Cowleys Essays | Page 4

Georg.--O fortunatus nimium, etc. Horat. Epodon.
Beatus ille qui procul, etc. The Country Mouse Horace To Fuscus
Aristius. The Country Life The Garden Happy art thou whom God does
bless Of Greatness. Horace. Lib. 3. Ode 1. Odi profanum vulgus, etc.
Of Avarice. I admire, Maecenas, how it comes to pass, "Inclusam
Danaen turris ahenea." The Dangers of an Honest Man in much
Company. Claudian's Old Man of Verona. The Shortness of Life and

Uncertainty of Riches. Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must
quit, The Danger Of Procrastination. Mart. Lib. 5, Ep. 59. Mart. Lib. 2,
Ep. 90. Of Myself. Martial, Lib. 10, Ep. 47. Martial, Lib. 10. Ep. 96.
Epitaphium Vivi Auctoiris. Epitaph Of The Living Author. A Few
Notes.

INTRODUCTION.

Abraham Cowley was the son of Thomas Cowley, stationer, and citizen
of London in the parish of St. Michael le Querne, Cheapside. Thomas
Cowley signed his will on the 24th of July, 1618, and it was proved on
the 11th of the next month by his widow, Thomasine. He left six
children, Peter, Audrey, John, William, Katherine, and Thomas, with a
child unborn for whom the will made equal provision with the rest. The
seventh child, born before the end of the same year, was named
Abraham, and lived to take high place among the English Poets.
The calm spirit of Cowley's "Essays" was in all his life. As he tells us
in his Essay "On Myself," even when he was a very young boy at
school, instead of running about on holidays and playing with his
fellows, he was wont to steal from them and walk into the fields, either
alone with a book or with some one companion, if he could find any of
the same temper. He wrote verse when very young, and says, "I believe
I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such
chimes of verse as have never since left ringing there; for I remember
when I began to read and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to
lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself
never in her life read any book but of devotion), but there was wont to
lie Spenser's works." The delight in Spenser wakened all the music in
him, and in 1628, in his tenth year, he wrote a "Tragical Historie of
Pyramus and Thisbe."
In his twelfth year Cowley wrote another piece, also in sixteen stanzas,
with songs interspersed, which was placed first in the little volume of
Poetical Blossoms, by A. C., published in 1633. It was a little quarto of
thirty-two leaves, with a portrait of the author, taken at the age of
thirteen. This pamphlet, dedicated to the Dean of Westminster, and
with introductory verses by Cowley and two of his schoolfellows,
contained "Constantia and Philetus," with the "Pyramus and Thisbe,"

written earlier, and three pieces written later, namely, two Elegies and
"A Dream of Elysium." The inscription round the portrait describes
Cowley as a King's Scholar of Westminster School; and "Pyramus and
Thisbe" has a special dedication to the Head Master, Lambert
Osbalston. As schoolboy, Cowley tells us that he read the Latin authors,
but could not be made to learn grammar rules by rote. He was a
candidate at his school in 1636 for a scholarship at Cambridge, but was
not elected. In that year, however, he went to Cambridge and obtained a
scholarship at Trinity.
Cowley carried to Cambridge and extended there his reputation as boy
poet. In 1636 the "Poetical Blossoms" were re-issued with an appendix
of sixteen more pieces under the head of "Sylva." A third edition of the
"Poetical Blossoms" was printed in 1637--the year of Milton's
"Lycidas" and of Ben Johnson's death. Cowley had written a five-act
pastoral comedy, "Love's Riddle," while yet at school, and this was
published in 1638. In the same year, 1638, when Cowley's age was
twenty, a Latin comedy of his, "Naufragium Joculare," was acted by
men of his College, and in the same year printed, with a dedication to
Dr. Comber, Dean of Carlisle, who was Master of Trinity. The poet
Richard Crashaw, who was about two years older than Cowley, and,
having entered Pembroke Hall in 1632, became a Fellow of Peterhouse
in 1637, sent Cowley a June present of two unripe apricots with
pleasant verses of compliment on his own early ripeness, on his
April-Autumn:-
"Take them, and me, in them acknowledging How much my Summer
waits upon thy Spring."
Cowley was able afterwards to help Crashaw materially, and wrote
some lines upon his early death.
In 1639 Cowley took the degree of B.A. In 1640 he was chosen a
Minor Fellow, and in 1642 a Major Fellow, of Trinity, and