginning of the civil war, as the prince passed through Cambridge in his way to York, he was entertained with a representation of "The Guardian," a comedy, which Cowley says was neither written nor acted, but rough-drawn by him, and repeated by the scholars. That this comedy was printed during his absence from his country, he appears to have considered as injurious to his reputation; though, during the suppression of the theatres, it was sometimes privately acted with sufficient approbation.

In 1643, being now master of arts, he was, by the prevalence of the parliament, ejected from Cambridge, and sheltered himself at St. John's college in Oxford; where, as is said by Wood, he published a satire, called "The Puritan and Papist," which was only inserted in the last collection of his works; and so distinguished himself by the warmth of his loyalty, and the elegance of his conversation, that he gained the kindness and confidence of those who attended

the king, and amongst others of lord Falkland, whose notice cast a lustre on all to whom it was extended.

About the time when Oxford was surrendered to the parliament, he followed the queen to Paris, where he became secretary to the lord Jermyn, afterwards earl of St. Albans, and was employed in such correspondence as the royal cause required, and particularly in cyphering and decyphering the letters that passed between the king and queen; an employment of the highest confidence and honour. So wide was his province, of intelligence, that, for several years, it filled all his days and two or three nights in the week.

In the year 1647 his "Mistress" was published; for he imagined, as he declared in his preface to a subsequent edition, that " poets are "scarce thought freemen of their company "without paying some duties, or obliging them"selves to be true to Love."

This obligation to amorous ditties owes, I believe, its original to the fame of Petrarch, who,

engaged in transacting things of real importance with real men and real women, and at that time did not much employ his thoughts upon phantoms of gallantry. Some of his letters to Mr. Bennet, afterwards earl of Arlington, from April to December in 1650, are preserved in "Miscellanea Aulica," a collection of papers published by Brown. These letters, being written like those of other men whose mind is more on things than words, contribute no other wise to his reputation than as they shew him to have been above the affectation of unseasonable elegance, and to have known that the business of a statesman can be little forwarded by flowers of rhetorick.

One passage, however, seems not unworthy of some notice. Speaking of the Scotch treaty then in agitation:

"The Scotch treaty," says he, "is the only "thing now in which we are vitally concerned; "I am one of the last hopers, and yet cannot "now abstain from believing that an agreement "will be made: all people upon the place incline "to that of union. The Scotch will moderate

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