may wonder, Sir, (for this seems a little too extravagant and pindarical for prose), what I mean by all this preface; it is to let you know that though I have missed, like a chemist, my great end, yet I account my affections and endeavours well rewarded by something that I have met with, by the bye, which is, that they have procured to me some part in your kindness and esteem."

Here is a fine passage from the Essay "Of Solitude :"

***“Happy had it been for Hannibal, if adversity could have taught him as much wisdom as was learnt by Scipio from the highest prosperities. This would be no wonder, if it were as truly as it is colourably and wittily said by Monsieur de Montaigne, 'That ambition itself might teach us to love solitude; there is nothing that does so much hate to have companions.' It is true it loves to have its elbows free; it detests to have company on either side; but it delights, above all things, in a train behind, ay, and a cheer too before it. And the greatest part of men are so far from the opinion of that noble Roman, that if they chance to be at any time without company they are like a becalmed ship; they never move but by the wind of other men's breath, and have no oars of their own to steer withal."

The whole Essay "Of Liberty" is full of the happiest adaptations of classical examples to Cowley's

peculiar views. He speedily dismisses the public side of the question, and enlarges on the slavery to which ambitious men (Catiline unfortunate in his ambition, Cæsar prosperous) voluntary subject themselves in the pursuit of their object. There are in this eloquent discourse many felicitous translations. from Cicero and Sallust, which taken with the specimens of Anacreon (which my readers will find further on), may lead us to lament deeply that in that age of translators, Cowley did not devote his cherished leisure to versions of some of the great masters of antiquity, especially the orators and historians.

I prefer however to give an extract from the curious fragment which he has entitled "On the Government of Oliver Cromwell;" a strange vision of which the whole tenor is strongly against the Great Protector, but into the midst of which, put it is true, into the mouth of a bad angel, the following character of Cromwell is introduced as if by an instinct of truth and candour which the writer found it impossible to resist. Hume has inserted this character "altered," as he says, "in some particulars," in his history. Why altered? The Scottish historian is a most clear and pleasant narrator, but surely he does not pretend to improve Cowley's prose. I give it from the original. The spokesman is the evil angel :

"And pray, countryman," said he, very kindly and

very flatteringly, "for I would not have you fall into the general error of the world, that detests and decries so extraordinary a virtue, what can be more extraordinary than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind which have often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in so improbable a design as the destruction of one of the most ancient and most solidly-founded monarchies upon the earth? that he should have the power or boldness to put his Prince and master to an open and infamous death; to banish that numerous and strongly-allied family; to do all this under the name and wages of a Parliament; to trample upon them too as he pleased, and spurn them out of doors when he grew weary of them; to raise up a new and unheard-of monster out of their ashes; to stifle that in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things that ever were called Sovereigns in England; to oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice; to serve all parties patiently for awhile, and to command them victoriously at last; to overrun each corner of the three nations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches of the south and the poverty of the north; to be feared and courted by all foreign princes, and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth; to call together Parliaments with a word of

his

pen,

and scatter them again with the breath of his mouth; to be hourly and daily petitioned that he would please to be hired at the rate of two millions a-year to be the master of those who had hired him before to be their servant; to have the estates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal as was the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in the spending of them ; and lastly (for there is no end of all the particulars of his glory), to bequeath all this with one word to his posterity; to die with peace at home and triumph abroad; to be buried among kings and with more than regal solemnity, and to leave a name behind him not to be extinguished but with the whole world; which as it is now too little for his praises, so it might have been too for his conquests, if the short time of his human life could have been stretched out to the extent of his immortal design."

Such is Cowley as a prose writer. And yet one of the most accomplished persons whom I have ever known assured me the other day that, excepting amongst a few men of very refined taste, he believed the Essays to be little read. They will rise in demand soon I hope, for my friend Mr. Willmott, a writer deservedly popular, has praised them in one of his charming volumes just as they ought to be praised. It would be difficult to say more.

The poems are singularly unequal. But as I for my own private recreation am wont to resort to

such innocent gaieties as the fathers of song have bequeathed to us, so I seldom fail to present them to my readers; and it happens that this philosopher, whom we have seen dealing with high and lofty thoughts, descanting like a hermit on the joys of solitude and the delights of the country,-and in this respect his odes are nothing inferior to his Essays;-it happens that this identical Cowley hath left behind him the pleasantest of all pleasant ballads, which could hardly have been produced by any one except a thorough man of the world. It is entitled "The Chronicle," and contains a catalogue of all the fair ladies with whom he had at different times been enamoured. Never was list more amusing. It abounds in happy traits, especially the one, which tells to half an hour how long a silly beauty may hope to retain the heart of a man of The expression when the haughty Isabella, unconscious of her conquest and marching on to fresh triumphs, beats out Susan "by the bye" has passed into one of those proverbs, of which doubtless as of many other by-words, they who use them little guess the origin.

sense.

"The Chronicle" was written two hundred years ago. Ladies, dear ladies, if one could be sure that no man would open this book, if we were all together in (female) parliament assembled, without a single male creature within hearing, might we not

VOL. I.

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