"I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life the nearer I came to
it--that beauty which I did not fall in love with when, for aught I
knew, it was real, was not like to bewitch or entice me when I saw it
was adulterate. I met with several great persons whom I liked very
well, but could not perceive that any part of their greatness was to
be liked or desired. I was in a crowd of good company, in business of
great and honourable trust; I eat at the best table, and enjoyed the
best conveniences that ought to be desired by a man of my condition;
yet I could not abstain from renewing my old schoolboy's wish, in a
copy of verses to the same effect:--
Well then! I now do plainly see,
This busie world and I shall ne'er agree!"
After several years' absence from his native country, at a most
critical period, he was sent over to mix with that trusty band of
loyalists, who, in secrecy and in silence, were devoting themselves to
the royal cause. Cowley was seized on by the ruling powers. At this
moment he published a preface to his works, which some of his party
interpreted as a relaxation of his loyalty. He has been fully
defended. Cowley, with all his delicacy of temper, wished sincerely to
retire from all parties; and saw enough among the fiery zealots of his
own, to grow disgusted even with Royalists.
His wish for retirement has been half censured as cowardice by
Johnson; but there was a tenderness of feeling which had ill-formed
Cowley for the cunning of party intriguers, and the company of little
villains. About this time he might have truly distinguished himself as
"The melancholy Cowley."
I am only tracing his literary history for the purpose of this work:
but I cannot pass without noticing the fact, that this abused man,
whom his enemies were calumniating, was at this moment, under the
disguise of a doctor of physic, occupied by the novel studies of
botany and medicine; and as all science in the mind of the poet
naturally becomes poetry, he composed his books on plants in Latin
verse.
At length came the Restoration, which the poet zealously celebrated in
his "Ode" on that occasion. Both Charles the First and Second had
promised to reward his fidelity with the mastership of the Savoy; but,
Wood says, "he lost it by certain persons enemies of the muses." Wood
has said no more; and none of Cowley's biographers have thrown any
light on the circumstance: perhaps we may discover this literary
calamity.
That Cowley caught no warmth from that promised sunshine which the
new monarch was to scatter in prodigal gaiety, has been distinctly
told by the poet himself; his muse, in "The Complaint," having
reproached him thus:--
Thou young prodigal, who didst so loosely waste
Of all thy youthful years, the good estate--
Thou changeling then, bewitch'd with noise and show,
Wouldst into courts and cities from me go--
Go, renegado, cast up thy account--
Behold the public storm is spent at last;
The sovereign is toss'd at sea no more,
And thou, with all the noble company,
Art got at last to shore--
But whilst thy fellow-voyagers I see,
All march'd up to possess the promis'd land;
Thou still alone (alas!) dost gaping stand
Upon the naked beach, upon the barren sand.
But neglect was not all Cowley had to endure; the royal party seemed
disposed to calumniate him. When Cowley was young he had hastily
composed the comedy of "The Guardian;" a piece which served the cause
of loyalty. After the Restoration, he rewrote it under the title of
"Cutter of Coleman Street;" a comedy which may still be read with
equal curiosity and interest: a spirited picture of the peculiar
characters which appeared at the Revolution. It was not only ill
received by a faction, but by those vermin of a new court, who,
without merit themselves, put in their claims, by crying down those
who, with great merit, are not in favour. All these to a man accused
the author of having written a satire against the king's party. And
this wretched party prevailed, too long for the author's repose, but
not for his fame.[29] Many years afterwards this comedy became
popular. Dryden, who was present at the representation, tells us that
Cowley "received the news of his ill success not with so much firmness
as might have been expected from so great a man." Cowley was in truth
a great man, and a greatly injured man. His sensibility and delicacy
of temper were of another texture than Dryden's. What at that moment
did Cowley experience, when he beheld himself neglected, calumniated,
and, in his last appeal to public favour, found himself still a victim
to a vile faction, who, to court their common master, were trampling
on their honest brother?
We shall find an unbroken chain of evidence, clearly demonstrating the
agony of his literary feelings. The cynical Wood tells us that, "not
finding that preferment he expected, while others for their money
carried away most places, he retired discontented into Surrey." And
his panegyrist, Sprat, describes him as "weary of the vexations and
formalities of an active condition--he had been perplexed with a long
compliance with foreign manners. He was satiated with the arts of a
court, which sort of life, though his virtue made it innocent to him,
yet nothing could make it quiet. These were the reasons that moved him
to follow the violent inclination of his own mind," &c. I doubt if
either the sarcastic antiquary or the rhetorical panegyrist have
developed the simple truth of Cowley's "violent inclination of his own
mind." He does it himself more openly in that beautiful picture of an
injured poet, in "The Complaint," an ode warm with individual feeling,
but which Johnson coldly passes over, by telling us that "it met the
usual fortune of complaints, and seems to have excited more contempt
than pity."
Thus the biographers of Cowley have told us nothing, and the poet
himself has probably not told us all. To these calumnies respecting
Cowley's comedy, raised up by those whom Wood designates as "enemies
of the muses," it would appear that others were added of a deeper dye,
and in malignant whispers distilled into the ear of royalty. Cowley,
in an ode, had commemorated the genius of Brutus, with all the
enthusiasm of a votary of liberty. After the king's return, when
Cowley solicited some reward for his sufferings and services in the
royal cause, the chancellor is said to have turned on him with a
severe countenance, saying, "Mr. Cowley, your pardon is your reward!"
It seems that ode was then considered to be of a dangerous tendency
among half the nation; Brutus would be the model of enthusiasts, who
were sullenly bending their neck under the yoke of royalty. Charles
II. feared the attempt of desperate men; and he might have forgiven
Rochester a loose pasquinade, but not Cowley a solemn invocation. This
fact, then, is said to have been the true cause of the despondency so
prevalent in the latter poetry of "the melancholy Cowley." And hence
the indiscretion of the muse, in a single flight, condemned her to a
painful, rather than a voluntary solitude; and made the poet complain
of "barren praise" and "neglected verse."[30]
While this anecdote harmonises with better known facts, it throws some
light on the outcry raised against the comedy, which seems to have
been but an echo of some preceding one. Cowley retreated into
solitude, where he found none of the agrestic charms of the landscapes
of his muse. When in the world, Sprat says, "he had never wanted for
constant health and strength of body;" but, thrown into solitude, he
carried with him a wounded spirit--the Ode of Brutus and the
condemnation of his comedy were the dark spirits that haunted his
cottage. Ill health soon succeeded low spirits--he pined in dejection,
and perished a victim of the finest and most injured feelings.
But before we leave _the melancholy Cowley_, he shall speak the
feelings, which here are not exaggerated. In this Chronicle of
Literary Calamity no passage ought to be more memorable than the
solemn confession of one of the most amiable of men and poets.
Thus he expresses himself in the preface to his "Cutter of Coleman
Street."
"We are therefore wonderful wise men, and have a fine business of it;
we, who spend our time in poetry. I do sometimes laugh, and am often
angry with myself, when I think on it; and if I had a son inclined by
nature to the same folly, I believe I should bind him from it by the
strictest conjurations of a paternal blessing. For what can be more
ridiculous than to labour to give men delight, whilst they labour, on
their part, most earnestly to take offence?"
And thus he closes the preface, in all the solemn expression of
injured feelings:--"This I do affirm, that _from all which I have
written, +I never+ received the least benefit or the least advantage;
but, on the contrary, have felt sometimes the effects of malice and
misfortune_!"
Cowley's ashes were deposited between those of Chaucer and Spenser; a
marble monument was erected by a duke; and his eulogy was pronounced,
on the day of his death, from the lips of royalty. The learned wrote,
and the tuneful wept: well might the neglected bard, in his
retirement, compose an epitaph on himself, living there "entombed,
though not dead."
To this ambiguous state of existence he applies a conceit, not
inelegant, from the tenderness of its imagery:
Hic sparge flores, sparge breves rosas,
Nam vita gaudet mortua floribus;
Herbisque odoratis corona
Vatis adhuc cinerem calentem.