Cowley, Abraham
Abraham (1618-1667), an English poet. At the age of fifteen, while attending Westminster School, he published his first volume of poems, Poetical Blossoms. He was elected a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he attained literary distinction. He was ejected from Cambridge as a royalist, and removed to Oxford, where he published a satirical poem entitled The Puritan and the Papist. Still identified with the Royalists, he followed Queen Henrietta to France in 1646, where he remained until 1656. He returned to England and settled at Chertsey. Among his poetical writings are Miscellanies, The Mistress, Pindarique Odes, and an unfinished epic on King David. In prose he wrote Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy, Discourse by Way of Vision concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell, and others. As a poet he was extremely popular in his day, but fifty years after his death his poetry was already a thing of the past.
QUOTATIONS.
The only cheap and universal cure.
But an eternal now does always last.
God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.
For he that runs it well, runs twice his race.
But boldly say each night,--
Or in clouds hide them; I have lived to-day.
Abraham Cowley, who at one time was ranked amongst the greatest of our poets, is now read by few. He is a curious relic of that school of poetry which rejected simplicity as beneath the dignity of verse, and aimed at expressing the most extravagant thoughts in the most hyperbolical language. Wit and learning he undoubtedly had; but in his poetry his learning becomes pedantry and his wit affectation. His prose writings, unlike his poetry, are elegant without exaggeration.--Knight.
Cowley was an author by profession, the oldest of those who in England deserve the name.--Taine.