If the Latin performances of Cowley and Milton be compared, for May I hold to be fuperior to both, the advantage seems to lie on the fide of Cowley. Milton is generally content to exprefs the thoughts of the ancients in their language; Cowley, without much lofs of purity or elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conceptions.

At the Restoration, after all the diligence of his long fervice, and with consciousness not only of the merit of fidelity, but of the dignity of great abilities, he naturally expected ample preferments; and, that he might not be forgotten by his own fault, wrote a Song of Triumph. But this was a time of fuch general hope, that great numbers were inevitably disappointed; and Cowley found his reward very tediously delayed. He had been promised by both Charles the first and second the Mastership of the Savoy ; but "he loft it," fays Wood, "by certain "perfons, enemies to the Mufes."

The neglect of the court was not his only mortification; having, by fuch alteration as he thought proper, fitted his old Comedy of the Guardian for the ftage, he produced it to the publick under the title of the "Cutter " of Coleman-ftreet." It was treated on the ftage with great feverity, and was afterwards cenfured as a fatire 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 fa"vour had been fhewn him, he received the

66

news of his ill fuccefs, not with fo much "firmness as might have been expected from fo great a man."

" fo

What firmness they expected, or what weakness Cowley difcovered, cannot be known. He that miffes 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,

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 reafon : it certainly has, in a very great degree, the power of fixing attention and exciting merriment. From the charge of difaffection he exculpates himself in his preface, by obferving how unlikely it is that, having followed the royal family through all their diftreffes," he should chuse "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 fatire on the royalists.

That he might fhorten this tedious fufpenfe, he published his pretenfions and his discontent, in an ode called "The Com"plaint;" in which he ftyles himself the melancholy Cowley. This met with the usual fortune of complaints, and feems to have excited more contempt than pity.

These unlucky incidents are brought, maliciously enough, together in fome stanzas, written about that time, on the choice of a laureat; a mode of fatire, by which, fince it was first introduced by Suckling, perhaps every generation of poets has been teazed:

Savoy-miffing 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 fay:
Nor would he have had, 'tis thought, a rebuke,
Unless he had done fome notable folly;
Writ verses unjustly in praise of Sam Tuke,
Or printed his pitiful Melancholy.

His vehement defire of retirement now

came again upon him. "Not finding," says the morofe Wood, "that preferment con"ferred upon him which he expected, while "others for their money carried away moft "places, he retired difcontented into Surσε rey."

"He was now," fays the courtly Sprat, weary of the vexations and formalities of

"an active condition. He had been perplexed "with a long compliance to foreign man86 ners. He was fatiated with the arts of a "court; which fort of life, though his vir❝ tue made it innocent to him, yet nothing "could make it quiet. Those were the "reasons that moved him to follow the vio"lent inclination of his own mind, which, "in the greatest throng of his former bufi"ness, had still called upon him, and re

66

prefented to him the true delights of foli"tary ftudies, of temperate pleasures, and a "moderate revenue below the malice and "flatteries of fortune."

So differently are things feen, and fo differently are they fhown; but actions are visible, though motives are fecret. Cowley certainly retired; firft to Barn-elms, and afterwards to Chertfey, in Surrey. He feems, however, to have loft part of his dread of the bum of men, He thought himself now safe enough from intrufion, without the defence of mountains and oceans; and, instead of feeking shelter in America, wifely went only fo far from the buftle of life as that he might eafily find his way back, when foli