distinguished himself by the warmth of his loyalty, and the elegance of his conversation, that he gained the kindness and confidence of those who attended the King, and amongst others of Lord Falkland, whose notice cast a lustre on all to whom it was extended. About the time when Oxford was surrendered to the Parliament, he followed the Queen to Paris, where he became secretary to the Lord Jermyn, afterwards Earl of St. Alban's, and was employed in such correspondence as the royal cause required, and particularly in ciphering and deciphering the letters that passed between 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 subsequent edition, that "poets are scarce thought freemen of their company without paying some duties, 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 professes love ought to feel its power. Petrarch was a real lover, and Laura doubtless deserved his tenderness. Of Cowley, we are told by Barnes, 13 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 resolution to tell his passion. This consideration cannot but abate, in some measure, the reader's esteem for the work and the author. To love excellence is natural; it is natural likewise for the lover to solicit reciprocal regard by an elaborate display of his own qualifications. The desire of pleasing has in different men produced actions of heroism, and effusions of wit; but it seems as reasonable to appear the champion as the poet of an "airy no13 Barnesii Anacreontem.-JOHNSON. Cambridge, 12mo., 1705. thing," and to quarrel as to write for what Cowley might have learned from his master Pindar to call, the "dream of a shadow." It is surely not difficult, in the solitude of a college, or in the bustle of the world, to find useful studies and serious employment. No man needs to be so burthened with life as to squander it in voluntary dreams of fictitious occurrences. The man that sits down to suppose himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind to an elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of his folly from him who praises beauty which he never saw, complains of jealousy which he never felt, supposes himself sometimes invited and sometimes forsaken, fatigues his fancy and ransacks his memory for images which may exhibit the gaiety of hope or the gloominess of despair, and dresses his imaginary Chloris or Phyllis sometimes in flowers fading as her beauty, and sometimes in gems lasting as her virtues. At Paris, as secretary to Lord Jermyn, he was engaged in transacting 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 preserved in Miscellanea Aulica,' a collection of papers published by Brown. These letters, being written like those of other men whose minds are more on things than words, contribute no otherwise to his reputation than as they show him to have been above the affectation of unseasonable elegance, and to have known that the business of a statesman can be little forwarded by flowers of rhetoric. One passage, however, seems not unworthy of some notice. Speaking of the Scotch treaty then in agitation :— "The Scotch treaty," says he, "is the only thing now in which we are vitally concerned; I am one of the last hopers, and yet cannot now abstain from believing, that the agreement will be made all people upon the place incline to that opinion. The Scotch will moderate somewhat of the rigour of their de 1618-1667. THE VIRGILIAN LOTS. mands; the mutual necessity of an accord is visible, the King is persuaded of it, and all mankind, but two or three mighty tender consciences about him. And to tell you the truth (which I take to be an argument above all the rest), Virgil has told me something to that purpose.' This expression from a secretary of the present time would be considered as merely ludicrous, or at most as an ostentatious display of scholarship; but the manners of that time were so tinged with superstition, that I cannot but suspect Cowley of having consulted on this great occasion the Virgilian lots, and to have given some credit to the answer of his oracle.11 Some years afterwards, "business," says Sprat, "passed of course into other hands;" and Cowley, being no longer useful 14 Wee proceeded to mention the King's [Charles I.] readinesse in foretelling events, and from this to his Sors Virgiliana, which hapned at Oxford in the time of the late war, and whilst the parliament sate there, viz. that his majesty being tired out with businesse and afflictions, resolv'd to recreate himselfe with some young noblemen who were students there, by pricking in Virgil for his fortune, which he did, and lighted upon Dido's curse to Æneas when hee left her. At bello audacis populi vexatus et armis, Sed cadat ante diem, mediâque inhumatus arenâ. Eneid, IV. 615-620. Whereat his majesty seem'd much concern'd, but sent it by Mr. Jermyn, now Earl of St. Alban's, to Mr. Cowley, then student of Christchurch, to translate them into English, with a command not to acquaint him whose sors it was, which Mr. Cowley did thus: 6 By a bold people's stubborn arms opprest, And on an open stage unburied lie. Diary of Dr. Edward Lake, under 29th Jan. 1677-8. The known story' of Mr. Cowley and the Sortes Virgilianæ is alluded to by Dr. Knightly Chetwood, in his 'Life of Virgil,' prefixed to Dryden's translation, and commonly (but erroneously) attributed to Walsh. at Paris, was in 1656 sent back into England, that, "under pretence of privacy and retirement, he might take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this nation." Soon after his return to London, he was seized by some messengers of the usurping powers, who were sent out in quest of another man; and, being examined, was put into confinement, from which he was not dismissed without the security of a thousand pounds given by Dr. Scarborough.15 This year [1656] he published his Poems, with a preface, in which he seems to have inserted something, suppressed in subsequent editions, which was interpreted to denote some relaxation of his loyalty.16 In this preface he declares, that "his desire had been for some years past, and did still vehemently continue, to retire himself to some of the American plantations, and to forsake this world for ever." From the obloquy which the appearance of submission to the usurpers brought upon him, his biographer has been very diligent to clear him, and indeed it does not seem to have lessened his reputation. His wish for retirement we can easily believe to be undissembled: a man harassed in one kingdom, and persecuted in another, who, after a course of business that employed all his days and half his nights in ciphering and deciphering, comes to his own country and steps into a prison, will be willing enough to retire to some place of quiet and of safety. Yet let 15 To Dr. Scarborough one of Cowley's Pindaric Odes is addressed. He is said to have written a poem on Cowley's death. 16 This suppressed something (as Johnson calls it) is nearly a folio page of the Preface to his Poems, 1656, and has not been reproduced in any edition of Cowley, or seen, as I suspect, by any of his biographers since Sprat. He gives in to the times, and is content to live under the existing government. It is ridiculous, he says, to make laurels for the conquered when the event of battle and the unaccountable will of God has determined the controversy. The war of the pen ceased with the war of the sword. He desires, "like Themistocles," the art of oblivion, and would have it accounted no less unlawful to rip up old wounds than to give new ones. It is this, he says, that has made him not only abstain from printing anything of this kind, but to burn the very copies, and inflict a severer punishment on them himself than perhaps he tells us the most rigid officer of state would have thought that they deserved. Three books of the Civil War, reaching as far as the first battle of Newbury, perished thus voluntarily on the part of the complying Cowley. At Newbury Lord Falkland fell. 1618-1667. HIS POLITICAL COMPLIANCES. 11 neither our reverence for a genius, nor our pity for a sufferer, dispose us to forget that, if his activity was virtue, his retreat was cowardice.17 He then took upon himself the character of physician, still, according to Sprat, with intention "to dissemble the main design of his coming over;" and, as Mr. Wood relates, "complying with some of the men then in power (which was much taken notice of by the royal party), he obtained an order to be created doctor of physic, which being done to his mind (whereby he gained the ill-will of some of his friends), he went into France again, having made a copy of verses on Oliver's death." This is no favourable representation, yet even in this not much wrong can be discovered. How far he complied with the men in power is to be inquired before he can be blamed. It is not said that he told them any secrets, or assisted them by intelligence, or any other act. If he only promised to be quiet, that they in whose hands he was might free him from confinement, he did what no law of society prohibits. The man whose miscarriage in a just cause has put him in the power of his enemy may, without any violation of his integrity, regain his liberty or preserve his life by a promise of neutrality for the stipulation gives the enemy nothing which he had not before; the neutrality of a captive may be always secured by his imprisonment or death. He that is at the disposal of another may not promise to aid him in any injurious act, because no power can compel active obedience. He may engage to do nothing, but not to do ill. There is reason to think that Cowley promised little. It does not appear that his compliance gained him confidence enough to be trusted without security, for the bond of his bail was never cancelled; nor that it made him think himself secure, for at that dissolution of government which followed the death of Oliver he returned into France, where he resumed his former station, and stayed till the Restoration. "He continued," says his biographer, "under these bonds 17 Whoever wishes to see Johnson's enlarged and earlier comment on this printed desire of Cowley's may see it in the Rambler, No. 6. |