COWLEY. со T' HE Life of Cowley, notwithstanding the penury of English biography, has been written by Dr. Sprat, an author whose pregnancy of imagination and elegance of language have deservedly fet him high in the ranks of literature; but his zeal of friendship, or ambition of eloquence, has produced funeral oration rather than a history: he has given the character, not the life of Cowley; for he writes with fo little detail, that fcarcely any thing is diftinctly known, but all is fhewn confufed and enlarged through the mist of panegyrick. ABRAHAM COWLEY was born in the year one thousand fix hundred and eighteen. His father was a grocer, whose con dition Dr. Sprat conceals under the general appellation of a citizen; and, what would probably not have been lefs carefully fuppreffed, the omiffion of his name in the regifter of St. Dunstan's parish, gives reason to fufpect that his father was a fectary. Whoever he was, he died before the birth of his fon, and confequently left him to the care of his mother; whom Wood reprefents as ftruggling earneftly to procure him a literary education, and who, as the lived to the age of eighty, had her folicitude rewarded by seeing her fon eminent, and, I hope, by feeing him. fortunate, and partaking his profperity. We know at least, from Sprat's account, that he always acknowledged her care, and justly paid the dues of filial gratitude, In the window of his mother's apartment lay Spenfer's Fairy Queen; in which he very early took delight to read, till, by feeling the charms of verfe, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are the accidents, which, fometimes remembered, and perhaps fometimes forgotten, produce that particular defignation of mind, and propenfity for fome certain fcience or employment, ment, which is commonly called Genius. The true Genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to fome particular direction. The great Painter of the prefent age had the firft fondness for his art excited by the perufal of Richardfon's treatise. By his mother's folicitation he was admitted into Westminster-school, where he was foon diftinguished. He was wont, fays Sprat, to relate," That he had this defect in his memory at that time, that his teachers "never could bring it to retain the ordinary "rules of grammar." 66 This is an instance of the natural defire of man to propagate a wonder. It is furely very difficult to tell any thing as it was heard, when Sprat could not refrain from amplifying a commodious incident, though the book to which he prefixed his narrative contained its confutation. A memory admitting fome things, and rejecting others, an intellectual digeftion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refufed the hufks, had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provifion made by Nature for literary politeness. |