The International Monthly Magazine | Page 8

ten feet
into the highway, was taken down in the year 1786, for the safety and
accommodation of the public."
"Here the last accents flowed from Cowley's tongue."
[Illustration: STAIRCASE--COWLEY'S HOUSE.]
STAIRCASE--COWLEY'S HOUSE.
The appearance of the house from Guildford Street, is no index to its

size or conveniences.(2) You enter by a side gate, and the new front of
the dwelling is that of a comfortable and gentlemanly home; the old
part it is said was built in the reign of James the First, and what remains
is sufficiently quaint to bear out the legend; the old and new are much
mingled, and the modern part consists of one or two bed-rooms, a large
dining-room, and a drawing-room, commanding a delicious garden
view, the meanderings of the stream, and a long tract of luxuriant
meadows, terminated by the high and richly timbered ground of St.
Anne's Hill. A portion of the old stairway is preserved, the wood is not
as has been stated oak, but sweet chestnut. One of the rooms is panelled
with oak, and Cowley's study is a small closet-like chamber, the
window looking towards St. Anne's Hill. It is never difficult to imagine
a poet in a small chamber, particularly when his mind may imbibe
inspiration from so rich and lovely a landscape. Beside the group of
trees, beneath whose shadow the poet frequently sat, there is a horse
chestnut of such exceeding size and beauty, that it is worthy a
pilgrimage, and no lover of nature could look upon it without mingled
feelings of reverence and affection.
Here then amid such tranquil scenes, and such placid beauty, the
"melancholy Cowley," passed the later days of big anxious existence;
here we may fancy him receiving Evelyn and Denham, the poets and
men of letters of his troubled day, who found the disappointments of
courtly life more than their philosophy could endure. Here his friendly
biographer, Doctor Spratt, cheered his lonely hours.
Cowley was one of those fortunate bards who obtain fame and honor
during life. His learning was deep, his reading extensive, his
acquaintance with mankind large. "To him," says Denham in his
famous elegy,
"To him no author was unknown, Yet what he wrote was all his own."
His biographer adds, "There was nothing affected or singular in his
habit, or person, or gesture; he understood the forms of good breeding
enough to practise them without burdening himself or others." This
indeed is the perfection of good breeding and good sense.

Having obtained, as we have said, the Porch-house at Chertsey, his
mind dwelt with pleasure--a philosophic pleasure--upon the hereafter,
which he hoped for in this life of tranquillity, and the silent labor he so
dearly loved; but he was destined to prove the reality of his own poesy:
"Oh life, thou Nothing's younger brother, So like that one might take
one for the other."
The career of Abraham Cowley was never sullied by vice,(3) he was
loyal without being servile, and at once modest, independent and
sincere. His character is eloquently drawn by Doctor Spratt. "He
governed his passions with great moderation, his virtues were never
troublesome or uneasy to any, whatever he disliked in others he only
corrected by the silent reproof of a better practice."
He died at Chertsey on the 28th of July, 1667, and was interred in
Westminster Abbey. A throng of nobles followed him to his grave, and
the worthless king who had deserted him is reported to have said, that
Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind him in England.
It is said the body of Cowley was removed from Chertsey by water,
thus making the Thames he loved so well, the highway to his grave;
there is something highly poetic in this idea of a funeral, so still and
solemn, with the oars dropping noiselessly in the blue water. Pope in
allusion to it, says:
"What tears the river shed, When the sad pomp along his banks was
led;"
which rather inclines us to the belief, that in this, as in many other
instances, the poetic reading is not the true one,
"The muses oft in lands of vision play:"
but the fact that he died at Chertsey, as much respected as a man, as he
was admired as a poet, is certain, and his house is often visited by
strangers, who are permitted to see his favorite haunts by the kindness
of its proprietor, who honors the spot so hallowed by memories of "the

melancholy Cowley:"--he who considered and described "business" as:
"The contradiction to his fate."
But we must postpone our farther rambles for the present.
[Illustration: TREES ON ST ANNE'S HILL.]
TREES ON ST ANNE'S HILL.

Chertsey loses half its romantic interest by the intrusion of the
progressive agents of our time--our noisy time,