The mind of COWLEY was beautiful, but a querulous tenderness in his
nature breathes not only through his works, but influenced his habits
and his views of human affairs. His temper and his genius would have
opened to us, had not the strange decision of Sprat and Clifford
withdrawn that full correspondence of his heart which he had carried
on many years. These letters were suppressed because, as Bishop Sprat
acknowledges, "in this kind of prose Mr. Cowley was excellent! They
had a domestical plainness, and a peculiar kind of familiarity." And
then the florid writer runs off, that, "in letters, where the souls of
men should appear undressed, in that negligent habit they may be fit
to be seen by one or two in a chamber, but not to go abroad into the
streets." A false criticism: which not only has proved to be so since
their time by Mason's "Memoirs of Gray," but which these friends of
Cowley might have themselves perceived, if they had recollected that
the Letters of Cicero to Atticus form the most delightful chronicles
of the heart--and the most authentic memorials of the man. Peck
obtained one letter of Cowley's, preserved by Johnson, and it exhibits
a remarkable picture of the miseries of his poetical solitude. It is,
perhaps, not too late to inquire whether this correspondence was
destroyed as well as suppressed? Would Sprat and Clifford have burned
what they have told us they so much admired?[27]
Fortunately for our literary sympathy, the fatal error of these
fastidious critics has been in some degree repaired by the admirable
genius himself whom they have injured. When Cowley retreated from
society, he determined to draw up an apology for his conduct, and to
have dedicated it to his patron, Lord St. Albans. His death
interrupted the entire design; but his Essays, which Pope so finely
calls "the language of his heart," are evidently parts of these
precious Confessions. All of Cowley's tenderest and undisguised
feelings have therefore not perished. These Essays now form a species
of composition in our language, a mixture of prose and verse--the man
with the poet--the self-painter has sat to himself, and, with the
utmost simplicity, has copied out the image of his soul.
Why has this poet twice called himself _the melancholy Cowley_? He
employed no poetical _cheville_[28] for the metre of a verse which his
own feelings inspired.
Cowley, at the beginning of the Civil War, joined the Royalists at
Oxford; followed the queen to Paris; yielded his days and his nights
to an employment of the highest confidence, that of deciphering the
royal correspondence; he transacted their business, and, almost
divorcing himself from his neglected muse, he yielded up for them the
tranquillity so necessary to the existence of a poet. From his
earliest days he tells us how the poetic affections had stamped
themselves on his heart, "like letters cut into the bark of a young
tree, which, with the tree, will grow proportionably."