and amongst others of Lord Falkland, whose notice caft a luftre on all to whom it was extended.

About the time when Oxford was furrendered to the parliament, he followed the Queen to Paris, where he became secretary to the Lord Jermin, afterwards Earl of St. Albans, and was employed in fuch correfpondence as the royal caufe required, and particularly in cyphering and decyphering 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 feveral years, it filled all his days and two or three nights in the week.

In the year 1647, his "Miftrefs" was published; for he imagined, as he declared in his preface to a fubfequent edition, that "poets are scarce thought freemen of their company without paying fome duties, or obliging themfelves to be true to Love."

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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 bafis of all excellence is truth: he that profeffes love ought to feel its power. Petrarch was a real lover, and Laura doubtlefs deserved his tenderness. Of Cowley, we are told by Barnes, who had means enough of informa tion, 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 refolution to tell his paffion.

This confideration cannot but abate, in fome measure, the reader's esteem for the work and the author. To love excellence, is natural; it is natural likewife for the lover to folicit reciprocal regard by an elaborate display of his own qualifications. The defire of pleafing has in different men produced actions of heroifm, and effufions of wit; but it seems as reasonable to appear the champion as the poet of an "airy nothing," and to quarrel as to write for what Cowley

2

might

might have learned from his master Pindar to call the "dream of a fhadow."

It is furely not difficult, in the folitude of a college, or in the bustle of the world, to find useful studies and ferious employment. No man needs to be fo burthened with life as to squander it in voluntary dreams of fictitious occurrences. The man that fits 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 faw, complains of jealousy which he never felt; supposes himself sometimes invited, and fometimes forfaken; fatigues his fancy, and ranfacks his memory, for images which may exhibit the gaiety of hope, or the gloominefs of defpair, and dreffes his imaginary Chloris or Phyllis sometimes in flowers fading as her beauty, and fometimes in gems lafting as her virtues.

At Paris, as fecretary to Lord Jermin, he was engaged in tranfacting things of real impor

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. Thefe letters, being written like those of other men whofe mind is more on things than words, contribute no otherwife to his tation than as they fhew him to have been above the affectation of unfeasonable elegance, and to have known that the business of a ftatefman can be little forwarded by flowers of rhetorick.

repu

One paffage, however, feems not unworthy of fome notice. Speaking of the Scotch

treaty then in agitation:

"The Scotch treaty," fays 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 an agreement will be made all people 66 upon the place incline to that of union. "The Scotch will moderate fomething of

"the

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"the rigour of their demands; the mutual neceffity of an accord is vifible, the King "is perfuaded of it. And to tell you the "truth (which I take to be an argument “above all the rest) Virgil has told the same thing to that purpose."

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This expreffion from a fecretary of the prefent time, would be confidered as merely ludicrous, or at moft as an oftentatious difplay of scholarship; but the manners of that time were so tinged with fuperftition, that I cannot but fufpect Cowley of having consulted on this great occasion the Virgilian lots, and to have given fome credit to the anfwer of his oracle.

Some years afterwards, "bufinefs," fays Sprat," paffed of courfe into other hands;" and Cowley, being no longer useful at Paris, was in 1656 fent back into England, that, "under pretence of privacy and retirement, ❝ he might take occafion of giving notice of "the posture of things in this nation,"

Soon after his return to London, he was feized by fome meffengers of the ufurping powers,