Lives of the Poets, vol 1 | Page 5

professes love ought to feel its power. Petrarch was a real
lover, and Laura doubtless deserved his tenderness. Of Cowley, we are
told by Barnes, who had means enough of information, that, whatever
he may talk of his own inflammability, and the variety of characters by
which his heart was divided, he, in reality, was in love but once, and

then never had resolution to tell his passion.
This consideration cannot but, abate, in some measure, the reader's
esteem for the work and the author. To love excellence is natural; it is
natural, likewise, for the lover to solicit reciprocal regard by an
elaborate display of his own qualifications. The desire of pleasing has,
in different men, produced actions of heroism, and effusions of wit; but
it seems as reasonable to appear the champion as the poet of an "airy
nothing," and to quarrel as to write for what Cowley might have
learned from his master Pindar, to call "the dream of a shadow."
It is surely not difficult, in the solitude of a college, or in the bustle of
the world, to find useful studies and serious employment. No man
needs to be so burdened with life, as to squander it in voluntary dreams
of fictitious occurrences. The man that sits down to suppose himself
charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind to an elaborate
purgation of his character from crimes which he was never within the
possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of his folly
from him who praises beauty which he never saw; complains of
jealousy which he never felt; supposes himself sometimes invited, and
sometimes forsaken; fatigues his fancy, and ransacks his memory, for
images which may exhibit the gaiety of hope, or the gloominess of
despair; and dresses his imaginary Chloris or Phyllis, sometimes in
flowers fading as her beauty, and sometimes in gems lasting as her
virtues.
At Paris, as secretary to lord Jermyn, he was 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 minds are more on things than words,
contribute no otherwise to his reputation, than as they show 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 something of
the rigour of their demands; the mutual necessity of an accord is visible,
the king is persuaded of it. And, to tell you the truth, which I take to be
an argument above all the rest, Virgil has told the same thing to that
purpose."
This expression from a secretary of the present time would be
considered as merely ludicrous, or, at most, as an ostentatious display
of scholarship; but the manners of that time were so tinged with
superstition, that I cannot but suspect Cowley of having consulted, on
this great occasion, the Virgilian lots[9], and to have given some credit
to the answer of his oracle.
Some years afterwards, "business," says Sprat, "passed of course into
other hands;" and Cowley, being no longer useful at Paris, was, in 1656,
sent back into England, that, "under pretence of privacy and retirement,
he might take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this
nation."
Soon after his return to London, he was seized by some messengers of
the usurping powers, who were sent out in quest of another man; and,
being examined, was put into confinement, from which he was not
dismissed without the security of a thousand pounds, given by Dr.
Scarborough.
This year he published his poems, with a preface, in which he seems to
have inserted something suppressed in subsequent editions, which was
interpreted to denote some relaxation of his loyalty. In this preface he
declares, that "his desire had been for some days past, and did still very
vehemently continue, to retire himself to some of the American
plantations, and to forsake this world for ever."
From the obloquy which the appearance of submission to the usurpers
brought upon him, his biographer has been very diligent to clear him,

and,