(Abraham), was born at London 1618. His father, who was a grocer, dying before he was born, his mother procured him to be admitted a king's scholar at Westminster. His first inclination to poetry arose on his lighting on Spenser's Fairy Queen, when he was but just able to read; and this inclination so far improved in him, that at 13 he began to write several poems; a collection of which was published in 1631, when he was but 15. But one thing extremely remarkable in him was, that with so extraordinary a natural genius, he had so bad a memory that his teachers could never bring him to retain even the common rules of grammar. So that had he not formed the most intimate acquaintance with the books themselves from which these rules are drawn, he could never have been master of them. In 1636 he was elected a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, and removed to that university. Here he went through all his exercises with a remarkable degree of reputation; and at the same time must have pursued his poetical turn with great eagerness, as it appears that the greatest part of his poems were written before he left that university. He had taken his degree of Master of Arts before 1643, when, in consequence of the turbulence of the times, he, among many others, was ejected from the college: whereupon, retiring to Oxford, he entered himself of St John's college; and that very year, under the denomination of a fellow... Cowley, lar of Oxford, published a satire called The Puritan and the Papist. It is apparent, however, that he did not remain very long at Oxford; for his zeal to the royal cause engaging him in the service of the king, who was very lenient of his abilities, and by whom he was frequently employed, he attended his majesty in many of his journeys and expeditions, and gained not only that prince's esteem, but that of many other great personages, and in particular of lord Falkland, one of the principal secretaries of state.

During the heat of the civil war, he was settled in the earl of St Albans' family; and when the queen-mother was obliged to retire into France, he accompanied her thither, laboured strenuously in the affairs of the royal family, undertook several very dangerous journeys on their account, and was the principal instrument in maintaining an epistolary correspondence between the king and queen.

In the year 1656 it was judged proper that Mr Cowley should come over into England, and, under pretence of privacy and retirement, give notice of the situation of affairs in that kingdom to those by whom he was employed. Soon after his arrival, however, he was seized, in the search after another gentleman of considerable note in the king's party; but although it was through mistake that he was taken, yet when the republicans found all their attempts of every kind to bring him over to their party proved ineffectual, he was committed to a severe confinement, and it was even with considerable difficulty that he obtained his liberty; when, venturing back to France, he remained there, in his former situation, till near the time of the king's return.

Soon after the restoration he became possessed of a very competent estate, through the favour of his principal friends the duke of Buckingham and the earl of St Albans; and being now upwards of 40 years of age, he took up a resolution to pass the remainder of a life which had been a scene of tempest and tumult, in that situation which had ever been the object of his wishes, a studious retirement. His eagerness to get out of the bottle of a court and city made him less careful than he might have been in the choice of a healthful habitation in the country; by which means he found his solitude from the very beginning suited with the constitution of his body than with his mind. His first rural residence was at Barn Elms, a place, which lying low, and being near a large river, was subject to a variety of breezes from land and water, and liable in the winter-time to great inconvenience from the dampness of the soil. The consequence of this Mr Cowley too soon experienced, by being seized with a dangerous and lingering fever. On his recovery from this, he removed to Chertsey, a situation not much more healthy, where he had not been long before he was seized with another confining disease. Having languished under this for some months, he at length got the better of it, and seemed pretty well recovered from the bad symptoms; when one day in the heat of summer 1667, staying too long in the fields to give some directions to his labourers, he caught a most violent cold, which was attended with a defluxion and stoppage in his breast; and for want of timely care, by treating it as a common cold, and refusing advice till it was past remedy, he departed this life on the 28th of July in that year, being the 49th of his age; and, on the 3rd of August following, he was interred in Westminster-abbey, near the ashes of Chaucer and his beloved Spencer. He was a man of a very amiable character, as well as an admirable genius. King Charles II., on the news of his death, declared "that Mr Cowley had not left a better man behind him in England." A monument was erected to his memory by George Villiers duke of Buckingham in 1675.