Lives of the Poets, vol 1 | Page 7

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 ample income[16].
By the lovers of virtue and of wit it will be solicitously asked, if he now was happy. Let them peruse one of his letters, accidentally preserved by Peck, which I recommend to the consideration of all that may, hereafter, pant for solitude.
"TO DR. THOMAS SPRAT.
"Chertsey, May 21, 1665.
"The first night that I came hither I caught so great a cold, with a defluxion of rheum, as made me keep my chamber ten days. And,