Abraham, the last and most distinguished of the metaphysical school of English poets, was born at London in 1618. His father, who was a grocer in Fleet Street, died before his son was born, but his mother sent him at an early age to Westminster school, from which he removed, in the ordinary course, to Trinity College, Cambridge. In the tenth year of his age he composed a poem entitled *The Tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe*; which, however, did not appear till the author had completed his fifteenth year. At that date it was published, along with others of Cowley's youthful productions, in a volume called *Poetic Blossoms*. He was first tempted to exert his poetic faculties by perusing the works of Spenser, which he says "were wont to lie in his mother's parlour." The reputation which he had gained for himself at school he increased at college, by the care with which he was accustomed to elaborate his exercises, and the success which attended his *Daviddeis*, an epic, in four books, illustrative of the history and character of the Psalmist of Israel. In the civil war, which broke out at this time in England, Cowley espoused the royalist cause, and was ejected from the university in 1643, shortly after graduation. Hereupon he retired to Oxford, the great focus of royalism, and was selected for the confidential office of deciphering the correspondence of the king and queen. In 1646 he went to the Continent; and on his return, after a residence there of ten years, he was seized as a spy by the Puritans, and compelled to give heavy security for his future conduct. The same year he published an edition of his poems; and in the following year, having obtained the degree of M.D. from Oxford, he gave to the world, as the result of his medical studies, a Latin poem on plants, in six books. In 1659 he went to Paris; and on the Restoration he returned to England, and claimed the mastership of the Savoy—an office which had been promised to him by Charles I. and his successor. His claim was passed over; but a compensation for this injustice was made to him in 1665, by his being selected to farm the queen's lands at Chertsey at a nominal rent. He died in 1667, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, between Chaucer and Spenser, the authors who had at first awakened in him a love of poetry. Dr Johnson's criticism of Cowley's poetical merits is in most respects the justest that has as yet appeared. He says, "Cowley brought to his poetical labours a mind replete with learning, and his pages are embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply. He was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode and the gaiety of the less; he was qualified for sprightly sallies and for lofty flights; he was among those who freed translation from servility, and instead of following his author from a distance, walked by his side; and if he left versification yet improvable, he left likewise, from time to time, such specimens of excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it." Johnson's estimate of his classical diction is equally high. By that critic he is ranked even above Milton as a Latinist. But Johnson had perused so much of the bad Latinity of the middle ages that he had corrupted to a certain extent his own naturally fine taste, and we must take this dictum of his cum grano. The faults of Cowley's style are the wearisome conceits by which it is characterized; the needless exaggerations and far-fetched analogies that exist in every page; and the useless display of learning and classical allusion, that often obscures instead of elucidating the sense.

Besides the works already mentioned, Cowley composed when at college a satire called *The Puritan and the Papist*, and after leaving the university a comedy called *The Guardian*, which was subsequently reprinted under the title of *The Cutter of Coleman Street*. His poems, published on his return from France, appeared in four different parts: 1. *Miscellanies*; 2. *The Mistress, or several copies of Love Verses*; 3. *Pindaric Odes, written in imitation of the style and manner of Pindar*; 4. *The Davidides*, already mentioned. Of all his poems his amatory effusions are the worst; and the reason of this, as alleged by himself, is quite satisfactory—namely, that he never loved but once, and on that occasion could not summon sufficient boldness to declare his passion.