Th' adorning thee with so much art

Is but a barbarous skill;

'Tis like the poisoning of a dart

Too apt before to kill.10

Often, I regret to say, he condescended to the fashionable licence of seventeenth-century speech and sentiment. In the extravagant, but more innocent, boisterousness of The Chronicle he pretends to a primacy for himself in its practical indulgence:

Margarita first possest,

If I remember well, my breast,
Margarita first of all;

But when awhile the wanton maid
With my restless heart had play'd,
Martha took the flying ball.

Martha soon did it resign

To the beauteous Catharine.
Beauteous Catharine gave place—
Though loth and angry she to part
With the possession of my heart—
To Eliza's conquering face.

Eliza to this hour might reign,
Had she not evil counsels ta'en.
Fundamental laws she broke,
And still new favourites she chose,
Till up in arms my passions rose,
And cast away her yoke.

Mary then, and gentle Anne,
Both to reign at once began ;
Alternately they sway'd;

And sometimes Mary was the fair,
And sometimes Anne the crown did wear,

And sometimes both I obey'd.

Another Mary then arose,

And did rigorous laws impose;
A mighty tyrant she!
Long, alas! should I have been
Under that iron-scepter'd queen,

Had not Rebecca set me free.

When fair Rebecca set me free,
'Twas then a golden time with me ;
But soon those pleasures fled;
For the gracious princess dy'd,
In her youth and beauty's pride,
And Judith reigned in her stead.

One month, three days, and half an hour,
Judith held the sovereign power :
Wondrous beautiful her face!
But so weak and small her wit,
That she to govern was unfit,

And so Susanna took her place.

But when Isabella came,

Arm'd with a resistless flame, And th' artillery of her eye; Whilst she proudly march'd about, Greater conquests to find out,

She beat out Susan by the bye.

But in her place I then obey'd
Black-ey'd Bess, her viceroy-maid;
To whom ensued a vacancy:
Thousand worse passions then possest
The interregnum of my breast ;
Bless me from such an anarchy !

Gentle Henrietta then,

And a third Mary next began ;
Then Joan, and Jane, and Audria;

And then a pretty Thomasine.
And then another Catharine,

And then a long et cetera.

But I will briefer with them be,
Since few of them were long with me.
An higher and a nobler strain
My present Emperess does claim,
Heleonora, first o' th' name;

Whom God grant long to reign! 11

The insolence, no less than the gaiety, of the confession is irresistible. But it need not overmuch shock serious readers who would like to respect the man as well as admire the poet. Both here and elsewhere in Cowley's amatory effusions, I find abundance of wit; I fail to discern passion. Disappointing as to some may be the theory, I am fully persuaded of the decorum of his life, loose as may be some of his verse. The freedom of his talk about women probably was little more than a flourish of intellectual audacity. By choice he pursued his amours in the free and safe communion of his own imagination, where he could

careless and unthoughtful, lying,

Hear the soft winds, above me flying,
With all their wanton boughs dispute,
And the more tuneful birds to both replying,
Nor be myself, too, mute.

For society he needed only that

A silver stream shall roll his waters near,
Gilt with the sunbeams here and there;
On whose enamel'd bank I'll walk,
And see how prettily they smile, and hear
How prettily they talk.12

If he permitted any material passion to divert his thoughts from life's incurable disease', it was gardening:

God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.13

When he meditates on womanly companionship; on

A mistress moderately fair,

And good as guardian-angels are,
Only belov'd, and loving me!

the wish, carefully toned down as it is, comes distinctly second to his primary longing:

Ah, yet, ere I descend to th' grave,

May I a small house and large garden have!

14

In praising a wife, he can devise no higher compliment than to discover

The fairest garden in her looks,
And in her mind the wisest books.1

15

I can read more satisfaction with the floral charms which are left to him, than despair at the departure of a beloved female guest, in the polite endeavour, in The Spring, to account for his garden's stolid complacency at its and his bereavement :

Though you be absent here, I needs must say
The trees as beauteous are, and flowers as gay
As ever they were wont to be;

Nay, the birds' rural musick too
Is as melodious and free,

As if they sung to pleasure you;

I saw a rose-bud ope this morn-I'll swear

The blushing morning open'd not more fair.16

Gardening itself he loved chiefly because it excused his retirement from affairs to hold converse with books and his own thoughts. His translations from the Classics demonstrate him an accomplished scholar, if not with Dryden's imperious strength of adaptation, richer in occasional felicities of diction; if without Milton's profound learning, more on a level than he with contemporary and applied science. For catching the spirit of Anacreon in particular, he has never had a superior; for instance:

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks, and gapes for drink again.
The plants suck in the earth, and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair ;
The sea itself-which one would think
Should have but little need of drink-
Drinks twice ten thousand rivers up,
So fill'd that they o'erflow the cup.
The busy sun-and one would guess
By 's drunken fiery face no less-
Drinks up the sea, and when he 's done,
The moon and stars drink up the sun :
They drink and dance by their own light;
They drink and revel all the night.
Nothing in nature's sober found,
But an eternal health goes round.
Fill up the bowl then, fill it high,
Fill up the glasses there; for why
Should every creature drink but I;

Why, man of morals, tell me why? 17

He was a master of prose, as of verse, and its reformer; at once metaphysician and orator. His essays, jewelled with rhyme, especially on gardens, charm still. History contains no written character more grandly outlined, and more deeply graven, than his of Protector Oliver. Ponderous he can be, both in Pindarics, and in Heroics; witness, his failures-On the late Civil war, as recognized by himself; the Resurrection; the noisy Plagues of Egypt; the Ecstasy; and the ambitious, and tiresomely respectable, Davideis. Often even in his finest efforts inspiration appears to be lagging. But we always may hope for a break. The Muse, after dozing in a dull grey twilight, suddenly awakes. The mist parts. Ears, eyes, and soul open in response to a burst of sunshine, and grave, rich harmony, as in the monody on Richard Crashaw. At any rate, his own period,