and he was not permitted to enjoy that solitude, which was his greatest comfort in life, for more than seven or eight years at most. As he himself says with much pathos, "But God laughs at man who says to his soul, 'Take thine ease.' I met presently not only with many little encumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness (a new misfortune to me) as would have spoiled the happiness of an emperor as well as mine.” 1 That his abandonment of his active life in the political world, no less than the low-lying situation of Barn Elms, acted prejudicially on his health, is shown by the abundant testimonies of his friends, and there is no doubt that he suffered severely upon both accounts.

It cannot be said for a moment that Cowley was idle in his retirement-that was not in his nature; but the sudden change from the exciting and arduous office of a political agent appears to have affected him in spite of himself. He loved solitude; but he was too suddenly plunged into its cool retreat to be able to take that delight in its quiet which he had long promised himself. His life was thrown out of gear, if the modern simile may be pardoned, for a time, and his body was thus rendered more liable to the attacks of disease, which it might otherwise have more easily repelled. At Barn Elms a long and enfeebling fever fell upon him, which did much to permanently weaken his once robust constitution; nay, even at his healthier home in Chertsey, a similar fever attacked him, and the quiet years of his solitude were thus disturbed by pains utterly unknown to him during his more active life. The house in which this second fever laid hold of him was called the Porch House, and as far as situation and surroundings are concerned it would seem to have been sufficiently healthy, except for the neighbourhood of the river Thames. Like a brave, true man, he battled with his troubles, and it is but seldom that a hint of them appears in his works of this date. There is, perhaps, an unwonted tinge of sadness in his later poems and essays; but that may be quite as much due to advancing years, to solitude, and to ill-health, as to any other causes. Indeed, the influence of solitude is calculated to produce a gentle melancholy in a man of Cowley's contemplative disposition, which would be more likely to display itself in his writings than in his intercourse with his friends. 1 1 Essays in Prose and Verse (1680), p. 145.

Moreover, he was a bachelor, and had none of those companions, in the shape of wife and children, who do so much to cheer the declining years of life. It must not be supposed that he was unhappy; in his own way he was perhaps as happy as it was in his nature to be. But his happiness had a tone of reflective melancholy, which is the wonted mark of solitary and continuous students.

Cowley, however, remained true to the wish of his boyhood; and though he was often tempted to quit his calm retreat by promises of profitable employment, now that his faithful service was missed, he resisted all temptations, preferring to devote his remaining days to the study of physical science and to literary pursuits. At Chertsey he was often visited by a small and select band of carefully chosen friends, who shared in his delight in a country life, and who loved his genial, unaffected companionship. Hither came that true gentleman and famous diarist, John Evelyn,' who took the keenest interest in his scientific pursuits. Sprat,2 the florid poet, who afterwards became the jovial Bishop of Rochester, was a frequent and a welcome guest at the Porch House. He was at this time Prebendary of Westminster, and he rejoiced to spend happy hours with his friend in the fields and lanes along the Thames, and merrier moments during the night in vivacious conversation, not untinctured by strong ale and generous wine. Here he learned that just appreciation of the quiet poet, which is delightfully shown in the almost perfect character-sketch which he prefixed to the 1680 edition of his friend's works. Hither came Dr. John Harvey, whose brother had been Cowley's college friend, and of whose untimely end he has left an immortal elegy. The singular respect with which the poet was treated, and the unaffected reverence shown him by his friends, give an unmistakable testimony to his modest and lovable character. In such society did the poet spend the last years of his varied life amid the country scenes, which he loved with all his heart, and the wish of more than forty years was realized after many stormy vicissitudes of changeful fortune.

On the first of August, 1667, Evelyn received the "sad news of Mr. Cowley's death, that incomparable poet, my

1 Diary, May 14, 1663; January 2, 1664, and other dates.
Collected Works (1680), Life passim.

Idem, Miscellanies, p. 18.

very dear friend, and was greatly deplored."1 Two different causes are assigned to the somewhat premature event, of which the former must surely have been the real one. Having scarcely recovered from his second fever, "in the heat of the last summer, by staying too long amongst his labourers in the meadows, he was taken with a violent defluction and stoppage in his breast and throat. This he neglected as an ordinary cold, and refused to send for his usual physicians, till it was past all remedies; and so in the end, after a fortnight's sickness, it proved mortal to him."2 Pope preserves an ill-natured piece of gossip, which would seem to relate to some one else, and which appears to be an echo of one of Cowley's own stories about the said person. He asserts that while dining out with his friend Sprat, the two were so overcome in their cups that they could not find the way home, and so lay in the fields all night. He further says that so late as his own time Sprat was still called "the drunken dean" by the country folk. The fact Sprat did not become the Dean of Westminster, or anywhere else, until 1683, or seventeen years after Cowley's death, sheds an unmistakable light on the falsity of Pope's piece of gossip. Nor do the circumstances of the tale at all agree with the poet's character, who was by nature so abstemious that such a thing could never have happened to him. It may therefore be taken for granted that Sprat's account, which has the advantage of being contemporary, is correct in all essentials. When the King heard of Cowley's death, with that nice discrimination of character, which was one of the most respectable of his gifts, he is reported to have said, "Mr. Cowley hath not left a better man behind him in England." Nor could a juster epitaph have been uttered by any prince of any subject.

The universal respect in which the poet was held, both on account of his undoubted genius and his amiable virtues, was abundantly shown at his funeral. Evelyn' says: "Went to Mr. Cowley's funeral, whose corpse lay at Wallingford House; and was thence conveyed to Westminster Abbey in a hearse with six horses and all funeral decency, near an hundred coaches of noblemen and persons of quality following; among these all the wits of the

town, divers bishops and clergymen. He was interred next Geoffrey Chaucer and near Spenser. A goodly monument is since erected to his memory." No fitter resting-place could have been found for one who drew his boyish inspiration from Spenser, and whose genius sent forth the bards of his time in a new direction of poetic style and manner of expression. The Duke of Buckingham, his constant friend and admirer, was responsible for the erection of the stately, though by no means unconventional, monument over Cowley's dust. An engraving of this ponderous memorial of one of the most modest of men is to be found in the translation of his Books of Plants, which was published in 1700, and to which it must be confessed that it constitutes a somewhat forbidding frontispiece. The Latin epitaph was composed by the poet's firm friend and sturdy eulogist, Thomas Sprat; and for once, though his poetry be unduly magnified, little but justice has been done to the memory of the man. Cowley was a profound and exact scholar, a poet of much compass and undoubted originality in certain directions, both in his English and Latin poems, a loyalist of unblemished constancy, in spite of the malicious slanders of his jealous rivals, and a man of a deeply pious and stainless life. He was as modest as he was able, as capable of conducting public business as of enjoying the quiet of retirement, a friend of unwavering fidelity, and a companion of gentle and kindly though pungent wit. Such is the picture of the man which those who knew and loved him have left to posterity; while they may have unduly magnified the excellence of his poetry, they could not exaggerate the tender goodness of his life. The most popular poet of his day he lived and died; and now he maintains his chief reputation as the writer of singularly easy and nervous prose.

1

It becomes necessary then to estimate his place as a poet, and to explain, if possible, the reason of his unpopularity, or, to say the least, of his all but universal neglect to-day. Mr. Edmund Gosse, one of the most discerning critics of the literature of the seventeenth century, has set about this task; but though he has avowedly purposed to do justice to Cowley, he does not seem to have entirely succeeded in his honourable endeavour. The vigour of his essay, and the keenness of 1 Seventeenth Century Studies, sub "Cowley."