About the time when Oxford was furrendered to the parliament, he followed the Queen to Paris, where he became fecretary to the Lord Jermin, afterwards Earl of St. Albans, and was employed in fuch correspondence as the royal cause required, and particularly in cyphering and decyphering the letters that paffed be tween 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 fubfequent edition, that “ poets are scarce thought "freemen of their company without paying fome du"ties, or obliging themselves to be true to Love."

This obligation to amorous ditties owes, I believe, its original to the fame of Petrarch, who, in an age rude and uncultivated, by his tuneful homage to his Laura, refined the manners of the lettered world, and filled Europe, with love and poetry. But the basis of all excellence is truth: he that profeffes 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 refolution to tell his paffion.

This confideration cannot but abate, in fome meafure, the reader's esteem for the work and the author. To love excellence, is natural; it is natural likewise for the lover to folicit reciprocal regard by an elabo

Barnefii Anacreontem. Orig. edit.

rate

rate difplay of his own qualifications. The defire of pleafing has in different men produced actions of heroifm, and effufions 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 fhadow."

It is furely not difficult, in the folitude of a college, or in the bustle of the world, to find useful ftudios and ferious employment. No man needs to be fo burthened with life as to fquander it in voluntary dreams of fictitious occurrences. The man that fits down to fuppofe himself charged with treafon or peculation, and heats his mind to an elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never within the poffibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of his folly from him who praifes beauty which he never faw; complains of jealoufy which he never felt; fuppofes himfelf fometimes invited, and fometimes forfaken; fatigues his fancy, and ranfacks his memory, for images which may exhibit the gaiety of hope, or the gloominefs of despair, and dreffes his imaginary Chloris or Phyllis fometimes in flowers fading as her beauty, and fometimes in gems lafting as her virtue.

At Paris, as fecretary to Lord Jermin, he was engaged in tranfacting 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 preferved in "Mifcellanea Aulica," a collection of papers published by Brown. Thefe letters, being written like thofe of other men whofe mind is more

on

on things than words, contribute no otherwife to his reputation than as they fhew him to have been above the affectation of unfeasonable elegance, and to have known that the business of a statesman can be little forwarded by flowers of rhetorick.

One paffage, however, feems not unworthy of fome notice. Speaking of the Scotch treaty then in agitation :

"The Scotch treaty," fays he, "is the only thing "now in which we are vitally concerned; I am one of "the last hopers, and yet cannot now abftain from "believing, that an agreement will be made: all peo"ple upon the place incline to that of union. The "Scotch will moderate fomething of the rigour of "their demands; the mutual neceffity of an accord is "visible, the King is perfuaded of it. And to tell you the truth (which I take to be an argument above "all the reft) Virgil has told the fame thing to that purpose."

This expreffion from a fecretary of the prefent time, would be confidered as merely ludicrous, or at most as an oftentatious display of scholarship; but the manners of that time were fo tinged with fuperftition, that I cannot but fufpect Cowley of having confulted on this great occafion the Virgilian lots *, and to have given fome credit to the answer of his oracle.

Some

* Confulting the Virgilian Lots, Sortes Virgiliana, is a method of Divination by the opening of Virgil, and applying to the circumftances of the perufer the firft paffage in either of the two pages that he accidentally fixes his eye on. It is faid, that king Charles I. and lord Falkland, being in the Bodleian library, made this experiment of their future fortunes, and met with paffages equally ominous to each. That of the king was the following:

At

Some years afterwards, "business," "business," fays Sprat, "paffed of course into other hands;" and Cowley,

At bello audacis populi vexatus & armis,
Finibus extoris, complexu avulfus Iuli,
Auxilium imploret, videatque indigna fuorum
Funera, nec, cum fe fub leges pacis iniquæ
Tradiderit, regno aut optata luce fruatur:
Sed cadat ante diem, mediaque inhumatus arena.

being

Eneid, book IV. line 615.

Yet let a race untam'd, and haughty foes,
His peaceful entrance with dire arms oppose,
Opprefs'd with numbers in th' unequal field,
His men difcourag'd, and himself expell'd:
Let him for fuccour fue from place to place,
Torn from his fubjects and his fon's embrace.
First let him fee his friends in battle flain,
And their untimely fate lament in vain :
And when, at length, the cruel war fhall cease,
On hard conditions may he buy his peace;
Nor let him then enjoy fupreme command,
But fall untimely by fome hoftile hand,

And lie unbury'd on the barren fand.

Lord FALKLAND'S:

Non hæc, O Palla, dederas promiffa parenti,
Cautius ut fævo velles te credere Marti.

Haud ignarus eram, quantum nova gloria in armis,
Et prædulce decus primo certamine poflet.
Primiti juvenis miferæ, bellique propinqui
Dura rudimenta, & nulli exaudita Deorum,
Vota precefque incæ !

DRYDEN.

Eneid, book XI. line 152,

O Pallas, thou haft fail'd thy plighted word,
To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword;
I warn'd thee, but in vain, for well I knew
What perils youthful ardour would pursue ;
That boiling blood wou'd carry thee too far,
Young as thou wert to dangers raw, to war.

O curs

being no longer useful at Paris, was in 1656 fent back into England, that, "under pretence of privacy and "retirement, he might take occafion of giving notice "of the posture of things in this nation."

Soon after his return to London, he was feized by fome meffengers of the ufurping powers, who were fent out in queft of another man; and being examined, was put into confinement, from which he was not dismissed without the fecurity of a thousand pounds given by Dr. Scarborough.

This year he published his poems, with a preface, in which he feems to have inferted fomething, fuppreffed in fubfequent editions, which was interpreted to denote fome relaxation of his loyalty. In this preface he declares, that "his defire had been for fome "days past, and did ftill very vehemently continue, "to retire himself to fome of the American planta"tions, and to forfake this world for ever."

From the obloquy which the appearance of fubmiffion to the ufurpers brought upon him, his biographer has been very diligent to clear him, and indeed it does not seem to have leffened his reputation. His wish for retirement we can easily believe to be undiffembled; a man harraffed in one kingdom, and perfecuted in another, who, after a course of business that employed all his days and half his nights in cyphering and decyphering, comes to his own country and steps

O curft effay of arms, difaftrous doom,
Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come;
Hard elements of unaufpicious war,

Vain vows to Heav'n, and unavailing care.

DRYDEN.

Hoffman, in his Lexicon, gives a very fatisfactory account of this practice of feeking fates in books: and fays, that it was used by the Pagans, the Jewish Rabbins, and even the early Christians; the latter taking the New Testament for their oracle.