Lives of the Poets, vol 1 | Page 7

the restoration, after all the diligence of his long service, and with
consciousness not only of the merit of fidelity, but of the dignity of
great abilities, he naturally expected ample preferments; and, that he
might not be forgotten by his own fault, wrote a song of triumph. But
this was a time of such general hope, that great numbers were
inevitably disappointed; and Cowley found his reward very tediously
delayed. He had been promised, by both Charles the first and second,
the mastership of the Savoy, "but he lost it," says Wood, "by certain
persons, enemies to the muses."
The neglect of the court was not his only mortification; having by such
alteration, as he thought proper, fitted his old comedy of the Guardian
for the stage, he produced it[13], under the title of the Cutter of
Coleman street[14]. It was treated on the stage with great severity, and
was afterwards censured as a satire on the king's party.
Mr. Dryden, who went with Mr. Sprat to the first exhibition, related to
Mr. Dennis, "that, when they told Cowley how little favour had been
shown him, he received the news of his ill success, not with so much
firmness as might have been expected from so great a man."
What firmness they expected, or what weakness Cowley discovered,
cannot be known. He that misses his end will never be as much pleased
as he that attains it, even when he can impute no part of his failure to
himself; and when the end is to please the multitude, no man, perhaps,
has a right, in things admitting of gradation and comparison, to throw
the whole blame upon his judges, and totally to exclude diffidence and
shame by a haughty consciousness of his own excellence.
For the rejection of this play, it is difficult now to find the reason: it
certainly has, in a very great degree, the power of fixing attention and
exciting merriment. From the charge of disaffection he exculpates
himself, in his preface, by observing, how unlikely it is, that, having
followed the royal family through all their distresses, "he should choose

the time of their restoration to begin a quarrel with them." It appears,
however, from the Theatrical Register of Downes, the 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 laureate; 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 again upon him. "Not
finding," says the morose Wood, "that preferment conferred upon him
which he expected, while others for their money carried away most
places, he retired discontented into Surrey."
"He was now," says the courtly Sprat, "weary of the vexations and
formalities of an active condition. He had been perplexed with a long
compliance to foreign manners. He was satiated with the arts of a court;
which sort of life, though his virtue made it innocent to him, yet
nothing could make it quiet. Those were the reasons that moved him to
follow the violent inclination of his own mind, which, in the greatest
throng of his former business, had still called upon him, and
represented to him the true delights of solitary studies, of temperate
pleasures, and a moderate revenue below the malice and flatteries of
fortune."

So differently are things seen! and so differently are they shown! But
actions are visible, though motives are secret. Cowley certainly retired;
first to Barn-elms, and afterwards to Chertsey, in Surrey. He seems,
however, to have lost part of his dread of the "hum of men[15]." He
thought himself now safe enough from intrusion, without the defence
of mountains and oceans; and, instead of seeking shelter in America,
wisely went only so far from the bustle of life as that he might easily
find his way back, when solitude should grow tedious. His retreat was,
at first, but slenderly accommodated; yet he soon obtained, by the
interest of the earl of St. Alban's and the duke of Buckingham, such a
lease of the queen's lands, as afforded him an